Love, Simon

Greg Berlanti’s 110 minute film follows Simon, a high school student who has told nobody he is gay. It comes from Becky Albertalli’s 2015 novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, winner of the American Library Association’s William C. Morris Award for a young adult debut. Shooting took place in Atlanta in March and April 2017. BuzzFeed News described it as the first movie produced by a major studio about a gay teenager, and 20th Century Fox opened it on 2,400 American screens on 16 March 2018. The decisive change is the ending. In the novel Simon meets Blue at a fairground without telling anyone, and nobody learns they are together until the next school day. The film has him post the meeting place on the school Tumblr, so his friends and half the school stand below the ferris wheel and watch. Coming out stops being a private appointment and becomes a scene with an audience. Two other changes matter: Simon’s older sister Alice is gone, and Leah’s crush, aimed at Nick in the book, is redirected at Simon. A good fit if you want the coming out staged in front of a cheering crowd rather than kept private. Not for readers who will miss Alice and Leah’s feelings for Nick, because the film rewrites both.