Show notes
This episode we talk about Love, Simon - and whether it's a Bad Movie or if Rowan is just reading too much into it. Let's chat gay high school romance, queer YA, and #ownvoices. This podcast needs your help to keep going. We are still losing money and need your support on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/thequeermoviepodcast and join for as little as $5 per month and we will provide you with personalised movie recommendations, along side all the other perks that come with membership. Thank you for supporting us! This is a queer movie watch party for your ears, hosted by Rowan Ellis and Jazza John. Join us as we take a look at the queer film canon, one genre at a time. From rom-coms to slashers, contemporary arthouse cinema to comedy classics - Queer Movie Podcast is a celebration of all things queer on the silver screen! New episodes every other Thursday. Find Us on the Internet Super Highway - Twitter: https://twitter.com/QueerMoviePod - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thequeermoviepodcast - Website: http://www.queermoviepodcast.co.uk/ - Multitude: @MultitudeShows Production - Hosts: Rowan Ellis and Jazza John - Editor: Julia Schifini - Executive Producer: Multitude - Artwork: Jessica E. Boyd ROWAN: Just before we jump into today's episode, I want to let you know about a special offer that we have going on on Patreon. So if you sign up to our Patreon by the 28th of August and don't worry, if you're already signed up, this counts for you too. You will get a personalized recommendation of a queer movie or TV show that we think that you would love based on your preferences. Very exciting. And of course, you will also get all of the other perks that normally come along with Patreon membership access to our Discord where we do monthly watch-alongs of queer movies, as well as top 10 lists queer newsletter that Jazza puts out, a bunch of cool stuff. So you can visit patreon.com/QueerMoviePodcast to find out more. [theme] JAZZA: Welcome to the Queer Movie Podcast celebrating the best and worst in LGBTQ+ cinema one glorious genre at a time. ROWAN: I'm Rowan Ellis. JAZZA: And I am Jazza John. ROWAN: Each episode, we discuss a movie from a different genre of cinema. JAZZA: This episode's genre is JAZZA AND ROWAN: Queer Coming Out. JAZZA: Oh, Oh, lovely have we used up all of the possible teen categories that we could have done in we're struggling. ROWAN: Yes. We've done queer high school, queer coming of age, queer romance, so we really weren't struggling but you know what these movies are coming out so it still counts. So this week, we're going to be reviewing the first gay film ever made. Love Simon, the film from 2018 based on the book Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. That was a little joke courtesy of Jazza because he likes to write these little intro bits and then I have to say them, and he knows I have a we'll get into it later. But I have a little bee in my bonnet about the way this film was marketed. But spoilers for later on in this episode. JAZZA: We have plenty of time to talk about it. But Rowan does have a 45-minute video titled, The Problem with Love Simon, so this shouldn't be really good. ROWAN: I kind of spoilt it myself by anything I've ever said about this film on the internet. Which is why I was like I this is this episode has been a long time coming. I feel like this has been something that's been requested quite a lot. So we thought why not give the people what they want? JAZZA: 100% we're going to be doing our best to avoid retreading that video. I can't wait to see what Rowan really thinks about this movie. But before we get into that, Rowan, what is the gayest thing you've done since the last episode? ROWAN: So I probably shouldn't say this because I've been, I've been- JAZZA: A lesbian? ROWAN: But I'm a lesbian. No, I– I am writing a little thing that has some characters in it. And I just decided that they're all going to be gay, or queer in some way. I say gay but I mean, just queer in general. JAZZA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The umbrella. ROWAN: And I think that it's very, it's very gay to just decide that the entire ensemble is going to be homos, big fan of that. I can recommend it to to anyone. JAZZA: Also just to saying, you know what, I'm going to go on holiday and become a novelist. ROWAN: I'm just going to go away and just write a novel. JAZZA: Yeah. ROWAN: To be clear, I didn't write the novel. I just decided what the plot was going to be. And I feel like me putting five fictional little queers into the world is pretty gay. How about you, Jazza? JAZZA: Um, so I've had a pretty gay month to be honest. Until yesterday, it was going to be going to see Haim which just has really strong kind of like queer energy as like a fan base in general, you know what I mean. I wouldn't say it with our friend Dodi who has a huge overlap of her fans who also like I'm what a bloody surprise. So that was pretty high up there. But then yesterday, I managed to book my monkeypox vaccine. ROWAN: That, I was gonna say that if you had that will be the gayest thing, awesome for you. JAZZA: It is so hard to get a bloody monkeypox vaccine at the