The Movies That Gayed Me

For Pride Month 2024, I decided that I was going to celebrate in my own way — with movies either about queer people, by queer people, or important to queer people. Think: The Queer Canon. Movies that don’t fall under the LGBT+ category, but movies that are important nonetheless to LGBT+ people. Movies like Drop Dead Gorgeous, Showgirls, Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, and, of course, The Wizard of Oz.

I was planning on writing a blog post reflecting on these movies. About how I feel like I missed out on some seminal moments of my queerness by missing essential classics that I should’ve seen in high school or earlier. As somebody who has until recently been more of a homebody and experienced anxiety and body image issues relating to my weight, I feel like I’ve missed out on a lot and only starting to catch up. I only occasionally went to gay bars. Many of my friends are straight. As much as I love them, I also wonder if there are moments where I didn’t spread my gay wings as much as I should have.

But all of this self-reflection led me to look back on my own life. Gay films, or films that I wanted to experience to feel part of a bigger culture, could really be anything. Every queer person has these seminal moments that build who they are. Some are just more common for queer people than others. There’s a deliciousness to the queer canon. Movies the LGBT+ community loves are indulgent, ridiculous, delicate, and often violent. We crave splatter, poorly delivered lines, and jokes that only get funnier every time you hear them. We love laughing and being scared — usually at the same time.

All of these things made me think: What are my seminal movies? What are the movies that reached into my heart and made it beat a bit faster? Which ones had me playing pretend and escaping into my little gay fantasies? In this post, I’m going to explore this. Here are the eight movies that made gayed me.

1. Clue (1985)

With a stellar cast and soundtrack and a biting script, Clue is probably the movie that has shaped me the most. The Hasbro board game became an object of my fixation alongside the Power Rangers and X-Men. I would force my family to play Clue during family game nights and would often play by myself in my room, setting down small stacks of cards for the other imaginary players. I’d switch between Miss Scarlet and Mr. Green, depending on my mood.

After one of our weekly Blockbuster trips, I saw Clue in the comedy section. It was like my whole world opened: The lore I was looking for sat right in front of me. I picked up the VHS, showed my parents that it was rated PG, and took it home. It’s one of those movies I remember watching for the first time: My parents had company over — adults — and I was left to my own devices. As they sat at the dinner table, I popped Clue into the VCR in my parent's room. Their TV sat on top of a massive wooden wardrobe, and I stood below it, watching the entire movie on my tip-toes.

As the synth soundtrack started playing, I became enamored — and immediately confused that Miss Scarlet was wearing a green dress. Why weren’t they color-coded? I wondered. Who are these people and what have they done with my Clue? I stood there in confusion; all talk of blackmail, dead husbands, and homosexuality flew over my head. I was bored senseless…until the cook fell out of the freezer with a knife in her back.

When you rewatch Clue, you’ll see how complex the story actually is. Espionage, bureaucracy, and multiple endings! How could they fit all of this into a single movie while making it funny? Madeline Kahn’s iconic “flames…flames on the side of my face,” line will make me gasp for air every time. It’s one of those many moments in a young gay boy’s life, where they run to their mom and ask. “Who is this actress??”

I think Clue is a movie that made me fall in love with theater. Its energy is electric: Tim Curry scurrying from room to room with the magnificent ensemble cast pulled in his wake. One-liners like, “Yep, two corpses; everything’s fine.” Clue teaches you to revel in the ridiculous and find a home in it.

2. Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

The killer plant, Audrey II, holds the human Audrey in its vines. — *Warner Bros.*

I watched Little Shop of Horrors for the first time when my theater teacher announced it as the musical for my freshman year at Thunder Ridge. I bought the DVD and soundtrack from Borders to hype myself up — even before auditioning. I remember thinking that the first song was good; I had heard it before. But my throat hitched when I heard the opening notes of “Skid Row (Downtown).” A movie that was supposed to be about a killer plant blossomed into something beautiful with a beating heart. People — all just trying to live, of all shapes, colors, and styles — sang together with one desire: to escape.

As Seymour finds himself at the end of a dreary alleyway, he sings: “Someone show me a way to get outta here / ‘Cause I constantly pray I’ll get outta here / Please, won’t somebody say I’ll get outta here? / Someone gimme my shot or I’ll rot here.”

I think queer people, especially when they’re just stepping into their queerness, can relate to feeling like they just need to escape. Whether it’s the suburbs of Denver or the back alley of Skid Row, everybody is looking to break away from the monotony and forge their own path. Sure, Seymour is straight, but Howard Ashman, a gay lyricist who would be dead from AIDS in five years, writes lyrics that make Menken’s music a truly universal experience.

