"The Issues With "Bros" (Special Podcast Episode)" Transcript

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Oct 04, 2022 First published.

Dec 07, 2023 Privated post-callout.

May 8, 2024Channel deleted

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#bros #gay #movies

hello everyone and welcome to episode 17 of the padreon which I'm actually going to release as a special public episode um so it's not just for patrons this one the next episode will go back to being patreon exclusive but this one I wanted to talk about something that I thought I'm gonna get asked about it anyway so I might as well kind of just put it out there um so if you're listening for the first time this is my patreon exclusive podcast the padreon my name is James Nick is usually accompanying me but he is at home visiting family right now so you've only got me this time around but I've got some thoughts so this will be going out on Tuesday October 4th and this past weekend the movie Bros from Universal Pictures was released in theaters very wide release it had 3300 screens um across North America so that would be Canada the US and Mexico um which people just call the American Market or the domestic Market um but it was sent out to a huge number of screens and had a huge marketing Blitz behind it TV commercials online ads Billboards in every major city across the US and Canada and it only made 4.8 million dollars which is an issue because I have not been able to track down the budget of the movie but as you know as I have talked about in many videos the budget of a movie in order to make back in order for a movie to make a profit it needs to make roughly twice the production budget and that's being very generous because that's not taking into account the marketing budget and that's because roughly I say this roughly because Disney has kind of broken the rules on this a theater will get about 50 percent theaters will get about 50 percent of the uh the gross and the studio will get the other 50 and then the studio will you know that will cover their production costs their post-production cost their marketing that also needs to include back end for actors which is when an actor when they sign their contract they make a deal to get paid a little bit of the gross or the net um that the movie brings in at the box office always better to I think it's the gross yeah always better to go for the gross because the net is basically how much the movie made after cost and because of Hollywood accounting which I could do a whole video on their movies never make a profit the Lord of the Rings technically according to new line cinema at the time lost money each Lord of the Rings movie made about a billion dollars so you know that's just not true um but back to Bros 4.8 million dollars [Music] um not great at all it had a steady drop across the weekend um for Saturday it dropped 4.1 percent which is not great usually percentage um goes up box office percentage growth goes up on Saturday but you know it went down which isn't horrible the bad thing is that on Sunday it dropped 29.6 percent which even though its Cinema score right now I believe is an a cinema score which if you don't know what Cinema score is that is when um there are people sent out to random theaters across the United States who when you see a movie they will ask you what did you think of the movie everyone says that they've never been asked anything like that because most of us haven't um these they go to the most random places sometimes they'll go specifically to big cities sometimes they'll go to you know the Small Town Theater and somewhere in the midwest but most people have never been cornered by Cinema score and asked what would you rate this movie and the cinema cinema score ratings go from a plus all the way I think to D minus I don't think they go to F I might be wrong but I don't think they go to F at least I've never seen a movie get rated f um but basically any movie that gets an A in front of it means that the audience is really really liked it um and so a minus a A plus means you're good you're probably gonna have good legs at the box office I mean which means you're going to last for a while you're gonna keep going and Bros got an A but made very little money usually when a movie gets an a cinema score what happens is over the weekend the box office numbers actually go up whereas with Bros it went down which says to me that it got it the audience that was excited for Bros went to see it right away and then continued to drop off throughout the weekend so that would probably be white gay men um and some straight women I'm assuming I'm not sure what the audience breakdown is Box Office Mojo used to give that kind of information they don't anymore unless you sign up and pay them and I'm not paying them for something they used to give for free but um I'm assuming you know white gay men were the majority of the people who went to see Bros opening weekend uh it didn't get an international release and at least not yet there have been plenty of countries that have said they're not going to show the movie there's no shocker there you know countries in Africa and the Middle East and some in Eastern Europe things like that they some countries in Asia have said they're not going to show it because in those countries it is illegal to