Billy Eichner was adamant. He needed several more minutes and didn’t want to miss out.

The aspiration for the actor came during the standing ovation of his new film just received at the Princess of Wales Theater. It was the world premiere of the comedy Bros during the Toronto International Film Festival, and the crowd was showcasing its ardent gratification at the film. Eichner needed that indulgence to continue.

“Keep it going! I want a longer ovation than The Whale!”

Bros is being branded the very first gay rom-com that was written and stars an openly gay performer, although the creators of the recent film Fire Island might beg to differ.  The story centers on Bobby (Eichner), a middle-aged podcaster who feels exasperated that he has no expectation for romance in his life. That is until he meets Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), an incredibly handsome lawyer who seems just as indifferent to a relationship as he is. Their initial casual encounter soon becomes complicated as the two men navigate an obstacle course of what they think their relationship should be, only to realize you can’t plan feelings.

Co-written with Nick Stoller (who directed the film as well), Bros plays off Eichner’s very distinct voice, which might be familiar to those who have caught his Billy on the Street segments that highlight his manic, cynical and self-deprecating verbal styling. A contraction of defensiveness and wittiness, Bobby is a character that could at times appear abrasive to an audience, but Eichner’s sheer determination to make you laugh combined with a yearning for affirmation gives the story a winning hand.

The project originated back in 2017, when Eichner and Stoller had been working on a television series together and the helmer of Forgetting Sarah Marshall sent the actor a note saying he wanted his next film to be a romantic comedy but with a twist. It should center on a gay couple.

“You want to write it with me?” Eichner recalls the outreach. “He then said, ‘You can star in it and if it goes well, I will direct’. I had no idea if I had the skills to do any of that, but I said yes. That’s how it started. Then Judd came on board.”

With Judd, he meant Apatow, who has become a one-man industry in progressive comedies and has launched the careers of such talent as Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Amy Schumer and Steve Carell. When offered the chance to produce the project, he jumped all in.

“I was a giant fan of Billy’s and Nick, whom I have worked with for a long time,” Apatow reflected after the premiere. “When they asked if I was interested, I thought it sounded like an amazing idea. We had a long run of writing and although we couldn’t shoot during COVID, they just grinded on the script and worked so hard to make something funny and beautiful.”

And for Eichner, he felt the responsibility as an openly gay man to be authentic.

“I wanted LGBTQ folks and gay men to look at the screen and go to a movie theater and see it on a big screen and say, there we are. That’s who we are. Not all of us, because we’re not a monolithic group, but I really wanted it to be honest, but above all, we all wanted it to be really funny. So, we felt the responsibility to make a movie that would really make people laugh out loud a lot.”

The film has an almost entirely LGBTQ cast, including many performers who normally don’t get cast in Hollywood movies, such as Ts Madison, a Black trans social media star.

“Now I do have to say, for the six lines that I did have in the movie, it was so much more,” she said during the post-screening chat. “Sitting here watching this movie with all of you beautiful people, it sent a tingle in all of our stomachs that I think we were all feeling in the back. I was like, do y’all feel that?”

Then summing up the experience, Madison pointed out the significance of the representation.

“I actually got to watch the world laugh with us, and not at us, because this film was produced by us.”