Zack Snyder Wants to Know If You Think a Fascist Could Make a Movie This Gay

Early reviews out of the Toronto International Film Festival have not been especially kind to Zack Snyder’s The Last Photograph, a two-hour revenge epic framed like The Searchers but set in South America. As the movie hovers around 18 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with words like “racist,” “misogynist,” and “fascist,” Snyder felt the need to defend himself against the big F-word specifically. He used his feature interview in Variety to make the case that he is not a fascist. The evidence? He made the movie 300. What about the movie 300 makes someone not a fascist? Well, per his words, it’s “the gayest movie ever made.” What makes it the gayest movie ever made, and not, say, Maurice? “Look, there are few movies where people come in straight and come out gay, and 300 is one of them,” Snyder insists without providing any hard evidence.

Even if 300 were a “gay movie” as opposed to a “movie with some homoeroticism,” that doesn’t mean 300 isn’t fascist (or racist). Or that there isn’t such a thing as a gay fascist (we might have a cover story just for him). Or that a guy who isn’t fascist — as Snyder insists he’s not — can’t make a movie that is fascist. There’s a lot of complicated, nuanced things happening here, all of which are easily ignored by Snyder calling his own movie “the gayest movie ever.” That’s not really something you can say about your own work, but power to him. Anything to distract from your latest bad movie.