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Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss
Tommy O'Haver, writer/director; with Sean P. Hayes, Brad Rowe, Meredith Scott Lynn, Richard Ganoung, and Paul Bartel

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There had to come a point where gay-themed films would descend into the dead-zone occupied by the bulk of American movies. Take Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss, the newest in this year's lineup of gay romantic comedies. Directed by Tommy O'Haver, the film begins with promise as Billy (Sean P. Hayes) tells us his all-too-gay life story. Born in Indiana and surrounded by straight people, Billy turned to art-- movies and Polaroid photography-- to find himself. Now in his late 20s and living in LA, he is doing his best to get a boyfriend, make ends meet, and build a career as an art photographer. Billy is quick to tell us that, stereotypes to the contrary, not all gay men want one sex partner after another. They want, as he does, romance, a stable relationship, kids, and respectability. Billy narrates this monologue over quirky Polaroid snapshots of family, friends, and fantasies that show a flair for irony and camp. Director O'Haver's tone is witty, light, and sharp. What fun-- a comedy about a gay man who wants the straight, middle-class dream. This might be a gay Candide for the 1990s, in which Billy learns that life is not like the movies, and gay lives can be more interesting by being simply lived than by imitating straight models.

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But as Screen Kiss continues, we realize, with sinking heart, that director O'Haver has little distance from his protagonist. Soon we are in the morass of second-rate romantic comedy. Billy and his best friend George-- short for Georgiana-- (Meredith Scott Lynn) meet the gorgeous Gabriel (Brad Rowe), a waiter in a coffee shop. Billy falls in lust and love, and asks Gabriel to be a model in his new project-- a gay revision of great Hollywood screen kisses. Billy is meanwhile loved by a successful fellow photographer, 40ish Perry (Richard Ganoung, who starred 12 years ago in Parting Glances), but Billy cannot see that happiness might lie that way. Meanwhile Gabriel is spotted by famous gay photographer Rex Webster (Paul Bartel)-- a mean, funny parody of Bruce Weber (his big new show is called "No Dogs, All Boys"). Billy seems to be falling into the arms of the gay fast-lane. Meanwhile our hero finds solace in imagining Walter Mitty-like alternatives to his life in fantasies cut from classic Hollywood movies.

While all this has the potential for insightful storytelling, Screen Kiss flounders quickly. Some of the writing is facilely funny-- jokes about movie stars, Deepak Chopra, and L.A. life abound-- the movie tries too hard to be Paul Rudnick (Jeffrey and In and Out) and falls far too short. The conceit of Billy using heterosexual Hollywood movies rewritten as gay fantasies never gains the momentum or urgency it should, mostly because O'Haver is not much interested in them other than as filler (though the film's production and cinematography go a long way to making them at least look good). But the real problem with Screen Kiss is that at heart it is terribly confused about where it stands.

For a film that wants to posit a rather conservative, assimilationist view of gay life and culture (i.e., most gay men want lives like heterosexuals', complete with kids), Screen Kiss plays uncritically into the most empty-headed gay (and het) fantasies-- beautiful models, the gay high life, and romantic liaisons that bear no relationship to reality. For the longest time we keep waiting for the film to place Billy is a slightly different context, to tell us that what he's thinking, how he's acting is foolish. But O'Haver seems to idolize as much as Billy the fake glamour of pretty models and trash-Hollywood fantasies. The film wants it both ways. Billy's claim to want a traditional relationship (as opposed to the more open sexual freedom of gay life) is seen as completely congruent with the fake worlds of Hollywood romance and the manufactured images of advertising beauty. This disjunction between articulated morals and image is no different than, say, films in the 1930s where Claudette Colbert agonized beautifully over an unfaithful husband, or 1950s weepers where Lana Turner suffered for "true love" while lounging glamorous in revealing evening clothes. It is, as they were, shallow, insincere junk. But, hey, this is popular entertainment at the end of the 20th century-- and Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss is what we can expect when gay filmmaking puts itself in the hands of Hollywood commerce.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com