Ask the Flying Monkey! (April 22, 2009)

Have a question about gay male entertainment? Ask the Monkey! (Please include your city and state and/or country.)

Q: Groeten (i.e. “Greetings!”):  Ever since I started to watch The OC, I was instantly smitten by the hotness that is Benjamin McKenzie. What I was wondering is: what is his stance towards the GLBT community and gay people/fans in general? -- Kevin, Belgium P.S: If you happen to have a super-special Flying Monkey magic spell to have him turn gay and fall madly in love with me, I wouldn't mind!

Ben McKenzie

Photo by Jeff Vespa/WireImage

A: In fact, Benjamin McKenzie already has a gay partner … in his role as a cop on the new NBC show Southland where his cop-partner is a very un-stereotypical gay man.

What does he think of gay folks in real life? Well, the Flying Monkey was a little reluctant to contact Benjamin and ask, “What do you think of gay people?” So instead I researched him.

I couldn’t find any evidence of him speaking out on gay issues one way or the other, but here’s what I discovered: he was raised in Texas (could be bad); he’s the son of a strong anti-war activist, and calls himself an anti-war activist as well (could be good); he played football (could be bad); he is a staunch Democrat and campaigned passionately for Obama (could be good).

I’m aware this is a lame, unsatisfying answer. But I’ll be at an event this summer when I’ll likely see Benjamin face-to-face. I promise I’ll ask a variation of your question then.

In the meantime, I did work the spell you requested, and he’s on his way over to you now. That means I’ll probably meet you both this summer. See you then!

Q: What are your favorite coming out scenes from film and television? - Jules, Syracuse, NY

A: It’s hard to think of recent coming out scenes, what with the fact that we live in such a “post-gay” world now, where we’re supposedly all bored with “coming out” stories, and where characters shouldn’t be expected to “come out” anyway.

But come on! People still come out, even if they tend to do it younger and younger. And hey, I for one think there’s always room for another coming out story, at least if it’s well-told and stays away from the stereotypes.

Here are a few of mine:

(1) I liked Summer Storm (2004), which I thought perfectly captured the confusion and emotion of not just coming out, but teenage love in general (which, weirdly, is almost never reciprocal; apparently that’s the price you pay for being that young).

A scene from Summer Storm

Next page! The puppy episode and trying not to be a mutant!