Have a question about gay male entertainment? Ask the Monkey!

Q: What do you think would happen if a major male movie star like Jake Gyllenhaal or Ben Stiller came out? -- Anson, Billings, MT
A: Assuming it’s someone at the peak of his career like Gyllenhaal or Stiller, and not a character actor like Ian McKellen or a “respected elder” like Jack Nicholson, I think it would all depend on how much money his next movie made. If the movie was a hit, he’d be lionized and hailed as a trailblazer in the media, and the offers would pour in (even as he’d be ridiculed and attacked on right-wing talk radio and on the “comedy” circuit; the paparazzi and online gossipmongers would be especially vicious).

But if that actor’s next movie tanked—and this is more likely, since most movies disappoint—well, that failure would be seen as instant confirmation of the “fact” that audiences won’t accept a gay male leading man…and that actor’s career would take a serious, perhaps non-recoverable hit. He’d still have to deal with all the nasty ridicule from right-wing talk radio and the online gossipmongers, but he probably wouldn’t get much more leading man studio work. He’d probably have no choice but to gravitate to character work or television, where he’d have another shot at stardom…but a television career would, again, depend on the success of his initial offering. If that first show failed, he’d probably have to take a few years off and hope for a comeback once things calmed down a bit.

How do I know this would happen? Well, I don’t, of course; it’s all speculation. But it’s pretty close to what happened to Ellen DeGeneres (and Anne Heche, for that matter).

Q: I was wondering are there any gay cartoon voice actors/actresses? – Chris, Toronto, ON, Canada
A: Plenty of out actors have done the occasional cartoon voice—from Nathan Lane in The Lion King (1994), to Harvey Fierstein in the animated adaptation of his (seriously overrated) children’s book The Sissy Duckling, to Neil Patrick Harris in the latest animated version of The Justice League (The Justice League: The New Frontier [2008]).

From left to right: Paul Lynde, Jim J. Bullock, Jack Plotnick

But I suspect you want something a little more ongoing or substantial. Paul Lynde did quite a bit of cartoon voice work (including the 1973 animated version of Charlotte’s Web). Jim J Bullock was the voice of Showtime’s Queer Duck (2006). And Jack Plotnick does the voice of voice of Xandir P. Whifflebottom on Comedy Central’s hilarious Drawn Together. (“The voice I was doing was fifty percent teenage boy and fifty percent teenage girl,” Plotnick tells me. “So it was always switching between the two.”)

Q: A few years ago, I read a book called The Dreyfus Affair, by Peter Lefcourt. It was about a "Christian" pitcher who fell in love with his catcher, on a big league team. Just after reading it, I read that Hollywood had taken an option out on it for a film. Never heard anything else. Any update? --Russell
A: Ahhh, The Dreyfus Affair! It’s a good book, fast-paced, funny, and cinema-ready, and Hollywood has been promising a film version for fifteen years.

Problem is, it’s been, uh, difficult to get off the ground.

The book was published in 1992, and immediately drew interest from the likes of Jodie Foster, Barbra Streisand, and Garth Brooks (who, according to Lefcourt, wanted to make one of the baseball players straight). But it was Disney — yes, Disney — who finally optioned it…only to dump it 18 months later. In 1995, then-hot director David Frankel told Disney he was interested in the project, so they optioned it again. “They said, 'My God!''' Lefcourt told Entertainment Weekly in 1996. ''Didn't we let that go? They called back and said, 'We loved this book and never meant to let it go!’”

But soon Disney let it go again, reportedly in the midst of fall-out from fundamentalist Christians over the company’s decision to extend domestic partnership benefits to gay and lesbian employees.

The project languished until director Betty Thomas, hot off The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) and Dr. Doolittle (1998), read the book and had 20th Century Fox option it for her. "I don't know if it's going to get made with Betty," Lefcourt told The Advocate in 1998. "I hope we don't have this same conversation a year from now."

Betty Thomas then took the project to New Line, which was all set to go…except that would-be star Ben Affleck wasn’t able to agree on a schedule. Owen Wilson, John Cusack, and Don Cheadle all expressed an interest, but New Line would only okay Affleck. And by now the film was deep in turnaround, having racked up $1.2 million in development fees (which must be paid before the project can be picked up by another entity).

Next Page! More on The Dreyfus Affair! Plus, a pre-Nuke gay soap!