![]() Though many LGBTQ youths are still facing the harsh realities of unaccepting communities, in 2018, the fact that Simon is gay feels less like an exclamation point and more like a comma at the tipping point of a movement. Like Simon, Berlanti also faced blackmail when someone threatened to out him and the person he was seeing in college. While the movie doesn't necessarily depict every person's experience within the LGBTQ community, as Berlanti told The Advocate, he used his own experiences of "isolation" as a closeted gay teenager to advise the movie's writers. Nearly two decades later, his own coming-of-age story is being reflected on the big screen thanks to the film, adapted from Becky Albertalli's young adult novel, Simon vs. "If we were going to bring the character out, it seemed silly to me that he couldn't kiss." But I took over the show, and that was an important thing to me," he told The Hollywood Reporterin 2016. "When we did the Jack kiss on Dawson's Creek, everyone was tentative. The Emmy-nominated writer and producer made waves in the industry early on when, after becoming executive producer of Dawson's Creek at 28, he pushed for the kiss between Jack and Ethan-ultimately the first passionate kiss between two men on primetime television. While this particular story didn't have its moment to shine until now, Berlanti was busy planting the seeds all those years ago. "We should've been talking about a movie like this in 2000." "It shouldn't be 2018 and we're talking about this film," Berlanti told NewNowNext. At a time when LGBTQ characters are at the helm of celebrated shows like Orange Is the New Black, Modern Family, Transparent and Will & Grace as well as the most recently Oscar-nominated Call Me by Your Name and last year's winner Moonlight, it seems strange that its taken 130 years of moving pictures for a story like Love, Simon to reach the silver screen with such support. While Simon's story is not applicable to every LGBTQ youth, it provides a very important opportunity for audiences to connect to someone different from them in a way that perhaps was inaccessible to them before through themes of love, family and adulthood. ![]() It's because of the film's material paired with the backing of a major studio that sends a significant message: this story is important and it needs to be seen. With production by Fox 2000 Pictures, distribution by parent studio 20th Century Fox and a cast including A-listers Jennifer Garner, Josh Duhamel and 13 Reasons Why's Katherine Langford, the movie is destined to reach theaters all over the country today and eventually around the world. "They said, 'We're absolutely making it, no matter whom you cast in the part.'" "I walked into my first meeting to get the job and I said, 'Are you really making this? There hasn't been a film about a gay teen protagonist by one of the major studios of your size,'" director Greg Berlanti recalled to NewNowNext. After all, it's the first romantic comedy focused on a gay teen produced by a major studio. In that moment, the film paves the way for a coming-of-age story the world has not yet been able to see at this magnitude. "I'm just like you, except I have one huge-ass secret-nobody knows I'm gay." However, it's not long before he gets to the crux of the film's storyline. With those nine words, high school teen Simon introduces the audience to his silver screen world in the trailer for Love, Simon-a world where he's guzzling iced coffee with his pals, drunkenly sneaking into his house by curfew and generally navigating the early adult years of his life. "For the most part, my life is totally normal."
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