A series by Christopher James looking at the 'Gay Best Friend' trope
How many of us have had babies with our straight female friend?Who doesn’t love gay lunacy?
The classic straight girl-gay best friend trope takes center stage in the hilarious 2012 microbudget comedy Gayby. Unlike other films that have tackled this relationship (think The Object of My Affection), the film is set primarily in the gay world, rather than framed through the straight world. This movie has everything: gay comic book store drama, hookups lined up for every day in the week, early cameos from Girls stars Adam Driver and Alex Karpofsky plus, finally, an impromptu dance break.
Matt (Matthew Wilkas) and Jen (Jenn Harris) have been best friends since college. Both have been through their whole adult lives together and find themselves in the same post-relationship rut. Matt feels uncomfortable having one night stands with other men after his seven year relationship ended. Meanwhile, Jen feels her biological clock ticking and wants to have a baby. How to do it though? There’s no romantic interest to speak of in her life, and Matt has been the most consistent relationship in her life. She proposes they do it… the old fashioned way. Soon, Matt also becomes excited about the idea of having a child with Jen. He can move on to this stage of fatherhood and bypass the frightening world of being single.
Time for our silly aspirational Instagram fantasy game. Would you rather...
• prepare a turkey with Diane Kruger? • snuggle with Gus Kenworthy and Matt Wilkas in the morning? • live the high life with Constance Wu & Awkwafina? • reflect in the dressing room with Laura Benanti? • reminisce about Goodfellas with Debi Mazar? • bet on a football game with Sam Trammell? • visit Stonehenge with Susan Sarandon? • relaxing with Kate Bosworth? • fly first class with Jeff Goldblum? • eat leftovers with Buffy?
a silly game in which we fantasize about hanging with celebrities. So would you rather?
...fiddle around with Kate Beckinsale's gusset? ...hot tub it with Tom Holland and his BFF? ... dive into the Red Sea with Tom Cullen? ...drop dead on Fire Island with Matthew Wilkas? ...rock climb with Jesse Bradford? ...reminiscing about that play you were in in college with Garret Dillahunt? ...get a facial with Madonna? ...go see Hamlet with Laura Dern?
photos after the jump to help you decide. Do tell us which you'd choose!
Variety Keira Knightley in talks to star in the biopic about the French writer Colette. Crossing my fingers about this one. Colette is fascinating (she wrote Cheri!) Comics Alliance on Marvel, politics, and why corporations are not your friend Towleroad TitanMen has offered disgraced Congressman Aaron Schock (the one with abs and a Downton Abbey fetish) $1 million to star in a porn film. LOL Variety Clive Owen, Alba Rohrwacher, and more join Meryl Streep's competition jury at Berlinale
Kenneth in the (212) Shirtless Russell Tovey reportedly causes a Broadway audience member to faint. Ha! Pajiba checks in w/ the Trainspotting cast, 20 years on i09 Naomi Watts reunites with Lynch for Twin Peaks S3 i09 Noomi Rapace not returning for the Prometheus sequel IndieWire thinks "The Chickening," a short film remix of The Shining is insane and genius. Definitely the first part. As for the second... Towleroad a first for ESPN, actor Matthew Wilkas (Gayby, You're Killing Me) labelled "Gus Kenworthy's Boyfriend" during the X Games Coming Soon Tony winner Annaleigh Ashford (we ♥ her) has joined the cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show the next TV musical (though this one won't be "live") Salon "Where are all the women in American Film?" a SAG-AFTRA member reviews her screeners
I had seen four films, 75 percent of which completely leave women out of the story. But maybe women really don’t feature in West African war zones. Or in the history of NWA. Or in finance.
But of course we feature. It just depends what story you want to tell.
TODAY'S WATCH Lady Gaga performering her and Diane Warren's Best Original Song nominee "Til It Happens To You" at the PGA Awards
LEFTOVER SUNDANCE BUZZ Variety 19 breakthrough performances from the festival Film School Rejects talks to the cast and filmmaker of the LGBT Korean-American drama Spa Night The Guardian Oscar buzz from the fest including Manchester by the Sea, Ira Sach's Little Men and Rebecca Hall as Christine
TODAY'S MUST (LONG) READ "Winona Forever" by Soraya Roberts for Hazlitt. It's a great history of the star's youth and her sudden generational iconhood. And how we've trapped her adolescence ever since.
Winona Ryder arrived at the perfect time. Film scholar Timothy Shary characterizes the teen genre as “cyclical.” Ryder’s first film, Lucas, was released at the end of the hyper-hormonal Porky’s era (AIDS and teen pregnancy ruined it for everyone), five years before the release of Boyz N the Hood. In the period between 1986 and 1990, during her teen career, there were about 250 American films about adolescents, the most memorable being nostalgic thefts of innocence such as Dirty Dancing (1987), Hairspray (1988) and Dead Poets Society (1989). Three of Ryder’s films—Great Balls of Fire, 1969, Mermaids—adhered to this theme. She was in a sweet spot: post sex-crazed, pre-violence crazed—the ideal landing pad for a wide-eyed alien.
“You’d be hard pressed to say who was an average girl in teen movies after the mid-80s,” says Shary. The Brats had moved on, and so had John Hughes (his last teen film, Some Kind of Wonderful, came out in 1987), though no one forgot about them. “[Hughes] showed that you could make sensitive teen films that didn’t have nudity that didn’t pander to the supposed teen sex urge,” Shary says. He thinks this was “a contributing factor in helping set up an actress like Winona Ryder who could come along in the later ‘80s and be taken seriously as a teen actress.” While Hughes muse Molly Ringwald pined for the rich guy, Ryder merely pined for herself...
It's a delicious read and for those of you who didn't live through the Depp/Winona years, a fine encapsulation of the generational fascination with their relationship.
Thursday, September 9, 2021 at 1:30PM 
How many of us have had babies with our straight female friend?Who doesn’t love gay lunacy? 
