Is Ben-Hur a gay film?

What do you think...?

__________________
http://www.last.fm/user/diezelpower/

I think it's closer to a bi-film. It's common knowledge that co-scripter Gore Vidal discussed the concept with director William Wyler about having Judah (Charlton Heston) and Messala (Stephen Boyd) being ex-lovers. When they reunite near the beginning, and Judah seems to reject Messala, that is supposed to make Messala's hatred grow and push him into trying to destroy Judah and his family later on. Allegedly, Wyler passed on the gay subtext to Boyd who acted his role clearly that way. Nobody told Heston about it though because Wyler said if he knew, "he would fall apart". Gore Vidal is the only person who has claimed this, and he's still alive, but it seems like it's in the movie alright.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

I can already smell people burning their DVDs...

I do not think I will burn mine, but I will put it next to My 300 and Spartcus Dvds.

__________________

“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

I always thought Boyd was a little intense in the beginning!

I read the book and hmmm... don't remember thinking the story had a gay subtext and I thought the film followed the book rather well. Of course, I read the book when I was a teenager and since I'm a straight female who never even thought about gay issues... I could have missed it.

Well, the point seems to be that Wyler and Vidal thought there had to be something more going on to make Boyd turn from best friend of the family to their chief torturer. He seemed so friendly at the beginning, but then he couldn't recruit Ben-Hur to the Roman side and soon went all Nazi. Of course, nothing was ever inserted into the script anywhere. It was just the way Boyd acted the role and the way Wyler shot it. I certainly missed it the first 10 times I saw it too , but looking back, it makes sense. I have no problem if people disagree, but I'm not sure why Vidal would lie about it when you can see it on screen.

Maybe not coincidentally, Wyler's next film, The Children's Hour, based on Lillian Hellman's play, was a lesbian drama starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. It was a remake of his own These Three, which he did in the 1930s but had to change the lesbianism to something resembling straight fornication. That is only circumstantial evidence, but it could lend credence to Vidal's claim.

I don't. Whoever wrote this is either gay himself and/or has too much time on his hands.

You can read into a film whatever you want to, after all it is about suspending disbelief. All Tennessee Williams and Terence Rattigan’s plays were said to be about gay rather than straight relationships, and of course the same was implied of George and Martha in Albee’s Who Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Myself I’ve always wondered about Roy Rogers and Trigger!

It's "common knowledge" that almost no one else has heard of. "Allegedly" means someone is saying something they can't prove. Gore Vidal apparently is the only living person who claims this, and it wouldn't be the first time that Vidal made an outrageous statement just to provoke a reaction. Sounds like an urban legend to me. I recently saw the film again on TNT, and Boyd didn't act any more gay in that role than in all of his others.

There has never been any suggestion that Lew Wallace wrote Ben Hur as a closet homosexual, nor has the character ever been played that way in any of the earlier productions, despite the fact that the main actors in the silent versions are obviously wearing lots of makeup. In the movie, Heston explains Boyd's viciousness as his former friend having been corrupted by the Roman court. And historically bisexual activity was accepted and even encouraged in Rome and the Roman army to a far greater extent than in Palestine where the Jewish religion had prohibitions against homosexuality.

On the other hand, this is all built on the unproven premise that Heston was homophobic and couldn't bring himself to play a homosexual, but is there any prove of that? He wasn't Jewish, yet he played a Jew. He wasn't Roman but played Marc Anthony. Unlike Yul Brynner and Burt Lancaster, he was never in the circus, yet played a circus manager. Wasn't British but played "China" Gordon. Wasn't a cowboy, but played them in Westerns. Wasn't Mexican or a policeman but played a Mexican cop so caked in makeup tht he looked like he was doing an Al Jolson imitation. Bottom line, the guy was an actor--if there was a reason to play a character as gay, Heston was capable of doing so. And likely would have.

Personally, I think Vidal wrote and Paul Newman played Billy the Kid as gay in The Left-Handed Gun. Why, the very title suggests an alternate lifestyle!

There's another one you need to watch, adi. Make sure you get the uncut version (does any other one exist on DVD, I wonder?).

Grown men rubbing each other's backs in the bath? Whatever next?

Then try Jarman's Sabastiane, a film that, for one horrible moment, I thought 300 was a sequel to.

Cue neg rep from insecure 300 fans.

Oh, and rufnek - I heard about the Ben Hur thang years ago and there's few people on this board more common than me!

__________________
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

I've seen Spartacus but Kirk Douglas ain't half as nice to look at as Heston. The man couldn't act to save his life, but he sure was pretty...

Gore Vidal talks about Ben-Hur in The Celluloid Closet (1996), which, unfortunately, I can't find the specific clip for on YouTube. I used the word "allegedly" because William Wyler's words are hearsay. No one has ever implied the source material had any hidden meanings or subtext. Take it for what you want, but when Charlton Heston heard about it, he denied that Vidal even had much of anything at all to do with the film. Vidal countered by citing Heston's own autobiography which says that Vidal was responsible for much of the final script.

I have no axes to ginnd. I've always liked Charlton Heston. None of this is a shot at him, at least not by me.

What exactly is a "gay film". Please define. If it means a movie with a "gay" in it then so many movies fit the bill.

Can't remember if I've seen Ben-Hur, but that article isn't very convincing. What the hell is a phallic symbol? A pole, carrot, boat, cigar, guitar, spoon, racket, etc., etc? I could call anything a phallic symbol and make a case for it. Except for a taco, they're exactly what they look like, a taco.

__________________

Everytime I eat at Taco Bell, I get a little straighter.

That taco shell looks more vaginal than phallic, but you just wanted to make it happen, didn't you, didn't you, you massively-"commercial", McG-wannabe!!

That could be one of their new tag lines.
"McG-wannabe?" Get a load of this guy. Show em' a taco and he starts to rap. "I'm lovin' it."

Don't forget a one-eyed man (and possibly even a one-eyed woman). Extremely phallic.

Many years ago, a family who lived next door to us moved out to California. Some years later, they moved back to Texas and came by for a visit. The matron of the house, who had worked as a waitress in California, told of Rock Hudson and his homosexual friends coming into the restaurant where she'd worked. But I don't think Hudson's homosexuality was "common knowledge" until he came out of the closet near the end of his life, although I'd heard about it years before.

I don't think I've ever before heard Ben-Hur discussed as a film with homosexual images or messages (although I'm tempted to say the Steven Boyd always looked acted suggested to me that he had a hamburger squeezed between his butt cheeks and was afraid he was about to drop the onions). But then I don't recall ever before hearing Ben-Hur discussed, period; it's not one of the "hot" films for movie fans today.

I suppose someone could read some homosexual messages into any sword and toga film from those ol' Italian-made strongman Hercules films on down to Troy and Lord of the Rings. But how much did the studio really put into those films and how much is imagined by playful viewers.

One-Eyed Jacks, the title of the only film that Marlon Brando ever directed, can refer to the two jacks in a deck of cards who are in profile, that is with one eye showing as opposed to the two who show both eyes. But in the old British Navy (and probably others as well), it was a reference to a man's anus among the buggering Jack Tars. Not a phallic image but certainly one with homosexual implications.