Earlier this month, American comedian and actor Billy Eichner found himself at the centre of a social media storm.
He had suggested that his new movie, Bros – a raunchy, R-rated romantic comedy about the roller-coaster relationship between two gay men – had underperformed at the US box office because straight audiences didn't show up in sufficient numbers.
His remarks prompted a deluge of counter-theories, criticism and (sadly predictable) homophobia.
"Ninety per cent of the people who immediately had a take on it hadn't seen the movie," laughs Eichner, speaking with ABC Arts in Melbourne, where he, Bros co-star Luke Macfarlane, and co-writer and director Nicholas Stoller have decamped for a whirlwind press tour.
"That's just the fascinating — but I think increasingly impossible-to-avoid — element of our culture."
Although Eichner's remarks were seen as disingenuous by some, they were of a piece with the film. By turns nervy, hyperactive, and raucously funny, Bros is a movie in constant dialogue with the cultural moment, with notions of queerness, with romantic comedies, and – perhaps most hilariously – with its very existence as a wide-release, studio-made gay comedy.
While there's been gay romance in mainstream American cinema (see: Love, Simon and Happiest Season for recent examples), Bros marks arguably the first time multiplex audiences have seen a full-tilt, sex-scenes-and-all gay rom-com – and one performed, save for a couple of delicious cameos, by an entirely LGBTQ+ cast.
In a year where heterosexual attempts to resurrect the genre have mostly induced a rom-coma, Bros actually feels alive, progressive, and in dialogue with the form.
Despite how far we think we've come as a culture – and the movie has plenty of gags at the expense of 'cis white gay men' to reflect it – the film still marks an important moment in representation.
Eichner is adamant: "We need more movies like this."
"As hard as that might be for a straight audience to wrap their heads around, in terms of whether it's something that they relate to, I still think LGBTQ folks are still wrapping their heads around seeing their own reflection. I think that can be complicated for people."
He includes himself in this equation: "I'm very comforted and inspired by seeing stories about queer people, because that's the life that I lead."
At the same time, he's aware that – as inclusive as Bros is – one splashy, wide-release movie isn't the answer to on-screen representation.
"This was a movie that I wrote, so it was going to reflect a version of my experience, but no one person can speak for the whole community," Eichner says.
Putting the romance in bromance
Largely set in New York City, Bros stars Eichner as Bobby, a nebbish podcaster-turned-curator of a new LGBTQ+ museum, who falls for dreamy gym rat Aaron, played by Macfarlane.
Canadian actor Macfarlane — who Eichner was drawn to thanks to his role in the television series Brothers & Sisters — says his experience essaying all-American beefcakes in Hallmark movies was perfect preparation.
"For whatever reason, I always kind of understood these wholesome-y type dudes, and I can tap into them in an authentic way," he says.
The film cleaves to the classic 'Will they or won't they?' rom-com template while constantly pushing up against it, reshaping the genre's tropes to reflect contemporary queer culture.
It's also plenty ribald, with the kind of gross-out gags and explicit sex jokes that were once reserved for the frat pack comedies of the 00s — films such as The Hangover, Wedding Crashers, and any number of Judd Apatow movies.
It was Stoller, the director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) and Bad Neighbours (2014), who floated the idea of a gay romantic comedy to Eichner, who he directed in the 2016 sequel Bad Neighbours 2: Sorority Rising – a film that featured a surprisingly empathetic portrayal of a queer couple in a genre all-too fond of leaning on gay panic jokes.
"For years I'd wondered why there wasn't a big, splashy studio romantic comedy about two men falling in love," says Stoller, adding that he was impressed not only by how funny Eichner was as an actor, but also that he was "a proper movie star".
"I was intrigued by the idea, but I'm straight. I didn't think I could do that correctly."
Eichner had his doubts.
"I didn't think any major studio would want to do it and release it theatrically. There was no precedent for it," he explains.
Growing up gay in the 80s
Eichner and Macfarlane grew up in the 80s and 90s, a time when a movie like Bros would have been a lifeline to queer youth who didn't have the representation of today's LGBTQ+ audiences.
As Eichner's on-screen character quips of the new generation: "We had AIDS – they had Glee."
Looking back, he says: "When I was growing up, we didn't have a ton of gay representation in popular culture."
As "a gay kid who was obsessed with pop culture" he was drawn to whoever happened to be the queer cast member on MTV's pioneering 90s realty TV show The Real World, and the openly queer cohort of dancers in Madonna's 1991 documentary, In Bed with Madonna.
"There was just enough representation to let me know that there was a world out there of gay adults, where I would be OK," Eichner says.
Macfarlane, who grew up in Ontario, remembers seeing the Canadian queer film Lilies (1996), and "just being fascinated — like, 'These are gay people.'"
"But it never really felt like it was for public consumption. It was the sort of thing that you discovered quietly, one Sunday afternoon where mum and dad were gardening."
Eichner is thoughtful when it comes his personal journey as a queer creative in Hollywood.
"We've all had to navigate Hollywood and also our personal lives as queer people," he says.
"So Nick [director Nicholas Stoller] and I were always very interested in what everyone's experiences were."
For a collaborative writer and director like Stoller, that meant listening to not just Eichner's experiences, but those of the diverse, LGBTQ+ cast – which included everyone from Bowen Yang and Miss Lawrence to the legendary Harvey Fierstein – who were encouraged to share their thoughts on set.
Eichner says: "We had all of those hilarious comic actors and everyone was so unique and came from a different background, a different generation, and just had a different perspective."
Reinventing the rom-com
Eichner and Stoller approached the writing of Bros as longtime rom-com fans, though the director – an admirer of recent, thorny efforts like Joachim Trier's The Worst Person in the World – says that the genre "has to evolve to match whatever stories we're telling now".
Eichner, meanwhile, was inspired by what he calls the "dialogue-driven" rom-coms of his youth, citing Moonstruck, Working Girl and Broadcast News – "probably my favourite movie".
"In those days they were allowed to talk like adults, and that wasn't considered something that would alienate the public," he says.
He admits to being bemused by feedback "about how much dialogue there is [in Bros], or how much my character speaks".
"I find it interesting that that's so provocative," he says.
"I don't know why explosions and horror movies are considered the norm, but people actually expressing themselves and having an intellect – even an aggressive intellect – is considered alienating."
Macfarlane, meanwhile, says he's been startled by the swift, frequently reductive hot takes that proliferated upon Bros' US release.
"We don't reflect to ourselves in the theatre, we immediately have to go out and say something about it — which is a strange burden to put on consuming any sort of piece of art," he says.
Whatever the movie's immediate fate, Stoller believes Bros will stand the test of time.
"Every time I screen this film, and sit in with an audience, it just destroys people. People have an emotional experience," he says.
"It's such an entertaining movie that I know it will live on."
Bros is in cinemas now.
