This profile is part of Queerty’s 2024 Out For Good series, recognizing public figures who’ve had the courage to come out and make a difference in the past year, in celebration of National Coming Out Day on October 11.
Name: Bruce Joel Rubin, 81
Bio: If you asked Rubin, the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind the 1990 classic Ghost, where to begin, he’d tell you in the sandbox when he was five. According to the Michigan native, a “spiritual experience” allowed him to see “infinite galaxies” and sense “the entire universe,” realizing instantly that “he was one with all there was.”
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This moment set the tone for a life preoccupied with metaphysical existence, life, and science. (And of course, art, thanks to an inspiring childhood production of Mary Poppins.)
As a young man, Rubin spent two years at a Detroit college before transferring to New York University’s film school in 1962, where he studied alongside Martin Scorsese.
Still, it wasn’t until the ’80s—decades after an accidentally massive psychedelic trip led him on a lifelong spiritual quest—that his screenwriting career began. While teaching meditation, he penned the script for what would become 1983’s Brainstorm before his family, including wife Blanche and two sons Joshua and Ari, relocated to Hollywood, and things began to fall into place.
Rubin is credited as a screenwriter for 10 produced projects, including Jacob’s Ladder, The Last Mimzy, Stuart Little 2, and his directorial debut, My Life. His most famous remains Ghost, which starred Patrick Swayze as a deceased banker whose ghost returns to rescue his girlfriend (Demi Moore) from the man who offed him, aided by a psychic (Whoopi Goldberg).
The supernatural romance earned Rubin the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, spawned a Broadway musical for which he wrote the book and lyrics, and is regarded as a certified classic.
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Coming Out: In classic scribe fashion, Rubin used the written word to come out as gay in his 2024 memoir, It’s Only a Movie. That said, he was fully aware of his sexuality long before.
“I’ve never not been gay,” he told The Guardian (his wife has known for over 50 years).
As Rubin explains, he sought a female partner after hearing the mythical lyric, “You better find somebody to love,” from a Jefferson Airplane song. At the time, finding a man seemed impossible.
“There were no clubs I knew about, no way to announce that part of my sexuality,” he says. “I had no idea there were so many people who were invested in the same ride.”
Nevertheless, Rubin’s marriage has been harmonious. He confessed his sexuality to Blanche before they wed, two years after meeting.
Their marriage is an unlikely arrangement the writer knew “would have confused people” if he had come out sooner. But it’s a decision he doesn’t regret.
“My sexual life was always very internalized,” Rubin admits. “Of course, one wants orgasmic life, but I had orgasms with Blanche. She and I had a good sex life.” (That includes a “conjoined” relationship with another man at one point and “a few other things” left out of his memoir for discretion.)
Still, Rubin says opening up—even in his eighties—was important.
“I don’t like that I was closeted for so long,” Rubin writes, adding that he “didn’t want to leave this world with any secrets.”
Gay Coded: Most meaningfully, Rubin credits his career success to his unique perspective and queer experience.
“Being ‘other’ is what led me to be a writer,” he reveals. “Finding yourself on the fringe of human experience is a gift rather than a torment. A movie like Ghost reached hundreds of millions of people and it’s my hidden lifestyle that gave me a voice to speak to them.”
Accordingly, Ghost’s queer-coded elements are part of its appeal. In one scene, Swayze’s character inhabits Goldberg’s body for a physical moment with Moore’s character, meaning two females are touching despite the onscreen depiction of a man and woman. Plus, one of its most iconic lines came from Rubin’s response as a gay man to a girl’s proclamation of love in college. (“I love you,” Moore tells Swayze, to which he replies “Ditto.”)
As a “happily gay” man, Rubin continues to see love all around.
“I’ll tell you something you’ll find out: when you hit your 80s and you think your libido is gone, it comes flying back, so big,” he says. “Male beauty, for me, is overwhelmingly powerful. Just seeing someone in the supermarket, I feel this explosive joy.”
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Good for him! He found a way to make a life for himself in a time when it was extremely difficult to for gay people to do so. Kudos for being honest with the woman he would marry. If I could speak to Mr. Rubin now, I would say:
“You did it your way and made it work. And welcome to your larger family”.