Thanks for answering. To me it seems very superfluous to include all those gay jokes and all those girlfriends and the dialogue with Irene - look at us both and John writing on his blog that relationships with women are not possible considering his life with Sherlock. They certainly do seem to want us to notice John always puts Sherlock before women pre TRF so marriage for John while Sherlock is around was very unlikely despite the canon meeting.
Mary is smart enough to encourage the friendship at first but after John has married why show the bickering about John not seeing Sherlock ?John is shown to be unhappy with Mary after just a month and craving adventure. After the shooting we get Sherlock saying you chose her and John saying We decide if we keep you.
So very much of the series becomes odd and out of place if they do not want us to consider the nature of the love / relationship between John and Sherlock.  Otherwise we seem to have a whole arc of information and dialogue from the very first episodes to the last that is pointless and ultimately irrelevant.
The writers denial of JL seems opposed to everything they have written and there are very good reasons to doubt them.

Some sources: 

http://theotherjournal.com/2012/02/24/the-private-life-of-sherlock-holmes-billy-wilder-1970/

The famous "desperately unspoken" quote from The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/nov/07/mark-gatiss-sherlock-holmes

A comparison between TPLoSH and Ritchie Holmes:

http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/03/08/sherlock-holmes-queer-straight-neither/

And there is Billy Wilder himself: ‘I should have been more daring,’ he says in an interview quoted in Ed Sikov’s 1998 biography, On Sunset Boulevard. ‘I wanted to make Holmes a homosexual . . . That’s why he’s on dope, you know.’
 

JP, I mean the "Yes.  You are being presumptuous" line (and also the way Robert Stevens plays him).  The ballet dancer is kind of irrelevant, and I'm sure "our" Sherlock would have turned her down too.  And acting a part is a typical Holmesian thing to do.  It's more about Watson's reaction to it, and Holmes' response to it, I think. 

He does kind of fall for a woman in the film though ... very like our Sherlock, although ASIB kind of puts that right in the end by letting Sherlock save her. 

I'm a bit wary of the piece with the "desperately unspoken" line, because it's the one Mark described as garbled. But the video is longer and doesn't appear to be cut too much, so more reliable! 

Yes, the "presumptuous" line is a good one!  And I agree, has double meaning.

The "desparately unspoken" line, I'm now wary of (a shame, because I love that phrase!), as it came from the article Mark Gatiss described as a "garbled mistranslation" of what he'd said.  

I agree that the film has a melancholy feel.  The gorgeous music helps.   There's a bit where Holmes' learns of the woman's death (is she called Elsa?  I can't remember), and is clearly heartbroken - it very much reminds me of the scene at the end of ASIB, and I'm sure the similarity is deliberate.  (I think Moftiss liked that character - they seem to have given some of her characteristics to both Irene and Mary).

Last edited by Liberty (December 28, 2016 5:31 pm)

It puzzles me when TJLCers cite TPLOSH as evidence for the conspiracy. In the BFI interview clip Mark doesn't mention anything about Holmes & Watson being in love in the film. The only evidence we have for that is the quote from the Guardian interview which Mark has refuted on twitter as a 'garbled mistranslation' of what he said.

I always come back to the interview he gave on stage in Mumbai at Comic Con. It's a sincere and genuine explanation as to why - although there would be nothing wrong in making Sherlock and John a couple - that's just not what they're doing in their version of the story. If Johnlock were going to happen, why would he have needed to say that? He could just have side stepped the question the way they do on anything else they don't really want to address. Yes they lie and obfuscate about some things but I just don't believe he's lying there.

Shani wrote:

It puzzles me when TJLCers cite TPLOSH as evidence for the conspiracy. In the BFI interview clip Mark doesn't mention anything about Holmes & Watson being in love in the film. The only evidence we have for that is the quote from the Guardian interview which Mark has refuted on twitter as a 'garbled mistranslation' of what he said.

I always come back to the interview he gave on stage in Mumbai at Comic Con. It's a sincere and genuine explanation as to why - although there would be nothing wrong in making Sherlock and John a couple - that's just not what they're doing in their version of the story. If Johnlock were going to happen, why would he have needed to say that? He could just have side stepped the question the way they do on anything else they don't really want to address. Yes they lie and obfuscate about some things but I just don't believe he's lying there.

I agree with all this.  I think that if Moftiss were influenced by the fact that Billy Wilder couldn't make them openly gay, and if they intended to make them a gay couple themselves, they wouldn't hide it away for years.  I think it's more likely that they didn't intend them to be in love in that way.  It fits with everything they've said about the show (and with what we've seen on screen, in my opinion - I know some scenes are ambiguous, but I think the overall feel, and the story, is about a friendship).   I really agree about Mark's sincerity - I do believe him.  I will have quite a different view of him, if it does turn out that he was lying. 

Ah, I forgot: How much of a scandal it would cause, if Wilder indeed made a gay film. 1970. Would it even shown back then? That's also a reason why I'm not completely trusting the quotation.

He's already answered it on twitter. When he confirmed the With An Accent interview, refuting Johnlock, was entirely accurate this summer, someone asked him about the Guardian quote. He responded that it was a "garbled mistranslation" of what he'd actually said.

Liberty wrote:

... I think it's more likely that they didn't intend them to be in love in that way.  It fits with everything they've said about the show (and with what we've seen on screen, in my opinion - I know some scenes are ambiguous, but I think the overall feel, and the story, is about a friendship).   I really agree about Mark's sincerity - I do believe him.  I will have quite a different view of him, if it does turn out that he was lying. 

I may get quite a different view of him as a writer if it turns out that all the clues were for nothing ;)
Unless Moftiss somehow come up with a better fitting resolution.

ewige wrote:

I may get quite a different view of him as a writer if it turns out that all the clues were for nothing ;)
Unless Moftiss somehow come up with a better fitting resolution.

 
Thank you, ewige, this and this exactly!
Especially again after the I love you trailer. Sorry to repeat myself, but they absolutely know what they are doing by this.
(And no, I also do not think they are giving away JL here, just to be clear)

Last edited by mrshouse (December 28, 2016 7:59 pm)