There’s something naggingly cheeky about the title of TV entertainment journalist Michael Ausiello’s memoir, Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies — it’s the story of Ausiello’s 14-year relationship with photographer Kit Cowan and Cowan’s untimely death from a rare form of cancer. I haven’t read the book, but a film adaptation (with an abbreviated title, Spoiler Alert), scripted by actor David Marshall Grant and gay advice columnist Dan Savage, has been released in theaters. As a result, some of the most intimate memories of Ausiello’s life are now gracing the screen, with TV star Jim Parsons portraying the author and the achingly attractive British actor Ben Aldridge as Cowan. Cowan’s parents are played by Sally Field and Bill Irwin.
As the book’s title suggests, the film plays the romantic tragedy angle with a light touch. Scenes from Ausiello’s childhood are acted out as a TV sitcom with an overbearing laugh track and younger actors playing Ausiello, his siblings, and his widowed mother. Whatever tone the memoir may have taken, Grant and Savage’s screenplay is tasteful and straightforward, largely holding back on too-cute dialogue and cheesy humor. And the obvious foreshadowing of Cowan’s end doesn’t make the scenes of terminal illness any less moving.
One of the reasons for that is the work of director Michael Showalter. Showalter was a member of the MTV comedy group the State and a writer on Wet Hot American Summer, and he directed the films Hello, My Name Is Doris — coaxing an unusually restrained and touching performance from Sally Field — The Big Sick, and The Eyes of Tammy Faye. He works well with actors, and Parsons and Aldridge are both convincing and relatable, from their awkward meeting in a gay bar to their relationship issues about sex and monogamy, and, especially, during Cowan’s swift and heartbreaking decline. As Cowan’s parents, Field and Irwin are more of a brief sideshow, but even they are tempered and sweet.
Parsons, at 49, is no longer the fresh-faced nerd from Big Bang Theory. His makeup in Spoiler Alert gives him a moony appearance, as if to hide wrinkles. He’s an unlikely match for Aldridge, who speaks American without the trace of an accent (how do all these Brits, Irish, Australians, and New Zealanders do it?), looks hunky and handsome, and invests Cowan’s art-scene coolness with soul. Both actors are gay and out in real life, the kind of casting that has become de rigueur of late with gay roles. Yet the political issues of gay romance are not the crux of the movie — gay life functions more like the addition of exotic details to what is basically a sad love story.
That is not true of The Inspection, another new film playing in theaters that features a gay protagonist and is based on the life experience of its writer (and, in this case, director), Elegance Bratton. LGBTQ identity is at the heart of the movie, which follows a homeless gay man, Ellis French (Jeremy Pope), as he enlists in the Marines and endures the grueling hurdles of boot camp, including abuse directed at him for being queer and other recruits for being Muslim or too sensitive.
Just as writer-director Bratton did — the film, he has said, is somewhat fictionalized — French signs up for the Marines during the late ’00s, when the Afghanistan and Iraq wars are raging and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is the ostensible policy in the armed forces. Because his single mother (Gabrielle Union) utterly rejected his sexuality, French had left home at age 16 and wandered the streets for 10 years, watching many of those he associated with die or go to jail. The movie begins with French contacting his mom to get his birth certificate, telling her he’s enlisting in the Marines. She laughs and lets loose her doubts and contempt, which only bolsters his determination. As he tells a sympathetic training officer, by becoming a Marine he’ll at least be “a hero to someone.”
In boot camp, despite official policy, French is asked about being homosexual and vociferously denies it. It makes no difference: everyone knows he’s gay, and his innocent arousal in the showers elicits a beating. His commanding officer (Bokeem Woodbine), fresh out of Iraq, seems intent on killing him and nearly does. But with the support of a kind supervisor (Raúl Castillo) and some fellow recruits, he finds the will to follow through.
The performances all around are superb, and Pope, a veteran of Broadway and TV, is sensational. He skillfully portrays the weariness and disgust, and the bedrock strength, of someone who has been showered with abuse his whole life. He refuses to give up on his mom, despite her unshakable condemnation of his gay identity — her rejection is clearly devastating to him. Bratton, who has made only one other feature (Pier Kids, about homeless teens), directs with remarkable authority. The movie never hits a false note. The sadism and bigotry of boot camp is not exaggerated, even though the process of breaking down recruits’ resistance and sense of self is unflinchingly depicted. Despite the horrific details, the military is still seen as a source of character-building strength, of which a lost soul such as French can be proud.
The Inspection is neither a liberal anti-military tract nor a sentimental glorification. It is, instead, a powerful work of art.