"Oz": Ten Years Later

Beecher and Keller's unseen sex life

Keller and Beecher's romance certainly ran the emotional gamut. And, pre-Queer As Folk, it may have been more fully-realized physically than any other male/male relationship on American television. But in a show that never flinched from showing violent rapes between men, as well as several fairly graphic (if aggressive) male/female couplings, it was striking that Beecher and Keller never got much beyond kisses.

Surprised when this is pointed out to him, Fontana states that the lack of a sex scene was “totally unconscious on my part”, and certainly not the result of any network censorship: “Yeah, no, HBO didn't have any problems, HBO never told me don't do anything. So it wasn't HBO saying ‘Oh, Tom, please don't show two men having loving sex.' They didn't ... Nobody said that.”

He reflects: “I think [it was] because in my mind ... I think that the sex that we did see, which was fairly violent — even in the case, like, in the first season when Edie Falco's character [Diane Whittlesey] slept with Terry Kinney's character [Tim McManus], it was not an attractive sex scene, it was a desperate sex scene. And to go back to what I was saying before, the show was really about power and the lack of power. And the sexuality and the violence were used as a prism for an examination of power. And so a soft and loving sex scene between two of the characters probably would have been counter to what was in my head about why I was showing any sex at all.

“I mean, if you think about it, what would a sex scene between [Beecher and Keller] have been like? I mean because they did love each other, it would have had a kind of ... it would have had to be, like, nice sex. Which wasn't part of the tapestry of the show, is I guess what I'm saying, which is why instinctively I guess I never went there.”

Kidding, he adds: “But — you know, f*** it, let's go back and shoot the sex scenes between [Meloni and Tergesen]! They'd do it, those two clowns! They're ready!”

He is probably correct in saying this. The relaxed responses of the two actors to questions about their same-sex storyline, along with their passionate onstage kiss at the 2000 GLAAD Media Awards, were part of what endeared them to gay fans.

On a show that also had a large straight fanbase, though, Fontana says that he never found himself pressured or criticized for the Beecher/Keller storyline: “The audience never seemed to indicate that, and the network never seemed to indicate that, and the reviewers never seemed to indicate that.”

Comfort through brutality

Part of what made the relationship more acceptable to straight male viewers, in particular, may have been the sheer brutality of the world that Oz depicted. It was difficult for them to sneer at Beecher and Keller as weak or “faggy” when, on a weekly basis, the characters were dealing with situations that most men, whether straight or gay, would struggle to survive.

The show also had a Brokeback Mountain-like quality of simply presenting you directly with the men's raw experience, with no apologies or justifications offered for doing so. Where Will & Grace substituted Judy Garland jokes for sexuality, Oz took you straight to the heart of a dark, intense love affair, in a way that was hard to resist.

On IMDb.com, a female poster recalled watching Oz with her boyfriend, who shouted “No!” when he saw Beecher and Keller kiss. She thought he was reacting homophobically, but it turned out that he was shouting to Beecher: “Don't take him back, you idiot! He broke both your arms and your legs!”

One of the interesting things about Oz was that it drew several actors with a rap/hip-hop background — not traditionally a community friendly to homosexuality. In the course of the show's run, there were guest appearances from LL Cool J and Master P, as well as longer-lasting turns from performers such as Method Man, and Lord Jamar of the group Brand Nubian. According to Fontana, however, no-one on the show ever voiced a complaint about the Beecher/Keller storyline or the show's gay content — at least not to him:

“Oh, you mean in terms of an actor who wasn't involved in that story going, like, ‘Man, I can't believe you're doing that'? Um ... the truth is I can't answer that, because if they had I probably would have fired them.” He laughs. “And they probably knew that. Because ... you know, the whole ... What was wonderful about the cast of Oz was that they got the whole thing, they understood the whole thing, and so ... I mean if anybody had a problem with it, nobody articulated it to me. But like I said they probably were afraid to, because they knew I'd get pissed off. Because I don't think it's right for people to be criticizing other people's storylines.”

Getting to heaven from Oz

Within the show, other people whom you might have expected to be against the Beecher/Keller romance were the characters of Sister Peter Marie Reimondo (played by Rita Moreno), and Father Ray Mukada (played by out actor B.D. Wong), a Catholic nun and priest respectively, who served the prison population. In fact, both characters were sympathetic to the relationship, and even went out of their way to arrange for the lovers to meet. Speaking about their attitudes, Fontana (who served as Executive Producer on the 2004 documentary In Good Conscience, a film about the Catholic Church's stance on homosexuality) says that:

“The nature of the priests and nuns who work in prisons is very different from what those clowns in the Vatican do. And the American Catholic Church is ... once you get to that level of people who are committed socially to, whether it's prisons or whatever they're committed to, they don't make those kind of judgments. I know a lot of activist priests and a lot of activist nuns, and they wouldn't be in those jobs if they suddenly were trying to be dictatorial about, ‘Oh, homosexuality is this,' or ... the ones that I know.

“Now maybe there are people out there who are much more hard-nosed, but the ones that I know and the ones that I met [while doing research for Oz], specifically the people in the prisons, were really very open and loving, and understanding of the loneliness and the fear that exists in prison, and how that can generate different kinds of relationships. So, for me it was never an issue.”

None of this is to say that Beecher and Keller never met with any disapproval in pursuing their relationship. Kareem Said (played by Eamonn Walker), the leader of the Muslim prisoners in Oz, was horrified by homosexuality — a fact which sometimes put a strain on his otherwise close friendship with Beecher. Many of the prisoners had the predictable macho dismissive attitude about ‘fags'.

At the same time, the Beecher/Keller romance did fulfill the ideal of a same-sex couple on television whose relationship was open and acknowledged by everyone around them, who did not spend time agonizing over their sexuality, and whose issues as a couple were mostly unrelated to orientation.

Neither of the characters could ever have been described as role models. Their relationship was born partly out of restriction and loneliness, and it might never have happened outside of Oz. But in the way that relationship was written and staged, it always included an element of genuine love.

The relationship is ultimately a doomed one, but that love was evidenced from the very first introduction of Keller under the heading “Boy meets boy”, when the camera pans over Beecher and Keller's faces as one of the show's characters reads a love poem, to the promise that Keller makes Beecher as he is led off at the end of Season 4:

Keller: I'll see you.
Beecher: When?
Keller: Back here. Or in heaven.
Beecher: You really think we're gonna get into heaven?
Keller: Ah ... you and me together? God doesn't have the balls to keep us out.

Get Oz on DVD from www.logoonline.com or watch re-runs on HBO Zone.