Sacha Baron Cohen won't be Freddie, Knocked Up's potential homophobia and Sunday's gay New York Times

Speculation circulated last Friday that Sacha Baron Cohen aka Borat aka Bruno aka Ali G had signed on to play Freddie Mercury in a biopic about the gay singer. A quick check of IMDB and Variety indicated no such thing, so I was pretty skeptical. Turns out skepticism was a good thing as Cohen's publicist released a statement this weekend saying it was "Pure hokum." