Crafting a Rom-Com That’s True to 21st-Century Gay Life

On a brisk November day, in a wing of the Newark Museum of Art mocked up as the first New York museum dedicated to L.G.B.T.Q. history, Billy Eichner stood in front of a glass vitrine. Inside was a black-and-white image of Magnus Hirschfeld, a Weimar-era physician and sexologist. In character as Bobby, the museum’s chief curator, Eichner gave a brief precis of Hirschfeld’s career, finishing with an ad-lib, “Tragically, he’s also my type.”

He took it again: “Ultimately he wanted an open relationship.”

And again: “We also had a very weird night together.”

The scene continued, as Bobby walked through the exhibit, delivering a lecture that encompassed homophobia, Nazis and, eventually, AIDS. “It’s a painful history; people need to experience it,” Eichner’s Bobby said.

Watching on a monitor, the director Nicholas Stoller turned to me. “Blockbuster comedy,” he joked good-naturedly. “You feel it?”

This was the final week of shooting for “Bros,” a romantic comedy written by Eichner and Stoller. The Universal Pictures film is a rare thing: a major studio comedy about queer characters, played by queer actors. It isn’t exactly the first major-studio gay rom-com, that rainbow laurel probably goes to 2018’s “Love Simon,” distributed by 20th Century Fox. And TriStar Pictures produced “Happiest Season,” a lesbian holiday rom-com, in 2020.

But “Bros,” which is set to open Sept. 30, is unusual — “historic” is the term Eichner used — in that almost everyone in front of the camera and a lot of the people behind it identify as queer. Which means that the movie shoulders two responsibilities: to deliver a comedy as raucous and raunchy as fans of Stoller, and Judd Apatow, an executive producer, would expect, and to educate viewers, gay and straight, on the past and present of queer lives and relationships. Eichner has been working out, so those shoulders are pretty broad.

“It’s obviously a huge honor,” he said, on a break between scenes. “But at the same time, it’s infuriating that it took this long. And it’s bizarre that it took this long. And it’s confusing that it took this long.”

The seed for “Bros” began not with Eichner but with Stoller. A rom-com veteran (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall”), Stoller wanted to feature a romance between two men. But he knew he wasn’t the man to write it. Not alone, anyway.

“I’m the diversity hire,” Stoller, who is straight, told me.

He thought immediately of Eichner, whom he had worked with on “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” and the acerbic Netflix series “Friends From College.” In between seasons of that show, he called Eichner up, suggesting they collaborate. “Definitely,” Stoller remembers Eichner saying.

Eichner, speaking in April from, as he put it, “Las Vegas, of all terrible places,” where he had just debuted the “Bros” trailer, remembers it a little differently. He had never written a movie. He had never starred in one. And he had come to believe he never would. He had loved rom-coms as a kid. His parents took him to “When Harry Met Sally,” “Pretty Woman” (yikes), “Dirty Dancing,” “Sleepless in Seattle.”

Staring up at the screen, as a 14-year-old, Eichner remembered thinking, “I could do that. I could be Tom Hanks in this movie.”

But two decades in the entertainment industry had taught him that as a gay man, the Tom Hanks roles were not available to him. And that even gay roles — in “In & Out,” say, or “The Birdcage,” or “Brokeback Mountain,” which “Bros” briefly satirizes — were often played by straight actors. At least one was played by Hanks. (Remember “Philadelphia”?)

“It was just always implied that my options would be very limited,” he said.

Still, he agreed to write “Bros.” Even though he worried he wouldn’t have anything to say. “I haven’t had many serious relationships in my adult life,” he said. “I’m not against them, I’m not an antirelationship person. It’s just not something that has happened to me.”

And then one night, a story began to suggest itself: two men, attracted to each other but both wary of commitment, especially as they grew up before same-sex marriage was legalized. Out and proud but also scared and self-doubting, Bobby stumbles toward a relationship with Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), a macho trusts and estates lawyer.

