Gay Best Friend: Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) in "All About Eve" (1950)

A series by Christopher James looking at the 'Gay Best Friend' trope
SERIES FINALE (for now)

She's the bitch who always has the tea... Addison DeWitt.All good things must come to an end (or extended hiatus). Over the past year, we’ve covered 42 examples of the gay best friend spanning from 1955 to 2021. Don’t worry, I’ll be starting a new column very shortly, so you haven’t seen the last of me. However, we are going out in fabulously bitchy style with our final entry. Not only is this our oldest entry, but it’s also the only Gay Best Friend that earned the actor in question an Oscar statue. Needless to say, George Sanders’ Best Supporting Actor win for the gossip columnist Addison DeWitt in All About Eve is one of the best wins in the category.

The central premise of All About Eve is a tale as old as time. Aging Broadway star Margot Channing (Bette Davis) meets an adoring fan one night named Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter). Margot bonds with Eve over her favorite topic… herself. She eventually giving her employment in the theater. Soon, the much younger Eve starts to get greedy, taking some of Margot’s spotlight as the new, younger face of the theater...

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Gay Best Friend: Peter (Stephen Fry) in "Peter's Friends" (1992)

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

Who wouldn't want a 10 year college reunion in their rich friend's new mansion?I love a good Big Chill type set-up.

Yes, I do love the actual 1983 movie The Big Chill. However, the hit film has itself spawned an entire genre of movies and TV. How many movies have you seen where an attractive ensemble of longtime friends spend a weekend away and come to terms with central truths within the friendship. There’s always as many laughs as there are tears. The uptight people finally get drunk or stoned and loosen up. Party animals gain new depth. A collection of the greatest hits of decades past are played throughout, usually with an accompanying singalong. I eat all of it up, no matter how predictable it may be.

One of the finer entries in the genre is Kenneth Branagh’s 1992 film Peter’s Friends. It’s more than just the English re-telling of The Big Chill. The film is simultaneously a pricklier and warmer examination of what friends do and don’t tell each other... 

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Gay Best Friend: Malcolm in "Darling" (1965)

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

Not pictured: The waiter that Diana (Julie Christie) and Malcolm (Roland Curran) were checking out.How can one be truly breaking convention if the act of breaking away is itself a convention? This is the plight of Diana Scott, the role that earned Julie Christie an Oscar win for Best Actress. Diana uses her feminine wiles to rise to the top of the English fashion scene, creating scandal everywhere she goes. She breaks all the conventions of how a “good girl” of the 50s would behave. While this makes her exciting, what is behind her social climbing antics? Is her rebellion ushering in a new progressive wave, or is she just rebelling to rebel? If the case is the latter, why is that something people should respect, rather than jeer?

The tagline of Darling (1965) reads: “A powerful and bold motion picture...made by adults...with adults...for adults!” It’s amazing to see what was bold by 1965 standards. An English production, Darling fittingly feels like part French-New-Wave, part mainstream Hollywood. The topics of sex, abortion, homosexuality and the blanket “sin” of adult life hang over every scene, even if very little is explicit. This illustrates that the “gay best friend” trope, among others, was once considered shocking or bold. By the 1990s, as we've witnessed in this series, boldness gave way to the expected, as the trope became overused...

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Gay Best Friend: Peter Steinberg (Oliver Platt) in "Three To Tango" (1999)

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

Oliver Platt's boredom-induced hairstyle is far from the worst part of "Three to Tango."

Why did every member of Friends want to do a gay themed movie as their attempted jump to film stardom? Lisa Kudrow earned awards attention in the sublimely tart The Opposite of Sex, while Jennifer Aniston’s charm and chemistry with Paul Rudd nearly made The Object of My Affection work (okay, maybe not). Matthew Perry’s dreadful vehicle Three To Tango feels like the nadir of the Friends theatrical launching pads, gay-themed or otherwise. With a script forged in gay panic, the instantly dated comedy is short on charm and laughs. However, it has casts a bizarre spell as a hate-watch. It’s an insensitive film that is a strange reflection of 1998 attitudes towards the LGBTQ community and what types of vehicles could launch a film career.

For the purposes of this column, our entryway into this movie is through Oliver Platt’s Peter Steinberg. He’s the openly gay architect partner of Oscar Novak (Perry). Through a series of bizarre miscommunications that would’ve been vetoed by the Friends writer’s room, everyone starts to think Oscar is the gay partner and Peter is the straight one...

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Gay Best Friend: Stanford Blatch (Willie Garson) in "Sex and the City" (1998 - 2010)

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

Stanford (Willie Garson) and Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) were an inseparable pair. Willie Garson will be dearly missed.Representation is always important, whether or not it is good or bad, strong or weak. I wanted to start this series because my first encounters with queer characters were in the “gay best friend” characters, both good and bad. Especially for those who grew up in the 90s and 00s, this was the experience of many people in the LGBTQ+ community. 

One of the most frequent and high profile gay best friends during this time was Stanford Blatch (Willie Garson), Carrie’s gay best friend and fellow serial dater. Garson passed away last Tuesday at the age of 57 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. His work served as the template for a whole generation of gay characters in film and TV and his work will live on in television history. Stanford made his first appearance in the legendary pilot, which aired on June 6, 1998. From there, he appeared in all seasons, 27 episodes and both movies. Everyone always talks about the four women at the center, but Stanford is one of the most important supporting characters. Garson was an astounding talent that will be greatly missed. In celebration of his life and defining career work, let’s take a look back at the best moments of Stanford Blatch...

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