![]() Zazu Myers, Production designerĪ mix of things kind of went into creating the gallery. There you are.Below, the crew break down how they built Lucy’s world – her New York from her memory-filled bedroom to her gallery for broken hearts. "The Broken Hearts Club" is good at things other than being a gay movie. That key line ("I'm 28 years old and all I'm good at is being gay") is like an announcement liberating gay movies from an exclusive preoccupation with sexuality. The movie's buried message celebrates the arrival of gays into the mainstream. It insists on the ordinariness of its characters, on their everyday problems, on the relaxed and chatty ways they pass their time. It's almost the point of "The Broken Hearts Club" that it doesn't crank up the emotion. The writer-director, Greg Berlanti, one of the creators of "Dawson's Creek," has mastered his screenplay workshops and knows just when to introduce the false crisis, the false dawn, the real crisis and the real dawn.īut the movie is so likable, we go with it on its chosen level. There's bitterness about "gym bunnies," and their obsessions with "sex and protein shakes." There are moments of truth, involving a romance threatened by roving eye syndrome, and the movie is so eager to get to an obligatory funeral scene that we can diagnose the doomed character almost from his entrance. There's tension between Patrick and Leslie ( Nia Long), the girlfriend of his sister ( Mary McCormack). (Answer: "I'd kick them both out of bed for Ed Bradley, circa 1980.") All of course is not banter. There's a debate: "Who would you kick out of bed? Morley Safer or Mike Wallace?" This is exactly the way straight guys talk, except they substitute Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez. ![]() ![]() Crew model, then drops him because he doesn't like the Carpenters. One of the characters lands a date with a handsome J. We are introduced to the definition of "meanwhile," which is a word introduced into any conversation when an interesting sex object walks by. One guy says his mother was a '60s love child: "In high school, she caught me smoking pot and all she said was, `I hope you didn't pay market.' " The lighthearted tone is set right at the beginning, as a group of friends plays a game to see who can act the straightest the longest before one reveals an OGT (Obviously Gay Trait). The big difference between this picture and your regular guy movie is that there aren't any girls (except for a lesbian sister and her lover). "The Broken Hearts Club" is not about neurosis, resentment, AIDS or secrecy, and the humor can be described as sarcastic rather than bitchy. It's the " Kiss of the Spider Woman" syndrome, with characters dramatizing what they see as their own current or impending tragedies. ![]() Historically, many movies about gays have had a buried level of, I dunno, call it muted hysteria, anxiety, impending doom. This is a rare gay-themed movie that relaxes. On a good night, and if the other guy's drunk enough, I'm a six." What's striking about the movie is the ordinariness of its characters and what they talk about. Mostly, though, dates don't come that easily, and Patrick (Ben Weber) complains, "Gay men in L.A. Many of the characters are members of the team, and there's a funny scene where the handsome Cole ( Dean Cain, from "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman") steps up to the plate and gets the phone number of the opposing catcher between strikes. Life centers on the Broken Hearts, a restaurant run by the fatherly Jack ( John Mahoney), who also sponsors a softball team. ![]() And that they can be insecure, unfaithful, lonely and deceptive (when an actor recycles lines from an audition to make a touching breakup speech, his ex asks, "Are you reading that off of your hand?"). What it discovers is that gay men, like straight men, spend an extraordinary amount of time thinking about sex. Most of the principals are not sleeping with each another, although some are, and others are not sleeping with anyone. The movie takes place in the predominantly gay area of West Hollywood, where its heroes hang out in coffee shops, restaurants, clubs and each other's homes. ![]()
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