BOX OFFICE POLITICS - This is everything that’s ridiculous about Hollywood in a single sentence. You can put together an acclaimed, hit-making director and two A-list, Oscar-winning actors, promise a low budget and an intriguing subject matter, and have the whole industry run away. The whole liberal, diversity-loving industry. Because, as director Steven Soderbergh explains, “They said it was too gay.”
Too gay. That’s the reason that Michael Douglas and Matt Damon’s “Behind the Candelabra” biopic about Liberace is coming to HBO instead of a theater this year. Because in 2013, apparently the entertainment industry believes we can still only watch stories about homosexuals in the privacy of our homes.
Soderbergh told the Wrap, “Nobody would make it. We went to everybody in town. We needed $5 million. Nobody would do it. They said it was too gay. Everybody. This was after ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ by the way. Which is not as funny as this movie. I was stunned. It made no sense to any of us.” Maybe he could have gotten green-lighted with a movie about a gay star who died of AIDS that was just a little bit gay?” (Read the rest … including where Downton Abbey fits into the discussion … here.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 3
Pub: Jan 8, 2013