Liberace Biopic Found Home at HBO After Being Dubbed 'Too Gay' By Every Studio in Hollywood

So sometimes, on this here third rock from the sun, a thing happens when a man will fall in love with and/or be sexually attracted to another man or a woman will fall in love with and/or be sexually attracted to another woman. Often, this is called “being a gay person” (ˈbē(-i)ŋ ā ˈgā ˈpər-sən) and it occurs rather frequently all over the world. These “gay people” (ˈgā ˈpē-pəl) live lives just like non-gay people, which means that some of their lives are really boring and some of their lives are exciting and worth talking about. Like, hypothetically, there’s probably a gay dude who spends his evenings eating canned soup and only ever talks about Sons of Anarchy — we don’t really need to hear about him, not because he’s gay, but because he’s dull. But then there are gay guys who work for NASA or are beautiful young ranch hands or who grow up to be cape-wearing, piano playing pop stars whose stories are intrinsically interesting and movie-worth. Liberace, as noticed by Ocean’s Eleven/Magic Mike director Steven Soderbergh, is one of these people. Unfortunately, none of the major Hollywood studios would help him make his Liberace biopic Behind The Candelabra because, ewwwwwww, it occasionally showed two boys kissing.

Soderbergh tells the NY Post, “Nobody would make it. We went to everybody in town. They all said it was too gay and this is after Brokeback Mountain, by the way, which is not as funny as this movie. I was stunned. It made no sense to any of us.”

Luckily, the film, which stars Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as the musician’s younger boyfriend, has found its home on HBO, a.k.a the Cambridge, Mass. of premium cable networks. “This is a magnet for attention,” says Soderbergh. “The whole package to them looked (to HBO) like a slam dunk.” Cool slam dunk move, HBO, but I just have to say that I object to this movie — not because it shows two men kissing, but specifically because one of those men is Michael Douglas.