20 years ago, ‘Eating Out’ gave curious viewers a smutty crash course on gay life
Eating Out made its debut at Phoenix’s Out Far! LGBTQ+ film fest—feel old yet?But, for many gays of a certain age, their first time experiencing Eating Out wasn’t at a festival, or even a movie theater.
It was at a rental shop, where its eyebrow-raising title and DVD cover flanked by its muscled stars stood out like a sore thumb with frosted tips.It was a movie frequently rented and watched in private, and one of our first opportunities to see gay characters on the screen that weren’t mired in tragedy, or struggling to come out.
And it was funny and sexy enough to open our eyes to a whole new world—is this what the straights felt like the first time they saw American Pie?Subscribe to our daily newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.So, two decades on, does Eating Out still hold up?
Not completely, no. But, more than just leftovers, it remains a distinctly queer and enjoyable watch, one that opened doors for more LGBTQ+ movies to come (and, yes, that includes four Eating Out sequels).For the unfamiliar, Eating Out takes a classic screwball structure of little white lies, missed connections, and comic misunderstandings—and adds in a heaping dose of horny homo hormones.At its center are straight dude Caleb (Scott Lunsford) and his gay roommate Kyle (Jim Verraros).
