Ask the Flying Monkey! James Francos' Little Brother, the Awful "Rolling Stone" Interview with the "Glee" Kids and More!

This week! Dave Franco, the "first" comings out, and whether the "hoyay" in Merlin is intentional! Plus, what's with Rolling Stone's horrible Glee article?

Have a question about gay male entertainment? Contact me here (and be sure and include your city and state and/or country!)

Q: So I don't usually do this (fans self), but I have to know, Mr. Monkey, is Dave Franco, younger brother of super-awesome gay friendly James Franco, a friend of Dorothy? I only ask this because of a reference he made in a short interview: “Once a week I would meet up with the coolest teacher and we’d go over my work. All my friends were like, Soooo… once a week at lunch you meet up with Mr. Schulenberg to talk about poetry. (smiles) They all thought I was having sex with my teacher. But I really just loved to write and it was a nice outlet.” What say you to the minions, Oh Icarus of the Apes?– Jacob, Santa Monica, CA

Dave and James Franco

A: Regular readers like you know how much I hate the “is he gay?” questions, but I’m making an exception in the case of Dave, the Franco brother who shaves, because he’s the best part of the reimagined Scrubs. In addition to that show, you may remember Dave from such roles as Gonzo in Greek, as well as Greg, the Guy Who Pissed His Pants Eight Years Ago in Superbad. He also plays a drug dealer in the new Ben Stiller movie Greenberg.

As far as I can tell, Dave has never suggested a sexual orientation one way or the other in interviews. (Regular readers also know that, as a personal policy, I do not schedule interviews with actors, just so I can ask: “Are you gay?”)

But from the quote you provide, I’d be inclined to say, “not gay,” if only because closeted gay actors tend to not make gay references about themselves. Basically, they doth protest too much.

Then again, we’re talking about the Franco brothers, who both seem decidedly unbalanced – in the best possible way – so who the hell knows?

Q: In your review of the second season of the UK show Merlin, you said you never really saw the hoyay – or “gay subtext” – that the hoards of slash-writers attest is there and say must obviously be intentional. But what do the actors and writers of the show think? – Maggie, Bloomington, IN

A: I confess to having a bit of a Marshall-McLuhan-in-Annie-Hall moment here – like that scene in the movie when Woody Allen confronts the pontificating a**hole in front of him by pulling Marshall McLuhan himself out from behind a sign who tells the a**hole, “You know nothing of my work! How you ever got to teach a class in anything is beyond me!”

Woody then turns to the camera and says, "Wouldn't it be great if life was really like this?"

Well, I interviewed Colin Morgan, the star of Merlin, last week, and I specificially asked him: all this hoyay between your character and Arthur that everyone is going on and on about: is it intentional or are people just reading into it?

Colin Morgan and Bradley James in Merlin

“It’s certainly something that we never ever play,” he told me. “I think you’re watching anything, and you’re looking for it, you could probably find it. You could find gay connotations in Barney. You could find it anything. ...I can attest to the fact that there’s no intentions there of pushing of any that kind of subtext. It purely as innocent as the scripts are. I think it’s very much dependent on the individual watching it.”

So there you have it, Merlin hoyay fans: You know nothing of Colin Morgan’s work. How you ever got to obsess about the “slash” possibilities between Merlin and Arthur is beyond him.

Read my entire interview with Colin here.

Next Page! Did Green Day's Billie Joe "in" himself?