As queer characters become increasingly commonplace in

mainstream cinema, more and more movies fall back on the “gay reveal” — it’s

when a character who had been presented as straight suddenly makes it known

that he or she is in reality gay or lesbian. It’s often thrown at us as a joke,

but sometimes the gay reveal emerges in dramatic contexts (or in contexts that

make absolutely no sense at all — but more on that later).

Whether or not the gay reveal is intelligent or offensive,

of course, is up to the filmmaker; if a cool character beloved by the audience

comes out of the closet, it forces straight viewers to reflect upon their

enjoyment of that character. In other cases it’s just a way to create yet

another on-screen homo who’s the butt of a joke. And that joke will feature a butt, guaranteed.

Here are 10 notable gay reveals, rated for boldness and out-of-the-blue-ness, measured in our patented Flying Monkey Rating Scale™ of 1 to 5 monkeys. Unavoidably, such a list will include tons of spoilers, so continue reading at

your own risk.

Tropic Thunder (2008)

Surprise gay reveal:

Rapper Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson)

What’s the story:

Chino is one of five actors who find themselves lost deep in an Asian jungle

during the disastrous shooting of a big-budget Vietnam War epic. The film begins

with Chino (a hip-hop artist) doing a commercial for his energy drink, “Booty Sweat,”

featuring lots of hoochie mamas dropping it like it’s hot. But as the actors

fear for their lives and begin bonding with each other, Chino inadvertently

reveals he’s been pining for a guy named Lance.

Brandon T. Jackson

Cat’s out of the bag:

The film ends with Alpa Chino attending the Oscars with his co-stars…and his

date, Lance Bass.

Bold or Blah?:

Very bold. Alpa proves that gay men don’t have to be stereotypes and can, in

fact, be just as brave as their heterosexual counterparts. He also shows that

not all gay men of color are flamboyant and/or drag queens, unlike the

characters in comedies such as The Longest Yard (2005) and I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007), among many

others. Alpa’s third-act coming out also makes his previous objectification of

women hilarious (while raising the question of how many real-life rappers are

yelling about “bitches and hos” while secretly lusting after former boy-band

members).

How surprising?: 3.5 Monkeys (out of 5)

The Mexican (2001)

Surprise gay reveal:

Hitman Leroy (James Gandolfini)

What’s the story:

Leroy takes nurse Samantha (Julia Roberts) hostage to ensure that her boyfriend

Jerry (Brad Pitt) accomplishes his mission of transporting a one-of-a-kind

vintage firearm (the “Mexican” of the title) across the border. Sam eventually

catches Leroy checking out another man’s ass and realizes that he’s gay, at

which point she becomes his hag and gets him to spill his guts about his love

problems.

James Gandolfini

Cat’s out of the bag:

Leroy has one night of love with a postal worker, who gets offed by a rival

killer while Jerry eventually kills Leroy in a kill-or-be-killed moment.

Bold or Blah?:

Rather bold, in that Hollywood movies like their gay characters at the far end

of the spectrum — either super-nelly or cartoonishly butch and leather-clad.

Gandolfini’s Leroy is a bad-ass tough guy who’s quick with his fists and lethal

on the trigger. He also happens to like dudes and that’s still a rare combo,

especially in such a star vehicle as this. (The Mexican may

have been built to show off the charisma of Pitt and Roberts, but Gandolfini

handily steals the movie out from under them.)

How surprising?:

Five Monkeys

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Surprise gay reveal:

Millionaire Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown)

What’s the story:

Musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) have the misfortune of

witnessing the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Chased by the mob, the two flee

Chicago the only way they know how — donning dresses and wigs, they turn

themselves into Josephine and Daphne and travel to Florida as part of an

all-girl band. Upon arrival, Daphne catches the eye of oft-married wealthy

playboy Osgood. Joe encourages Jerry to date the rich lay-about so that he,

Joe, can borrow Osgood’s yacht to woo the band’s singer, Sugar Kane (Marilyn

Monroe).

Joe E. Brown & Jack Lemmon

Cat’s out of the bag:

At the end of this classic, breathless farce, the wigs come off and everyone

has to admit to their disguises. When Daphne tells Osgood that he’s really

Jerry, we expect the rich guy to be horrified, disgusted, and incredulous.