be gay or to at least act upon your gayness um sometimes punishable by prison sentence sometimes by Death and so that was no shocker but it didn't doesn't have a European release yet which I personally found shocking um but Billy Eichner who produced the movie co-wrote the movie stars in the movie uh has already come out today and said that the reason it didn't make that it didn't do well at the box office is because straight people didn't show up for the movie and I would like to say to Mr Eichner the um the advertising campaign was I think very focused on the gay Market um the entire cast was made up of queer people which is great um but you know they did a lot about talking about how the entire cast was made up of queer people and they marketed the movie in the trailers with lots of kind of gay in jokes um jokes about poppers and and the like things like that things that straight people probably wouldn't get and they marketed it as a very very very very very very very very very gay movie um so I don't know why they're surprised that straight audiences didn't show up to it especially straight male audiences it's not that shocking to me uh Billy Eichner is a very contentious personality within the queer Community uh some people find him very annoying um I am kind of I don't find him annoying I don't find him Charming I'm kind of in the middle I'm very like meh about him I was very excited for the movie when the trailer came out and everything because you know the whole marketing campaign was about how this is the first big budget romantic comedy coming from a big Studio it's made by Universal um and you know and so get excited because this is the first romance gay romantic comedy coming from a big Studio get excited oh my God and I was excited when the first trailers came out when it was announced when it was announced I was about I was a bit um I had my trepidations about it because [Music] um I thought well this is just gonna be you know like every other gay romantic comedy except with a higher budget and apparently it's not just every other gay romantic comedy with a higher budget but amped up to 11. it kind of takes the gay in jokes and just like ramps them up um which again would be I think anyway it would make straight people feel excluded now the question being you know okay so you've made a movie straight people felt excluded they didn't go see it or you know is it that straight people felt excluded from the movie because of the ad campaign or were they just not interested or did gay people not feel all that excited about the movie because I know a lot of gay people as you may know uh or as at least as you have probably assumed and lots and lots of gay people were not excited for this movie for any number of reasons a lot of people were annoyed by Billy Eichner a lot of people kind of looked at it as uh kind of get oddly because we we always talk about how we want you know gay characters in movies to be played by gaycare by gay actors Etc but because this was all Queer an all Queer cast a lot of people in the community felt like it was kind of ghettoizing because there were no that's it seemed like Okay so this movie straight people don't even want to be involved in it um which you know whether that's a legitimate criticism or just kind of uh being in your own little gay world is Up For Debate but so you know that the question that I posed uh is it because the Straits didn't go because they felt excluded because they just weren't interested or was it because gays weren't interested and I know that a lot of gay people were not interested in Bros for any number of reasons like I said annoyed by Billy Eichner a lot of people are annoyed that it's just two white guys um you know who look like 80 percent of the white guys on Grindr and so you know okay if I want to spend two hours with those people I can just go to a gay bar I can just go to a drag race party you know I will I can find them very easily and the fact that it is just two white guys when there's already been uh I forget the movie's name now single all the way I think is uh what it was called came out on Netflix this past Christmas where it's an interracial couple and you've got Fire Island which has a diverse cast and you know not a white cast you know and a predominantly Asian cast which is incredibly rare and then Billy Eichner gets out there and starts talking about how this is revolutionary because this is the first gay rom-com and things like that and real really running with this is the first gay movie first gay rom-com from a major studio and really running with a major Studio thing which that's when I stopped being excited for the movie because I have seen a lot of queer movies um starring straight actors queer actors with you know queer writers and directors straight writers and directors I have seen a lot of queer movies um good and bad and just sort of ignoring them uh writing them off as not being as important because they didn't come from one of the big used to be the big five Studios but I think it's three now um maybe four felt very uh like privileged um to me because you know for so long gay movies have had to be produced how they could be produced which is being produced by independent Studios but uh an independent production companies and uh completely independently produced movies