*Screams Hysterically After Looking At Phillip Seymour-Hoffman's Face* in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

When I was in high school, I happened to see The Talented Mr. Ripley. It would be an understatement to say that that movie really fucked me up.

I knew that I was going to write about it because ever since seeing The Celluloid Closet, I've been wanting to write about what I perceived being the messages regarding queers in cinema, and therefore I decided to watch it again. I couldn't even get five minutes into the move before I faithfully fast-forwarded to Jude Law's nude scene, Matt Damon's murders of both Jude Law and Phillip Seymour-Hoffman, and I couldn't watch the end where Matt Damon murders his lover. Then I read some reviews about the movie. The reviews for the movie were rapturous; all the reviews were by heterosexuals.

The Talented Mr. Ripley is about a young man, a sociopath, who develops an obsession with a wealthy playboy. The obsession eventually turns sexual and eventually he kills the playboy, assumes his identity and must go through a whole series of nasty charades to keep the game going.

The movie is based off a novel that was written in the 1950s. There is no homosexual context in the original novel. There's a 1960 French movie based off of the novel in which there's no gay context (although the French version has Tom Ripley being caught by police in the end, which happens in neither the book nor the Matt Damon version). Why was a gay obsession thrown into the mix this time? To be honest, I don't know. I think that we're going through a period where if a man expresses admiration or affection for another man and it's not a plausible mentor/tutee relationship, homosexual feelings are the only route that Hollywood can seem to comprehend. There's no reason for a man to be so fixated on another man if it's not an unhealthy sexual appetite.

This movie made me form a lot of opinions about myself and they were from two specific people in the movie: Matt Damon and Phillip Seymour-Hoffman. Matt Damon was a psychopath... beyond just a sociopath. The thing is, I recognized a lot of Tom Ripley's traits within myself. I did not have the developed psyche to realize that the need for validation does not ALWAYS lead to murder. I began to worry that not only was I sick for being gay, I was also sick because of the envy that I held within me. It was a very frightening thing to be grappling with at 15. Joe didn't understand why I would start crying from time-to-time. I think he knew that I was having a really hard time coming to grips with everything, and he was very patient with me... I think that's why I'm so patient with people and their sexuality now. These are not easy questions. Coming out brings up just as many problems as it finds solutions.

Phillip Seymour-Hoffman represented the heterosexual perspective of Tom Ripley. Jude Law's character is, for the most part, oblivious to the depth of psychosis that Matt Damon has... and amazingly, so is Phillip Seymour-Hoffman. But he's mean to Ripley right from the start. Why is that? It's because he perceives the queerness of Ripley and that makes him an enemy immediately. When the psychopathic behavior is confirmed, there is no solution but for Phillip Seymour-Hoffman to be murdered by Matt Damon. It's a very strange turn although it's not as violent as Damon's murder of Law.

Ever since this movie, I have hated with a passion the movies of Matt Damon and Phillip Seymour-Hoffman. I won't watch either of their movies because they just disgust me. When people try to probe why I don't like either actor, I don't have a credible answer except to say that I feel wronged by them for this movie. Ironically, I don't feel that way about Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett or anyone else in the movie, just those two. They are the two opposite sides of a coin that I hate.

The things I took from this movie stayed with me for a very long time and I resented anyone who said they enjoyed it. I assumed they were my enemy. Only one other movie really provoked this kind of negative reaction in me and that was Mystic River. I literally went into therapy after watching Mystic River.

I'm not sure I really like this trend of Hollywood making gay people more visible. It's like female characters in movies. Oftentimes roles for women are poorly written because they are written by men. I find that roles for GLBT people, even when written by GLBT folk, are sanitized by the heterocentric system in which corporate art is produced. Entertainment is so empty from good product that when something profoundly stupid comes along (of course I'm talking about Looking), we all run toward it with arms wide open because we want ANYTHING.

Well, I learned the lesson of visibility at any cost. Give me good role models or stay the hell way from portraying something which you know nothing about. Part of me thinks this ubiquitous visibility is responsible for the rise in GLBT youth suicide. In my day, we didn't have visibility, but we didn't kill ourselves. We served our time until we could get away from the people who made us feel like shit and find people who appreciated us. For some reason, kids these days have these unrealistic expectations that they should be automatically accepted from a young age. That's not how it works... if racism amongst youth still exists (and it does), then you can be sure homophobia is going to be around for another fifty years at least. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Toughen up because it does get better.

And for God's sake, don't watch The Talented Mr. Ripley no matter how madly you want to see Jude Law's dick...