When it comes to LGBTQ+ rom-coms, the Bros movie is working to set a new bar. Co-written by Nicholas Stoller and Billy Eichner, who also direct and star in the movie respectively, Bros is set to be the first LGBTQ+ rom-com movie from a major studio. In August 2022, Screen Rant were invited to visit the “#BrosMobile,” a mobile movie theater experience hosted by TS Madison, who plays Angela in Bros.
The Bros movie follows Bobby Leiber (Billy Eichner), a man who is convinced that he is happy with the single life and is working to arrange the exhibits for an LGBTQ+ history museum. When Bobby finds himself unexpectedly attracted to Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), the pair struggle with their own commitment issues and concerns that they might have very different interests. However, as the Bros plot synopsis suggests, Bobby and Aaron are “maybe, possibly, probably stumbling towards love.”
Nicholas Stoller also serves as a producer for Bros is already known for his work on rom-com movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the Netflix series Friends from College. He brings his experience to the movie alongside Billy Eichner’s writing, as Eichner marks several firsts with this LGBTQ+ romantic comedy from Universal Studios. The Bros movie will be in theaters in the United States on September 30, 2022, but in the meantime, here is everything that Screen Rant learned from the #BrosMobile event in Atlanta and the early promotional footage.
Bros Was Made As A Truly LGBTQ+ Rom-Com (In Every Way)
When Billy Eichner and Nicholas Stoller sat down to write a romantic comedy about two men, they weren’t fundamentally breaking new ground. Movies set around LGBTQ+ romances, once destined to be dramatic depictions of trauma or to end in tragedy, have become more common in recent years, and have been able to join the rom-com scene with notable movies such as the 2020 Hulu holiday movie Happiest Season or the 2022 BuzzFeed movie My Fake Boyfriend. While a part of Bros’ uniqueness comes from its being an LGBTQ+ rom-com from such a major studio as Universal, there’s much more that’s special about the story.
At the #BrosMobile event for the Bros movie, Screen Rant learned that once Billy Eichner and Nicholas Stoller had settled on creating an LGBTQ+ romantic comedy, they decided that they had to go all the way with it. While it is becoming less common for cisgender people to play transgender roles, it is still not out of the ordinary for straight people to portray characters with queer sexual orientations. Eichner and Stoller turned this on its head for Bros, with every member of the principal cast being an openly LGBTQ+ individual. LGBTQ+ actors play all major roles, both queer and straight alike, with only a couple of allies in the wider cast. Even when casting the extras, Screen Rant learned that special efforts were made to prioritize LGBTQ+ people for those background roles.
The LGBTQ+ cast of Bros in turn supports the wider story and historical elements at play. Space is given throughout the movie for discussion of the LGBTQ+ experience and the community’s history (or histories as the case may be) while centering a gay couple at the heart of the rom-com. Bros is committed to not just being an LGBTQ+ rom-com, but a positive LGBTQ+ depiction of the realities of life in the queer community.
Why Bros' LGBTQ+ Cast Is So Important
It might seem easy to overstate the importance of Bros being a LGBTQ+ rom-com written by LGBTQ+ writers and portrayed by primarily openly queer actors. Many have argued that actors should be able to play any roles that they want. However, even in recent years, it has been commonplace for LGBTQ+ stories to be told by non-LGBTQ+ people while those with the lived experience are shut out of the conversation for the largest part.
The importance of the Bros LGBTQ+ casting was highlighted at the #BrosMobile event by comments from TS Madison regarding her experience in the acting scene. TS Madison is a Black trans woman, an LGBTQ+ activist, and has appeared in reality TV series as herself, such as on RuPaul’s Drag Race. However, despite her talents, Madison has repeatedly found herself unable to land acting roles, with only a few small roles prior to Bros including the role of Hollywood in Zola and an appearance on BET+’s Emmy nominated The Ms. Pat Show.
While speaking at the #BrosMobile event, Madison shared that she finds the LGBTQ+ positive casting of Bros empowering and hopes that this movie from Universal Studios can help usher in a wider push for LGBTQ+ actors to be cast more reliably when portraying their own stories.
Bros Is For LGBTQ+ & Straight Audiences Alike
One of the struggles that LGBTQ+ rom-coms struggle with when attempting to court a mainstream audience is the idea that the movie might need to be one thing for the LGBTQ+ community and another for people who don’t have lived-LGBTQ+ experience. This has been a complaint lobbied against Love, Simon, a movie that some described as being an LGBTQ+ movie for straight people, a criticism aided by the lead role being given to a straight actor.
Footage from Bros shown at the #BrosMobile event pushes back against this notion and highlights how queer love stories can be for everyone, such as a conversation that brings up Schitt’s Creek, with Billy Eichner’s character complaining that straight people like it too much before conceding that that doesn’t stop it from being good.
The Bros movie is not just for LGBTQ+ audiences, nor does it try to become a toned-down version of itself in an attempt to appeal to non-LGBTQ+ audiences. The content shown demonstrates that Bros is a romantic comedy that is happy to poke fun at the modern dating scene while light-heartedly ribbing both queer and straight people alike. This message from Bros was highlighted by the very location of the #BrosMobile event in Atlanta: Blake’s On The Park. Blake’s is known as a straight-friendly gay bar, hammering home the idea that all are welcome to come and enjoy Bros and that it is not in anyway intended to be exclusionary.
How Bros Is Rethinking History Through An LGBTQ+ Lens
While Bros is clearly a light-hearted rom-com in many ways, exploring tropes and farcical notions to comic effect, the promotional material shown at the #BrosMobile event highlighted that the movie is also providing something more important for audiences, both LGBTQ+ and otherwise. In an expansion of a scene from the Bros trailer, Eichner’s Bobby Leiber is chairing a meeting for the LGBTQ+ history museum and struggling to direct the flow of conversation.
Throughout this scene for the Bros movie, several of the LGBTQ+ characters bring up parts of queer history that have been ignored or forgotten by many. This plays into a larger problem for the LGBTQ+ community: between decades of erasure and so many members of the community dying to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 90s, a lot of LGBTQ+ history has been lost, with less people of lived experience to pass that history on.
While it might seem like a somber aspect for a romantic comedy, Bros takes a chance to examine history and to rethink aspects of it through an LGBTQ+ lens, proving that there should be something for everyone when Bros releases in theaters.
