Billy Eichner covers the latest issue of Variety, which is their preview of the Toronto International Film Festival. Eichner’s “gay rom-com” movie Bros will premiere at TIFF and I can’t wait! It looks so good and so funny. Eichner gave a really great interview to Variety about the fight to make this movie the way he wanted to make it, full of LGBTQ+ people, even in the “straight” roles, full of real talk about sex and same-sex relationships and more. He also talks about being out from the word go and how that affected his career. Some highlights:

‘Bros’ needs to work: “I feel a responsibility for it to do well. I’ve worked so hard on it, I care so much about it, and I want it to do well for the sake of the LGBTQ stories getting greenlit. So there’s a burden I feel, much as I want to sit here and just talk about how funny the movie is.”

His character is based on Holly Hunter’s hard-driving producer in “Broadcast News.” “There’s no character in modern films I relate to more than Holly Hunter’s, because she’s so damn smart, she has all her sh-t together, and no one is better at her job. And yet, she falls for the handsome idiot. And that’s human, especially if you’re a person who doesn’t connect romantically to a lot of people. When it does happen, it can really mess you up.”

The studio didn’t fight him about anything: “To this day, I’m waiting for someone at the studio to call me and go, ‘You know, now that we think about it, you’ve gone too far.’ But it never happened. There’s part of me that realized some of this would be eye-opening for certain people in the audience, and I loved that too. I was like, ‘Great! Let’s surprise people. Let’s shock them.’ Sacha Baron Cohen doesn’t worry about that — why should I?”

Straight rom-coms: “Universal has a rom-com with George Clooney and Julia Roberts [‘Ticket to Paradise’] coming out a month after ‘Bros’. I love Julia Roberts more than life itself, but no one is going to ask Julia Roberts and George Clooney, ‘Are you worried that gay people are going to relate?’ No straight movie star or straight director in major studio history has ever sat there and worried, ‘God, I hope gay people show up in droves.’”

The political fight still being waged by the LGBTQ community: “We’re always going to have to keep fighting. We’re even going to have to keep fighting for the handful of rights that we managed to acquire, because every time we make progress, the other side gets scared and pushes back.”

Growing up, he never struggled with his sexuality: “It looked chic. I watched a lot of shows about fashion, and Madonna was always palling around with her gay dancers. On ‘The Real World,’ there was always a cool and artsy gay man who went to fun nightclubs, and I wanted to do all of that.”

He wanted to make a movie about 40-somethings: “Most of the LGBTQ content today is about gay teenagers who are presented in a very sitcom-ish fashion. We’re wearing cutesy little outfits, and we’re there to be charming. I don’t relate. Where are the adults? I look at this queer programming, and I don’t know who these gay men are. They don’t look, sound or behave like me and my gay friends.”

[From Variety]

I think the LGBTQ community will go out in droves to see Bros, but what’s great about the promotion (from what I’ve seen) is that they aren’t trying to trick anyone, it’s not like they’re hiding the fact that this is the first studio-made “gay rom-com.” Meaning, straight people will choose to see it, knowing exactly what it is: a funny movie about a couple of dudes falling in love. I love how he describes his idea of being gay when he was a kid – it looked cool, you get to hang out with Madonna, everything is chic. Bonus points for loving Broadcast News too – such a completely underrated classic and Holly Hunter’s character is amazing.

Cover courtesy of Variety, additional pics courtesy of Avalon Red.