The movie teases out that effeminate situation for all it's worth. MacElroy and Michaels are forced to live together while they train. In one scene, they exchange hair-care tips. In another, they don tutus and leotards and cascade around a dance floor. That is until Michaels shoves a guy for getting too close.
"They ultimately have to be brothers and this weird couple," said Gordon. "At the same time, they have to make it OK for you."
It's not an easy line to walk.
Going down that same road
THE new Buena Vista comedy "Hogs" attempts another male bonding story -- suburban guys in midlife crisis on a cross-country motorcycle trip -- but much of its humor is about straight guys being mistaken for gay.
John Travolta's alpha dog Woody is often paired with the more delicate computer geek bachelor Dudley, played by William H. Macy. In one scene, Dudley longingly sniffs the cologne off Woody's neck and Woody threatens to kill him if he does it again. In other scenes, a flamboyantly gay state trooper catches them sleeping together and skinny-dipping and tries to join in. By the end, all these scenarios have drawn the men closer as friends.
"It's four grown men discussing things in honest, intimate ways, which doesn't happen as much as it should in the real world," producer Mike Tollin says of the film in production notes. "But most of all, it's just plain funny."
Some critics were turned off.
"It's ... hard to recall a recent movie so desperate to convince you of its heterosexual bona fides," wrote Scott Renshaw in the Salt Lake City Weekly.
"Studio product once ridiculed homosexuals outright," wrote Dennis Harvey in Variety. "Now it goes the more insidious route."
Men's identities are clearly in transition, and it's all being filtered through our entertainment. To show how tricky matters can become in a hyper-aware culture: The makers of the smash comic-book-based war film "300" have noted that their film has been accused, simultaneously, of being homoerotic and homophobic. And it was only a matter of time before one of Tony Soprano's henchmen, Vito Spatafore, turned up in a gay leather bar, as happened on last season's "The Sopranos" on HBO.
On FX's "Nip/Tuck," womanizing plastic surgeon Christian Troy spent an entire season in the throes of an identity crisis, questioning his sexuality, working it out in therapy and distancing himself from his best friend and business partner, Sean McNamara. Ultimately, he realized he was experiencing a sort of familial love for a good male friend. Creator Ryan Murphy has called the show "a heterosexual love story between two men."
"The fact that gay people are more visible in people's lives problematizes their relationships with other men," says "Manhood in America" author Kimmel. "The more the visibility of gay people in American life -- which I consider a great benefit for straight men as well as gay men -- the richer and fuller straight men's lives will become. You can see that you can express all kinds of feelings, all kinds of emotions. You become safer and more secure in your identity."
gina.piccalo@latimes.com
