How gay is that

The gap between films like 'Milk' and fluff such as 'Gays Gone Wild!' is vast, with no bridge in sight

Gay movies come in two categories: the ones you see and the ones you don't. Gus Van Sant's "Milk," with Sean Penn as the late San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, is one you'll see. "Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild!" is one you won't.

Is "Gays Gone Wild!" even worth talking about? The cliches, stunt sex, talking venereal diseases, and general filthiness don't really owe anything to Harvey Milk - or Gus Van Sant, for that matter. But this raunchy little movie, which managed to get an unheralded theatrical release a few months ago, along with an army of movies like it (many of which are available through the independent video retailer TLA), occupies a trifling extreme of gay moviemaking.

At the other end of the seesaw sits a film like "Milk," which opens Wednesday, or "Philadelphia," from 1993 - serious, unmistakably important films meant, on some level, to make the populace aware of gay issues. The gulf between singing crabs and political activism is vast. Why isn't somebody filling that gap with less socially ambitious or less ineptly obscene movies?

The problem doesn't lie with a movie like "Milk." Van Sant's film about the country's first openly gay male elected official is a portrait of both Harvey Milk and the dawn of the gay rights movement. But Van Sant uses city politics, homosexuality, American culture, and Milk's assassination as patterns in a greater pop kaleidoscope. It's a serious movie that deftly avoids the righteous trappings of self-seriousness.

It's also a movie that might make you wonder why there aren't more movies with prominent gay characters - movies that aren't overtly or ostensibly political.

The answer, of course, is that there are. On the one hand, the TLA film ghetto - through which many of the raunchy gay movies are available - is a vast landscape of artistic mediocrity. On the other, those independently made movies and their non-TLA brethren are single-handedly keeping a kind of gay moviemaking alive - and having fun doing it.

Titles like "Eating Out," "3-Day Weekend," and "Dog Tags" - the TLA synopsis warns, "Damion Dietz ('Beverly Kills') is back with a hot new film that tells the story of a friendship between a gay man and a 'straight' soldier that leads to bed" - are a far cry from gay filmmaking's confrontational revolution in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Those were years in which Todd Haynes, Isaac Julien, Gregg Araki, and a handful of others, sometimes under the aegis of the producer Christine Vachon, were making aggressive challenges to art house self-satisfaction. A night out at one of their movies (Haynes's "Poison," Araki's "The Living End," Julien's "Looking for Langston," say) meant a dangerous dose of politics with your popcorn.

By the late 1990s, that brave new wave had ebbed into a kind of complacency that began to mirror gays' slightly more visible position in American society. The movies went from the siege of "Poison" to the self-questioning romps in Paul Rudnick's "Jeffrey" and "In & Out" to the fluff of "Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss."

The movies tended to ignore, mock, or vilify homosexuality while television attempted to take up the progressive slack, with shows such as "Will & Grace" and "Six Feet Under." But the success of "Will & Grace" (1998-2006) also appeared to obviate the need, at least from the perspective of some TV producers, for another show to be as gay as farcically.

ABC became a kind of haven for gay characters who were as addled - and ultimately dull - as their straight counterparts. (Look no further than "Brothers & Sisters.") The network simultaneously became a notorious civil-rights battleground when the "Grey's Anatomy" actor Isaiah Washington was fired after he insulted (and consequently outed) a costar. Recently, the show found itself back in hot water with viewers following the abrupt, unexplained departure of Brooke Smith, whose character had just come out.

At the movies, homosexuality remains an Issue, and with very few, very bad exceptions. (Why "The Birdcage"? Why?) "Frivolity" and "gay" don't really mix. This is partly because homosexuality is a matter too close to home for Hollywood to comfortably laugh at. There are a lot of closet doors in that town staying closed - and the bravest thing an actor or, in some cases, a director can do is to open one.

So when an ostensibly straight star plays a gay part it's considered an act of courage. That's partly how the tragic love in "Brokeback Mountain" became a phenomenon: a convergence of cultural novelty and Hollywood piety - the film's general excellence and Heath Ledger's astonishing performance aside.

