Bro’ing out on Twitter discourse

AKA I have thoughts about the movie Bros

October 06, 2022

Editors Note

I’m gonna try to avoid updates on each twist and turn of Elon trying to buy Twitter until something looks final. The story is just moving too fast, steeped in too much chaos, and requires too much thought about a deeply unlikeable person for me to want to spend too much time dwelling on what it means until it actually means something. 

A New Dada-ist Moment

 

The urge to write said analysis is growing, but right now, I’m just gonna say go enjoy some of the delightful strange videos in this thread. 

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Bros and Tweets and Movies and Gays, Oh My 

I saw Bros this week. While the film’s producers probably wish I saw it over the weekend to boost those early box office numbers, I went on Monday night with one of my partners and a group of queer friends. We ordered a few cocktails and cackled along in a theater that felt largely full with other queer men. It was a delightful time, not a perfect movie, but very enjoyable and funny.  

If you check Twitter, you might assume this film is either this film is the last chance to save queer cinema and no queer artist will ever get paid again if we let this movie flop or this deeply unfunny film was obviously doomed to fail. Twitter discourse usually acts like a funhouse mirror on veterinary-grade tranquilizers with its ability to distort and elevate odd points of view, but the bird app’s alternate reality around this film feels especially intriguing to me. So if you’ll indulge me, I want to pick apart some of the gears turning this conversation. 

First, some background. Bros is the first feature film starring and written by comedian Billy Eichner. You most likely know him from his show Billy on the Street, which takes the “man on the street” late night show segment format and hops it up on gay pop culture obsession. His character in Billy on the Street is loud, kinda mean, and spends a lot of time yelling at strangers for failing to appreciate obscure pop culture trivia (career goals tbh). His career includes other roles on Parks and Rec or American Horror Story, playing characters with a similar disposition, including in the Hulu show, Difficult People, which he co-created with comedian Julie Klausner.      

The movie’s marketing has also been a bit of a mess. An October romantic comedy release already felt like an uphill battle, but the marketing and press tour have gone out of their way to promote the “firstness” of the film. Intended or otherwise, this drew the film into comparisons with another queer romcom released earlier this year, Fire Island (which is also amazing, go watch it on Hulu right now). Before Bros even hit theaters, the discourse around this comparison had forced Fire Island creator Joel Kim Booster to release a notes app “no really Billy and I aren’t in competition” statement on his way back from Burning Man.     

And now we get to Billy’s tweets. On Sunday, Billy put out a tweet thread in response to the lower than expected opening weekend box office numbers for Bros. One of the points that really grabbed people’s attention was that “straight people just didn’t show up.” Which naturally launched thousands of highly qualified media industry critiques on Gay Twitter™️ to chime in as well (I am aware of the irony of my very long version of that here, don’t @ me). I won’t bother recapping all of the discourse for you, but there are a few areas I want to unpack:

  1. People didn’t want to see it because Billy is unlikeable 

  2. The historic framing made the film seem like homework  

On the likeability of Billy as a film lead, I think it’s worth asking what people know him from. In both Billy on the Street and Difficult People, Billy plays characters named Billy. A heightened self-insert version of what we, the audience, are supposed to assume is a version of the real-life Eichner, but Difficult People gives that character more space to breathe. I can see how if you mainly know Billy On the Street, you’d find him abrasive and unlikeable. In Difficult People, you get a much more self-deprecating and self-reflective look at those qualities. Eichner’s character in Bros feels like an extension of the Billy we got in Difficult People. One that is loud, harsh, and at times preachy, but also vulnerable and struggling to find success and intimacy. 

The success of Billy on the Street likely overshadows Eichner’s more nuanced Billy. I’d love to ask everyone talking about the film which version of Billy they are most familiar with. Your ability to imagine Billy as a romantic comedy lead is likely answered by that question. 

On point the second, I kinda agree. The weakest points of Bros for me were when the film slowed down to deliver brief queer history lessons. Billy’s character in the film is working on opening a queer history museum, so I get how a marketing team could arrive at this movie's position in that history as a central theme worth highlighting. The issue is that Bros isn’t a singular turning point for queer comedy, it’s part of a much larger trend. Fire Island, The Other Two, Hacks, Jinkx & Dela’s Holiday Special, Jerrod Carmichael’s special Rothaniel, and so many other projects from queer comedians have hit streaming in the past few years. Bros is unique among this set for getting a theatrical release, but that’s not the defacto marker of quality or cultural significance that it was pre-2020. 

There are things to discuss and critique in this movie and all of the other queer comedies I’ve listed here. It’s also worth celebrating that so many queer artists are getting a chance to tell these stories at all. I refuse to blindly champion queer art defending it from any critique, just as I refuse to let cynicism prevent me from enjoying things and reveling in how lucky I am to be alive at a time when I get to be myself and see myself in mainstream media. I’m gonna have my snarky little gay cake and eat it too. 

In Conclusion

I wasn’t kidding about watching Fire Island earlier. You have homework this week. If you haven’t seen the projects I mentioned in this newsletter, please do yourself a favor and watch one this weekend. I’m happy to help recommend where to start if you need guidance. Seriously DM me what streaming services you have and the kind of TV and movies you like, and I will recommend queer art that I think you’ll enjoy.