Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (July 18, 2008)

afhickman

"It takes a village (to make Village People)"

One of my favorite hustler films is 1992's "Die Blaue Stunde" ("The Blue Hour"), which features Andreas Hereder as Theo, a call boy who finds love in an unexpected place. Sixteen years later, a 40-ish Herder looks like this: 

 

I clicked the link to read about the 2007 coming out of one of the History Boys but it was broken.

I can't believe the guys at AE don't like Wesley! I think he's absolutely charming, and what are you talking about? He can definitely pull off those shorts, I think they look great on him. :)

afhickman

"It takes a village (to make Village People)"

Stephanie Zacharek has written a lovely tribute to this film on Salon.com. I have the link:

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2008/07/18/forget/index.html

And you don't have to be a hustler, or HIV+ to appreciate it, or realize that what Nolot is showing you is what y'all have to expect as Tim'es Wing-ed wastebasket (As Gore Vidal calls it) hovers ever-closer. Besides, the Dish alone is FABULOUS!

Nolot was Roland Barthes' boyfriend before Roland dumped him for a younger model named Andre Techine.

He doesn't just rule the web. HE RULES THE WORLD!

Sounds like a new Sid and Marty Krofft show, doesn't it?

I'm surprised that the link you gave "outing" Mikey V didn't go for the juicier gayness in his past. That was what made the story so amusing to me -- it ROPED me in!

I understand your point about closeted male dancers, but unfortunately they are in a similar spot to leading-man movie stars; they have to be perceived as interested in their female lead, or their work doesn't go over. Unless the partner work you're choreographing is boy-boy (and believe me, a lot of boys would sign on for that number), the boy-girl partnership is very delineated in its gender roles -- more specifically, how men dance and how women dance.

As a dancer and a choreographer, I didn't have a problem with it . . . it just doesn't read right in a male-female dance if the guy is dancing soft. Male dancers have heard this since the beginning of time: "I don't care what you do offstage. Just dance strong when you're on it." I don't we're gonna stop hearing it anytime soon.

The tricky part -- which only becomes an issue when there's a show like SYTYCD where the dancers are given individual visibility -- is that the gay boys fear losing votes if the tween girls dialing the numbers don't think they're "available." It then becomes a question of whether Tom Cruise or Cheyenne Jackson would get more votes on the show. If you follow my drift.

 

 

Follow my drift to the blog. The blog dances like a boy but sleeps with them too. 

Why on earth aren't you lot covering Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long blog??? www.drhorrible.com NPH is seriously rocking every single scene, not to mention the songs. So he's out, proud, in a relationship, starring in a tvshow, does musicals and has a great voice for it. Reminds you of anyone? LOL Maybe Americans really got themselves their very own John Barrowman... If only NPH was equally slutty :P And I say it with all the affection. I love how Barrowman snogs everyone around :P

There was, at the very least, one out gay guy on SYTYCD, Thane, who was dropped last week, admitted to being gay in an interview with Us Weekly's James Vituscka. The rest said they were straight or didn't answer at all.

Umm....Thayne said he was gay?

Really?

Thayyyynnnne . . .

 

 

The blog wants to cook Thayne dinner. And the blog means that euphemistically.

Newby here and I was just checking out what has happened this week when I read about this movie Mysterious Skin, looked it up and it's available online. I was not at all prepared for what the movie was but am so grateful for the experience. It was phenomenal! The writing, the acting save for Michelle Trachtenberg and the story, all great. It was funny, heartbreaking and I hate to even admit it but even erotic. Wow! I was just blown away. Thanks afterelton for leading me to this film. Now I'm going to check out the author of the book that inspired it. Also, can't wait to go see the Dark Knight this weekend!

We got an openly gay dancer who made it to the grand final (I voted too). His name is Rhys and he's fabulous! He was totally himself on stage - even though he didn't say he was gay, but his outfit and appearance during result nights just gave it all away. And when asked if he was being himself, his answer was, "How much more of myself could I be?". Go Rhys!

He has made it virtually impossible for me to watch. I loathe this expression but the best way I can describe him is a total douche. He spends the majority of his time trying to convince everyone he's straight but seriously, is there any gay man out there who would want him to be gay? The very thought of it made me throw up a little bit.

