Gay Best Friend: Buddy (Charles Grodin) in "The Woman in Red" (1984)
Monday, May 24, 2021 at 10:03AM a series by Christopher James looking at the 'Gay Best Friend' trope
Don't worry, Teddy (Gene Wilder). Buddy (Charles Grodin) isn't going to take your girl, he's gay.The recently passed Charles Grodin (1935-2021) leaves behind an enviable film career. From Beethoven to Clifford, Grodin mastered being the “straight man” in comedies opposite zany characters. The master of reaction shots, Grodin knew how to wring laughs out of being the “put upon wet blanket.” His career features many other great performances, including The Heartbreak Kid, Midnight Run, Heaven Can Wait, The Great Muppet Caper, Dave and Ishtar. In all of the many obituaries that have recently been written about him, few have mentioned his role as Buddy in The Woman in Red ...and with good reason. The movie may have won an Oscar (Best Original Song for Steve Wonder's "I Just Called To Say I Love You"), but it has little cultural footprint today.
The misogynistic film is best left undiscovered. However, Grodin’s Buddy has an interesting distinction of being one of the earliest out, sympathetic gay best friends in a popular, male-centric comedy…
Right off the bat, we’re in hot water. Gene Wilder’s mild-mannered married man, Teddy, watches as Charlotte (Kelly LeBrock) steps over a grate that blows up her skirt. After dancing with her dress blown up, she walks away, walks back and then dances some more, showing off her underwear. The male gaze is overwhelming. He’s overcome with horniness and makes it his mission to cheat on his wife with her. This involves lots of “hilarious” mishaps, including Teddy accidentally inviting his co-worker Ms. Milner (Gilda Radner) on a date instead of Charlotte.
Buddy loves to cheer his friends up, even if it means pretending to be blind and causing a scene (again, the movie has not aged well).
Teddy: [buying a new suit] Buddy, are you sure this style suits me?
Buddy: You want to look good at funerals?
Teddy: No, no. I'm just sayin', I wanna look nice, that's all.
Buddy: Let me see. Put your arms down. Now you're cooking with Crisco!
Much of the movie is spent with Buddy and his group of friends. Joey (Joseph Bologna) has just been thrown out of his house once his wife discovered his frequent affairs. Buddy (Grodin), along with Mikey (Michael Huddleston), use comedy to deflect the tension and be there for their friends. When Joey gets thrown out of the house, Buddy pretends to be blind and destroys a restaurant that threw Joey out. These friends never interrogate each other’s bad behavior. Rather, they delight in debauchery and trade stories of cheating on their significant others.
Thus, when Teddy talks to his friends about “The Woman in Red,” they’re all for him cheating on his wife. At this point, it has not been revealed that Buddy is gay. Yet, he’s saddled with the one thing all gay best friends must do: a makeover montage. In an effort to spruce Teddy up for his date with Charlotte, Buddy gives Teddy a makeover. By straightening his hair and putting him in an ill fitting suit, Buddy has apparently made Teddy irresistible to Charlotte. She’s responsive to every advance of Teddy’s without any sort of motivation. “The Woman in Red” is as fully formed as the title suggests. Buddy, like the movie, is rooting for this odd pairing to succeed, though never giving a reason why it should work.
Even when he comes out, Buddy still gets to be one of the guys, in all their cheating glory.
Teddy: I thought you'd painted this place.
Buddy: I was going to, before I moved in with my friend.
Teddy: Well, you've got a nice chair.
Buddy: Thanks.
Teddy: What color you gonna paint?
Buddy: Shocking pink!
While the four men are having lunch, talking about cheating on their wives (quite literally), an older man walks up to the group. He returns a bracelet that says “Eric” that Buddy had got from a guy earlier. It becomes clear that Buddy was just like the rest of his friends. He was with this older man, but cheated on him with a younger guy named Eric. With this, he became the second person in the group to be thrown out of his home for cheating.
Teddy goes to visit Teddy at his single person’s apartment. He still has boxes everywhere and the place is in shambles, as he was always at this other man’s place. For a fleeting moment, the movie stumbles upon an honest moment. Teddy understands how little he’s been involved in Buddy’s life, even though Buddy has been very involved in all of their lives. Buddy is so used to masking his sexuality and life that he breaks the tension. With “shocking pink,” Buddy finally acknowledges to his friend that yes, he is gay. Also, yes, he can be the butt of the joke.
Buddy gets to go through life as normal with his friends after this. They continue to get into hijinks. He continues to help Teddy try to bed Charlotte. For 1984, it was great to see a gay character come out and still have the same relationship with his macho group of friends. This level of acceptance wasn’t commonplace. By today's standards, Buddy is underwritten and engages in similar levels of misogyny as the rest of the men in the movie. However, at the time the movie came out, this level of normalcy in a male-focused comedy was incredibly positive.
For being a supposedly “light” comedy, the takeaway from The Woman in Red is rather dour. Men are trash, women are trash, love is fleeting and everyone cheats. Cue laugh track. This isn’t to sound puritanical. Cheating is never presented with any degree of nuance or context. Every character, gay or straight, follows their libido towards whoever is closest to them. Gay characters often were framed as being “just like straights” in order to further acceptance. With characters as baldly awful as the ones in The Woman in Red, it’s a disservice to blend in with them.
