The words “Ron Howard” and “controversy” are not familiar bedfellows. Sure, there were mild fusses kicked up around “The Da Vinci Code” and its sequel, but nothing beyond expectations for movies with religious subject matter. But when CNN anchor Anderson Cooper took Universal to task on “Ellen” last week for including the line “Electric cars are gay” in the trailer for Howard’s new comedy “The Dilemma,” which opens in January and stars Vince Vaughn and Kevin James, controversy finally came to the artist formerly known as Opie.
Cooper called the filmmakers and studio out for including the term ‘gay’ as a pejorative both in the trailer and the film, and despite a claim from a Universal spokesman that no offense had been taken by “gays in our marketing department” (a spokesman who was presumably a character from “Mad Men”), the trailer was swiftly recut to remove the line in question. But it looks like that hasn’t quelled the fires, as Deadline are reporting that, with yesterday being National Coming Out Day, GLAAD have called on the studio to remove the scene from the film altogether.
With a spate of horrific homophobic violence and teen suicides of late, the organization have launched an online petition to ask Universal to remove the scene. Whatever the film’s supporters might say, there is something faintly offensive about the scene — in Allan Loeb’s screenplay, dated a year ago, Vaughn’s character goes on to say “Not homosexual gay… but soft gay, unmanly gay, quiet and small gay” (in the trailer, the line was “my-parents-are-chaperoning-the-dance gay”) and that “if you’re a real man… you don’t want an electronic car,” which tries to swerve homophobia while still taking the word as a slur, and at no point is he reprimanded for his stance by any other character.
Really, we’d rather that comedies like this one were able to avoid using lines like this for easy, Neanderthalic lowest-common-denominator laughs. In fact, we’d rather they didn’t exist at all. And this is certainly a debate worth having in the current climate. There’s no denying that the line should never have been included in the trailer, and that theoretically conscientious filmmakers like Howard, Loeb and Vaughn should have thought twice about it at all. But really, they should have thought twice about the whole abominable-looking project.
The new trailer, less offensive to the gay community, but still offensive to anyone with eyes, ears, a brain and a heart, can be seen below, and you’ll be able to take your most unreconstructed buddies to it on January 14th, 2011.
The trailer may have been recut, but the offensive version was still playing in theaters over the weekend. I saw it Saturday at a screening of the "Social Network". It was actually the first time i had seen it and I was really taken aback by the slur. It is patently offensive, I don't even think it's a question.
I must say that I am a bit ambiguous however about whether the film should be edited. I hate censorship and homophobia at about the same level. I'm inclined to think we should use the film's offensiveness as a "teaching moment" and a touchstone of homophobic (and lazy) writing to be avoided by films in the future.
Say what you want about the trailer, the film (no matter how terible it looks to begin with) should not be cut. I'm sure this is not the first film to use the word "gay" as a derogatery term, so should we go recut all the older films? If anything, the character's use of the term should just reflect on his character in the film (whether that means you like him less or more) just as a racist in a film would use racial slurs such as Clint eastwood did in Gran Torino. No Asians were screaming at that film being offensive. I'm sure a lot of people (whether you agree with them or not) would be offended by the sex scenes in Blue Valentine, but i bet you would shit your pants if they said they would cut them out to appease said people. Same thing.
Cut the entire scene? Because a character used a word in the same way that someone like him would almost certainly use it in the real world? Some people may like the idea of living in a society where nobody uses the word "gay" as a negative adjective, but we don't, and I think we all know that. And part of the joke–and I'm not claiming it's actually funny–is that he clarifies his use of the word isn't meant to refer to "homosexual gay". Are we seriously talking about removing the word from every movie made in the future? And I'm just curious, if his character said "Electric cars are retarded," would the same people be so outraged by it? I'm just saying, chopping the entire scene out of the movie seems to be a ridiculous overreaction.