that are just you know financed and produced by one person and that's kind of just how queer movies have had to be made for the longest time and these are the queer movies that broke ground that revolutionized what could be shown on film you know within the United States all across Europe and Asia like two white guys falling in love in New York City I think it takes place in New York uh is not very revolutionary anymore no matter what studio it comes from and that's the issue I think this sort of we made a movie with the big boys we made a movie that because it was green lit by Universal Pictures we've made a gay movie that has been approved by the Straits is how it feels like and because it's been approved by the Straits The Straits gave us money to make this movie you should support it and like that was already implicitly there because it was a big deal that Universal was financing this movie um but the other thing is it's not even true that you know a gay romantic comedy or you know gay romance even that this is the first one that comes from a major Studio because you know love it or hate it love Simon was produced by Fox like five years ago so it's not even revolutionary in the way that it thinks it was and they were really playing up this whole like how revolutionary it was that a major Studio was producing this movie and it's just so it feels so blind because they're you know you've got the obvious ones you've got Brokeback Mountain and you've got Moonlight and you've got the bird cage and um other movies like that and you've got innumerable independently produced uh gay romantic comedies gay romances gay tragedies gay you know not action movies but you know basically gay movies that run the gamut have been produced independently and so I feel like a lot of gay people kind of looked at the way the production team was acting mostly Billy Eichner but it wasn't just Billy Eichner and kind of disregarding all of these other gay and queer movies that you know laid that yellow brick road for Bros to get a green light from Universal Pictures and just completely disregarding them and pretending that they don't matter that they don't exist that they're not as important because they maybe were not green lit by the straight Studio um that they were you know financed by an independent Studio independent studios are the reason we have queer cinema at all even Brokeback Mountain was financed by an independent Studio so just just writing off all of these movies and you know it's funny the the other love Simon came from Fox just five years ago and I guess that's not technically a romantic comedy but the other thing that Billy Eichner doesn't seem to be taking into consideration with his comments about uh how the movie didn't do well because the Straits didn't show up straights haven't been showing up for straight romantic comedies either like with minor exceptions like crazy Rich Asians romantic comedies haven't been doing well for about a decade basically since Netflix started making movies romantic comedies haven't been doing well because you know going to a theater to a movie theater it's not cheap you know tickets can run anywhere from ten to twenty dollars or more if you're in like a city like New York and so and then you've got the popcorn and you've got you know travel and parking and all that kind of stuff and the you know the effort to get to the movie theater if you have a car that you might be in traffic if you don't have a car then you got to get on buses and stuff like that and so there's a lot of effort to go to a movie theater these days uh it's not like you know the 70s where everyone lived in a suburb and everyone had a car and it was just you know a nickel it wasn't a nickel but it was cheap it was like 250. I remember just going to um movies when I was a kid and the matinee pricing for people under 16 was 4.50 there are no movie tickets for four dollars and fifty cents now matinee or not um and I mean that was only like 20 years ago so you know going all the way back to the 80s and the 70s and the 60s and stuff like that like whole different ball game but even just going back 20 years when romantic comedies were kind of at their Zenith when you were getting movies like Runaway Bride um movies that and my best friend's wedding and things like that movies that did incredibly well at that time it was way cheaper to go to the movies and so now that movies are so expensive and going to theaters is kind of really inconvenient people audiences have really started to say is this worth the effort of going to a theater to see it um because it's a lot of effort and you know people will go to see you know black panther when that comes out they will go to see um Spider-Man they will go to see um the Tom Cruise fighter jet movie oh my God I can't believe I'm blanking on the name um [Music] Top Gun uh top gun Maverick the new one that came out this summer and made a friggin Fortune um they will go to see these movies and they will go to see them because they feel like they're getting their money's worth because it is spectacle you know it's just like when TV came out and Hollywood really had to rejigger what they were doing and so they started making gigantic spectacles they started making the greatest show on Earth they started making Ben Hur and the Ten Commandments and