moment, especially in London, where we've got a bit of a where most of the cases are in the UK. To be clear, I'm not having the monkeypox vaccine because this is a gay disease, but because that's where it has spread most in the population. And I'd quite like me and the people I love to be safe. ROWAN: Essentially, being public health conscious, the gayest thing that Jazza has done this month. JAZZA: 100%. ROWAN: Amazing. [theme] JAZZA: Hello, friends. Pray, allow us to briefly recap how it goes down here on the Queer Movie Podcast. First, we will give you some analysis of the key differences between the way novel and the Hollywood blockbuster and then some other stuff around debates of around representation in literature and film, which I'm sure will be fine. ROWAN: Bit of a wider context of the film as we like to do when we begin after that, as always, we'll be splitting the film into three acts. Take a shot the new drinking game when you hear party in its aftermath, the name of at least one act, and every film that we seem to watch. JAZZA: We will crowbar it in somehow. ROWAN: We always do. JAZZA: Yeah. ROWAN: And finally ending as always with our very special gay ratings. JAZZA: We will be spoiling all of this movie, I will be honest, Rowan probably doesn't think that you should bother. But I did cry several times the first time I saw this movie and several times on rewatching the movie earlier today. So I would recommend watching it if only to keep your tear ducts active. ROWAN: So without further ado, let's publicly shame our potential boyfriend and outing himself on a Ferris wheel and review Love Simon. [theme] ROWAN: Okay, so let's start by talking a little bit about the difference between the novel, the book that this film was based on, and the film itself. So I actually read the book before I saw the movie and I liked the book, I really, really did. It's published by Penguin in the UK, who's the company I used to work for. So it was kind of like a big thing, a big book that everyone read, everyone's very excited about, even before the movie came out was very, very well received. And I really, really liked it. And then have just slightly subtly hinted so far in the podcast wasn't that big a fan of this movie? And I think the key reason is these differences between the book and the movie, the some of the changes that they made, I wasn't too keen on this and very, you know, irrelevant changes like the title and like- JAZZA: The number of sisters that Simon has. ROWAN: Yeah, the number of sisters Simon has, like all of that kind of stuff. But for me, the big stuff that is different is things like Leah's crush, for example, in the book, she has a crush on Nick, whereas in the movie, they change it so that she actually has this crush on Simon and is actually been in love with Simon this whole time. JAZZA: Leah having a crush on one of their mutual friends rather than on Simon. ROWAN: Exactly. JAZZA: Yeah. ROWAN: And then the way that like, Simon's coming out happens, and the movie really emphasized how his friends just decided to hate him for that and for his being blackmailed. And the ultimate one which you know, the fairest the Ferris wheel. JAZZA: The fucking Ferris wheel. ROWAN: Where essentially in the book, Simon does not tie together, him and Blue, finding out who each other are getting to know each other potentially wanting to date in real life. He doesn't tie it in with like an ultimatum for Blue to come out very publicly, while people watch on to find out who he is like, everything like putting that kind of pressure on him, which is essentially the big finale of Love Simon, which we will talk more about when we get to it because I think it's very tied to a lot of classic romance movie tropes and teen movie tropes, which work for heterosexual characters for various reasons, but which get a bit sticky when we are putting them into a movie, which is not just about queer teens, but explicitly a homophobic environment that they've they've kind of set up within this world. So there are there are like a bunch of smaller differences. But for me, the big differences is the ending and the way that these two things kind of play out in the movie as well, for example, like Blue basically tells Simon like I don't want anything to do with you don't email me anymore. Whereas in the book, it's like a classic bit of miscommunication where Blue did want Simon to message him and actually gave him his phone number, but Simon doesn't find it until later and thinks that Blue doesn't want anything to do with him. So it's kind of like a some differences that I think were changed for the worse within the movie. I would be remiss, however, if I let I just wanted to get that context out there first, but I want to just circle back really quickly to something that Jazza said. JAZZA: Oh, no. ROWAN: Well, Jazza was like, "Oh, I did cry the first time I saw this movie." I was with Jazza the first time he saw this movie, we saw it at the BFI, right? JAZZA: Yeah. ROWAN: We were in the big NFT the big- JAZZA: MFT ROWAN: MFT. It's the name of the screen. JAZZA: Okay, that's unfortunate. ROWAN: The film bitch. Yeah, didn't you reboot to NFT1 to see the screen. But