For Your Consideration: Chicago (2002)

I watched Chicago and felt like I was watching something I shouldn’t be seeing. It’s sultry, dark, bloody — and they put all of it to music. Chicago is illustrious for a reason: It revitalized the movie musical while in its slump. There were bright moments since the golden era of cinema: Cabaret and Little Shop come to mind, but nothing changed the zeitgeist quite like Chicago — for better or for worse.

3. Saved! (2004)

When I rewatched Saved! this year, my biggest fear was that it wouldn’t hold up to the memories I had of it. Thank God it did — and I might even say that it’s more relevant now than it was at the height of the Bush era. It’s a snappy satire and dares the viewers for introspection. And, like all good satires, the Devil is in the details.

Why would a god force us to worship him? Why would a god want hegemony after creating such a beautiful and diverse world? Why would God create beings to be forsaken for who they are? And why would God allow for his zealots to blaspheme his name by refusing to help the least of these?

Though hilarious, the climax of this movie is a tear-jerker. It single-handedly made me rethink my christianity. I tried — so, so, hard — throughout my life to please others and change myself into something I never was going to be. I ran to and from religion like a game of Red Rover. But Mary’s final argument sealed the deal for me: “Why would a God who made us all so different want us to be the same?” I decided to leave that god behind for good. If he truly is all-forgiving like Christians say he is, then I’ll be seated beside them all at the table in paradise.

4. Scream (1996)

The cast of scream eating lunch outside of their highschool. — *Dimension Films*

The Scream franchise is at its finest when it pairs a brilliant script by openly gay screenwriter Kevin Williamson with the whip-smart direction of Wes Craven. The end results (Scream, Scream 2, & Scream 4) are fun to an almost dizzying degree. And, like many other movies that shaped me, it only gets smarter as it ages.

My first experience with the franchise was watching Scream 2 over the shoulder of my friend’s older brother when it first came out on VHS. I was horrified but I couldn’t look away. We walked into his room to see what he was doing, and I watched Ghostface slam David Arquette’s face into a glass window and blood erupted from his mouth. Then, he stalked Courtney Cox around tight, soundproofing corners. I couldn’t get these brief but vivid images out of my head. What was it about the chase that satisfied my young imagination?

In a world that’s so obsessed with true crime to the point where we gulp innocent lives down like entertainment, Scream is a lens into how violently obsessed American culture is — and has always been. It begs you to ask yourself why we’re enjoying the slaughter. And, even when watching it for its intended meaning as a satire, why do we find so much enjoyment in a mirror being held so close to our bloody faces?

5. Jurassic Park (1993)

Steven Spielberg is possibly America’s greatest filmmaker. By approaching every shot with childlike wonder, his films remain timeless and touch the hearts of the kids inside all of us. No matter the summer blockbuster, his action movies always take me back to a time when egos and identities weren’t part of my equation.

I think there’s also something so special about watching the kids survive Jurassic Park. Timmy and Lex go through it, almost more so than any of the adults who honestly have it easy. The children in Jurassic Park are easy prey for the flock that wants to feed on them. But Alan is always there to give guidance and teach them about a world they barely know.

There’s nothing more queer than children surviving what life throws at them and escaping their trauma. Children are resilient — and those who don’t have the privilege of family need somebody like Alan who will, though reluctantly, stand up and take care of them. You see this in drag and ballroom culture, at Pride events where Women offer “mom hugs” to children who have encountered rejection or loss. You see people, whether they want kids or not, stepping up every day in the queer community to protect their own.

6. Waiting for Guffman (1996)

Sometimes, the best comedy movies take place in a twisted alternate universe where everything — from the laws of physics to interpersonal interactions — can feel as foreign to our reality as an old Warner Brothers cartoon.

But Waiting for Guffman isn’t one of those movies. It firmly has both feet planted in our reality, and the audience benefits because of it. It has a small, midwestern heartbeat similar to our own, and we relate to these characters because we yearn alongside them. How will fame change us? Is notoriety our only way out? In a country so set on individualism and capitalism, how can setting yourself apart be your ticket to fame and fortune?

In an ensemble cast that swings for the fences with every line, Christopher Guest’s Corky St. Clair rises above the rest. His delusion is like an ambrosia — twisting the viewer up into his absurdity. As the movie goes on, the audience begins to gaslight itself: Maybe there is something here. Maybe, just maybe, their big break is coming.

Theater has always been and will always be a safe haven for the LGBT community. And Corky, who is flamboyantly gay but not out of the closet, is the town’s unspoken MVP. The people of Blaine hold him highly regarded in their ranks. But it’s still Blaine; a small Missouri town where people love you and care for you but don’t want you to talk about your real self. It’s no wonder he escapes back to New York City at the end to play with his My Dinner With Andre action figures and practice his Cockney accent (without the H’s). Maybe Corky was actually sick of the spotlight after all was said and done.

