Why did it take so long for Hollywood to make a gay teen story like 'Love, Simon'?
Patrick RyanLove, Simon is rewriting history.
Adapted from Becky Albertalli's 2015 young-adult novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, the film (in theaters nationwide Friday) follows a closeted teen (Nick Robinson) who falls in love with an anonymous online pen pal from his high school who is also gay, and navigates the tricky waters of coming out to his friends and family. It's the first major studio movie to focus on a gay teen romance.
"I kept asking the studio that myself, actually," director Greg Berlanti says. "My sense is that they make fewer and fewer movies these days, and they're more reliant on pre-existing things and want more sure bets. You see less of these smaller kinds of films and less risks taken, but at the same time, there seems to be a clear movement by the audience to have more representation in film."
Simon is the latest in a string of projects to center on young LGBTQ characters, although it has the widest release (2,400 theaters) and biggest budget ($17 million).
Oscar-winning dramas Moonlight and Call Me By Your Name each tell coming-of-age stories about young gay men coming to terms with their sexuality. Comedic drama The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival in January, follows a girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) who's sent to gay conversion therapy — a subject that will also be explored in Boy Erased starring Lucas Hedges (Lady Bird) later this year. Then there are TV sitcoms such as NBC's new Champions, and Netflix's One Day at a Time and Dear White People, all of which prominently feature teenage characters who happen to be gay.
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What separates many of these stories from past LGBTQ representation in Brokeback Mountain, Philadelphia and The Crying Game is their content: The latest characters aren't "punished" for being gay, and if they are, their journeys are punctuated by hopeful messages about acceptance.
Cameron Post "had a positivity to it that really struck me when I first read it," Moretz told the crowd at a post-screening Q&A in Park City, Utah. "What one of our first conversations was about was that it deals with such heavy subject matter. And the reality of the situation for these kids is so heavy, but we wanted the interpersonal relationships to be real and fun."
Simon is similarly heartwarming, drawing comparisons to a "gay-themed John Hughes movie," says Greg Hernandez, founder of gay entertainment blog Greg in Hollywood. "That's really the breakthrough here: It's a love story about youth. It's not tragic and has a lot of commercial potential."
As a producer, Berlanti, who is gay, has championed LGBTQ characters on shows including Dawson's Creek, Riverdale and Arrow. For him, it was crucial to avoid some tropes while leaning into others: Simon, a soft-spoken music geek who hangs with both athletes and theater kids, and his more flamboyant classmate, Ethan (Clark Moore), show very different but equally layered portrayals of gay men. On the flip side, the movie also embraces some rom-com conventions, as Simon plans a grand romantic gesture to try and find his mystery boy.
"With each character, whether they're straight or gay, you try to add authenticity to them," Berlanti says. The roles reflect high-school stereotypes, yet "the point was to have stories similar to what we've seen before, but put a new twist on it."
That mix of conventional and groundbreaking is what ultimately stands out about Simon, which has received strong reviews (88% positive on aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes) and is predicted to make upward of $15 million this weekend, according to Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations. Coming at a time when only 23 movies released by major studios last year featured LGBTQ characters, according to GLAAD's Studio Responsibility Index, it could also help push the needle forward for more gay stories on the big screen.
"This is a way to make it palatable to the mainstream," Hernandez says. "If they can get teenagers in to see this, that's key. If this makes a decent amount of money, I think we might be seeing more of them."
