San Francisco’s Castro Theater hosts historic LGBTQ ‘Bros’ movie premiere

SAN FRANCISCO — A historic movie premiere in San Francisco’s Castro District Sunday night drew more than a thousand people to the theater.  

‘Bros’, the first gay romantic comedy distributed by a major Hollywood studio, got it first public screening in the U.S. and the San crowd gave an enthusiastic welcome to actors Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane. 

“It’s interesting when we sat down to write the movie five years ago we never thought about being historic, we didn’t know that it was historic, we just wanted to make a really funny, touching movie,” said Eichner, who co-wrote and starred in the film. “But then it turned out there are historic statistics attached to it, so that’s very exciting, it’s an honor.” 

Eichner stars in ‘Bros’ as Bobby, who navigates the modern dating world and runs into Macfarlane’s character Aaron. 

The entire cast of the movie is openly LGBTQ, but stars said the movie was meant to be relatable for everyone. 

“I mean funny is funny, and it’s very rare to get a comedy that makes me laugh out loud from start to finish,” said Eichner. 

“If every single time you went to a movie only if it related to your specific world view, you would not see very many movies,” said Macfarlane.

“It’s interesting because LGBTQ folks we grow up pretty much only seeing movies about straight love stories, so this is a good chance to flip the script,” added Eichner.  

The stars held a meet-and-greet before the sold-out screening. They took photos with Metallica’s drummer Lars Ulrich, and some of San Francisco’s most famous drag queens. 

“This gives us hope, because this is sort of a love story for the underdog maybe?” said Sister Roma. “Love is out there for everybody. It’s hard sometimes to be a fabulous queen and find love, right girls?”

“We’ve all grown up with rom-coms and the gay person is always the side character, but this is our thing, it’s our turn to be the main character,” said premiere attendee Danny Caragan of Oakland.   

The line for a chance to see the main characters on the big screen stretched for several blocks. 

“I’m taking a lot of plane rides these days as part of promotion for the movie, and I re-watched the Harvey Milk documentary and I was so struck by how early and how powerful and how important the queer movement is to this city and how it’s knit altogether with this city, so it’s an honor,” said Macfarlane.  

‘Bros’ comes out in theaters September 30th.