For Your Consideration: For Your Consideration (2003)

Did I include the “For Your Consideration” categories as a bit so I could include this wordplay? Maybe. Do I genuinely love this movie? Absolutely. For Your Consideration is the perfect companion piece to Waiting for Guffman: Christopher Guest plays a director one more, this time for the screen and much more apathetic.

But deep down it’s the same song and dance that Guest loves to shine a light on in showbusiness: How do we make this project a success and, most importantly, how do we make the project about me?

7. Austin Powers (1997–2002)

Mike Myers as Austin Powers, holding several cigarettes in his hand. — *Warner Bros.*

Is Austin Powers a misogynistic film or does it lampoon how dim-witted misogyny is?

As a child, I was obsessed with James Bond. I rented the movies from Blockbuster (they were PG after all…). At the library, I checked out The Secret World of James Bond — a companion encyclopedia filled with descriptions of every character and gadget complete with panoramic pages filled with maps of villains’ layers — so much that I should have had a stamp card to redeem rewards. But, lost to my young eyes was the boundless, reckless misogyny.

The first time I watched Austin Powers was the first time I fully understood that anything was up for grabs. Its dirty, senseless humor appeals to the lowest common denominator, but its sendup of 60’s British culture and parody of toxic masculinity cuts deep. On the surface, there’s not much to read into. But upon further examination, the women who accompany Austin aren’t just toys for his sexual pleasure — though that’s what he wants them to be. They are the most capable characters in the entire film, and part of the whacky, slapstick nature of the parody is that he’s too self-centered to listen. It’s only when they’re in dire straits and out of ideas — the scene of them being slowly lowered into the piranha pit comes to mind — that he finally decides to consider a voice outside of his own.

Maybe this is a weird one to include on the list, but I think Austin Powers movies shifted my perceptions away from the ruggedly handsome James Bond. I think I was so in love with James that I never processed what he was actually saying to the women in his life. This obsession with misogynistic toxic men who happen to be pretty is still rampant in the gay community today. In gay spaces, men are still men and women are still women — there is always a power dynamic at play. Of course, we make space for each other — and, hopefully, our trans siblings — but the patriarchy still rules over all things.

Gay men should be less critical of women in gay spaces. I used to think that straight women used gay bars as a sort of playground or zoo. But maybe it's just as safe for them as it is for us. And maybe I shouldn’t assume somebody’s sexuality based on the way they present their gender. A group of women in a gay bar will always be a good thing. For most gay men, we found safety in the covens as children. Why would we take that away as adults?

8. The Haunting (1963)

I can’t remember the first time I ever watched The Haunting. I feel as though it’s maybe always been a part of me, and it tops all of my lists as my favorite movie of all time, so I had to include it here, too. The psychosexual romantic tension between Elanor and Theodora is palpable throughout. I’m still unsure how a movie manages to be equal parts sexy and horrifying, but The Haunting strikes the balance well.

Queerness is at the heart of this movie and moves through every scene like one of the ghosts. It’s an unspoken tension, a thickness in the air. It’s in the way Nell and Theo hold each other for comfort when the ghosts make themselves known. It reverberates through the disembodied moans in the night and the swelling doors that nearly burst from their hinges.

Recommended Double Feature: Mission To Mars & Whispers: An Elephant’s Tale (2000)

Whenever I got good grades on a report card, my mom or dad would take me on a one-on-one trip to the AMC in Highlands Ranch to catch an afternoon movie. It would usually go something like this: “You got good grades this quarter…we’re going to [insert movie] at [insert time]. Let’s get in the car.” It was always a fun surprise and I cherished it every time.

In 2000, my mom surprised me with tickets to Mission To Mars. I was so excited. I was only 9 or 10, but the promise of a more adult science fiction movie. But, when the astronauts entered the massive storm on Mars and died one by one in gruesome ways, I couldn’t handle it. I forced my mom and myself to leave and she kept reassuring me that it was justified. “That should NOT be rated PG-13. That was ridiculous!”

She exchanged our tickets for a movie that was about to premiere. Some real kiddy shit called Whispers: An Elephant’s Tale. I don’t remember much from the movie, only that the mother elephant dies from poachers, and crying. LOTS of crying.

I sobbed throughout the whole thing. I remember thinking how ridiculous I must have looked in a G-rated movie near my 10th birthday crying to an obscure movie about elephants. Was I really meant to be like this? A crybaby?

I remember leaving the movie after it ended. My heart and throat were sore. I looked up at the yellow numbers on the marquee and wiped the remaining tears from my eyes. “That was a good movie,” I whimpered.

“You’re a good kid,” she said.

A baby elephant holds onto his mother's tail — *Disney*