The Gay We Were: ‘In & Out’

The 1990s were an odd little crossroads for gay entertainment. The dominant mainstream narrative — when it paid any attention at all — trended towards the AIDS crisis and tragedy. At the same time, far from the mainstream, the cottage industry of gay romantic comedies pitched itself to a greatly underserved market. These movies barely made it to a theatrical release, and it’s fair to say that most of them weren’t great films, but they were what passed for a niche genre back then, and that makes them important. Certainly, for a child of the ’90s, they were formative in ways both good and bad. With The Gay We Were, we’re going to examine this subgenre one film at a time and examine what they said about gay entertainment and the era that once was.

This Week’s Film: In & Out
Release Date: September 19, 1997
Directed by: Frank Oz
Written by: Paul Rudnick
Starring: Kevin Kline, Joan Cusack, Matt Dillon, Tom Selleck, Wilford Brimley, Debbie Reynolds

Being one of the most high-profile gay comedies of the 1990s would seem to put In & Out right at the center of the genre we’re talking about. But besides putting an Oscar-winning A-list star at the center of a mainstream comedy to play a gay character, tackling small-town American homophobia, and devoting a good 30% of the film to Barbra Streisand and the Academy Awards, there is something about In & Out that has just never felt authentically ours. I’m trying to puzzle out why that is.

A big part of it is that it doesn’t feel like it’s coming from us. Which is both true and not true. Director Frank Oz does indeed seem to be an odd fit to tackle a gay comedy, considering his previous non-Muppet films had been Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, What About Bob?, and Housesitter. But screenwriter Paul Rudnick had adapted his own stage play for the very authentically gay Jeffrey in 1995, and before that, he wrote the script for Addams Family Values, one of the most underratedly campy creations of the 1990s. (Between Addams Family Values and In & Out, Rudnick’s films are a great source for Joan Cusack wedding-dress comedy.)

On paper, In & Out counts as “ours” more than, say, Brokeback Mountain does. But it goes further. It’s impossible to say whether it came at the script level or the studio level or during filming or what, but Howard Brackett’s gayness only ever feels skin deep. It’s like he caught gayness on an airplane flight, or was cursed by a gay gypsy and woke up mincing. After Howard comes out to his family and friends, he’s kvetching about his situation to Tom Selleck’s cheerfully opportunistic gay TV reporter, he looks down at his hand, which is emoting limp-wristedly as if operating independently from his body. They say it starts in the hands.

The premise of the movie is one of those what-if ideas that starts with a real-life inspiration. When Tom Hanks won the Oscar for 1993’s Philadelphia, he thanked one of his inspirational gay teachers. In & Out says what if that happened to a teacher who wasn’t out yet. But Howard doesn’t present as a gay man who’s been living in the closet this whole time. When Cameron Drake (Matt Dillon) says “and he’s gay” at the Oscars, it’s like it’s the first time this has occurred to Howard (or really to anyone).

It’s honestly one of the more frustrating movies I’ve watched in recent memory. It’s undoubtedly well-intentioned, and it probably did some good going out to the audience it went out to. That audience just wasn’t gay people. But it’s also a movie with some really sharp comedic instincts. Kevin Kline is still somehow massively underrated as a comedic actor, and it’s kind of a shame he didn’t make twice as many comedies as he did. There are some great one-liners delivered by an all-star supporting cast, including Debbie Reynolds, Wilford Brimley, June Squibb, Becky Ann Baker, Lauren Ambrose, and Deborah Rush.

There is also an extended sequence at the Academy Awards before Cameron Drake drops his big bombshell. There are a couple very funny lines there (Paul Newman is nominated for a film called “Coot”; Clint Eastwood is nominated next for “Codger”), but there are also more than a few indications that the filmmakers have no consideration for how the Oscars really work. For one thing, it’s Oscar night — traditionally February or maybe March —and it’s a bright and sunny summer’s day in Indiana? For another, when Cameron Drake’s nomination is called, he gets like three massive clips from his movie, while his fellow nominees get zero. Ignorance of the Oscars is an unforgivable sin in most movies. In a gay movie? How dare you, Frank Oz.

If In & Out fails to present a convincing gay character, it does better as a critique of performative masculinity. Constantly, macho norms are being critiqued and undercut, emphasized most explicitly in the scene where Howard attempts to listen to an instructional tape for tips on how to be more manly.

Also, rather ingeniously, and the genial pleasantness of small-town life presents is homophobia not through aggressive hatred but rather through quiet suppression and insidious talk of norms. It’s a virtue that gets totally buried in the film’s wildly disappointing climax, wherein Howard’s job and standing in the community is saved by a Spartacus-like ending where the community all come out in support of him. Howard doesn’t once stand up for himself, which in a movie that is explicitly about gay self-actualization, is shocking. If you’re going to sand all the edges off of a gay character because you’re in a mainstream comedy, you damn well better remember that you’re a mainstream comedy when it comes to the ending.

There are so many frustrating ambiguities about the way In & Out ends. Did Shawn Hatosy’s character, a student of Howard’s, come out of the closet for real, or was he doing it just for show? There were certainly signs that Hatosy was keeping something under wraps throughout the movie. But there’s a plausible deniability in the way the final scenes unfold.

And are Howard and the Tom Selleck character together at the end? The moment earlier in the film where Selleck plants one on Howard and it lingers well past the point of funny until it’s not funny and then funny again (Kline’s limbs are a national treasure), but it’s also the one legitimately sexy moment in the entire film.

It’s also Howard’s first erotic moment in his whole life. It would make sense that they would date, however casually. There doesn’t seem to be much reason for Selleck to attend Howard’s parents’ vow renewals if they’re not. But there’s no physical indication in that direction at all. Again, this is a mainstream Hollywood comedy. Give us a happy ending and for Pete’s sake spell it out.

[In & Out is currently streaming on Prime Video.]