In a way, the movie The Full Monty is how I got married to my lovely wife.
Flashback to 1997
Back in 1997, the Internet was a baby and we pretty much had text and low-graphic gifs for communication. A lot of us connected on chat boards, message rooms, online roleplaying games, and the like. My wife and I were on a roleplaying game together, we had mutual friends and started chatting about this and that. I’d moved to Chicago recently, so online chatting was how I kept in touch with my old West Coast friends, and that included my now-wife.
At some point, I ended up going to the movies with my East Coast/Midwest friends, and one of them wanted to see The Full Monty. All we really knew was it was big hit in England, it was about a bunch of guys who raised money by stripping, and it was a comedy. I was up for pretty much any entertainment, and as long as it wasn’t a horror movie, I was in.
A few days after I got back from the movie, the movie came up in conversation and I said it was actually a great movie. My wife said she had no interest in seeing a movie about a bunch of men waggling their bits at women, and honestly she had a point. But I told her what I saw in the movie.
What I saw was a movie about a group of men who had very little else in their lives. They were broke, struggling, lonely, alone (which is a different thing), and they needed support where there was none. And these men formed a found family.
On my recommendation, she went to the movie, she loved it for the same reasons I did, and we started talking and one thing led to another. Now we’ve been together for over a quarter century and I’m heading on a vacation with her to see parts of the world we’ve never been.
Found Family
Any queer will tell you about their found family. We all have them. Mine exists in large part due to Tracy, my cohort in crime on this site. From the day she walked into my hotel room and we chatted, my life was changed for the better. But that came many years later. In 1997? My found family was a lot smaller. I had a few gay guys I was friends with, but I didn’t have a structure of friendly support. My biological family, don’t get me wrong, is amazing, but they’re not queer.
My found family gives me love and support in a very different way because they understand. They know about the internalized hate, they know about the fear, and they know about the anger. We just want to be, you know? And why the hell does everyone hate us? Even today, we see laws passed that only hurt queers, and for what? To feel better or more important?
That makes us feel more alone.
The movie has one gay man, Lomper. We meet him when he’s trying to kill himself, because he has nothing, just an aging mother. We don’t know he’s gay yet, that comes later, and when it does, my heart ached. This poor man had no one. He had no one to talk to about his feelings, his fears, and he lived a life of solitude and sadness. And how many people do we know who are dead queers in our real lives? How many killed themselves due to no support or love for who they are? How many were killed?
Lomper, luckily, meets Gaz and Dave (and Gerald) and suddenly you see hope in his eyes. Then he found love with Guy, fleeting though it turns out to be, Lomper becomes who he always was, and suicide stops being a thing for him. He lives, because he has family. As Dave puts it, “Nowt’s as queer as folk.”
The movie ends with the boys having their moment in the spotlight. For one night only, they provide the Full Monty, and you’re left with hope.
Twenty Six Years Later
Frankly, the world has gone to shit in 26 years, and there’s no denying it. Climate Change, Brexit, COVID, wars… It’s bad. And when we rejoin the boys, it sucks for most of them. Dave and Jean finally had the child they wanted, only for him to die a crib death and Jean begins an affair. Gaz hasn’t change much at all, his life is a mess, he lives in a trailer, his second child, Destiny, is as messed up as he is, his son’s a cop with a disabled son of his own, and nothing every works for him.
Guy seems successful, but is a chronic liar who vanishes from time to time (note: Guy’s actor was removed from the series for inappropriate conduct, which is likely why he gets written out abruptly), even abandoning his pregnant fiancé. Lomper is married to lovely baker, Dennis, with whom he’s opened a struggling café named “Big Baps.” Gerald is a man out of time, seeming to struggle more and more with the modern world (note: Gerald’s actor passed away shortly after the release of the series, and his poor health is hard to miss). Horse … Horse is just old, and clearly running out of time.
They’re all struggling. They’re all sad. They’re all in a bad place.
But unlike the movie, the series is incredibly sad. It’s darker, like the world, and while the blokes have changed, so did the world and they’re not equipped for it.
Of course… Are any of us?
ReFound Family
The thing is, I love and hate the series.
I love seeing these blokes again. I love their humor, the fact that they can’t dance half as well as they did a quarter century at all, and their love for each other. I adore the growth and change, and some of the non-change. Lomper continues to be a bit simple (he doesn’t get why ‘big baps’ is an insensitive name), but his love for Dennis is impossible to miss. Dave still struggles with his weight, and talking about his problems, but he loves his Jeanie, even with their mistakes.
Perhaps endemic of the story overall, Gaz remains a failure at everything. Everything. He tries to help a struggling, diagnosed schizophrenic, artist, and it backfires. Badly. But no matter what, Gaz has one thing that makes him the hero. Gaz cares for his friends. Sometimes (okay many times) this is to the detriment of the relationship with his kids, but he does care about them too. Gaz will break the law for his friends, he’ll sell his home for his children, and the one thing he can always be relied on is that, when the chips are down, Gaz is there. No matter the personal cost.
At the end, the boys come together for one last farewell. They show that even 26 years later, the found family will be there for each other. They will love each other, support each other, and they are always, forever, family.
If it wasn’t for the darkness (and the death), I would love this series. The death is why my wife cannot watch it. We would rather sit and think of the end of the movie, hats in the air, naked butts on display, and the success of a stripping. Instead, the series is a farewell to friends that leaves you dwelling on mortality.
But … But I still find myself smiling fondly at the guys and their antics. I mean, how does a pigeon, a mattress, an electric piano, a dip in a lake, and a death make me smile? I can’t explain it. Maybe it’s really the fondness I have for the movie, and the special place it is in my heart, but I do love this series as well. As dark, as painful, as it is, I sat and cried with happiness when they bring the team back together.
Should You See The Full Monty?
Assuming you don’t have that shared experience with the movie? I think the series is worth a go. Not for the queerness, it’s a blip on the radar (though incredibly obvious to any queers). And the best you can say about the gay in the series is that it’s just another part of life and no one turns a hair. But if you want to see a story about a found family in the darkest points of their lives who love each other and never give up, have a go at it.
In the end, I love the boys from Sheffeild, a city on the move.
I hope you will too.
