Ryan Murphy's Hollywood

Well, I am not the target audience for American Horror Show, but I did end up watching the Ryan Murphy series Hollywood after all, despite having heard it was not great. It was definitely entertaining in a trashy way: it's a fantasy "what if" story--what if Hollywood wasn't as bigoted as all that. On the one hand, it was bunk. On the other hand, wouldn't we have loved it if a story like this could have happened, where people defied prejudice and didn't get blackballed? Jim Parsons plays a loathsome agent who abuses everyone, but gets a redemption arc and tries to make amends to "Rock Hudson" and decides to make a movie that's a love story between two men. This made me realize that I don't know what the first movie was that portrayed a real love story between two men, before Brokeback Mountain. I found this list on imdb of films worldwide with LGBTQ+ themes and so many of them seem to be bound up in stereotypes, equating homosexuality with depravity, or punishing gay characters to conform to the Hays code, enforced until 1968.  This slideshow is more centered around how U.S. films and Hollywood represented LGBTQ+ themes or characters, although it doesn't mention underground films like Warhol or Kenneth Anger. I did watch The Celluloid Closet on the plane on my way to Spain.