Standing on the Top

I immediately thought of the Rick James song "Standing on the Top" when I came up with the title for today's blog post, but that's not what the post is about. (As a sidebar, I remember where I was when I heard Rick James died. I was at a jazz concert in Philadelphia watching saxophonist Steve Cole and he announced it during the show and played "Give It to Me, Baby.") But I digress. I watch a lot of gay movies and, sadly, a lot of them are bad. I understand gay films can't get the kind of budgets that films featuring straight couples can, but I find it hard to believe that they can't get better scripts. The movie I saw over the weekend was called Monster Pies and it was about two Australian teenagers who fall for each other while they're working on a school project about Romeo and Juliet. Fine, right? Wrong. This movie was such a downer. One kid's mother was brain damaged and confined to a nursing home as a result, that same kid's father was an alcoholic who beat him, the other kid was bullied at school and ended up losing his after school job at a video store after a woman falsely accused him of harassing her (when she was the one harassing him). And, just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, the kid with the brain dead mother and alcoholic father hangs himself in the end. Oy. What a depress-fest. I just wish more gay-themed movies didn't end on such a tragic note. Why can't the gay guys or lesbians come out on top at the end? Why can't they reign victorious and overcome the shit they've dealt with in the movie? Why can't they be standing on the top when the credits roll? I know every gay-themed movie isn't terrible and/or depressing, but a lot of  them are. I know life isn't all sunshine and rainbows, but it's not all gloom and doom either.