Richard Day is quoted in a Movieline EXCLUSIVE today, sounding an awful lot like the phantom e-mailer who got both Sharon Waxman and Nikki Finke to launch hyperbolic competing hypefests about Bruno’s “gay problem.”
In fact, Movieline (and others, including me) mocked the dueling drooling when it happened.
But today, using his real name, Richard Day hits some of the same notes, including the shrill argument that “the film has not been screened for a large number of gays” and that “the reaction from gays has been almost uniformly one of alarm.”
The film has been shown to GLAAD and widely screened for hetero and homo sexuals in the industry alike. There has been little alarm since.
Not coming up much anywhere is also the fact that there is what would be an NC-17 version of the film that was screened for international exhibitors that was considered by most to be much more shocking than the final version… though not on the basis of gay content.
Day’s quotes today sound like the continuing story of someone with an ax to grind, whose first efforts didn’t take. Movieline oversells the story in its headline, suggesting a dramatically different ending to the film, when in fact, the difference, according to the angry accuser, is basically that the earlier version further extends the gay bashing that still happens in the film to a physical injury. The fact that the passive sidekick of Bruno would be victimized and take it without anger is hardly outside of the overall theme of the film nor does it seem to further anything about the gay elements of the film. They picked a gentler ending. But the joke was the guy who would get himself beat up for his employer who repeatedly treats him like shit, not that a gay man was bashed.
How bitter is Day that no one but him seems to be enraged by this film?