Zack Snyder says he isn't a fascist, calls 300 "the gayest movie ever made"

No doubt anything made by a Zack Snyder untethered by studio expectations will elicit strong opinions, though as Variety notes, the outrage over The Last Photograph, described by critics as “racist” and “misogynistic,” feels different to the reactions to his previous efforts. (Like the 2013 outcry over Man Of Steel, which we all recall was simply polite discourse about the film’s anti-Superman hyperviolence and fashy subtext.) Despite this latest outrage, Snyder would like to remind everyone that he also made 300, a film that cannot be fascist for how perceptibly gay it is. “Look: Whether you like the movie or not, I’m not even commenting on that; but with me, it’s more clickable to say, ‘I hate Zack Snyder! He’s a fascist!’ than it is to say, ‘I saw the movie and it was cool.’ Nobody gives a fuck about that,” he said. “And obviously, I’m not a fascist.

“When we showed 300 at the Berlin Film Festival, this exact same thing happened,” he continued. “There was immediate discourse around the movie, and everyone booed and walked out […] They were saying it was a disaster,’ ‘the worst movie ever,’ and a ‘fascist’ movie. Then we had a press conference where they were asking me all these questions, like, ‘Are you a fascist filmmaker?’ In Berlin! Classic. Maybe they’re a little more sensitive. The hallmark question was when one of the guys said, ‘Are you pro-gay or pro-NRA? Which are you?’ And I said, ‘Look, I’ll be honest: I’m a tiny bit of both.‘ But obviously I’m pro-gay. I made the gayest movie ever made.”

And while his response prompts one to grapple with knotty questions such as whether one could ever be both pro-gay and a fascist, Snyder is not kidding about 300. When Variety‘s Marlow Stern asked Snyder if he honestly thought the stridently homoerotic 2006 Frank Miller adaptation was indeed the gayest film ever, he doubled down. “300 is one of the gayest movies ever made. I always go, ‘Look, there are few movies where people come in straight and come out gay, and 300 is one of them.'”

What’s next for Zack Snyder? First, there’s making sure The Last Photograph finds a distributor (as dubious as those prospects might seem at the moment), and then his Escape From New York remake. After that, who knows? Perhaps a Rick And Morty movie! Or, just to keep everyone on their toes, that adaptation of Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead Snyder’s been wanting to make for eons. “That’ll probably be my magnum opus. I’ll probably die on that one.”