things like that in the robe um and it was a while before the before Hollywood got to settle down where people were like you know TV isn't giving me something that even low budget or mid-range movies can give me which was Quality quality writing quality acting quality production quality now you're in a really weird space where you're even getting like Blockbuster Lord of the Rings MCU style shows on streaming and and like obviously there's you know the rings of power and uh House of the dragon and some of the Marvel shows some of them are pretty cheap some of them come across as pretty cheap um but I think that Loki and Falcon and the Winter Soldier did not come across as cheap I'm I'm not a fan of a huge fan of either of those shows but they didn't come across as cheap um the whereas I think I think the Star Wars shows come across as pretty cheap but um and as you you get stranger things which the special effects and everything from stranger things rivals in my opinion anything that's been on the big screen in you know for as long as I can remember and you know you do have shows like the rings of power which Amazon spent a billion dollars on and you know how can a movie like Bros compete with those things because you can't even say really the argument of well the straights don't show up for gay content because that's not even true because Heart Stopper was a huge success even um uh young Royals was a huge success and that wasn't even in English like you had to read subtitles for that it was still a huge success if you for First Blood you know there's the big controversy about First Blood being canceled and everything because it was relatively uh expensive show far more expensive than Heart Stopper um but that the uh First Blood didn't have a great completion rate on Netflix which is why it got canceled but if First Blood was a movie you know it would have people started it you can only you know you can't well I guess you can walk out of a movie halfway through but you know you go to a movie you usually watch the whole thing and that's a ticket that is bought and paid for and so it's not that the audience doesn't exist for this stuff it's that with the gay like it's not just gay people that made Heart Stopper huge and it's not just gay people that made young Royals huge I know more straight people who have watched Heart Stopper and young Royals then then I do then I do gay people um and I think and this is and and so I I don't think it's that straight people didn't show up because straight people have been showing up for queer content when it's easily accessible which is on streaming um single all the way did incredibly well if it didn't Hallmark wouldn't have just greenlit their first gay Christmas movie which they did it's gonna be a gay Hallmark Christmas movie this this Christmas season um and so you know they saw the numbers they they said oh we want some of that and now they're going to get some of that because when it is accessible people will watch queer content whether it is about um you know gay people lesbians trans people non-binary people they will watch it if it's good and easily accessible Netflix is kind of a messed up situation because Netflix is canceling a lot of shows that shouldn't be canceled right now and I don't looking at the numbers First Blood should not have been canceled like two years ago a year ago First Blood wouldn't have been canceled it would have been renewed um and to my knowledge the only reason that Heart Stopper got renewed with Netflix's crunch is that Heart Stopper has a uh an outside Studio producing it it's not Netflix dependent uh Netflix is mostly a distributor for Heart Stopper um and so it's not just that straight people didn't go see it it is a conflagration of things straight people not going to see it not because they're homophobic which Billy Eichner accused straight audiences of being homophobic for not going to see his movie uh that's not a good look but not because they're homophobic but because theaters are expensive and kind of a [ __ ] to get to and a lot of people still aren't comfortable going to theaters believe it or not there is still a pandemic going on I have been very choosy with which movies I have gone to theaters to see I was going to go see Bros in theaters I was going to you know Brave the kovid but I didn't um and I've I've got four vaccinations and I didn't go see Bros because of the drama surrounding it um and so it's not because straight audiences are homophobic like I said it's a conflagration it's theaters are expensive theaters in this especially in the United States are messy you have a bad experience in theaters when you have people you know in there on their phones and stuff like that and talking to each other and the ushers you know they don't want to get into a fight with someone so they're not going to go tell someone that they have to put their phone away um I've actually never experienced that in Canada but I hear that it's like horrible in the U.S um so you know theaters are expensive and messy the access isn't there um and I and you know he also pissed off a lot of gay people by basically growing all of these queer movies that have defined queer Cinema some of which have actually helped to Define Cinema like I'm not a huge fan of Brokeback Mountain but Brokeback Mountain defined