TAPPING THE HOMOSEXUAL MARKET (original) (raw)
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- May 2, 1982
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May 2, 1982
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Section 6, Page
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Major film studios made a hedged bet this season that the healthy, wealthy and-or wise homosexual was a marketable commodity. Paramount Pictures's ''Partners,'' which opened this weekend, is a comedy about two New York cops (one's straight, the other isn't) who pretend to be lovers to solve a murder. It follows: 20th-Century Fox's ''Making Love'' (a doctor leaves his wife for another man); Warner Bros.'s ''Personal Best'' (two female Olympic teammates fall in love) and ''Deathtrap'' (Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve play lovers), and M-G-M/ U.A.'s ''Victor, Victoria,'' in which Julie Andrews finishes off her nun and governess image by playing a woman pretending to be a man who is a female impersonator.
The challenge was to sell these films without alienating either the general audience or the homosexual audience. Accordingly, the studios' public profile was low. Executives and film makers even denied that their projects were about homosexuality, insisting, for example, that ''Personal Best'' was a look at competition and friendship, while ''Victor, Victoria'' was alleged simply to be an updated version of an old farce.
But the investment of millions in movie-budget and movieadvertising dollars represents a radical shift in attitude, regardless of attempts to downplay it. In 1971, financial success eluded John Schlesinger's critically-acclaimed ''Sunday Bloody Sunday,'' about an unmarried couple attracted to the same man; audiences weren't ready for it. Only a decade later, Hollywood is gambling that they are ready for a film with a homosexual theme. Since none of the anticipated problems materialized - no pickets, no theater boycotts - Hollywood may be right. (Television took a similar chance: This season, NBC offered ''Love, Sidney,'' starring Tony Randall as a homosexual who finds himself with an instant family.)
The studios' wager was doubly significant in the homosexual community, which found itself both the subject of films and the object of marketing strategies.
Going beyond mainstream advertising, several studios turned to publications catering to homosexual readers, such as Christopher Street, in Manhattan, or the California-based The Advocate. When ''Sunday, Bloody Sunday'' flopped, the homosexually oriented press largely consisted of community newspapers eking out a marginal existence with local, mail-order and classified ads. No longer. Today, the studios advertise alongside Heublein, Seagram, Perrier, Harper & Row and others, primarily wooing an economically attractive segment of the consumer population - the white, single, welleducated, well-paid man who happens to be homosexual.
In tight-money 1982, men with high earning power and low financial obligations are making purveyors of luxury items and leisure services take a second look. While these men are a small percentage of the national homosexual population - one market researcher refers to them as ''the upscale tip of the iceberg'' - they are, according to The Advocate's publisher, Peter Frisch, a ''recession-proof market.''
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