Clone star state

Happy, Texas (12) Once upon a time, homosexuality was a taboo in Hollywood. Actors like Rock Hudson spent their entire lives keeping their true natures a closely guarded secret, while what few gay characters there were - and they were never identified as such - were always weak-willed, limp-wristed and effeminate. Take Peter Lorre in The Maltese Falcon, for example, who Humphrey Bogart contemptuously smacked with the words: "When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it."

In this atmosphere of fear and repression, Alfred Hitchcock had a field day. In thrillers like Rope (1948) and Strangers On A Train (1951), homosexuality - again only intimated, never named - was implicitly equated with psychosis. Watching the latter film, which had a welcome re-release earlier this year, it's amazing how blatant Robert Walker's smooth-talking dandy is in his attempted seduction of Farley Granger's bland tennis pro, with murder a thinly disguised substitute for the love that, back then, dared not speak its name.

It was in British films like Victim and A Taste Of Honey that gay lifestyles came out of the closet. But even in the swinging 60s there was still a whiff of tragedy attached, with Oscar Wilde a universal symbol of the intolerance homosexuals faced.

Thankfully, things have changed. William Hurt and Tom Hanks both won Academy Awards for portraying homosexual characters, in Kiss of the Spider Woman and Philadelphia respectively, while Kevin Kline had a hit with the "is he or isn't he?" comedy In And Out - inspired, incidentally, by Tom Hanks' Oscar acceptance speech, in which he inadvertently outed his old drama teacher.

It's interesting to note that in Sam Mendes' upcoming American Beauty, a darkly satirical study of dysfunctional families in modern- day America, the only stable relationship in the entire film is between two gay men. And who would have thought The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert would have the makings of an international smash?

Happy, Texas won't push back any boundaries, but it's surely a sign of how far we've come when the idea of two fugitives who pretend to be gay in order to avoid recapture strikes us not as risque or bold but ingenious and amusing. In an ironic spin on The Defiant Ones, Mark Illsley's comedy has Harry Sawyer (Jeremy Northam) and Wayne Wayne Wayne Jr (Steve Zahn from Out of Sight and That Thing You Do!) mistaken for a gay couple who specialise in staging Junior Miss America-style beauty pageants.

While Sawyer sees the financial possibilities of the charade, the idea appals redneck Wayne, as does the thought of tutoring a roomful of kids in the finer points of singing, dancing and deportment. But matters are complicated when Sheriff Chappy Dent (William H Macy from Fargo) takes a shine to Sawyer. "You're a man's man!" he informs the nervous fraudster, gifting Harry a freshly amputated rabbit's foot as a token of his affection before whisking him off to a cowboy joint where men-only line dancing is all the rage.

Wayne, meanwhile, who has the names of movie starlets tattooed all about his person, surprises prim schoolteacher Ms Schaefer (Illeana Douglas) by goosing her in the classroom. ("That whole gay thing is more of a hobby, really," he slurs.) Everything comes to a head on pageant day, with Macy coming into his own by foiling a heist. ("That is one big-dick cop!" says another officer admiringly.) Northam and Zahn's edgy partnership recalls Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis' double act in Some Like It Hot, while the script (written by director Mark Illsley, Ed Stone and Phil Reeves) cleverly juxtaposes traditional Deep South sensibilities and prejudices with the locals' concerted attempts to be politically correct. Happy, Texas more than lives up to its name although some might claim it reinforces the same sexual stereotypes we've spent 60 years trying to banish.

Copyright 1999
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