In & Out (1997)

Howard Brackett (Kevin Kline) is a high school teacher in a small town in Indiana with a good job, an attractive fiancé named Emily Montgomery (Joan Cusack) and respect from everyone. Everything changes one night when a former high school student of his named Cameron Drake (Matt Dillon), now a famous actor in Hollywood, makes an acceptance speech after receiving an Oscar for his portrayal of a gay army soldier and 'outs' Howard Brackett as his inspiration for the role. A media circus begins as Howard desperately tries to keep his life from falling apart by protesting that he is not gay and that the whole thing with Cameron's speech is a simple misunderstanding. While most of the townspeople want to believe Howard, Peter Malloy (Tom Selleck), an openly gay TV reporter who arrives in town to cover the story, suspects that the teacher is in denial. Howard is fired, but attends the graduation ceremony to support his students. When the students learn that he was dismissed for being gay, they proclaim themselves to be gay themselves to show their support for Howard. His family follows suit, as do his friends, and all the townsfolk assembled.

This romantic comedy was inspired by Tom Hanks's speech when he accepted his 1994 Oscar for his role in "Philadelphia", and mentioned his high-school drama coach Rawley Farnsworth, and his former classmate John Gilkerson, "two of the finest gay Americans, two wonderful men that I had the good fortune to be associated with"--unaware that Farnsworth was still in the closet. This is one of Hollywood's few attempts at a gay comedy, and was notorious at the time for a 10-second kiss between Kevin Kline and Tom Selleck. The film ends with everyone dancing to the Village People's song "Macho Man". Marc Shaiman composed the incidental music, Paul Rudnick wrote the screenplay, and Frank Oz directed.

Best of Boys in Love (1998)

This is a compilation of 7 short films selected from "Boys in Love" and "Boys in Love 2". The original has 3 fictional political shorts, and the sequel has 6 that are more eclectic and edgy. The first in "Best of" is "Achilles", an animated film about Achilles and Patroclus who battle the Trojans and love each other. "Boot Camp" is about a shy gay (Mathew Solari) who sees a leatherman (John Cantwell) go into an S & M bar. They meet and break into a song! It's a cute gay parody of 1930's musicals. "Death in Venice" features a repressed academic who is seduced by his landlady's stepson. "Dirty Baby Does Fire Island" shows an animated baby-doll among deer, weightlifters, and humping men in a bedroom. Dirty Baby snorts poppers, hallucinates, and rolls outside into a pool. She tries cocaine, which causes her to freak out and fall down a hill to the beach. Later the doll is launched into space. In "Karen Black Like Me" nervous Emil (Ira Rosenberg) receives a huge dildo with a cock ring on it. After a visit from his mother, he is chased by the evil "King Dong". It's a comic homage to the cult film "Trilogy of Terror". Next is "SPF 2000" about two friends, J.J. and Pucci, who sunbathe in a park near cute young Kip and his mother. All the boys go swimming and a silver faced alien named Suroh tries to communicate with them by applying sunscreen to everybody.

In "Twilight of the Gods" a Maori named Toa (Greg Mayor) finds many dead tribesmen and soldiers in the jungle. One of the soldiers is alive and Toa nurses him back to health. They have a gay romance, and this exotic and violent entry is the treasure of this collection, the most explicit and with the best production. These aren't slick big-budget productions and some of them look quite cheap. But most are also funny. They are not raunchy sex films, but humorous and sometimes sweet stories of flirtation, love and occasionally sex. Avoiding homophobia and coming-out stories which have been done to death, the short films avoid such tedium in favor of imaginative and entertaining stories in which homosexuality is a given, not a cross to bear.