There is always a red flag that comes with any movie whose release has been delayed by several years. Back in 2014, Emilo Estefan produced his wife in A Change of Heart which took three years for what we think was its only any screening before it was put back on its dusty shelf in some warehouse. Being unfunny is no crime, it happens often in the cinema, but patronizing both the LGBT and the Latino communities as Estafan did in such a clumsy manner, is nothing short of insulting.
“Wild about Harry” is not guilty of any such offenses but it has sat on its own dusty shelf since 2009 for totally different reasons. It was no doubt a well-meaning project by newbie filmmaker Gwen Wynne but time has not been kind to it as it has not aged well at all. The clue is actually in its original title of American Primitive, which was meant to describe a certain business. But it reminds us more how that in 1973 the attitude towards gay men was so regressive,
The film is the tale of Harry (played by Tate Donovan with a strained English accent) a widowed father of two teenage girls who are all moving the family to an idyllic Cape Cod cottage with a spectacular beach view. The house is a total surprise to the girls as is the presence of Mr Gibbs (Adam Pascal) who is introduced as Harry’s business partner.
They are too innocent to read any more into their father’s new colleague, and neither do all the man-hunting local women who just see the rosy prospects of two handsome bachelors to be swooped up.
Harry and Mr Gibbs are very much an item and have evidently have been for some time, but we never get a glimpse into any of the relationship’s history. But once the girls start at their new school Madeline (Danielle Savre) the older one is soon the object of a couple of boys’ attention. In fact when she goes out on a double date one night she ends up in a gay club in nearby Provincetown and (quelle horror) she espies Daddy and Mr. Gibbs making out on the dance floor.
This is a dramatic moment for an impressionable teenager in a time when we gay men were meant to be few and far between, and never in our own families. Her reactions, and that of her maternal grandparents who come for a visit, are both of the same cliched claims of ‘how can you do THAT to me?’ The emphasis was not on the plight of the gay men’s own discreet and somewhat secret lives, it was the unchallenged accepted belief by society that their ‘selfish choices’ were ruthlessly ruining everyone else’s lives.
This was of course an era when many gay men got married to women for all the wrong reasons, but Harry was one of the sadder types, who when his true sexuality was challenged he thought he should think about ‘going back to women’. He probably portrayed a whole slew of men who chose or were forced to make a similar decision. However, Donovan’s portrayal of a gay/bisexual man was performed with the real hesitance of an actor playing gay for pay. Pascal was doing the same, but with a great deal, more commitment and he was so much more convincing.
I’ve no idea why the distributor thought why this lightweight “Lifetime TV” type movie should be made available now. However the one thing is very clear, looking back or forward, we queer people should be telling our own stories to avoid misfires like this
Labels: 1973, 2021, Adam Pascal, Cape Cod, drama, Tate Donovan
