While conceiving and filming Everybody Wants Some!!!, did director Richard Linklater inadvertently tap into a screamingly gay vein?
That’s the argument posited by Kyle Buchanan in a new column for Vulture. Describing a locker room scene starring Tyler Hoechlin as “casually obscene,” Buchanan fixates for a solid paragraph on the tableaux of the actor “draped over” the couch, which he claims plays out “like an artful provocation.”
“It’s an image so sexy,” he writes, “that the friend I saw the film with actually let out a yelp.”
Buchanan argues that Everybody Wants Some!!! will quickly join the ranks of other accidentally homoerotic films like White Squall, Top Gun, Fight Club, and Ben-Hur:
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Did Linklater expect that his film could be read this way? I doubt it, but those images don’t lose their power just because they’re inadvertent. The movie opens with a procession of male-gaze images as Jenner’s character checks out college hotties on his way to school, but Linklater’s gentle, generous eye leaves enough room for another kind of male gaze that might position Jenner as the hottie worth ogling. The result is an ode to straight-male bonding that doubles as a whole other kind of romp for gay men.”
The excellent article can — and should — be read in its entirety here.
Guess we have plans tonight after all.
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