Jazza was crying so hard. Cheering specifically the scene where Simon comes out to his mum. Those who have seen the movie will know after that scene, there's some light hearted scenes, there's the things picked back up like it moves on. That's not the end of the movie. And Jazza was crying so hard and could not stop crying to the point where he had to take his jacket that he had taken off because it was too hot in the summer and hide his head under it because he was so loud. No one could hear what was going on in this movie because Jazza was still crying. And I felt like the most heartless bitch in the world sitting sitting beside you and like sort of like imaginary- JAZZA: There, there. ROWAN: There, there, Jazza, my friend as you were probably having a crisis in the seat beside me in the cinema. It was amazing. Don't let don't let Jazza for you and he does a really casual like, you know, I cried a few times had a little cry today about it. JAZZA: I know, I know. I had a breakdown. Yeah. ROWAN: It was it was week. It was a whole week. JAZZA: Yeah, pulled out like my, my, my heart and soul. The same thing happened rewatching it so this is now what we're watching for the this podcast is the third time that I've watched it. And I had the same reaction to the same scene. It's like not quite as dramatic. ROWAN: So predictable. JAZZA: Yeah. And I think that is going to affect the way that I talk about this movie because I have a bit more of a retrospective. We will we'll see as we come into talking about the plot more in-depth. But for me, we joked about this being the first ever gay movie. And I'm like, go and look at our back catalog of episodes. There were several other queer movies about teens with quick protagonists and with queer actors in it, and queer filmmakers making them that came far before 2018 When this movie actually came out. But this was the first time I saw something that really resonated with me, and how old I was like in my late 20s, at the time, and that was such a kind of like that, that does make it a really, really important movie for me, albeit one with many criticisms and I'm not least that fucking Ferris wheel. ROWAN: So another bit of context we wanted to talk about before we dive into like, going through the exact plot of the movie is something Jazza you've been looking into, which is the controversy, the conversation, the invasiveness, I don't know what to call it around the sexuality of the author of the novel, right? JAZZA: Yeah. So Rebecca Albertalli is the writer of not only Love Simon, but also what she refers to as the Simon-verse ROWAN: The Simon, also, I love what you've called Rebecca Albertalli. When her I'm pretty sure, she just goes by Becky Albertalli. But it makes it sound like like, Okay- JAZZA: I've never met her, I feel like I have to use her full name. ROWAN: We don't be you don't want to, I don't want to presume I can use her nickname, which is- JAZZA: No, I would never. ROWAN: -know the name Rowan, that's too presumptuous. JAZZA: I'll just call her Albertalli. Like I'm referencing her in a in an academic article. So it has written a number of novels for YA novels with queer protagonists, queer themes, but was perceived by many people for a long time to be cis het, cisgender heterosexual, because she is in a heterosexual marriage and had never really spoken explicitly about her sexuality, and had actually kind of like whenever people heard invasively asked her about her, like, why is why is this het woman writing about like a gay boy, like in Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, this kind of like coincided with a movement called Own Voices in from what I can, Rowan, you may understand more context about this, because you were in this world when this was happening. But it was a term coined, by a YA author named Cohen Davis, which was a way of kind of categorizing online stories that were told by the people who were from the communities and the identities that were portrayed in the literature that they were creating, which sounds like a great idea, right? The problem is, this then ended up gatekeeping happened and gatekeeping of queerness, not only by the companies who were then going around trying to tick the box of something that would fit under an own voices title, but also by people online, who then would go around questioning whether or not people had the right to be able to talk about particular communities based on their backgrounds. This got so heated, that my close friend, Rebecca Albertalli, ended up posting a quite a really moving very emotional, medium post coming out as bi and made it very, very clear. Like I'll quote her for a sec, let me be perfectly clear, this is not how I wanted to come out. This does not feel good or empowering, or even particularly safe. Honestly, I'm doing this because I've been scrutinized, sub-tweeted, mocked or lectured and invalidated just about every single day for years, and I'm exhausted. And obviously, this is a terrible experience for her to have had to have gotten through. But I think this started in like the YA space. But I think and I, I'll be honest, I don't know where I stand on…
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