#big eden 2000

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[fredbydawn]

Pike is tall, shy, autistic, and his love language is cooking, he’s literally the ideal man

[celluloidrainbow]

BIG EDEN (2000) dir. Thomas Bezucha Henry Hart, a successful New York Artist, returns to the town of his childhood to care for the ailing grandfather who raised him. Back in tiny and quaint Big Eden, Henry must come to terms with his relationship to Dean Stewart, his best friend from high School, as well as the object of his unrequited love. All these years Henry has been pining for a dream image of Dean from back then. This is also the story of Pike Dexter, the shy, unassuming owner of the town's general store, who is as surprised as anyone to find himself falling in love with Henry. The people of Big Eden conspire and attempt to bring Henry and Pike together. (link in title)

[mash-or-pass]

big eden (2000) good luck babe edit

[deramin2]

If we're going for the definition of Christmas being "Movies that happen around Christmas where that setting frames some of what's happening in the broader narrative," then I have 3 gay Holiday movies to check out.

Directly Holiday Movies:

Bros (2020):

Romcom, 115 minutes

Bobby Lieber is a successful New York City queer history podcaster, failed children's book writer, and rejected screenwriter, who's just won a community award for Best White Cis Gay Man. He announced he will be the first curator of a new national LGBTQ+ history museum in Manhattan.

His new coworkers are deeply passionate about the work but also squabble over everything, escalating it with intra-community discourse squabbling about who's the most oppressed and therefore should be the person that gets what they want. As someone in Very Online queer communities I can't emphasis enough how accurate and real this is and is very well-handled as an affectionate joke from within the community. The subtext is that they aren't wrong and what they're experiencing is real and needs to be factored in, but also they're stopping anything at all from actually happening that could materially help their community because they're too caught up trying to perfect the details.

He prefers Grindr hookups to romantic relationships. He regularly hate-watches Hallheart movies while secretly longing to be truly loved in more than just passing.

Bobby goes to the launch party for his friend's new queer dating app. There he meets Aaron Shepard, a hot but boring estate lawyer and they hit it off and kiss. They ultimately meet up again and the romcom unfolds in unconventional ways.

Bros both play into the romcom genre and resist it, especially how it erases what queer relationships are really like even when the characters are the same gender. It's a queer movie really made for the queer community and not the straight gaze. It's our jokes for us. It has some of the funniest sex scenes I've ever seen. The ending is absolute perfection. Overall extremely funny and intelligent movie.

Holiday connection: Bobby and Aaron celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas together at one point.

Spoiler Alert (2020)

Medical Death Memoir, 112 minutes

Based on the memoir 2017 Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies by Michael Ausiello about his partner Kit Cowan dying of cancer after being together 14 years. (The movie tells you this is the end at the beginning.) It's basically in 3 acts.

Act 1, is a romcom about how Michael and Kit met at a gay club, and instantly connect. It's about the comedy of trying to integrate into each other's lives, insecurities, and weirdness. Like Michael's secret all-consuming fandom. This is the first long-term relationship either of them have had.

Act 2, the relationship 12 years into it and where they are now.

Act 3, Kit is diagnosed with cancer and they reconcile with mortality and running out of time.

This is a very poignant film about love, lost, and how relationships are never as perfect as movies and TV make them seem. One way or another they all end, and you have to reconcile what all those feelings mean. It's about the string of platonic and familial relationships that come along with romantic ones and how important that love is, too. How our networks hold us together. It's about forgiveness and making sure you really talk to the people you care about while you can.

Respect if you can't handle another film about queer medical death. But it's nice to have one that's not about AIDS. It's also a really good study of the reality of cancer for anyone. I found it to be a really powerful film that made me come away wanting to actually live my life.

Holiday connection: Christmas is Michael's favorite holiday that fills him with magic and wonder and the passage of time is marked by Christmases.

Holiday Movie Adjacent:

Big Eden (2000)

Romcom, 117 minutes

One of the first gay romcoms ever, and hugely influential. This isn't a holiday movie, but it's directly engaging with most of the tropes of Hallmark movies, so I think it deserves to be here.

New York City gay artist Henry Hart suddenly leaves his home and career to go to the remote mountain town of Big Eden Montana to care for his ailing grandfather Sam after a stroke.

Through the church gossip he hears his high school crush Dean Stewart has moved back to town with his boys after getting a divorce, and Henry realizes he still has feelings about him.

The widow Thayer offers to help cook for Henry and Sam. The meals are delivered by shy Native American general store owner Pike Dexter, who's been harboring a crush on Henry since high school. He's been ordering Henry's fine paints for him. The general store has a flock of old men who spend the whole day gossiping there.

Widow Theyer's cooking is dreadful 1950s white bread Americana stuff. Pike decides he wants to make things nice for Henry, so he teaches himself gourmet cooking and makes increasingly elaborate meals. Then more romcom stuff happens.

One thing I love about it is that Henry, Dean, and Pike are closeted. Henry and Dean both express fear about coming out. But everyone in the town is friendly with the open hardware store lesbians. As their being queer becomes more obvious, it's shown that everyone around them would actually love and respect them and would appreciate being let into their inner lives. It's outside societal conditioning and outdated assumptions that's made them scared. In 2000 this message was a big deal. Everything else we had was tragedies about how society hates us. This resisted all of that.

