Knight at the Movies ARCHIVES
 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
Second Chances:
Adam & Steve
3-29-06 Knight at the Movies/Windy City Times Column
by Richard Knight, Jr.
Adam & Steve
3-29-06 Knight at the Movies/Windy City Times Column
by Richard Knight, Jr.
A coming of middle age gay comedy is helped by its two gay stars
In tried and true romantic comedy form, Adam & Steve begins with a flashback. It's 1987 and Adam (Craig Chester), a double
for The Cure’s Robert Smith and his hefty gal pal Rhonda (Parker Posey) wander into Manhattan’s Danceteria thinking its Goth
night. It’s not but seeing the fetching Steve (Malcom Gets), dressed only in a skimpy loin cloth, up onstage leading his dance
troupe in a typical “I Eat Cannibals” style number, they decide to stay. After a tentative meeting, a nightmarish one night stand
between the two men involving lots of cocaine cut with baby laxative follows.
We then flash forward 17 years later where the duo will meet again, not remember each other until much later in the picture, and
become involved in a relationship, that like the movie, proceeds in fits and stars. Adam has become a recovering drug addict, Steve
a psychiatrist/counselor. Both are now in their mid-30s and neither has found a satisfying relationship. Not that golden boy Steve
with the gym bunny body is particularly searching either – he’s more than happy trysting away at the health club showers or at the
baths while the mournful, pessimistic Steve, with the dark circles under the eyes, is like a walking case of anxiety who seems to walk
around with a “Victim” sign taped to his forehead.
Somehow – and it’s never quite clear just how – these two hit it off and start dating. What ensues is a sort of cross between the mid-
90s gay comedy Jeffrey and The Way We Were. In this version Steve is light WASP Robert Redford to Adam’s dark Jewish Barbra
Streisand. Nothing seems to suggest that Adam and Steve really belong together but somehow the relationship, like the film, keeps
bumping along and after a while, the clunky rhythms have a cumulative effect and you start rooting for the mismatched pair.
The odd coupling is helped by Rhonda, now slimmed down and doing stand up comedy and hindered by Steve’s oddball friend,
Michael (Chris Kattan), who plays…well Chris Kattan. Once these two hook up (in a funny scene over a shared bong and an evening
of American Movie Classics on TV) their characters, annoying up to that point, are fleshed out and actually their romance in some
ways becomes more interesting than the one between the two leads. Maybe because instead of seeing Adam and Steve in those
little unusual moments, we see the usual stuff – like those standard set pieces where each meets the others parents. Steve’s
mother (played by Melinda Dillon) and his father are disapproving uptight conservatives while Adam’s (played by Julie Haggerty and
Paul Sand) are Jewish, accepting and sweet but are described as “unlucky” and seen to be so in a scene that is so over the top as to
be cartoonish. These familiar actors aren’t really given much to do, however and could have used some help in the writing
department.
All this before either Adam or Steve has the “aha!” moment when they realize they met back in the 1987 that fateful night at
Danceteria (which actually closed in 1986 – but let’s not quibble) and suddenly the relationship is in crisis. Next, also in typical
romantic comedy fashion, come scenes of the lovers apart, trying valiantly to put their lives back together with the aid of their friends
until a slam bang, physical comedy finish (this one taking place at Steve’s two-step class).
Out writer/director Craig Chester is best known to GLBT audiences for 1992’s Swoon, which delved deeply into the gay relationship
between murderers Leopold & Loeb so this return to queer cinema with a gentle, loopy romantic comedy is a decided change of pace.
And though the film is diverting and has its share of laugh out loud moments (Chester has a gift for those acidic Neil Simon one-
liners and the luck to have Posey and Kattan spouting them), the freshest thing about it is that it focuses on two 30-something gay
men as opposed to the typical youngsters these romantic comedies (gay and straight) usually focus on.
But what I loved most about Adam & Steve is that throughout the course of the courtship between the gloomy Gus and the perky
prancing pony there are lots and lots of kisses – passionate ones, swift ones, Honey I’m Home ones, Going Out To Get The Paper
ones. Lots and lots of every sort of kiss – just like those any gay (or lesbian) couple would engage in. Although Chester puts in
some of these kisses to inject a comedic plot device (Adam & Steve are “hilariously” gay bashed each time they pucker up in public)
all those kisses pointed out something I found very interesting. In every single film I’ve seen in which straight actors have played
gay (including Brokeback Mountain) not one has shown the intimacy of one of those I’m Kissing You Without Thinking About It
kisses like this movie does. Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin didn’t have it in Making Love, neither did Steven Weber and Michael
T. Weiss in Jeffrey, and for all the hoopla, neither did Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain. There’s always
been that little nagging voice in my head saying, “This isn’t how real gay men in love behave. They kiss and touch a LOT more than
this and I oughta know.”