Cinema for a while like romance movies that came after Brokeback Mountain were all aping off of it so like these movies have done that you have and you have had huge successes in the past like The Birdcage so it's not like audiences are homophobic I think that the whole I I think so there's all of that but I also think that it's a gay movie wasn't a great way to sell a movie just like I think it's a quote-unquote black movie isn't a great way to sell a movie um if you look at movies recently that have been uh and to use that as an example if you look at movies recently that have been just about the black experience and especially in America they don't do terribly well they don't get big releases they get much smaller releases than Bros did in fact but when you have a movie like black panther which is you know very much about black you know the black experience but it's not the America the African-American experience um it speaks to that but that's not the Crux of the story it does incredibly well you know black panther had a lot of white people going to see it um it was a huge four quadrant movie and I think that's the thing the marketing it as the gay rom-com was the problem I think the rom-com thing is an issue because people don't see rom-coms as theater worthy anymore there's too many of them too many of them on Netflix sorry rom-coms are kind of dead in theaters and I don't think they're gonna come back uh unless they're huge they've got like big budgets and stuff like that like crazy Rich Asians and they're kind of tourist tourism porn is kind of what crazy Rich Asians was um but there's this sort of I don't I don't know like it just there's so many reasons for why this movie didn't do well and for him to get on social media and just chalk it all up to well straight people are homophobic and they didn't go see it it's like well they're not gonna definitely not gonna go see it now friend um and you know it's it's uh you know it's frustrating because I wanted the movie to do well but like I said the this is a gay movie kind of selling it like this is a gay movie was a problem because when you look at the the queer things that have been very successful recently things like Heart Stopper and things like young Royals they have gay and queer couplings at their Center but that's not what it's about it's not about being queer it's about something else and the characters are incidentally queer you know young Royals is about income inequality and think you know things like that and and you know um Family pressure and things like that the main couple just happened to be two guys um same thing with Heart Stopper Heart Stopper has a gay couple and a lesbian couple and a straight couple one of the uh and one of the straight couple happens to be trans and so it feels more open because it's not about being gay Heart Stopper isn't about being queer heartstopper is about being a teenager um going through kind of the same things mostly that straight teenagers go through except you know putting an extra layer of stress on there which creates drama which is good for television um another sh and I think a good comparison for Bros would actually be the recent um Queer as Folk reincarnation which has recently been canceled after one season and it was you know obviously it was this is the gay show um gay characters by the queer show gay characters bisexual characters trans characters non-binary characters just you know running the gamut um [Music] and I don't think that show had any like solid lesbians interesting um but that may have felt exclusionary to straight audiences because not even that there was no straight characters but that it was all about the queerness the trauma of being queer the stress of being queer how hard it is to be queer oh my God life is terrible oh we're being murdered that's Aids HIV etc etc whereas Bros was very much the not even queer the gay romantic comedy and I feel like that makes it less accessible than something like young Royals where it's a show about teenagers with drama it's kind of you know Swedish Gossip Girl if you will where the main couple just happens to be gay incidental queerness and I think what we need to reckon with is that although a lot of us may want to see I don't want to say militant representation but very you know pointed representation of you know this is a queer thing that incidental queerness may actually be more accessible to a wider audience and for God's sake start casting people of color Jesus like you found the two whitest guys gay guys in Hollywood I'm like God damn it um yeah it's just it's it's I I'm disappointed that with what has happened with Bros that they that the box office wasn't there the people didn't show up but at the same time I'm kind of disappointed with the I'm very disappointed with the production team with just how they sold it as you know the first gay rom-com all that um so I'm kind of disappointed with the whole situation that it was allowed to get there and be that disappointing um especially because from critics and stuff let's just quickly before I wrap up um have a look at where it is on Rotten Tomatoes which I can't even find it on Rotten Tomatoes that's there we go so yeah it's got 91 audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 90 critic score with 134 reviews that says people enjoyed