In February 1980, when I was a sophomore at Augustana College, my first boyfriend Fred took me to see American Gigolo, to catch a glimpse of Richard Gere's biceps, chest, abs, and penis -- the first full frontal shot in any mainstream movie! When I pointed out that there were a lot of men in the crowd, not many women, Fred explained: "Every gay man in the Quad Cities is here."
Gere plays Julian, a hustler who specializes in women, and in fact rejects any assignment involving "fag tricks." The plot involves Julian falling in love with one of his clients (of course), and being framed for murder. (He was with a client that night, but she refuses to come forward.)
I don't remember being offended by the "fag" references. Nearly every movie released in the 1970s and 1980s threw in some homophobic slurs.
I don't remember being offended when the villain turned out to be gay: Julian's pimp (Bill Duke), whom he pushes out a window to his death. Nearly every action movie and thriller in the 1970s and 1980s had a sleazy, simpering gay villain.
Straight people hated us; it was a given, a simple fact of life. You couldn't escape it, unless you managed to live and work in a gay neighborhood and avoid mainstream media altogether. The rest of us would hear homophobic jibes, slurs, scandals and jokes from family and friends, from coworkers, from random strangers on the bus, and anytime we turned on the tv or went to the movies. If you wanted to see Richard Gere nude, you had to put up with "fags."
Five years later, when I was living in West Hollywood, Alan the Pentecostal Porn Star took me to see Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, about the gay writer who developed a fixation with bodybuilders. Again, the theater was mostly occupied by men.
Wait -- the director, Paul Shrader, also directed American Gigolo. Why would someone who hates gay people direct a movie about a gay writer? By the end of the movie, I knew why: it isn't a positive portrayal. Being gay is all about darkness, destruction, death. Being gay is evil.
Years later, I discovered that a year before American Gigolo, Richard Gere starred in the gay-themed (and not homophobic) Bent on Broadway, about gay men who are sent to a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, and die. How did he manage both? Did he hate gay people, or not?
A 2012 article in The Advocate reviews an interview from Entertainment Weekly. Gere reeals that he took the part because Julian was so different from himself, into fashion and languages (which Gere was not), and with "a gay thing flirting through it," and he knew nothing about "that community." Good enough explanation, I guess.
In 2022, an American Gigolo tv series will provide a sequel: 15 years after the events in the movie, the middle-aged Julian (Jon Bernthal) tries to find out who framed him (I thought Leon confessed?) and to reconnect with The Girl of His Dreams. Doubtless he won't favor us with a full frontal shot (Gabe Labelle, who plays the young Julian, has already appeared naked on film).
Rosie O'Donnell has been cast as Detective Sunday, so this will be a less homophobic version. Now, if only Julian changes his policy of rejecting male clients....