I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry - Do People Learn?

I finally watched I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, our neighbor loaned it to us. I am not a big Adam Sandler fan, I did like The Wedding Singer, 50 Dates and The Longest Yard but, I am just not into his normal type of humour. I didn't rush out to see or rent this movie because I was concerned about the way they would treat the main characters trying to pass for gay. I will be honest I am not gay, we are not The Cleavers or Ozzie and Harriet here (though we have a dog named Ozzie), but our, or should I say my alternative lifestyle is of a different nature.

I have known gay people pretty much all my life. My grandparent's lived in or near Provincetown, Massachusetts, and anyone that knows the history of P'Town knows it has been an arts colony for a very long time. There are many gay people in the arts and my family knew alot of them. Later I had gay friends, I laughed with them, cried with them, we had sometimes quiet and others heated discussions on many subjects. I enjoyed these people for what they were, people.

In a similar vein I know someone that was brought up bigoted. He hated African-Americans. He once had an accident on his motorcycle that left him in the path of an oncoming bus. An African-American man ran out in front of the bus, grabbed him and pulled him to safety. He wondered about this for a very long time. Why if these people were like he was brought up to believe they were like would this man do this very courageous thing. The blinders fell from his face as he came to realize that what he had been taught as a child about African-Americans was wrong.

So you may ask what does all that have to do with this film? One of the things I liked best about the film was how over time Chuck (Kevin James), Larry (Adam Sandler) and others have the blinders removed from their eyes in relation to their views on gay people. Chuck and Larry are best friends and partner fire fighters. Chuck after three years still mourns the death of his beloved wife and cares for his two kids, while Larry (How should I put this?), in one scene Larry's Captain (the wonderful Dan Ackroyd) tells him something like if my pencil wore a skirt I would have to beat you back off it. Larry is a womanizer. Chuck has a very serious problem and asks Larry to pretend they are domestic partners. This does not work so they go one step further and go to Canada and get married.

Over the course of the film they get a crash course in what it is like to be gay. In the beginning they call gay's queers and faggots and other nasty names, they are stigmatized by their fellow firefighters. In one scene Larry is told they do not need his help for the annual scout camp out or to coach little league, they have all the parents they need. They also come to find that gay people are just people, they are just a little different. Aren't we all. They come to see that the gay lifestyle is not wrong, just different. Of course all ends well and they can once again rejoice in their heterosexuality (a little tongue in cheek here).

This film reminds me of a book published in 1961 called Black Like Me. It was written by a non-fiction book by journalist John Howard Griffin. (I am going to borrow from Wikipaedia here.)

Griffin was a white native of Mansfield, Texas and the book describes his six-week experience travelling throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia passing as a black man. Sepia Magazine financed the project in exchange for the right to print the account first as a series of articles.

Griffin kept a journal of his experiences; the 188-page diary was the genesis of the book. In 1959, at the time of the book's writing, race relations were particularly strained in North America; Griffin's aim was to explain the difficulties facing black people in certain areas. To expedite this, under the care of a doctor, Griffin artificially darkened his skin to pass as a black man. In 1964, a film version of Black Like Me starring James Whitmore was produced. Robert Bonazzi subsequently published the book Man in the Mirror: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me.

The title of the book is taken from the last line of the Langston Hughes poem Dream Variations:

Rest at pale evening...
A tall slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black like me. 

John Howard Griffin too got to go back to his life as a white man in the south once his experiment was finished. I know Jewish people who cannot understand why I don't hate Palestinians (or other Arabs). First of all I don't hate anyone. Second of all how can you possibly hate someone if you don't even know them? So I am wondering when you read a book like Black Like Me or see a film like I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry does it make you think about and challenge your negative attitudes about other groups of people? Not just the ones being addressed but any other group of people. As Marshall McLuhan said The message is the medium.

Oh my I forgot my shameless plug. This was primarily written for the group All About Film, Movies And Actors. If you write about anything related to film please submit it here.