the movie the people who went to see the movie which again I can't find any information on the demographics were the people who went to see the movie a lot of white gay men and they're probably female friends um and you know there's also the issue of it being rated R and you know it's labeled here strong sexual content some drug use and language throughout maybe it shouldn't have been rated R maybe you should have toned some stuff down and the argument would be well then it wouldn't be authentic and if that's the movie you want to make if that's this if that's the queer population that you want to represent that's fine awesome you know code of many colors but you have to realize that when you put our rating on something a huge section of the audience is immediately removed from it and like you really should have looked at love Simon again game movie recent game movie from a major Studio love Simon didn't do that great um let's just since I'm on a typing kick love Simon total made 66 million dollars on a budget of 17 million so it made profit which is good um which is why love Victor ended up becoming a thing um but they should have looked at that 66 million dollar worldwide gross okay so it only had a 40 million dollar domestic row so let's just work with the domestic gross because Bros doesn't have an international release yet just a domestic gross of 40 million dollars and that was rated PG-13 you immediately need to take that 40 million dollars and deduct from it because there is a giant section of the audience that isn't going to be able to go because they're going to be too young to get into a rated movie or you're going to be off-putting to a section of the audience because you are showing what I have heard to be kind of uh sort of uh words aren't working unrestrained queerness unrestrained queer sexuality which I'm all all in favor for it's one of the reasons I loved the new Queer as Folk and the original queers folks that they were very unrestrained in the queer sexuality um but you know if you're if you want to make a ton of money at the box office you need to take into account that that's going to make a lot of people uncomfortable um and not just straight people there are a lot of gay people who don't like the idea of the idea the public image of gay people being you know fisting Queens uh people who do poppers uh people who do you know other sex drugs things like that and so you've got straight people and gay people foreign your movie so you've got Billy Eichner being kind of a dick talking you know just throwing other gay movies under the bus you've got people not wanting to go to theaters because of the pandemic you've got people not wanting to go to theaters because they're inconvenient you've got people uh maybe being turned off from the movie because it's very white you've got people [Music] um maybe being turned off from the movie because there's from the trailers there weren't a whole hell of a lot of strong female characters apparent um and yeah you do and you've got that are you've also got the R rating to contend with you've also got the fact that it's the beginning of October which isn't exactly a huge box office month to begin with you're releasing you know October is spooky month and you release the opposite a horror movie not smart um you've also got the romantic comedies in general have not been doing well find me a straight romantic comedy other than crazy Rich Asians that has done super well recently and so you've got this Confluence of events and and and things that are working against it and then just coming out and saying it didn't do well because straight people are homophobic not a great look not a great look not a great look um so yeah what did you guys think uh have you seen Bros have you watched it did you like it have you avoided it um and if you have avoided it leave a comment and let me know why you specifically didn't want to see it and also leave a comment letting me know if you did see it and what you thought of it um because I'm not against seeing it you know I'm probably gonna wait to stream it or something like that just because you know I am nervous about going to theaters being asthmatic and covid still being a thing um and having moved to a place where like nobody wears masks anymore um yeah it makes me nervous um but yeah so this was a one-off public padreon um episode 18 will be going back to private for patrons only so if you liked this and you'd probably like it more with an actual discussion between me and Nick um sign up for the patreon everybody gets the Padre everybody gets the podcast and we try to do them every week and I think next week's episode I'm not sure if Nick will be here so it will be me rambling on again so I hope you don't mind the ramblings of my my gay brain so thank you guys so much for listening and for everyone who's a patron thank you so much um we'll be going back to the podcast just for you guys next week and everyone who has listened and checked this out let me know what you think of the Bros situation in the comments below and hopefully if you are able maybe I'll see you on the patreon all right have a great week guys I love you all and got a new video coming out this weekend for spooky month so look forward to that have a great one

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