Culture Slut: Gods and Monsters Shows Brendan Fraser’s True Talent

Make it stand out

I felt very involved in Oscar season this year. I read so many articles about predictions and trends and inner machinations that I felt like an unpaid intern for Entertainment Weekly or something, and I loved it. Like any good gay, the crowning glory for me was the Best Actress in a Leading Role, followed by Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and I’ve been fairly consistent with following that every season, but this year I was into it all - Best Actor, Best Picture, Best Original Song, all of it, every category. 

I guess the broad reason was that I was absolutely in love with the pop juggernaut Everything Everywhere All At Once, directed by the Daniels, but the more focused reason was that I was very emotionally invested in Michelle Yeoh’s journey to winning Best Actress - the first Asian woman to do so, and only the second woman of colour (the first being Halle Berry more that twenty years ago). Yeoh’s performance was incredible, showing herself to be a true well of conflicting emotions, an abiding love, comedic prowess and the physicality of a true heroine, all of which has been glimpsed in the decades of her veteran career but this role, written specifically for her, finally gave her the opportunity to explore the complexity she so desperately deserved. I cried real tears as I watched her receive her award (presented by Berry) and she gave an incredible heartfelt acceptance speech, and EEAAO won almost every category it was nominated for. I was very emotional, and also a little drunk from the ouzo I drank in the hours and hours I waited for the Best Actress category.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role also went to an EEAAO performance, Ke Huy Quan as Yeoh’s hapless husband, and watching him finally succeed after so many years of near-defeat was also incredibly satisfying to see. Bonus points for the moment when an ancient Harrison Ford presented EEAAO with the Best Picture Oscar at the end of the show and was reunited on stage with Quan, making us all think about them as Indiana Jones and Short Round in The Temple of Doom back in 1984. Best Actress in a Supporting Role went to Jamie Lee Curtis, queen of genre cinema, and whilst I appreciated another win for EEAAO, I do sort of think it should have gone to the very regal Angela Bassett, a woman long overdue the flowers she deserves. 

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You may have noticed that this means that EEAAO made almost a clean sweep of the acting Oscars, leaving only Best Actor in a Leading Role up for grabs. This is an award that has never held as much interest for me, or, from what I can tell, my lavender ancestors. I guess Best Actor has never had the grandness or camp power or glamour given to Best Actress. Hollywood has always been a conservative institution, and its male stars can be used to trace the thread of American masculinity and stoic heroism that built its national mythologies, as can be read in the fantastic book The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo. I think Quentin Crisp said it best; when he was asked about glamour he immediately started talking about great actresses and pointed out that for decades the phrase movie star meant a woman by default. Men were too bland to even be considered stars, except for some notable exceptions, the one he favoured being Rudolph Valentino, and only then because he was dark and seductive in a feminine way.

This year’s Best Actor winner was Brendan Fraser, who was far and away the sentimental favourite of the night. Returning to Hollywood after a long absence, Fraser described how as a young, handsome, rising star he was blacklisted because of his claims of sexual abuse made against the former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. His experience stands in the wake of movements like Me Too and Time’s Up and brings much needed attention to the almost completely ignored sexual abuse of men, as well as women and other minority genders. His comeback gave audiences a fresh chance to see his charisma again, and, like Yeoh, in a role that gave him a whole wealth of emotional drama to chew on, which brings us to the actual film. I haven’t seen The Whale, and up until recently I had no real desire to. I think the use of a fat-suit is a bit antiquated, and the grand guignol of it all seems excessive, but more than that, no one was talking about the plot, just Fraser’s return and his transformation. I’m a little more intrigued knowing that Fraser is in fact playing a dying gay man trying to reconnect with his daughter, but not sure if or when I actually will watch it. Instead, I’m going to focus on something a lot more interesting, Fraser’s OTHER gay role, back in 1998.

Gods and Monsters is an incredible film I first saw as a teen shown during the late night slot on Channel Four (now available on Prime) and it stayed with me for a very long time. It focuses on another dying gay man, James Whale (from one terminal whale to another, see, it all connects) the incredible director behind iconic films like Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Old Dark House and Show Boat, played perfectly by Ian McKellan, and his burgeoning friendship with his handsome hunky gardener, a very buff Brendan Fraser. Whale spends his time painting copies of Old Masters and entertaining eager young students in ways that only dirty old men can, swapping industry stories for bared flesh, but his relationship with Fraser is different. He starts off wanting to paint him, drawing parallels between Fraser’s square physique and his famous monster’s blockiness. He takes him to a George Cukor party to meet royalty and other old Hollywood legends, all the while testing his limits and friendship, until he finally asks him to kill him before his cancerous brain tumour completely destroys his life.

“Whilst it's fun to obsess over Oscar nominations and prestige vehicles, delving back into a star’s lesser known work can sometimes be ever more rewarding.”

McKellan’s portrayal of Whale is incredible, equal parts dominant, wistful, high spirited and lost, but more importantly was the first ever depiction of an older gay person that I’d ever seen. I’d dipped in and out of European gay coming of age films, American AIDS dramas, drag queen road odysseys, but this was my first elderly, established, comfortable (sort of) homosexual. He reminded me of my grandmother, a raconteur with a cheeky sense of humour, surrounded by memories, poetry and paintings, apart from the world but by his own choice, and thus he became someone I could look up to, someone I could imagine myself becoming. He was a symbol of hope, not in that he was dying of an illness, but in that he was a queer person who had had the privilege of growing old enough to start dying of more natural causes. 

This role lead McKellan to his first of only two Oscar nominations (the other being for Gandalf in Lord of the Rings), which I found astonishing, considering that in the UK he is considered one of the greatest actors alive. He didn’t win, but the film did win Best Adapted Screenplay, and Lynn Redgrave was nominated for her scene-chewing turn as his gruff maid. Fraser wasn’t nominated for his role, but he showed heretofore unplumbed depths of feeling, very different from his physical comedy roles and slacker movies.

It was so interesting comparing my understanding of this film now to what I knew at 14, and it has only gotten better. Certain parts have been recontextualised by other semi-historical (or, at the very least -period-) dramas, so I think it would be very much more accessible to modern audiences. Whale describes the Cukor parties he attended in the 1930s and 40s, lavish dinner parties thrown by producer and director George Cukor that would end with gay orgies, old queens pairing off with hot young studs swimming naked in the pools and running over the lawns, which was very much a theme addressed in Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood. Set in the 1940s, Hollywood was a revisionist take on the very real personalities and history of the Studio system, but taking a more modern approach with their focus on the reality of power politics and sexual assault. At one point, Whale meets Princess Margaret, and after having seen Netflix’s The Crown, it's interesting to find that common timeline being explored. Having a wider understanding of a historical period makes any narrative set back then feel far more engaging. This seems like an obvious statement, but the beauty of growing older and learning more is that you find out that simple ideas like that are actually true.

Gods and Monsters is a great film, and I highly encourage anyone and everyone to watch it. It's a highly sensitive and nuanced hidden 90s gem exploring old Hollywood, forbidden love, and control over one’s death. Three perfect performances, two from old legends, one from an unexpected young stud, prevent the story from dissolving into melodrama and will pluck at the heartstrings with its marvellous sense of both freedom and pathos. Whilst it's fun to obsess over Oscar nominations and prestige vehicles, delving back into a star’s lesser known work can sometimes be ever more rewarding. Take me away from Marvel and trauma porn stories, take me away from suffocating virtue-signalling discourse and let me breathe in the warm summer air of James Whale’s LA lawn. Take me to the land of Gods and Monsters.

Words & Collages: Misha MN