Twink Dispatch: 'The Boys in the Boat'

Three months ago, friend of the newsletter Matt Erspamer told me I should watch The Boys in the Boat—the George Clooney-directed Oscar bait from December that not one person gave a fuck about, even people over the age of 60—through my unique and expert lens as a twink aficionado (his words). Now that it’s almost Q2 2024 and everyone else has completely forgotten this movie even exists, I have decided to do exactly that.

Welcome to movies, regrettably’s first ever Twink Dispatch.

The Boys in the Boat tells the story of a junior varsity crew team who proves their worth Ayn Rand style and get to represent the United States of America at the Berlin Olympics of 1936—even though they are not varsity.

The main twink of the film is noted hot Callum Turner. Also, he’s really more of a twunk and also in his mid-30s but that’s okay. Anyone who follows me on social media knows I think this man is beautiful. And I love his perhaps too physically comfortable relationship with Masters of the Air co-star Austin Butler. The sexual tension is like nothing I’ve seen before in two straight men on a press tour, and that’s saying something.

I first learned about this movie because of a social media ad where Callum Turner is blond and wearing his little shorts and he’s like “I’m Callum Turner and I’m about to get in this boat!” or something and he moves his body in a charming way. I was like, I guess I will be seeing that.

there he is

Turner plays Joe Rantz, a natural blond with inexplicable pitch black roots, who lives in a hollowed out, rusty ass car? in a shantytown outside of, you guessed it, Seattle, Washington. His mother died when he was young and his father abandoned him to start a new family in a city where there was better work. So, he lives in that car.

But he’s an engineering student at the University of Washington, a brainiac with brawn to boot. Joe’s bestie convinces him to try out for the crew team with him, because there’s money in it if they make the team. Of course, they do make the team, there would be no movie if they didn’t, and we never hear the friend speak again. Once we get in the boat, the only characters who speak are Joe; his girlfriend, Joyce (Hadley Robinson?); and the coaches, Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton) and Tom Bolles (James Wolk—where’s he been?), whose trials and tribulations take the forefront.

This is probably my favorite thing about The Boys in the Boat, how all of the twinks who are not Callum Turner are completely anonymous, even his friend who we kind of got to know in the first act. Once they get in that boat, they are no longer twink, but boat. In fact you could read this as intentional, that they become faceless as part of The Team, that nothing is more important than The Team. But I do not think that is what Clooney was going for. Not actively.

there they are

I don’t even know how to describe the feeling evoked by the anonymous twinks. Because they are omnipresent, but we know nothing about them. We see their faces, they are constantly doing reactions in the background such that I sort of feel like I do know them, despite not knowing a single concrete detail about them. But there they are, rowing away. Grunting and straining. Always wearing their little shorts, usually with a sweater on top (long sleeves with short shorts is the ideal look for a man, by the way—I’m a millennial). There is so much rowing in the movie, more than I was expecting, even for a movie called The Boys in the Boat. Every time they win a race, they go out drinking, and all the twinks are so smiley, but Turner remains the only one who has dialogue.

If you really want to know, the twink that sits behind Callum in the boat is the most stereotypically “my type.” He is a brunette, for one. I don’t know anything else about him so I don’t even know why he is my type. He’s more femme, is probably the thing. I’m really doing radical vulnerability here. I just looked through the cast on IMDb to identify which twink is which and let me tell you—I can’t do it. I am not sure which of those boys is the one that sits behind Callum Turner.

Okay, I clicked through and figured it out. The one that is most my type is called “Bruce Herbelin-Earle” and he plays “Shorty Hunt” in the movie. This is his face:

that’s shorty hunt

Until the ending, I mostly found the film to be inoffensive and pleasant. Everything you think is going to happen in this movie is exactly what happens in the movie. Even Hitler, THE Hitler, shows up in the last act (it is the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, remember) and he is really huffing and puffing at our American boys in boat.

one more time, now with arms

The story is framed by elderly Joe in the 80s, watching a bunch of kids do boating in a river or lake. In the first shot of him in the beginning, he is slicing an apple and I really found that funny. We have no idea who this old man is but he is looking wistfully at a body of water and enjoying an apple. But the ending was just ghastly—his grandson asks “did you like rowing eight-man crew?) and elderly Joe is like “we were never eight. We were one” and then he looks wistfully off into the distance at nothing.

I took off a full star from my Letterboxd rating because of this. It really made me laugh.

wonder if they did any homoerotic interviews together