Love, Simon

Pride Daily.

And Jennifer Garner says Love, Simon's the most important film she's ever made.

The 53-year-old played the mum of a schoolboy coming out as gay in the 2018 story and reckons she struggles to talk about it without getting emotional.

Says she had to be a part of the movie because of its positive message and her joining the cast actually helped to get the film funded.

It is the thing that I think really opened my eyes to musicals as a kid.

that.

See, it does.

This stars Rick Moranis, Ellen Green, Vincent Gardenia, Steve Martin, and the voice of Levi Stubbs.

This was released on December 19th, 1986.

Love that this was a Christmas release.

So Christmassy.

So today we're looking at how a contemporary classic took that exact terrifying premise and translated it, you know, from the page to the big screen.

We are pulling apart an incredible piece of source material from Looper that meticulously compares Becky Albertalli's 2015 debut novel, um, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, with its 2018 cinematic adaptation, Love, Simon.

Which is such a fascinating exercise really, 'cause we aren't just talking about a book and a movie here.

Right.

We're talking about a genuine cultural watershed moment.

Right, and the film adaptation carried equally massive stakes.

You know, it was directed by Greg Berlanti, who brought his own lived experience as an openly gay man to the director's chair, and the film broke ground as a major studio rom-com centered entirely on a gay teen.

I remember the absolute frenzy when that movie was announced.

We're talking about the power of owning your story, challenging expectations, and creating art that reflects who you are, not who the world expects you to be.

My guest is a multidisciplinary artist whose journey has taken him from just western Sydney, Australia, to global stages across music, film, television, and dance.

From falling in love with the movement of dance at just the age of four years old and building a career that spans Hollywood productions, award-winning recognition, and some major fashion and luxury brand collaborations, he has never been one to fit into just one box.

With his debut album, Rainbow Boy, surpassing 52 million organic streams, he has created space for conversations around identity, self-expression, and the freedom to embrace every part of yourself.

Today's guest is a multidisciplinary artist, actor, and musician from Western Sydney, Australia.

At just four years old, he fell in love with dance and never looked back.

He trained at Brent Street Performing Arts before breaking through with his roles in Dance Academy, The Flash, The Divergent Series, and the culture-shifting film Love, Simon.

As a musician, his debut album, Rainbow Boy, earned a Glade Media Award nomination and has crossed 52 million streams organically, built on visuals he's conceives, directs, and choreographs himself.

I don't know.

Love it.

I'm going to do it anyway.

But that's how we're going to kind of frame this episode because I think it's important.

Well, can we talk about next week's movie? Um, so next week's movie, uh, next week's movie, I, I, I'm ha I keep on battling between three movies, but I think it's going to be love Simon.

Um, if y'all haven't seen love Simon, it's life.

Love Simon is on Hulu.

Um, it, uh, Whereas this is your age group movie.

She's my favorite thing of all time.

Love her.

She might be Anastasia.

Love her.

Shout out Olivia, my queen.

Gorgeous girl.

Yes.

And she said, I think about it every day.

Yeah.

stories that we already know about but I think we have sort of come from an era of seeing a lot of coming out stories and I think coming out stories are always important and we will always see them but it is also nice to see queer work where queer people are already existing in the world and they don't have to have that coming out moment which can often be like associated with like trauma or you know like emotional struggle and rejection I mean sometimes they're really like beautiful like I think obviously Love Simon was a film that came out a few years ago that was like obviously a big mainstream film and even though again it's kind of telling a very familiar story like there was something like very joyous in like that being such a big mainstream success but yeah I'm excited about films where queer characters just are I think sometimes it's quite nice when they film you know queerness is almost secondary to the film and it's just these people are you know living their life they're up to whatever they're up to and they also happen to be queer as well you know maybe you're just seeing them like at home, you're seeing them with friends, you're just seeing the way they're able to like live their lives.

So I think, yeah, I think that's really beautiful.

I think any way that queerness can sort of be like wrapped up in genres where we're not often represented, I think obviously some really exciting stuff is happening in sort of like the horror and genre world, like I know everyone was obviously talking about teenage sex and death at Camp Miasma, but the way that that's sort of like interrogating how queer people exist in more sort of like niche genre films, I think is really exciting.