Ask the Flying Monkey (September 23, 2008)

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

Q: I get a distinct “bear” vibe from the guy who does the OxiClean commercials. Any scoop on him? — Amanda, Norman, OK

A: Everyone who sees this guy on TV wonders why he’s on TV shouting at them. But despite a vague resemblance to Home Improvement’s Richard Karn, OxiClean spokesman Billy Mays, 50, is famous only for selling stuff on TV. He started pitching OxiClean, Orange Clean, and Orange Glo on the Home Shopping Network in the mid-1990s, and sales immediately went way, way up. Which is funny, because these days most people seem to find him incredibly annoying.

The Flying Monkey disagrees. He’s got spunk and, unlike The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s Lou Grant, the Monkey likes spunk. That said, he’s now on record as pitching at least fifty-one different products. That’s pretty whore-tastic, even by American standards.

Anyway, Billy may be scream “bear” to you, but sadly, he is married to a woman, Candace.

Q: Hey, Flying Monkey! I am always looking for movies about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender teens. Unfortunately, due to oversensitive ratings, most of them are rated R and therefore are unfit to show at school. Are there ANY movies out there about LGBT teens that aren't rated R? — Rachel, Kansas City, KS

A: It’s a great question — and also an extremely relevant question to high school gay-straight alliances looking for movies to sponsor for campus events, but unable to show R-rated movies. As the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated shows, gay content is subjected to different, often arbitrary standards by the MPAA, Hollywood’s movie-rating board.

But the best, most famous gay teen movies to date — Summer Storm, Beautiful Thing, Get Real, and Another Gay Movie — are all rated R (for really good reason, in the case of Another Gay Movie). Camp is rated PG-13, and The Edge of Seventeen and a new gay teen movie, The Curiosity of Chance, were not rated by the MPAA. But the Monkey isn’t wild about any of them.

So what’s your best bet? Maybe you could turn to television, editing together the gay storylines in shows like As the World Turns, DeGrassi High: The Next Generation, Dawson’s Creek, and Greek.

Good gay teen movies - All rated R

Next page! Joan Armatrading's "Everyday Boy," plus should Gaytown be run out of town?