Is it different in this movie because the two leads are played by two openly gay actors and are completely at ease with the physical
intimacy and probably did it without thinking about it? That would be my guess – and boy is it a pleasure to watch this instinctive
chemistry happen. It’s the same kind of thing you see in the best straight romantic comedies. The camera turns and the thing
happens. It certainly gives Adam & Steve an extra dimension – and makes its claim of being “a tempting gay romantic comedy” an
example of truth in advertising.
for The Cure’s Robert Smith and his hefty gal pal Rhonda (Parker Posey) wander into Manhattan’s Danceteria thinking its Goth
night. It’s not but seeing the fetching Steve (Malcom Gets), dressed only in a skimpy loin cloth, up onstage leading his dance
troupe in a typical “I Eat Cannibals” style number, they decide to stay. After a tentative meeting, a nightmarish one night stand
between the two men involving lots of cocaine cut with baby laxative follows.
We then flash forward 17 years later where the duo will meet again, not remember each other until much later in the picture, and
become involved in a relationship, that like the movie, proceeds in fits and stars. Adam has become a recovering drug addict, Steve
a psychiatrist/counselor. Both are now in their mid-30s and neither has found a satisfying relationship. Not that golden boy Steve
with the gym bunny body is particularly searching either – he’s more than happy trysting away at the health club showers or at the
baths while the mournful, pessimistic Steve, with the dark circles under the eyes, is like a walking case of anxiety who seems to walk
around with a “Victim” sign taped to his forehead.
Somehow – and it’s never quite clear just how – these two hit it off and start dating. What ensues is a sort of cross between the mid-
90s gay comedy Jeffrey and The Way We Were. In this version Steve is light WASP Robert Redford to Adam’s dark Jewish Barbra
Streisand. Nothing seems to suggest that Adam and Steve really belong together but somehow the relationship, like the film, keeps
bumping along and after a while, the clunky rhythms have a cumulative effect and you start rooting for the mismatched pair.
The odd coupling is helped by Rhonda, now slimmed down and doing stand up comedy and hindered by Steve’s oddball friend,
Michael (Chris Kattan), who plays…well Chris Kattan. Once these two hook up (in a funny scene over a shared bong and an evening
of American Movie Classics on TV) their characters, annoying up to that point, are fleshed out and actually their romance in some
ways becomes more interesting than the one between the two leads. Maybe because instead of seeing Adam and Steve in those
little unusual moments, we see the usual stuff – like those standard set pieces where each meets the others parents. Steve’s
mother (played by Melinda Dillon) and his father are disapproving uptight conservatives while Adam’s (played by Julie Haggerty and
Paul Sand) are Jewish, accepting and sweet but are described as “unlucky” and seen to be so in a scene that is so over the top as to
be cartoonish. These familiar actors aren’t really given much to do, however and could have used some help in the writing
department.
All this before either Adam or Steve has the “aha!” moment when they realize they met back in the 1987 that fateful night at
Danceteria (which actually closed in 1986 – but let’s not quibble) and suddenly the relationship is in crisis. Next, also in typical
romantic comedy fashion, come scenes of the lovers apart, trying valiantly to put their lives back together with the aid of their friends
until a slam bang, physical comedy finish (this one taking place at Steve’s two-step class).
Out writer/director Craig Chester is best known to GLBT audiences for 1992’s Swoon, which delved deeply into the gay relationship
between murderers Leopold & Loeb so this return to queer cinema with a gentle, loopy romantic comedy is a decided change of pace.
And though the film is diverting and has its share of laugh out loud moments (Chester has a gift for those acidic Neil Simon one-
liners and the luck to have Posey and Kattan spouting them), the freshest thing about it is that it focuses on two 30-something gay
men as opposed to the typical youngsters these romantic comedies (gay and straight) usually focus on.
But what I loved most about Adam & Steve is that throughout the course of the courtship between the gloomy Gus and the perky
prancing pony there are lots and lots of kisses – passionate ones, swift ones, Honey I’m Home ones, Going Out To Get The Paper
ones. Lots and lots of every sort of kiss – just like those any gay (or lesbian) couple would engage in. Although Chester puts in
some of these kisses to inject a comedic plot device (Adam & Steve are “hilariously” gay bashed each time they pucker up in public)
all those kisses pointed out something I found very interesting. In every single film I’ve seen in which straight actors have played
gay (including Brokeback Mountain) not one has shown the intimacy of one of those I’m Kissing You Without Thinking About It
kisses like this movie does. Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin didn’t have it in Making Love, neither did Steven Weber and Michael
T. Weiss in Jeffrey, and for all the hoopla, neither did Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain. There’s always
been that little nagging voice in my head saying, “This isn’t how real gay men in love behave. They kiss and touch a LOT more than
this and I oughta know.”
Is it different in this movie because the two leads are played by two openly gay actors and are completely at ease with the physical
intimacy and probably did it without thinking about it? That would be my guess – and boy is it a pleasure to watch this instinctive
chemistry happen. It’s the same kind of thing you see in the best straight romantic comedies. The camera turns and the thing
happens. It certainly gives Adam & Steve an extra dimension – and makes its claim of being “a tempting gay romantic comedy” an
example of truth in advertising.