Previously in Gay Best Friend
pre stonewall
- Plato (Sal Mineo) in Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
- Sebastian Venable in Suddenly Last Summer (1959)
- Calla Mackie (Estelle Parsons) in Rachel Rachel (1968)
post stonewall
- Erich (Norbert Weisser) in Midnight Express (1978)
- Toddy (Robert Preston) & Squash (Alex Karras) in Victor/Victoria (1982)
- Dolly Peliker (Cher) in Silkwood (1983)
1990s and the 2000s
- Tim (Nathan Lane) in Frankie & Johnny (1991)
- Hedy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) & Graham (Peter Friedman) in Single White Female (1992)
- Sammy Gray (Steve Zahn) in Reality Bites (1994)
- Gareth (Simon Callow) and Matthew (John Hannah) in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
- Jane (Whoopi Goldberg) in Boys on the Side (1995)
- Sterling (Patrick Stewart) in Jeffrey (1995)
- George Downs (Rupert Everett) in My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)
- Simon (Greg Kinnear) in As Good As It Gets (1997)
- George Hanson (Paul Rudd) in The Object of My Affection (1998)
- Bill Truitt (Martin Donovan) in The Opposite of Sex (1998)
- Michael (Stuart Wells) in Billy Elliot (2000)
- Robert (Rupert Everett) in The Next Best Thing (2000)
- Patti (Sandra Oh) in Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)
- Damian (Daniel Franzese) in Mean Girls (2004)
- Nigel (Stanley Tucci) in The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
- Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin) in Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010)
- Brandon (Dan Byrd) in Easy A (2010)
the now
Reader Comments (14)
The fact that TWiR won an Oscar for song reminds me of the days when the voters often picked the song they just liked to most. I kind of miss that. Now, they seem to want to factor in the quality of the film itself. I think these awards should be given to the best achievement in whatever the category is. So, if the best, say, cinematography is is a movie that's otherwise a dud, it should still win that award. But the thinking is now that the film as a whole has to be great. I understand why, but still.... Why?
" The misogynistic film is best left undiscovered."
Eh, The Woman in Red is a 1980s classic!
An updated version - for the 1980s - of The Seven Year Itch (1955), actually a remake of a French film, Pardon Mon Affaire(1976). The original French title: Un éléphant ça trompe énormément, in English literally An Elephant Can Be Extremely Deceptive.
The French one was nominated for the Golden Globes in Best Foreign Film and three César Awards - The French Oscar - (won Supporting Actor for Claude Brasseur), had a sequel, Pardon Mon Affaire, Too!(1977). French: Nous irons tous au paradis, We Will All Meet in Paradise.
Walking through the filmography of the 1980s, one easily stumbles into misogyny, racism and all kinds of "ism". I always tell the unsuspecting viewers and more sensitive beings to avoid the films of this decade, even the classics. Movies one step away from being canceled.
I MISS KELLY LEBROCK!
Kelly LeBrock, never too much to praise the beauty of this goddess immortalized in this remarkable film from this decade that I consider underrated compared to the previous one. And its soundtrack is as wonderful as that of Flashdance(1983) that won the Oscar in the same category.
Gene Wilder, king of comedy, Kelly LeBrock, no words to describe, Gilda Radner, Wilder's real life wife, with a little more time on screen would steal the entire movie in the role of the secretary. You hope she can appear any time. The character deserved a movie for her own.
What the movie says is that a gay guy, like a straight guy, can be a jerk. Being a jerk meaning being an equal in that group in the movie. Funny that the story doesn't show Buddy's homosexuality in the beginning and Charles Grodin plays him without manneirism or cliché and to learn about it comes as a revelation. He's the most interesting of Teddy's friends. RIP Charles Grodin.
How I love Charles Grodin.
Most of the American male comics of the last decades I have found extremely unfunny. Their rage to be thought cool, and their insistent demanding that you think them cool. Their show boating, and self absorption, and lack of interest in their co-worker actors. And of course the constant “funny” misogyny (that you describe so well). And their basic stupidity....
But Charles Grodin....
Grodin comes across as a person who is smart and nice. He’s able to play truly breathtakingly horrible characters because he understands they are horrible.
Grodin really listens to other actors, picking up on the smallest nuances and using and integrating them into the scene. Other actors seem relaxed around Grodin. They know he’s not going to steal the spotlight, that they are working together as a team, and that they will look better for being in a scene with him.
Watching him made me both laugh and get thoughtful. I was always happy when he got a good fat part, like “Midnight Run”, where you see he is every bit Robert de Niro’s acting equal.
@Feline JusticeI lived through the 80s, and there were misogynist/homophobic/racist films, but there were plenty that were not. I don't think we give a pass to the risible films like THE WOMAN IN RED and BLAME IT ON RIO just because, "it was the 80s." I could give you a list of 100 films from that decade that hold up beautifully. Besides, Christopher is hardly saying "pull it off the streaming services. Take the DVD off the market." Watch it to your heart's content. But THE WOMAN IN RED is misogynist. I remember thinking that AT THE TIME.
Yes, the best sex comedies of the 80s involve scenes where the male friends interrogate each other’s bad behavior.
(Sorry, feeling cheeky this morning, and I kinda like this movie while also acknowledging the period/environment in which it was made. And, I especially love Grodin's character for also being allowed to be a jerk).
The scene in the restaurant when Grodin pretends to be blind is very funny. This was an unusual choice for this series, but welcome at a time of irreparable loss. I loled reading. Sometimes when the writer doesn't like the subject / theme, the resulting text is more fun and less solemn.
Charles Grodin... master of the snarky stare and one-note delivery. He will be missed but please, never fucking mention Clifford ever again. That movie was shit.
The 1980s Best Song Oscars are one of the best jukeboxes of all time. Including those nominated - and others that could have been nominated and unfairly were excluded. Radio hits everywhere Even if you haven't lived through the era, you may know the song and like it without knowing it's part of a movie soundtrack.
that same year charles grodin was the [straight] best friend in ‘the lonely guy’ and gives one of the best sadsack performances of all time
Indeed, this one hasn't aged well at all. The only bits that work are those involving Radner and sadly, she isn't in it very much.
I am, however, quite fond of HAUNTED HONEYMOON! :)