Candace Bushnell talks to Out Magazine about “Sex and the City” and its connection to gay men

Out Magazine has a really terrific interview with Candace Bushnell who created the Sex and the City characters through her books which were a look at life in New York City for a group of female friends and based on Bushnell’s life.

Here are some excerpts:

OUT: Why do you think Sex and The City resonates so strongly with gay men?
BUSHNELL: Well, I always used to say that gay men and straight women in New York City always had the same dating problems. [Laughs] And they are much more similar I think than straight women and straight men. People say, “Why don’t you write Sex and the City for straight men?” Well, because it would just be life, OK? Gay men and straight women have a lot of similar dating stories so I think there’s a lot of similarities and we are simpatico.

Q. Did you ever see the article in the New York Times hypothesizing that the women from The Golden Girls are actually the Sex and the City characters in their 50′s?
A. I haven’t seen it, but you know what? I think it could be true. I think that people love [the Sex and the City characters] and they want to see them in all different kinds of iterations. In fact, my girlfriends and I always say “When we get old, what are we going to do?” Everybody has this idea we’re going to have a big house in the country or big apartment and we’ll all live together. Of course, now people are saying we can have a nurse too to take care of all of us. It’s really kind of sad, but it probably will be true. And, in fact, that’s a book that I’ve always wanted to write, but it’s kind of on my list. I haven’t gotten around to it.

Q. Finally, what did you think of Sex and the City 2?
A. I had a great time. I really had a great time. I went to the movie premiere, which is always so crazy. There are so many people and the Ziegfield Theatre is enormous. So you’re watching it with five thousand people, which is disconcerting, but then I always go home and watch it on my screen. And I thought it was great fun. Let’s face it, it got some bad reviews, but I’ve had so many women come up to me and say it was exactly what they expected and they had a great time.

Q. I also think that gay men haven’t always been able to be open about their sexuality — and still aren’t always able to, and women have had to deal with the same thing. So, in many ways Sex and the City was trailblazing in that it was the first time women were talking about their sex lives freely and openly and without apologizing. Do you consider yourself — and the series — to be rooted in feminism?
A. Oh, I absolutely consider myself a feminist. In fact, one of the reasons for me personally writing The Carrie Diaries series is that the characters in Sex and the City came out of such a specific time. And, if it weren’t for seventies feminism and this movement of young women moving to urban areas in the early eighties and having careers and having a very different life than what their mothers had, the characters in Sex and the City wouldn’t exist. So the characters come out of a very specific feminist time and a very specific feminist message; in fact, they embody it…