Instead, in one of the greatest closing lines in the history of cinema, Osgood

nonchalantly tells Daphne, “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

Bold or Blah?:

Billy Wilder’s comedic roundelay remains an incredibly daring movie,

particularly given that it was made during the Eisenhower era. From Sugar’s

lament of “always getting stuck with the fuzzy end of the lollipop” to the

film’s many gags about impotence, cross-dressing and homosexuality (“Why would

a guy marry another guy?” “Security!”), Some Like It Hot is

still sassy after all these years.

How surprising?:

Three Monkeys

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

Surprise gay reveal: Flatmates Gareth (Simon Callow)

and Matthew (John Hannah)

What’s the story?: A

charming group of upper middle class Brits (led by Hugh Grant) attend one

wedding after another, lamenting their own unmarried state. Two of this group,

Gareth and Matthew, are quite obviously a couple, so the reveal in this case

isn’t to the audience but to the thick straight characters in the film. It’s

not until the hedonistic Gareth drops dead during a Scottish jig and his

friends gather for his memorial — thus prompting wags to refer to this movie as Four Straight Weddings and a Gay Funeral — that the

heterosexuals realize they’ve had a “perfect couple” among them all along.

Cat’s out of the bag:

One of the film’s most moving moments comes at Gareth’s funeral when Matthew

delivers a heartfelt eulogy, capped off by one of gay poet W.H. Auden’s “Twelve

Songs.” (It’s the ninth one, which starts “Stop all the clocks, cut off the

telephone/Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.”) Hannah’s reading of

the poem is so good it’s featured on the film’s soundtrack CD.

From left to right: Simon Callow, John Hannah & Charlotte Coleman

Bold or Blah?:

The gay characters are lovely, but it can be argued that the movie totally

back-burners them. The fact that their coupledom is barely acknowledged until

one of them dies feels like a know-nothing slight.

How surprising?:

One Monkey

The Full Monty (1997)

Surprise gay reveal:

On-the-dole laborers Guy (Hugo Speer) and Lomper (Steve Huison)

What’s the story:

A group of unemployed steel workers in the north of England note the huge

popularity of the visiting Chippendales troupe of dancers and decide that they

could earn even more money by going “the full monty” and stripping down all the

way. (G-strings are for wimps, you know.)

Cat’s out of the bag:

The characters of Guy and Lomper mostly keep to themselves, but when the two

are seen holding hands at a funeral, their fellow would-be strippers finally

figure it out. Dave (Mark Addy) finally shrugs it off with the old adage,

“There’s naught so queer as folk.”

Steve Huison (left) & Hugo Speer

Bold or Blah?:

Given that The Full Monty is already about rough blue-collar

types who have to discover their inner ecdysiasts, this is a movie willing to

explore gender roles. But to have tough manly-men workers turn out to be gay —

and to have their tough manly-men peers be nonchalant about it — rates as quite

bold indeed.

How surprising?:

Four Monkeys

The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

Surprise gay reveal:

Abductors Franz Tomczeszyn (Fagin Woodcock) and Janke Dacyshyn (Callum Keith

Rennie)

What’s the story:

Former FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian

Anderson) are called back on assignment to help track down a missing agent.

Clues indicate she’s one of several women who have disappeared in a similar

fashion, and a disgraced pedophile priest (Billy Connolly) seems to be having

visions that may or may not lead the feds to the killer.

Cat’s out of the bag:

“Guess who got married in Massachusetts?” says one agent about two likely

suspects: Franz, it turns out had been doing stem cell research on living human

beings, and when disease began ravaging his body, his husband Janke started

snatching people with a similar blood type in the hopes of grafting Franz’s

head onto a new, healthy torso. Why a gay man would want to give his fella a

new lady-body is never quite explained.

From left to right: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Callum Keith Rennie

Bold or Blah?: Oh

look, crazed gay killers/mad scientists. How fresh and new. What’s

that, one of them was also a child sexual abuse victim at the hands of the

perverted priest? So much the better. And while it’s certainly despicable,

there’s a freakish entertainment value to be experienced when a movie made in

2008 is this bonkers.

How surprising?: - 1.5 Monkeys

Clue (1985)

Surprise gay reveal:

State Department bureaucrat Mr. Green (Michael McKean)

What’s the story:

During the 1950’s Red Scare, six strangers are summoned to a spooky house,

where it is revealed that all of them are being blackmailed. While everyone’s

guilty secrets are revealed — Miss Scarlet (Lesley Ann Warren) runs a brothel,

Mrs. Peacock (Eileen Brennan) accepts bribes on behalf of her politician

husband — Mr. Green stands up and announces to the group that he is, in the

parlance of the era, “a homosexual.” He adds that he feels no shame about this,

but that he would lose his security clearance if the truth were revealed.

