Director Mark Rappaport, abetted by smug-perfect actor-narrator Dan Butler ('Frasier'), presents a myriad of film clips from a myriad of films, and manages to find 'hidden gayness' in every one of them.
The whole film is reminiscent of social scientists who stubbornly hold to certain theories, and, using questionable methods, painstakingly set out to prove them.
This flick tells us that those 'buddy' movies (Hope-Crosby, Martin-Lewis et al) were reflections of repressed homosexuality. Heterosexual affection between men is a myth: they're all hiding something.
The Walter Brennan Syndrome, as Rappaport preciously and pretentiously calls it, is really the story of those many trusted movie 'sidekicks' who secretly harbour homoerotic fantasies about their heroes. This extends to great cinematic 'sidekicks' like Brennan, Millard Mitchell, Andy Devine, Walter Huston and many others.
This is amazing arrogance, and it's stitched together here in an effort to imitate an actual documentary.
If you follow the relentless drumbeat of the Rappaport-Butler conspiracy theory, huge numbers of screenwriters and directors are or were gay, closeted or no. Why? Because they reveal themselves in their dialogue. Those double entendres and nuances are nothing more than confirmation of secreted homosexuality. Case closed. Alas, human discourse, developed over many thousands of years, is just slightly more complicated than that.
This flick deliberately tries to be sensational, and fails miserably. There is very little sensationalism to be found, unless you think 'outing' Rock Hudson, Randolph Scott and Sal Mineo is sensational. Those guys were 'outed' decades ago.
If you're looking for a truly stupid and boring fake documentary, this is for you. And it's smug; oh, is it smug. Insufferably, intolerably smug.