AfterElton.com - Interview With Sir Ian McKellen (page 2)

Interview With Sir Ian McKellen (page 2)
by Michael Jensen, September 27, 2006

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AE: In the X-Men movies, Magneto promotes very actively resisting those who think mutants are bad and would change them. I'm curious: How much do you — someone who speaks up so much for gay rights — identify with that philosophy when it comes to the way the gay community should deal with the straight community? Especially here in the U.S., where we have the Christian right so aggressively targeting the gay community. Do you think we should be out in the streets protesting more than we are?
IM: I think we all do whatever we can or what we want to do. And I think progress has been made because there are people prepared to go out on the streets and, as it were, frighten the horses. I'm not one of those. And others like me who try to influence lawmakers directly by trying to present the arguments privately and in public. It all works together.

Someone like Peter Tatchell, who is a member of Outrage — not that they do much that is outrageous, demonstrate and make their point in an often theatrical way. But theater is my profession, and I don't need to feel I'm doing something by going out and shouting the oughts, but you do what you can. You write your member of Parliament or your congressman and vote and you write the newspapers. You argue the case. You do whatever you can.

It's rather easy for me as I have access to the media. People who don't can feel frustrated and can feel the best way is to make a public fuss. But that's all fine, as it all adds together. Gays are different from each other and want to approach it in different ways. But in the end you do have to convince the legislators if you're going to get rid of bad legislation or introduce new legislation. That has to be done. That takes time and patience, and you have to be politic about it. That in the end is the way it works.

But the situation is very different in the United States. The United Kingdom is a very small country. … The laws are changed by people who live in London and who I could very easily bump into and talk to. That isn't true in the United States where people can feel very detached from their legislature. But here it is always very homogeneous, and the laws that are passed in London affect the whole country.

AE: I've read you comment before that you weren't surprised Brokeback Mountain lost Best Picture. How much of its loss, do you think, was attributable to homophobia, if any? And what's your response to Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine, who said they wouldn't see a movie "like that"?
IM: I didn't know either of those two actors were still alive. No, I'm joking. You don't lose the Oscar. It was nominated as one of the five best pictures of the year. I would've thought that a considerable win, that one. The reasons Oscar voters vote are multifarious, I suppose. But as often in the past, the actual Oscar went on rather parochial grounds to a film that was about life in Los Angeles, and I think that is probably the more significant point to make.

As for people who decide they don't want to see a film because they heard they mightn't enjoy it, well, it's a point of view. I don't think it's very significant. Had Brokeback Mountain been named Best Picture of the year, I don't think that would've meant Hollywood was suddenly at ease with the idea there are gay people in the world. Hollywood is very ill at ease with the idea that there might be gay people in their midst. Nobody in their right mind would look to Hollywood to advance society in any way. Hollywood deals with fantasy and not with the real world at all.

If Ernest Borgnine doesn't want to see a film — maybe it's that he doesn't want to see bisexual cowboys. Without knowing more about his position I couldn't really comment.

We are in a period of great change. There are advances made, and then the tide goes out, and then it comes back in a little further. We'll look back at this period and we'll understand that. Victory, as it were, is inevitable. Whether it's quite in sight yet is another matter. In some parts of the world, it very much is. Looking around at the laws of this country [the U.K.], it's very difficult to say what more could be done to advance equality for gays.

One good thing about Tony Blair's government, reluctantly or not, it has passed a great deal of legislation that is an example of the tide coming in nicely. The to-ing and fro-ing with regards to gay marriage in the States is something that we should be concerned about. But it probably is making us think the best way to advance gay equality is to insist that we should have the right to have our partnerships called a marriage. … It wouldn't be high on my list. There is a whole movement among some gays who absolutely don't want to ape heterosexuality by being married. So the system we've now got here [is] the system of civil partnership, which is only available to same-gender couples, not to straight people. If straight people want to have the same advantages gay people can have through civil partnerships, they have to get married. That legislation here discriminates [laughs] against heterosexuals. As I said before, these are times of change, at least in our two countries.

In other parts of the world, things are absolutely desperate. Even here in the U.K. we recently had a case of a boy who was identified by two thugs as being gay murdered simply on those grounds. Those two people are behind bars for the rest of their lives, but that is happening even as Parliament are declaring that gay people should be treated equally.

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