He was also in the Being Human pilot--a Vampire, a Werewolf and a Ghost become roommates (and doesn't that sound like the first line of a joke?)--he's the Werewolf. Supposedly the BBC picked it up. With any luck, he's still starring. He's the reason I fell in love with it!

afhickman

"It takes a village (to make Village People)"

Well apart from Captain Hammer's gay groupie and Dr. Horrible's wardrobe (which is straight out of James Whale), this really wasn't very innovative. I can't see where Whedon could possibly take the story. It's more like an attenuated SNL sketch. That being said, Neil Patrick Harris is letter-perfect as the Doc; his double takes and dead-pan facial expressions are the funniest thing in the film. Fillion's Captain Hammer is a one-joke character, and the point about his hypocrisy is "hammered" home early on. Episode 3 was a major yawn. Of course, I felt the same way about "Serenity." Whedon's audience had good reason to root for Buffy, especially with the charismatic Sarah Michelle Geller in the lead. "Dr. Horrible," by contrast, is one joke stretched terribly thin. NPH can do little to save it. Anyone else?

I think Dennis Ayers was too harsh in his personal attacks on Nigel Lythgoe. Mr. Ayers was so persistent in emphasizing his personal agenda that there be "out" contestants on the show, that he blinded himself to Lythgoe's attitude that sexual preference didn't matter in the slightest.

It is a very rare occasion when a male dancer is called upon to be 'mincy' onstage. Lythgoe is simply stating what he (and *many* other choreographers) need to see in a male dancer's performance. Very much like a director would do when casting a male leading actor. I doubt very much that Mr. Ayers would find Chris Crocker to be a convincing 'Indiana Jones', yet I also doubt he would be so insulting to Spielberg for not casting Crocker in the role. Stating that male dancers should be masculine appearing does not in any way indicate that Lythgoe is fearful of homosexuals or 'prissy' dancers. Those male dancers who can't portray masculinity onstage (or a variety of other characteristics) *should* be weeded out of the competition, IMO. Note, too that Lythgoe never indicated that any dancer should stay in the closet or hide their 'offstage' personna. He was never asked about that by Ayers. He was simply bludgeoned with Mr. Ayers' personal agenda for outing any gay contestants.

IMO, Nigel's responses were completely professional and protective of the contestants' personal choices to 'out' themselves or not. He only indicated what he expected at a *performance* level and indicated *very* clearly that any contestant's sexual preference was of no importance whatsoever to him.

It's one thing to speak up (as an individual) and say, "I'm gay" to offer oneself as a role model (if it can be helpful). It's very different (and IMO childishly insecure) to *insist* that all people announce their sexuality to the world. What purpose does that serve other than to emphasize a ridiculously false message that an individual's sexual practices define who they are? To my mind, Lythgoe is the greater role model in this situation for not allowing himself to be bullied by Mr. Ayers' personal agenda and for insisting that sexual preference was not an issue.

"It's curtains for you, Dr. Horrible. Lacy, wafting curtains..."

<a href="http://www.drhorrible.com"><img src="http://www.drhorrible.com/images/banners/banner.gif" border="0">&l

In your section on Midnight Cowboy, you wrote:

"Okay, so Cowboy doesn't make the gay relationship bewtween Voight's Joe Buck and Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo completely explicit, but it drops a hell of a lot of hints."

It's been a while (decades, in fact), so I'll have to go back and re-watch but as I remember it, the movie wasn't explicit because there was no explicit, gay relationship between Buck and Ratso. In the film version, Buck was a very naive, heterosexual man who attempts sex with another male character in the movie for the money only. It is clear in the movie that Joe is not getting pleasure from the encounter and that he is thinking of a woman the whole time.

In the movie, his character turns out to be a compassionate, heterosexual male. Not necessarily in love with, or desirous of Ratso - he just ends up showing love and compassion towards him because of the platonic relationship that develops between a straight man and a gay man.

 

-Sibelius

"It's curtains for you, Dr. Horrible. Lacy, wafting curtains..."

It's not that Lythgoe feels a male dancer should be masculine that makes him a homophobic a$$ - it's the way he treats gay people on his shows. He constantly makes fun of gays (both directly and indirectly) and has been known to enforce an atmosphere of intolerance behind the scenes of both of his shows. Then has the nerve to blatantly lie about it when he's confronted. We need more people willing to hold homophobes accountable for their actions. Making excuses for them or turning a blind eye certainly doesn't help.

There was a made for TV movie called "The Children of Times Square" about a couple of runaways, one a male and one female, and what they had to do for money. I thought it was pretty ground-breaking for its day even though it does not hold up today.