THINGS WE’RE LOOKING FORWARD TO: BROS

By Arnold Wayne Jones

By the time the weather gets this stultifying hot – despite the appeal of pool season – we start looking forward to the fall and all that entails: Cooler weather, upcoming holidays and, this year, Billy Eichner.

Eichner has been the secret weapon of various filmed entertainments for a decade. Starting with his YouTube videos Billy on the Street – featured on FunnyOrDie.com, and later a proper series on cable – which were equal parts super-gay, super-funny and super-terrifying, ambushing pedestrians for what must seem like a bipolar flash-mob-of-one game show, he proved mania could be marketable and hysterical. But he’s also lent brilliant comic energy in supporting roles to such diverse properties as the reboot of The Lion King (voicing Timon), Parks & Rec and Friends from College. 

Bros Courtesy of Universal Pictures

He finally will lead his own feature film, set to arrive in late September along with pumpkin spiced lattes and Halloween costume prep. Bros, which he co-wrote with (straight) director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Neighbors), tells the romantic complications of Eichner’s character, Bobby, a schulbby intellectual loner, and Aaron (out hottie Luke Macfarlane), the athletic hyper-masculine muscle hunk he falls for. But don’t expect some chastely ordinary queer-rom-com. Based on the trailers (the second one dropped last week), it’s outrageous, sexy, winkingly smart at celebrating and skewering queer culture… and incredibly funny. It also seems to be the class reunion of every gay icon and out comedic actor in Hollywood, including Kristin Chenoweth, Debra Messing, Jim Rash, Guy Branum, Guillermo Diaz, Bowen Yang and Amanda Bearse.

Bros Courtesy of Universal Pictures

How appealing is all this? Just check out the new trailer, and put Sept. 30 on your calendar. We can all bro it up!