A Tale of Two Trailers: The De-Gaying of “A Single Man”
by Peter Knegt (November 9, 2009)
A scene from Tom Ford's "A Single Man." Image courtesy of The Weinstein Company.
While the heterosexualized poster for Tom Ford’s not-so-heterosexual “A Single Man” caused a wee stir last week, it seems the recently released trailer has just re-enforced those complaints. “A Single Man” was adapted by Ford and David Scearce from Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel of the same name, regarded as one of the first and finest novels of the early gay liberation movement. A meditation on love and death and isolation, it follows a single day in the life of George (Firth), a middle-aged gay Englishman working as a college professor in 1962 Los Angeles. His longtime lover, Jim (played by Matthew Goode in a series of flashbacks) has recently died in a car accident, and as a result George is the midst of self-destruction. Aided by his boozy best friend Charly (Julianne Moore) and an inviting young student (Nicholas Hoult), George finds unexpected hope as his intended final hours wind down. A comparative study of the trailer that Ford’s production company released as the film premiered in Venice a few months back (where in won the Queer Lion Award for best gay film), and the trailer The Weinstein Company - which acquired the film shortly after its festival premiere - just put out tells quite the tale. The new trailer uses the same music and mostly the same shots, except it adds in a bunch of quotes that not-so-subtly emphasize the film’s Oscar buzz, leaving out a few choice shots - pretty much all of which are suggestive of the film’s gay content. The new trailer essentially is altered to suggest the core of the film is the relationship between Firth and Moore’s characters, even removing from the end of the trailer the names of both Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult. Moreover, in the first trailer, we see Firth’s character kiss both Goode and Moore, in the second we just get Moore. There’s also a sequence of shots in the first trailer which crosscuts Firth, who plays a professor in the film, staring into the eyes of both a female student and a male student. In the second, as you might guess, we only get the female (in a telling twist, instead of cutting to the male eyes, the trailer cuts to a quote from Entertainment Weekly saying “[Firth’s] performance is bound to win attention in this year’s Oscar race”).
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BROKEN EMBRACES
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It’s not a matter of “agenda,” Jorjal, nor is it a matter of “purism.” It’s about honesty.
There are some really solid comments and points made in this discussion. However, I think some may not be seeing that both trailers show a character who is wrestling with a serious enough issue that he has pulled out a gun and something dangerous may happen. Remember: the trailer is not supposed to be a linear telling of the movie. It is to be a tease to get you to want to go see the movie in order to discover what the drama and the mystery is.
One trailer makes it obviously about a man tormented by a happy gay relationship while living a straight life, one makes it about a man tormented and it appears it might be a triangle between a man and a woman and a man and a man. But without showing the kiss between the men, we’re not really sure - which keeps the intrigue going.
For the LGBT purists, yes, (I don’t mean this in a hostile manner) you’re not getting the agenda trailer you want, that says, “look, look it’s a gay movie, come see our gay movie.” For the studio, this is a much smarter approach to sell more tickets on opening weekend.
Personally, I’d go see it based on either trailer. But IMHO professionally, the new trailer is a better sell as a wider studio film and the first trailer is a better sell as a smaller niche film.
oops, I apologize, I’m getting the stories about their old company Miramax and the new Weinstein Co confused—Miramax has reduced their release schedule to 5. Weinstein is at 10—though they have their fair share of layoffs and rough times themselves, and my comments about the film content still stand.
There’s a reason that the Weinstein company is on its last legs. Most of the NY office has been let go, the remaining LA-based skeleton office mostly exists to manage the existing film library. I think their release commitment is down to just three a year, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them just shut that part down altogether and turn into 100% film rental.
So with a company in shatters, really bad decisions like this get made. Makes you wonder why they even bothered to pick up this film. The people who would go see it due to (or regardless of) the gay content won’t get that, and anyone offended by gay content is getting “tricked”. So who wins here?
Can we agree that “straightened” might be a better term than “de-gayed”?
How can anyone defend this? Peter is clearly right, and even lets them off the hook a bit. Not only does the second trailer make this film look 100% percent like a heterosexual romance (which is what I would have assumed had I not read anything about it before seeing this), it also has a very strange moment at the end in which Matthew Goode’s dreamlike closeup, followed by Colin Firth’s tortured face, implies that though a good upstanding hetero, with a beautiful wife or lover (Moore is definitively played out here as though a wife or lover), he has gay demons!! DEMONS! This is disgraceful, and anyone who says otherwise is making excuses for a corrupt, bigoted system.
I think you’re all forgetting the purpose of a trailer. You want to reach the absolute widest audience with something that teases but doesn’t tell the story. There is obviously an incredible drama going on here - in the Weinstein trailer too - which is very intriguing. The new trailer is tighter, more dramatic, more mysterious and very compelling. The new trailer tells us there is something really important and possibly tragic going on. Given all the wonderful shots available, surely the film (I haven’t seen) is very special on many levels. Narrowing the focus down to just a festival crowd or arthouse crowd or gay niche misses a huge part of an audience which should see and learn from high quality films like this one. The point is to put people in the seats, not make GLAAD happy. Quotes are good for TV ads… but getting tedious in trailers. Same with festival laurels. Stop interrupting the flow. - J
great exercise. thanks for setting up. you can’t de-gay this movie any more than Julianne Moore could have her way Colin Firth’s character. everyone relies on quotes in this day and age.
Bravo, Mr. Knegt. I was absolutely appalled at the Weinstein trailer. I loved the film (I picked it as one of my top 3 favorites from Toronto out of 30 films I saw) but was dumbfounded at how they are using Moore’s presence to fool audiences into thinking her role is much larger than it is. Meanwhile, Hoult appears for a fraction of a second in the trailer.
I love Julianne Moore but she is simply not central to this film.
I am simply disgusted at the marketing which appears to be underway.
I agree with Peter.
When I saw the film in Toronto, and then heard that Weinstein Co. picked it up later that night, I figured that the Fade To Black trailer wouldn’t be used (I also guessed it might disappear from the internet).
Firth’s character, George, is unapologetically gay. In that sense alone, the new trailer is misleading. I think the original trailer is stunning and in league with recent Almodovar trailers like TALK TO HER…and a more honest representation of the material.
Agree with Mark. I feel like I’m swirling around on some ballroom floor about to be sick the whole time. It doesn’t really matter who’s kissing what because there is zero context; the only offering being an elegant aesthetic most likely of little interest to brutish homophobes.
And since when in the recent media past hasn’t just a little tinge of gay proved to be extremely secretly alluring and ultimately lucrative?
Really?? I found the added quotes way too obvious and desperate. Almost every one mentions Oscar contention. When I first saw the first trailer, I was impressed with how flowing and hypnotic it was. Now they’re just whoring themselves out.
I’d also disagree with your suggestion as to what the real issue is here. Removing multiple shots of content that suggests the film’s true, queer nature - while unsurprising - is still really unfortunate. Particularly because now it manipulates the audience into believing that a heterosexual romance between Firth and Moore plays a major role in the film. Simplistically, it’s dishonest, and on a more complex level, it’s homophobic.
I don’t think the issue is so much whether they de-gayed the trailer as whether they de-bored the trailer. Clearly they “cleaned it up” (a mistake in my opinion) but by adding the quotes they gave an intensely dull and meandering trailer some structure and purpose.