One of the the most memorable scenes in Bros was originally cut, reveals director Nicholas Stoller.
Written by Stoller with Billy Eichner, Bros has made history as the first gay rom-com to be produced by a major Hollywood studio with an almost entirely LGBTQ+ principal cast.
The film follows Bobby Lieber (Eichner), a podcaster and radio show presenter, as he accepts a position at Manhattan’s new National LGBTQ+ History Museum and falls for macho lawyer Aaron Shepard (Luke Macfarlane).
Bros received universal acclaim from critics (check out our five-star review here), with praise aimed at the performances of the cast, its refreshing script and its authentic depiction of queerness and the gay male experience.
To coincide with the UK release, Stoller revealed in an interview with GAY TIMES that one of the most-discussed scenes in the film almost didn’t make the final cut.
“We tried something where we lost the Christmas four-gy and the conversation where Billy says he’s uncomfortable having an open relationship,” said Stoller.
“It suddenly felt, 100%, like a straight rom-com. I don’t know why. It just did. Something got lost. I was like, ‘This doesn’t work at all,’ and they put it back in.”
The scene in question sees Bobby and Aaron proposition the latter’s former crush Josh (Ryan Faucett) for a threesome, before another random party-goer Steve (Brock Ciarlelli) joins in to hilarious effect.
Stoller continued to explain the importance of the film’s queer scenes, reminiscing on a conversation with Eichner where he said Bros “can’t be a movie where it’s a straight couple and you just take out the woman and put in a man.
“It has to be a queer love story, a truly gay love story.”
The writer and director, known for his work on iconic comedies such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), The Five Year Engagement (2012) and Neighbors (2014), said he had three rules for Eichner before they collaborated on Bros: “It has to be very funny, honest and have a happy ending.”
“Particularly being honest, it needed to be honest,” he continued.
“Aaron and Bobby end up together because it would be dishonest if they didn’t. These are two people we created that should be together in some way. At the end, they’re gonna try for another three months, so that’s the joke.
“That was very intentional in terms of how we built it.”
When asked about a potential sequel to Bros, Stoller admitted that he doesn’t “know” what it would look like, but “it would be so fun to work with these actors again” and could “live in the museum board for a whole other movie”.
“All the characters are characters you’d want to follow home and follow to different places,” he said. “So, I don’t know what it would be but there’s certainly a lot of material to work with.”
When Eichner and Macfarlane spoke with GAY TIMES, they joked that country singer Garth Brooks will play a more prominent role if a sequel is greenlit.
In Bros, Aaron reveals that he’s a huge fan of country music, particularly Garth. Bobby later writes an original song for Aaron in the style of – fun fact incoming – the GLAAD Award winner, titled Love Is Not Love, and performs it at the opening of the National LGBTQ+ History Museum.
“Garth and Luke and me are gonna be in a throuple in the sequel,” laughed Billy, with Luke describing a second Bros adventure as a “road trip movie” in which their characters drive the star “back from Tennessee to Oklahoma”.
“That’s good, I like that,” added Billy. “See? There’s your premise for the Bros sequel.”
Bros is out now in UK cinemas. The film also stars Ts Madison, Monica Raymund, Guillermo Díaz, Amanda Bearse, Jim Rash, Bowen Yang, Miss Lawrence, Harvey Fierstein, Eve Lindley, Symone and Dot-Marie Jones.
You can watch Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane’s exclusive interview with GAY TIMES here or below.
Latest