With a script outlined, the writers prepared to pitch the movie to Universal. Eichner never believe that a major studio would bite. But Donna Langley, the chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, didn’t hesitate. To her it sounded like “a really funny movie and a really honest movie.”

That movie still had to be written, a process that Stoller likened to “a multiyear therapy session.” Because making a gay romantic comedy isn’t as simple as switching out an X chromosome here and there. So don’t expect “When Harry Met Harry.”

“That’s not reflective of how gay relationships function, at least the ones that my friends have, at least the ones that I’ve had,” Eichner said. “Gay men, in particular, we have our own rules, we have a certain way we behave.”

Honoring that behavior meant including plenty of sex scenes, some of them with three or four participants. (There’s also a very good joke about a gender reveal orgy.) It also meant educating Stoller on the sociology of gay male relationships.

“As a straight guy I didn’t know about a lot of this stuff,” Stoller admitted.

Eichner confirmed that. “I think he’d heard of Grindr,” Eichner said, referring to the gay dating app. “But I don’t think he fully understood it.”

Despite the Grindr and orgy particulars, Apatow, another diversity hire, emphasized the story’s universal aspects. “We’re all seeking love,” he said. “And we’re all insecure. And we all have baggage and those are the issues which make for great comedy.”

But “Bros” couldn’t be just another comedy. As one of the first major releases of its kind, its creators felt a duty to instruct as well as entertain. Which explains why, after a pandemic delay, the production designers had transformed that Newark gallery into the L.G.B.T.Q. Legends Pavilion, its glass cases devoted to figures like James Baldwin, Gertrude Stein, the trans activist Sylvia Rivera and the nonbinary Native American artist We’wha.

On set, none of Eichner’s co-stars looked like they were learning on the job. The atmosphere suggested pleasure, not pedagogy. And Eichner, who had given himself what he called a glow-up in preparation for the shoot, looked like a leading man. Between scenes, as he received a touch-up from a makeup artist, his co-star Ts Madison paused to admire his costume.

“Oh, my God, is this velvet? Rich! Rich!” she said, stroking a lapel of his tux.

Madison, a trans woman and a reality TV star, described the delight of working with an almost entirely queer cast. (The almost? Debra Messing and Kristin Chenoweth. “Allies,” Stoller clarified.)

“We’re all God’s creatures,” Madison said. “We’re all God’s special kids. It feels so good.”

Macfarlane, the Juilliard-trained actor who plays Aaron, has made plenty of rom-coms before, nearly all of them for the Hallmark Channel. (He generally plays straight men, with the giddy Netflix holiday rom-com “Single All the Way” a recent exception.) But “Bros” felt different, he said, in that he was hired because he is gay and not in spite of that.

“This wasn’t just another character,” he said. “Everything that I’ve said and everything that I have staked out for myself got me this opportunity.”

Apatow enjoyed his visits to the talent-filled set, but he also found it “heartbreaking,” he said. “I couldn’t help but think how many opportunities had been denied them.”

For “Bros” to create further opportunities, it needs to find a mass audience. Heading into test screenings, Stoller described himself as “naïvely optimistic,” confident that the movie worked emotionally and that most of the jokes would land.

According to Stoller — Universal wouldn’t offer specific numbers — “Bros” tested higher than any other movie he has worked on, even with straight audience members. Viewers who identified as L.G.B.T.Q. scored it even higher.

As Apatow put it, “The crowd basically said to us, in a way that I thought was very emotional, we’re ready for this movie, and we’ve been ready for it for a really long time.”

Because gay rights are so often under threat, “Bros” never lacked for relevance. But Apatow, who mentioned the recently passed Florida education law, nicknamed “Don’t Say Gay,” felt that it would arrive at a particularly urgent moment. “With politicians telling people in the L.G.B.T.Q. community to hide who they are, it suddenly has way more resonance,” he said.

Eichner mentioned the Florida law, too. But for him, the significance of “Bros” was not only political. It was personal, too.

“I’m so excited to finally be able to play a three-dimensional human being,” he said.