A Different Story (1978)

as a gay male i don't like being pigeon holed into any particular category. it's funny how the gay community loves to claim alternative lifestyle status but very rarely likes any one in their own community to step out of the prescribed mold. if you are gay, that's it, bottom line, and any diversity of your sexuality is discarded or questioned. if you're heterosexual you're allowed to be Bi or experiment. it often seems that in the gay community experimenting outside of your gay sexuality is frowned on.that's why 'A Different Story' still remains a breath of something different decades later. it explores sexual themes that a lot of gay movies don't like to touch on. i mean if you can be latently gay you can probably be latently heterosexual too. and contrary to criticism of the movie, lots of gay people have been married or attracted to the opposite sex.at the time of release in 1978, a lot of people thought this film wasn't daring enough or too afraid to break convention and be a "all gay" movie. now with the gay network Logo and gay movies more common, the outlook of this movie now seems to be less conventional and breaks a standard mold. the two main character seem very unconventional by current gay standards.it's very easy to relate to the main protagonist in this story thanks to to very fine performances by Perry King and Meg foster who are both excellent and radiate warmth and depth which helps to make their characters seem human and very fallible.this is a excellent movie for everyone as long as prejudice doesn't interfere with your viewing. prejudice from both sides, straight and gay which this movie is vulnerable to, unfortunately.

I think it unfortunate that the leading comments on this movie include the words "Clueless and appalling nonsense." I think it is a very funny movie and excellent entertainment. One has to suspend one's disbelief that a homosexual man and a lesbian woman could fall in love, have a child and live together happily ever after. But it is always wonderful to see it played out in a movie and have one's heart warmed. Is it so impossible? There are far more implausible events described in other movies. The acting is good, the script is funny. The only negative comment is that the story could well have ended when the family drives away from its initial house instead of extending on to explore whether the man retains any residual homosexuality.

This is a film for entertainment; I did not think the world made social commentary from one small film. I personally find this film funny, audacious, and memorable. It is a fantasy not unlike a cinder girl becoming a Princess. This film was done very well I might add, in the 70's a time of the best experiments in film with being able to mention a person's sexuality. This movie is not about a person being homosexual or not, it is however about love, in all it's strange forms. This film does show some of the realities of being gay in the 70's in Hollywood, or in California. Pretty boys being looked after by older not so pretty men. Women who had to stay deeply locked in the emotional closet or risk not having a career. Bathhouses were an integral part of the gay community.THEN the fantasy begins!! Let us mix a lesbian with a gay and add some liquor and what do we have? Well this movie, which in ANY way was better than that dismal redo "The Next Big Thing". Perhaps someone should have asked the entire crew to see this movie and then try to do better.I enjoyed this movie when I saw it in the 70's and it still brings a smile to my lips now. I heartily advise anyone who wants a funny, tender movie- to curl up with some popcorn and have some fun. Some people need to lighten up!!! And this is the film you should do it with!

Since this film was made in the 70's when people understood very little about homosexuality, I suppose someone was bound to come up with this absurd scenario. A gay man winds up playing house with a lesbian, then they get married to prevent his being deported.After discovering each other sexually after a drunken birthday party, they are magically turned into full-fledged heterosexuals, becoming parents in the process. Once the guy begins working for a gay designer, we're setup to think he's going to go back to his old ways. (Spoiler Alert!) Well, he's having an affair all right, but with a female model. But all is well in the end.This film is written and acted with complete sincerity, making the whole thing look truly clueless by today's standards. Gay life is represented by our hero's largely sexual attachments to wealthy men and trips to a bathhouse, while the heroine has a relationship with a pathologically insecure closeted lesbian who threatens suicide. In other words, the film makes being gay look like a truly depressing dead end existence - one that you can choose to give up when the right person of the opposite sex shows up.I suppose the bogus "ex-gay" movement could use this film as a recruiting device, except that it's pretty dull.