Breaking out of the celluloid closet.

As the gay coming-out comedy In & Out storms America's multiplexes, Hollywood is doing a little coming out of its own. Forget the independent low-budget gay film or even the mid-budget film with a gay subplot. Hollywood's major studios are throwing big money at a brand new movie genre: the gay blockbuster.

With this summer's hit comedy My Best Friend's Wedding soaring past $100 million at the box office and Rupert Everett soaring to stardom on the strength of his scene-stealing turn as the film's gay best friend, suddenly, in studio boardrooms and showbiz media headlines, gay is good. But how good?

Attitudes are clearly changing in Hollywood toward gay material. However, although most major studio slates now boast upcoming pictures with gay themes and characters, this first-ever bumper crop of gay-themed pictures is likely to show both how far we've come and how much further we need to go.

In some ways the success of My Best Friend's Wedding is the first fruit of a honeymoon that began last year when The Birdcage earned more than $100 million at the box office. Before that gay subject matter had been confined to the limited releases and low budgets that independent companies could provide. The Birdcage proved there was gold in them there high heels.

In the next few months, Hollywood hopes to follow in The Birdcage's footsteps with such gay-themed pictures as Warner Bros.' Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Clint Eastwood's adaptation of John Berendt's best-selling novel; TriStar's As Good as It Gets (formerly titled Old Friends), directed by TV and film veteran James L. Brooks; and 20th Century Fox's The Object of My Affection, the long-in-the-works adaptation of Stephen McCauley's novel, helmed by gay director Nicholas Hytner (The Crucible).

In & Out screenwriter Paul Rudnick, one of Hollywood's few openly gay writers, points squarely to the financial success of previous pictures as the dominant note in Hollywood's new gay-friendly tune. "There's absolutely a new openness to this material," he says. "And I would say it's primarily due to the financial success of earlier gay-themed pictures. The fact that The Birdcage and Philadelphia made substantial amounts of money increased interest in developing and making these movies. That's always the bottom line--Hollywood responds more to income than it does to good intentions."

Consider the story of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, starring Kevin Spacey and John Cusack. From start to finish the film has been championed by major players noted for their sense of the bottom line. It was supermacho action producer Joel Silver (Lethal Weapon) who pitched the project to Warner Bros. The studio immediately bit--and no-nonsense businessman Eastwood signed on to direct.

With the business deals in place, Hollywood spokesmen are getting more comfortable with the G word. Bill Gerber, Warner Bros.' copresident of production, insists that Midnight's gay subject matter--the true story of a prominent Savannah, Ga., man (Spacey) accused of killing his male lover (Jude Law)--was neither an attraction nor a deterrent for the studio.

"Midnight is a movie based on a huge best-seller," he says. "Certainly that was our approach to it. The gay subject matter just happened to be what it was about. I think for Warners and for Clint Eastwood, the bottom line is finding good material. Characters' being gay--or any other controversial aspect--wouldn't change that. Whether it features lead characters who happen to be gay or happen to be Jewish doesn't make a difference."

Gerber does admit that "there was a time when people didn't as readily accept gay lead characters." But now, he adds, "after the success of My Best Friend's Wedding and how spectacular Rupert Everett was in that film, I think those days are diminished to a large degree."

And cynics be damned, there's also more than money behind Hollywood's changing attitude toward gay-themed projects. The tired old town is getting regular infusions of blood from the friskier world of independent film.

Typical of this new breed of decision makers is Tom Rothman, president of production at 20th Century Fox. Formerly the head of the Samuel Goldwyn Co., Rothman oversaw 1990's Long-time Companion, the first feature to focus on the impact of the AIDS crisis on the gay community. In the more powerful position he occupies these days, Rothman purchased The Object of My Affection, the story of a straight woman who falls in love with her gay roommate.

Rothman points out that Hollywood is known not so much for setting social standards as it is for following them. "There is a general broadening of perspective in relation to gay issues, society-wide," he says. "Look at what's happened with Ellen on prime-time TV. In the media in general, I think there is less of a regionalization of this subject matter."

Nevertheless--despite what America's gay and lesbian filmgoers might wish--the effort to make and market big-budget gay-themed movies remains a significant financial gamble. If In & Out turns a profit in theaters across the country, it will be one of the first gay-themed Hollywood films to do so.

Gay film buffs will recall the pioneering 1982 gay drama Making Love. It bombed. As did Robert Towne's 1982 lesbian love story Personal Best. The sound of no hands clapping put a deep freeze on gay subject matter for almost a decade.

"There was a time when every studio exec would point to the failure of Making Love as absolute proof that films with gay characters or subject matter could not make money," says Rudnick. Interestingly, it was not a comedy but an AIDS drama, 1993's Philadelphia, that turned the tide--and, not incidentally, a tidy profit.

"Everybody's a simpleminded soul out here," says As Good as It Gets director Brooks, whose upcoming comedy stars Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Greg Kinnear, who plays a flam-boyant gay artist. "Once you prove that box office isn't affected, nobody has a problem with anything. Philadelphia was very important in this regard. There were probably real concerns about limitations on box office, given the subject matter. If Philadelphia had not been successful, I think it would have cast a dark cloud that would have taken years to come back from."

But if the success of Philadelphia led to The Birdcage and both in turn helped bring about the new gay glasnost in Hollywood, Brooks still believes there are limits on the studios' open minds--and open checkbooks. "There is certainly not the freedom to explore the gay world that there is to explore the heterosexual world," he says. "We're not anywhere near there yet."

Rudnick concurs. "Presenting gay characters as fully as straight characters, by putting two men or two women in a Pretty Woman or Casablanca or Star Wars situation, may be regarded as the final frontier," he says. "People are far more frightened of a gay kiss or a portrayal of p genuinely affectionate and romantic couple--especially in a big-movie way--than they are by raw sexuality."

But Rudnick is optimistic that even these frontiers will soon be reached, and he points to this summer's gay media darling as a leading candidate to bring it about. "The breakthrough of Rupert Everett is terrific because he certainly has the potential to be a gay leading man--a handsome, sexual movie star. That's something that hasn't been seen in studio moviemaking."

Indeed, in the wake of My Best Friend's Wedding, Everett set up two studio pictures he's planning to write and star in: a gay spy picture in the James Bond,vein at TriStar and a romantic comedy, Martha and Arthur, at Disney's Touchstone that may re-team. him with Wedding costar Julia Roberts.

The summer also saw the announcement of two more major-studio gay-themed pictures in the works. Fox's Rothman bought The Dreyfus Affair, a comedy about two baseball players who hit it off in more ways than one. And As Bees in Honey Drown--Douglas Carter Beane's off-Broadway hit about a gay writer and a Hollywood femme fatale--was snapped up by Universal in partnership with gay mogul Sandy Gallin.

Most agree that it's the preponderance of these pictures that marks a new era in Hollywood, and it's that type of critical mass that secures gay-themed movies against the inevitable vagaries of the business. In the past one flop spelled doom for a decade. That's no longer the case. "There have been enough successful movies with gay lead characters now that your odds are about the same as with any other subject," says Warner Bros.' Gerber. Rudnick puts it more succinctly: "If one movie fails, no one's going to say, `There goes the genre!'"