Gay Best Friend: Patrick (Ezra Miller) in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" (2012)

a series by Christopher James looking at the 'Gay Best Friend' trope

Ezra Miller had one of their biggest critical successes playing Patrick in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower."With the recent release of Love Victor season two on Hulu, it has been remarkable to see how the depiction of gay teenagers has grown over decades. The sweet natured, loving depictions of coming out in Love Simon and (to a certain extent) Love Victor stand out compared to the harder times that queer kids like Rickie Vasquez (Wilson Cruz) from My So Called Life had to go through over twenty-five years earlier. This is a great sign of progress in our world’s treatment of LGBTQ+ people, but we know queer kids still face plenty of bullying, violence and, in the case of trans kids, legislative battle.

One of my favorite depictions of a gay teenager has been Ezra Miller’s performance as Patrick in The Perks of Being a Wallflower. This gay best friend got the chance to be a fully rounded character. He experienced joy and love, rather than being defined by the trauma heaped upon him by others. In his friendships, he could be the center of attention, and have both power and support. Patrick doesn’t go through a journey of figuring out his sexuality. Instead, he goes on a journey of loving all parts of himself - his sexuality, his strength, his weaknesses - everything...

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Cast This: Johnny Depp out of "Fantastic Beasts" franchise

by Patrick Gratton

Understandably lost during the fog created of election week, on Friday afternoon Johnny Depp took to his Instagram page, announcing that he was stepping down from the role of Grindlewald. The Warner Bros’ Harry Potter spin-off franchise, the Fantastic Beast series is no without a villain. Depp claims that the move comes at Warner Bros request following his failed libel suit against News Group Newspapers, the publisher of the tabloid magazine The Sun, over allegations that Depp abused ex-wife Amber Heard.  

The news comes after a tumultuous year for the Potterverse. Not just for Depp, whose years of litigation with ex-wife Amber Heard and whose substance abuse has made him tabloid fodder...

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Top Ten: Ezra Miller Lewks

by Nathaniel R

Tilda & Ezra 7 years ago. He learned from a master

We have been greatly remiss in celebrating Ezra Miller's rising fashion-icon insanity. I am pleased in retrospect to have been one of the five people who saw and admired his debut performance in the disturbing art film Afterschool which made $3,911* at the box office in 2009 (*actual figure, not sarcasm). I vividly remember seeing it because when I left the theater, a friend who worked at the Nashville Film Festival ran up to tell me that Nicole Kidman & Keith Urban had attended the screening directly before mine. (A tragedy truly: we saw the same movie at the same festival on the same day but weren't in the same showing. ARGH!)

More than ever in 2018, Miller has proven that his casting as Tilda Swinton's son in his breakout picture, Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) was more than a little prescient because he's following in Tilda's iconoclastic and androgynous footsteps in the department of causing stirs on the red carpet.

So herewith a top ten of Ezra fashion after the jump...  

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THR's 20 New Stars to Watch. Plus Ezra Miller.

by Nathaniel R

Remember when the release of Vanity Fair's "Hollywood Issue" used to be so exciting for its semi-frequent attempts to predict who would be the next big things? You could spot future superstars as well as divine which actors, great future or not, had hustling agents that managed to snag them covers with little actual work to back that up. The Hollywood Reporter is trying their hand at something similar with their new issue, which has four cover stars, two of whom (Awkwafina, Ezra Miller) aren't listed within the "NextGen" list presumably because they've already "arrived"? We don't know. The other two cover stars (Letitia Wright, Noah Centineo) are represented on the list after the jump...

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Tweets that make you go hmmmmm

Here we go

My favorite genre of movies are ones in which Saoirse Ronan:
- wants to go to New York
- goes to New York
- fights with her mom
- leaves her mom
- cries over letters from her mom
- slowdances w/ a Nice Irish Boy
- hooks up w/ a Charismatic Italian Boy
- goes to church a lot pic.twitter.com/R98O7fnNbj

— Kate Halliwell (@Kate__Halliwell) November 10, 2017

 Should we have a "Lady Bird" week where we truly obsess? Considering it. MORE AFTER THE JUMP including Wonderstruck, Justice League, Star Wars ghosts, and kindred spirits in James Dean fandom...

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