Ask the AfterElton Flying Monkey! (May 20, 2008)

Q: One of my favorite actors, whom I first discovered in Longtime Companion, is Stephen Caffrey; he played Fuzzy opposite Campbell Scott. What can you find out about him, both personally and professionally? Tell me everything! -- DG, Chicago, Illinois

Left: Stephen Caffrey
Right: Campbell Scott with a bearded Caffrey in Longtime Companion

A: The Flying Monkey contacted Stephen, who had this shocking revelation to share about his experience with Longtime Companion (1990): “The memory that always comes back is waking up very early to have hair glued on my chest each day,” Caffrey says. “Fuzzy wasn't really fuzzy in those days!”

Fuzzy wasn’t really fuzzy?! Geez, what will we find out next—that Farrah Fawcett’s famous mane was really a wig and Tom Cruise is only five feet tall? (Wait. I think the second one is true.)

Caffrey adds, hilariously, “Now Fuzzy's older & finds hair growing in places he doesn't wish to discuss!”

What’s Caffrey been up to since Longtime Companion? “The last several years have found me working in the theatre primarily,” the former All My Children heartthrob tells AfterElton.com. “Across the country in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and many others. The Bedouin life for me.”

Does he ever see any of his co-stars from the movie? “I have run into Bruce [Davison] once or twice over the years when I'm in L.A. I’ve seen Brian [Cousins] at an audition as well. I am so pleased to see how well some of the actors have done since then and watch their work when I can.”

Mostly, though, Caffrey has fond feelings for Longtime Companion. “This film, as much as anything I've been involved with, seems to have a heartbeat even now,” he says.

Q: What’s up with the relationship between George Boleyn and the musician on The Tudors? I'm wondering if there is an historical basis for this subplot, or if it's just a juicy tidbit for the Showtime series?—Bob

A: Alas, The Tudors is far from historically accurate. That said, historians are split on the possible bisexuality of the historical brother of Anne Boleyn (the second wife of Henry VIII, for whom he famously split with the Catholic Church in order to marry, and later, just as famously, beheaded). Some historians point out that George was considered a womanizer at the time. But historian Retha Warnicke, in an influential 1989 book The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family politics at the court of Henry VIII, speculated that George was gay or bisexual, and fiction writers (including Philippa Gregory in her smash hit The Other Boleyn Girl, which was the basis for the recent movie) have been having a field day with it ever since.

In other words, the producers of The Tudors know a juicy subplot when they see one!

In the series, George is played by Padraic Delaney; his musician-lover, Mark Smeaton, is played by David Alpay.

Smeaton (left) & Delaney

The Monkey did some some checking around and has reason to suspect neither George nor Mark have happy endings in store for them.

Q: What the hell IS AfterElton.com? I know you’re owned by Logo (which you tell us again and again and again). But what does that mean? Where did you come from? Do you know where you're going to, do you like the things that life is showing you? – Lyle, Sacramento, CA

A: The Monkey was wondering when someone would get around to asking this.

AfterElton.com was the brainchild of AfterEllen.com founder Sarah Warn. Sarah founded AfterEllen.com, AfterElton.com’s lesbian counterpart, in April 2002 as a hobby.

“No one was doing critical analysis and original content about lesbians in entertainment and the media,” Sarah says now.

In the summer of 2003, I was promoting my just-released gay teen novel Geography Club, and I came upon AfterEllen.com. There are lesbians in my book so, being the media whore that I am, I pitched it to Sarah. She liked it and decided to interview me. We really hit it off on the phone and soon discovered by chance that we lived only ten miles apart. I then did something I’ve never done before (or since): I invited a journalist over for dinner.

Sarah and her partner Lori came over and met my partner Michael (I also burned the fish, but that’s another story). The four of us all hit it off big-time, and before long we were fast friends, seeing each other regularly.

A few years later, in early 2005, Sarah had the great idea to start a “companion” site to AfterEllen.com, about gay and bisexual men in entertainment.

“There were lots of gay blogs,” Sarah says, “but very few people were doing original content.”

She and Lori posed the idea to Michael and me over dinner one night, and it was the two of us who suggested the name AfterElton.com.

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