In The Big Gay Musical, actors Paul and Eddie (Daniel Robinson and Joey Dudding) are starring as the first same-sex couple in Adam & Steve: Just the Way God Made ’Em! an off-Broadway tuner that looks at Genesis through lavender-colored lenses. But the real gay drama is offstage, where Eddie comes out to his religious parents and Paul ditches dating to whore around. Having premiered at Philadelphia’s QFest in July before a brief Provincetown run, The Big Gay Musical now opens in New York City on September 11 and plays more than 20 LGBT film festivals around the world this fall. First-time screenwriter Fred M. Caruso (who codirected the film with Slutty Summer’s Casper Andreas and penned the songs with NEWSical’s Rick Crom) took a break from writing the second installment of a planned TBGM trilogy to tell Advocate.com why his movie is so much sexier than Prayers for Bobby.



Advocate.com: What was the genesis for The Big Gay Musical?
Fred M. Caruso: I actually wrote Adam & Steve, the musical within the movie, eight years ago. So many gay people have been screwed up by religion, but gay shows and movies about religion always end up being so depressing. I wanted to create a show with a positive message about being gay and religion that was funny, campy, and crazy.

Did you ever mount Adam & Steve?

I did a reading of it back when I wrote it, but as a commercial theater producer I realized that the show could never make money. It has a cast of 10 people, so it could never really find an audience to sustain it. But now that the movie’s out and can help sell the show, there’s actually talk of mounting Adam & Steve, so we’re looking at the possibilities.