Pop Culture Fix: Olivia Wilde’s Queer Teen Buddy Comedy “Booksmart” Is Just One of the Five Gay Trailers in This Post

In this week’s Pop Culture Fix, I will prove, definitively, that all movies are gay now (or should be).


+ Literally all I want to do is talk about Captain Marvel, and while I will mostly refrain from doing that in this Pop Culture Fix, I would like to note that the film destroyed even Marvel’s most optimistic projections, and will earn over $500 million worldwide while I’m typing this sentence on Tuesday afternoon. Variety even says the myth of women superheroes flopping at the box office is over.

And now I shall unleash so many trailers for queer films upon you.

+ Booksmart is blowing critics’ minds at SXSW. It’s an Olivia Wilde-directed indie buddy comedy about two teenage girls — one of whom is queer — getting up to some shenanigans on their last night of high school. Lady Bird meets Superbad is what they say. New York Magazine‘s Emily Yoshida called it a masterpiece.

+ My Days of Mercy, starring Ellen Page and Kata Mara.

+ Anna Paquin’s Tell It to the Bees.

+ The full official season two trailer for Killing Eve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLq2BDkCzyA&feature=youtu.be

+ BBC has dropped a trailer for Gentleman Jack, a new series about Anne Lister. (In the US, we’re getting it on HBO.)

+ Autostraddle CEO/Editor-in-Chief Riese Bernard is rightly quoted in this piece at NewNowNext about queer women who have never seen The L Word coming out and admitting it.

+ There’s a new Orphan Black series in development at AMC? I asked our very own Orphan Black expert Valerie Anne to explain this to me and she did so thusly: “IT’S SACRILEGE IS WHAT IT IS. IT’S NOT ORPHAN BLACK WITHOUT TATIANA, YOU MONSTERS.”

+ The entire USWNT is suing U.S. Soccer for gender discrimination. Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan chatted about it on CBS This Morning.

+ Frankie Shaw’s SMILF has been canceled at Showtime due to a probe into her alleged misconduct.

+ How one joke evolved along with Rhea Butcher’s gender identity.

+ Why Women Kill is coming to CBS All Access.

+ One more thing:

+ Hulu has set a premiere date for Harlots season three and it’s July 10th, with episodes dropping on subsequent Wednesdays after that.

+ Netflix has set a premiere date for She’s Gotta Have It season two and it’s May 24th.

+ It feels like Freeform’s Jordin Sparks’ comedy has to have a gay character, right?

+ And finally: Busy Phillips flew a plane around LA telling Netflix to #RenewODAAT! (I mean, she hired a plane — she didn’t fly it herself; she’s not some kind of Alison DiLaurentis.)

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1719 articles for us.

20 Comments

  1. Well technically we don’t know if Tatiana is involved in the new Orphan Black show yet do we? I agree it’s unlikely but I’ll hold out hope until we know.

    Apparently Tell It To The Bees is terrible and changes the book in some bad ways. FYI

    • Yep, it turns the ending from a happy one to a sad one, because straight people like to see us suffer. I’ll be skipping it.

  2. I can’t help but wonder how Sally Wainwright is going to needlessly kill off Ann Lister. #lasttangoinhalifax #justiceforkate

  3. When I first heard about My Days of Mercy, I cringed and thought it sounded awful, but the trailer looks great! I wonder if I’ll be waiting as long to see it as I have for Wild Nights With Emily.

  4. i guess ellen page’s new niche is soft hearted soft butch? i’m into it whatever it is

  5. Can we all agree that Kaitlyn Dever’s character in “Booksmart” is just Eve Baxter grown up? Because that girl should have been gay.

  6. OMG, the Killing Eve trailer! It looks like Villanelle is pining after Eve in her twisted, demented way while Eve is just in deep denial of having “no feelings”. Oh April is going to be so much fun.

    Also, I can’t stop watching the bit in the trailer where Villanelle tells that Instagram blogger to “get a real life”. It’s ridiculously hilarious!

  7. I’m SO excited for Booksmart! Also Villanelle can do whatever she wants to me, holy hell.

  8. That’s ok, I’m 50 and I haven’t seen all of The L Word yet either (nor probably will). I think I bailed during season 5, the episode after we first meet Dawn Denbo and her lover Cindi.

  9. I was so excited for Gentleman Jack but I just finished a book about her (Gentleman Jack by Angela Steidele) and she was not a nice person. The way she treated women in her search for a rich wife, and how she treated that wife, is not something I want to watch now. But I also hope they don’t make it all sweet and romantic because that relationship was not. Her diaries are important as lesbian history but I just want to see some happy lesbian stories for a change.

  10. it seems worth adding that Beanie Feldstein, who plays the straight friend in Booksmart, is currently dating a woman.

  11. I’d like to toss in a Czech movie – it’s in English but filmed in Brno – called Sklenený Pokoj (The Glass Room). It’s based on a book by Simon Mawer and it’s about the love story of two women that spans decades. It’s a bit slow but I liked the tension and drawn out nature of the movie, and I’m always a sucker for love stories set during the tumultuous period of WWII. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAU5ru7RQM4

  12. I am woefully behind on AS articles (as per usual) so no one will probably see this comment, but I really want to see Booksmart! I LOL’d for real several times during the trailer, and the “Korean face mask” part had my wife & I crying laughing. SO GOOD.

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