"Gays Gone Wild!" and its abundant, hypersexual ilk refuse the burden of seriousness. But if you're one of many average gay moviegoers who feels underserved, it's fair to point out that those movies don't take anything seriously and that's a problem, too.

Where are the movies that an average gay person can take his buddies to without feeling lectured, embarrassed, or stressed out, as if the entire future of gay civilization depends on whether you show up that opening weekend? (Perhaps you too were desperately recruited to attend "Brokeback Mountain" with the urgency of a "get out the vote" campaign.)

A few filmmakers are trying to bridge the gap between the stress of importance and the limitations of fluff. In the last several years, there was "Imagine Me & You," about an openly gay florist and her married customer; "Shelter," about two surfers in love; "Dorian Blues," about a mouthy high schooler's coming of age; "Tru Loved," with mouthier high schoolers of color; and "Save Me," a drama with Chad Allen undergoing a Christian de-gaying.

These are perfectly basic movies, avoiding both real politics and interesting sex while never quite sating the modest desire to be entertained. They wilt in the gap between fluff and prestige. Meanwhile, the lack of anything legitimately gay to watch also leaves the imagination time to wander.

How many testosterone-soaked high-school action movies ("The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," "The Covenant," "Never Back Down," et al) can a person watch without wondering why all the boys are close-talk-ing each other so much and so often?

Then there are the selected films of Owen Wilson ("You, Me and Dupree") and Matthew McConaughey ("Failure to Launch"). Why can't those dudes find the right girl?

Things are looking dubious for mainstream movies and homosexuality any time one of the most sophisticated treatments of male love is "Jackass Number 2" and when the most compelling political statement (pre-"Milk," of course) comes from "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry." It might be years before my favorite non-"Milk" gay character in a movie this year - razzle-dazzling choreographer Ryan Evans in "High School Musical 3" - realizes he's gay.

Every once in a while, though, a filmmaker has a vision that manages to make the notion of "gay filmmaking" or the question of what "gay" even means anymore seem absurd.

In 2003, that movie was "Tarnation," a homemade video memoir by Jonathan Caouette that managed to turn Caouette's life into an astounding work of psychological and cinematic origami. In 2006, that movie was John Cameron Mitchell's great ensemble love carnival, "Shortbus," which was about the post-traumatic stress of simply surviving another day. It's not fair to leave either movie wondering why more of them can't be as good or as daring, but you do.

One reason they're not is that great openly gay directors have interests other than homosexuality. In Van Sant's, Haynes's, and John Waters's films, gay is more a sensibility than a subject. Much of their brilliance as works of provocation and art arises from specific perceptions of mass culture. The same is true for Mitchell's "Shortbus."

Another, more crucial reason gay movies take fewer risks is a matter of attitude. American movies are uptight. In the last 30 years, Hollywood has grown squeamish about sex, regardless of who's having it. In Kirby Dick's 2006 documentary about the motion picture ratings board, "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," Kimberly Peirce, the director of "Boys Don't Cry," made the flabbergasting but persuasive observation that the MPAA is averse to sexual pleasure, especially a woman's, more especially if another woman is doing the pleasuring. The movie goes on to argue that films with sex scenes, independent films in particular, receive more "R" ratings than films with profanity or violence.

Politics may be thorny but the MPAA doesn't have guidelines for them. Ditto for something like the queeny minor characters who show up in movies to make quips and be flamboyant. This partially explains why the gonzo loveless sex thrives so happily in marginal, unrated movies like "Gays Gone Wild!": Nobody's looking.

If it sounds like I'm arguing for more seriousness, I'm not. I'm arguing for better, more centrist inanity. Surely, the moment is ripe to move the cheesy plots, emotional shallowness, and ridiculously athletic intercourse of "Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds" closer to the entertainment middle, if not closer to "Milk." Given the civil rights fracases that have cropped up across the nation over the last couple of years, where, for instance, are our comedies of gay remarriage?

To get more decent gay comedies or dramas, a filmmaker needs a delicate balance of frivolity and gravity, and reserve and recklessness - fearlessness, not too many speeches, and a respect for an audience that considers itself no different from other paying customers. Talent and a certain moderation are excellent tools to start transforming more movies you wouldn't see into movies you would.

Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to www.boston.com/movienation.