Programmed June 2023

Queersighted: The Gay Best Friend

Featuring a new conversation between series curator Michael Koresky and author Mark Harris The Gay Best Friend can be helpful. The Gay Best Friend can be catty. They can be unconditionally loving or secretly sinister. Yet they all have something in common: we never learn very much about their lives, existing as they do to support, elucidate, or put into relief something about their films’ straight main characters. This persistent stereotype provides a lens through which we can understand queer film history and the legacies of characters who have been, almost by definition, marginalized. In this latest edition of Queersighted, series curator Michael Koresky and his special guest, author Mark Harris ( Mike Nichols: A Life ), discuss a selection of titles stretching from Production Code–era Hollywood to the “out” nineties, featuring fascinating characters who may gaze from the sidelines but bring vivid life and depth to their films.