This movie leans into a lot of tropes with so much love and sincerity, but also interrogates them and makes them queer and really has something very intelligent to say about how we deserve to be viewed in stories. Gay Hallmark films attempt to recreate stories like this on the surface, but lack any depth or real queerness and just end up being a warped straight parody. Seeing the real deal makes you really see what absolute garbage lesser films are.

[keep-dreaming-killjoys]

I watched Big Eden for the first time today while I was working. like I got an ad for one of those short form series but it was queer and had a fake marriage plot, so i watched it and it was silly and over the top but it left me feeling like watching queer romcoms, so I watched the thing about harry and when I was done with that one i still wanted to keep watching romcoms, but all that came to mind were ones with high school settings and I didn't feel like it, so I googled queer romcoms and got recommended a lot of those high school ones but like three of the lists included Big Eden, so I watched it while answering emails and now I'm devastated bc I can't experience it for the first time again and I feel like I didn't pay it the attention it deserved bc I had to answer emails!!!!!! anyways, what a lovely movie, imma rewatch it 16 more times

[gloomiedyke]

"I know it's foolish. I just want things to be nice for him." + "The thing is, we want things to be nice for you, too."

"Did we teach you shame?"

"I want you to have it. I want to think of you with it."

*learns to cook extremely complicated and lovely meals all on his own just to feed the man he loves without credit*

Big Eden really invented love, huh. Nothing quite tops this movie for me in terms of demonstrating love of all kinds. The impeccable queer romance, the found family, the quiet acts of devotion, food as a love language, loving community... a fantastic comfort movie, if anyone's feeling down and needs some sweetness and kindness.

[toastywindow]

Dear Soulmate | Big Eden (2000)

am Unwell for this movie I love this movie so much. To the user jay from letterbox that I randomly followed one day and recommended this? Thank you very much..,,.,.,.,.., It's so fucking Good

Big Eden (2000) is the property of Chaiken Films

Music: Dear Soulmate by Laufey

Nothing is owned by me and are the property of the appropriate owners.

[one-and-a-half-threat]

:(

Big Eden (2000)

[transratsactivist]

the background lesbians were so important for this movie, actually

[cappuccinoandglitter]

I'd forgotten how silly and wholesome this movie was. The old busybody welcomes Henry into town, engineers a party for him to meet all the eligible ladies. When she realizes Henry is gay, she redoes the whole party but with a bunch of men. Without missing a beat.

Then there's Pike who is teaching himself to cook so he can replace Mrs. Thayer's terrible cooking with his own on his meal deliveries to Henry, but won't take credit for it because he's painfully shy.

Meanwhile Henry's high school boyfriend disaster-bi Dean (played by Tim DeKay who is no stranger to looking at his costar like he wants to tap that) is just being a slutty little bastard showing himself off to Henry because he can.

All this in a fictional town in Montana where homophobia doesn't exist and I just love that.

[fructo]

"'Did we teach you shame? Did I teach you that? Because it would break my heart if I had. Can't you see what a good job God did here? Can't you see how beautiful He made you?'"

-Big Eden (2000)

[fredbydawn]

Autistic gays, come get y’all’s juice

[gender-luster]

dean stewart, big eden is so special to me, actually. as an aromantic person who has tried so hard, and failed, multiple times to be in romantic relationships with people because i desperately wanted to be close to them, and that's the kind of relationship they wanted from me, and has lost close, meaningful relationships with people because they couldn't see me as anything other than an object of romantic desire, and that's something i simply cannot reciprocate

[pippamiddlethong]

Big Eden (2000)

[future-dregs]

Food as a metaphor ect. in Big Eden.

Pike makes Henry and his grandfather food. Good, healthy, beautiful meals.

He isnt quite sure what's going on with his emotions, he's doing so much so outside of his comfort zone and he doesn't fully understand why (at least, in the beginning) and he can't share a meal just yet, or take the credit for all of his efforts, but he's open to this, he's ready, even if he doesn't know quite what for, and the result is something beautiful and delicious.

(Falling in love with Henry caught Pike off guard and was unexpected, but he's ready for it, he throws himself into it. His anxieties stem from social anxiety and reciprocation, not from his own sexuality.)

Dean makes Henry scrambled eggs. He's trying to comfort him and take care of him, but he doesn't know where things are in the kitchen, he burns the eggs, and in the end no one even eats them.

(Dean wants to embrace and explore his sexuality (for my money he's bi) but he can't just throw himself into it. He's not there yet, no matter how much he wants to be. He's still working through the ends and outs of his sexuality, (he's just come out of a divorce) and he and Henry are in completely different places, in their lives, and in their queerness, and its DIFFICULT FOR HIM. Henry's already had to go through this, but Dean is in pain, he's going through it right and it hurts him. He's not doing anything wrong by being unable to enter into a romance with Henry, and Henry isnt doing anything wrong by being unable to work with Dean through his sexual experimentation/understanding/awakening, but they are incompatible, romantically speaking.)

Henry meanwhile doesn't make food for anyone, he rarely even serves it to others, only occasionally bringing a plate in to someone, sometimes pouring coffee, or setting a table.

He's spent his whole life knowing he was gay and and being in love with someone he couldn't be with. He's hungry, and ready to receive.

But of his two suitors, only Pike is in a place to feed him the way that he needs.