Michael McKean

Cat’s out of the bag:

In a gimmick that stays true to the film’s board-game origins, Clue offers three endings and two possible resolutions for

Mr. Green’s storyline. In two of them, he is innocent of any of the film’s

multiple murders, but the other characters treat him like a hapless boob,

smacking him around and subjecting him to condescending barbs. The other ending

posits that Mr. Green is in fact a plant from the FBI, and after he turns his

co-stars over to the authorities, Green ends the film by staring at the camera

and declaring, “I’m going to go home and sleep with my wife.”

Bold or Blah?:

He’s not handled any more cartoonishly than any of the film’s other

two-dimensional characters, granted, but it’s a little grating that in the

ending that features a heroic Mr. Green, the movie has to tell us that he’s

really straight after all. (And this may be the rare movie in which not letting the gay character be a murderer feels

discriminatory, but that’s a whole other discussion.)

How surprising?: Two Monkeys

The Children’s Hour (1961)

Surprise gay reveal:

Schoolteacher Martha (Shirley MacLaine)

What’s the story:

Martha and her dear friend Karen (Audrey Hepburn) have opened a successful

girls’ school in New England, but their dreams come crashing down around them

when an obnoxious little girl (Karen Balkin) spreads the lie that the two women

are lesbians. Even though the child’s story isn’t true, it strikes a chord with

Martha, who is indeed a lesbian and has harbored feelings for Karen for years

without being able to identify or express them.

Audrey Hepburn, James Garner & Shirley Maclaine

Cat’s out of the bag:

Once Martha confesses her true feelings to Karen, she does what most queer

movie characters of the era did — she kills herself.

Bold or Blah?: Bold

for the time, yet still overwrought and shame-filled. (Sometimes it just works

out that way.) MacLaine gives a great interview in the documentary The

Celluloid Closet (1995) in which she admits, regarding the film’s

discussion of lesbianism, “We didn’t do the picture right. We were in the mindset

of not understanding what we were basically doing.”

How surprising?: 1.5 Monkeys

Mamma Mia! (2008)

Surprise gay reveal:

Stuffy financier Harry Bright (Colin Firth)

What’s the story:

Bride-to-be Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), raised by her mother Donna (Meryl

Streep), has always wondered about the identity of her father. Finding a trio

of likely candidates in Donna’s old diaries, Sophie invites all three men to

her wedding, thinking that she’ll immediately know upon meeting them which one

is her daddy. But things don’t run quite so smoothly in this ABBA-inspired

musical.

Cat’s out of the bag:

For no real reason whatsoever, Harry — one of the three paternity potentials —

suddenly has a boyfriend at the end of the movie. It’s touched upon briefly and

explained even less.

Colin Firth and Amanda Seyfried

Bold or Blah?:

Just ridiculous, really. But then, it’s a movie full of people singing ABBA

songs that only occasionally fit the flimsy plot. So someone just turns gay

with no explanation? Why not? Put him in a sparkly suit and make him dance!

How surprising?:

Half a Monkey

Over Her Dead Body (2008)

Surprise straight

reveal: Catering assistant Dan (Jason Biggs)

What’s the story:

Distraught over the death of his fiancée (Eva Longoria) just before their

wedding, Henry (Paul Rudd) is sent by his sister to go talk to Ashley (Lake

Bell), who works as both a psychic and a caterer. While Ashley tries to use her

psychic abilities to summon the recently-departed bride, her catering business

is handled — badly — by her bestest gay pal Dan. But as Ashley starts falling

for Henry, Dan admits that he’s lied for years about being gay; he’s really

straight and pretended otherwise just to be near her.

Lake Bell (left) & Jason Biggs

Cat’s out of the bag:

Uh, what? Even in a romantic comedy about a would-be psychic and a vengeful

ghost, the character of Dan makes no rational sense whatsoever. The subplot is

so clumsy and ridiculous that it makes the rest of the admittedly mediocre

movie look sophisticated and funny by comparison.

Bold or blah: The

film pretends this plot twist is a daring one, but neither the script nor the

actors pull it off. In what Bizarro world is Over Her Dead

Body set, where people behave like being gay is a set of personality

traits and catch phrases that can be adopted as easily as a Halloween costume?

How surprising?:

2 Monkeys, minus one for sheer absurdity.

Duralde is the author of 101 Must-See Movies for

Gay Men (Advocate Books).