Booksmart redefines our preconceptions of studio comedies, teen high school movies, and the romcom. What Wilde does do, however, is make a film that is bold, clever, and a breath of fresh air. Such is the burden of representation, but it’s not Olivia Wilde’s job to represent an all-encompassing gay teenage experience. Amy is white and middle class and her upcoming trip to Botswana has a faint whiff of eau-de-voluntourism. It’s not a perfect representation, of course (does such a thing exist?). “Usually the gay character is the best friend, the condiment, the side item, the seasoning.” Austin Crute, who plays George’s friend Alan, said, “We’ve all seen the Ryan/Sharpay dynamic portrayed before,” referring to the iconic High School Musical duo. Galvin’s character was originally meant to be a straight woman. Noah Galvin, who plays flamboyant theatre enthusiast George, praised Booksmart for the way it allows queer characters “to have rich interior lives.” “We actually see her explore her sexuality in this movie.” Her crush on Ryan is a source of excitement and agony throughout the film and focused on as much – if not more than – Molly’s infatuation with popular boy Nick.Īmy is not the only gay person in her class, either, so it doesn’t feel like an act of tokenism. “We don’t just say Amy is queer, and then we move on from it,” said Dever. With Booksmart, Wilde shows that sexuality can be a non-issue but still explored with sensitivity and humour. This may be a reality for many young people, but queer teenagers deserve to see fictional versions of themselves happy and accepted, too. So many stories of LGBT youth onscreen involve a fight against homophobic violence, a fight against themselves, their families, their peers. “We wanted to tell a story that moved beyond what we typically see when it comes to queer-identifying characters, when it’s all about the coming out and the stress around it,” Wilde told Buzzfeed News. They’re the conversations straight teenage boys have been having in comedies for decades. The discussions of female sexuality, queer or otherwise, are frank, crude, and funny.
What seems to have particularly appealed to Feldstein is the believability.
Mainstream gay sex scenes movie#
This was the first time Feldstein had publically mentioned her sexuality, and like Amy in the movie it’s been largely treated as a non-issue by the press and the public. I think if I could have seen our film earlier, I think I maybe would have found myself a bit sooner.” She spoke of how moved she was during Amy’s sex scene with classmate Hope (Diana Silvers): “Representation is really important. “It was really meaningful for me to watch the film,” said Beanie Feldstein, of Lady Bird fame, after its premiere at SXSW Film Festival, because “my partner’s a woman.” In a recent Buzzfeed article, Olivia Wilde said she wanted to treat Amy’s sexuality as “a non-issue.” Moreover, lesbianism is never fetishised Amy and Hope’s (attempted) sex scene is awkward, funny, and not at all sexy. The film also doesn’t ‘bury its gays’ – that is, it doesn’t indulge in cheap tragedy, as so many movies about young LGBT people tend to do. Her story is not focussed on coming out – she has already been out for two years – and her sexuality is never a punchline. There’s no announcement or corny exposition Amy is just a teenager with a crush, and that crush happens to be on a girl.Īmy has a storyline that differs from other lesbian characters in mainstream teen movies. The two best friends are eating lunch outside their high school cafeteria in the Californian sunshine, on their last day of senior year. One of the first conversations we hear between Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) in Olivia Wilde’s debut feature Booksmart is about lesbian sex.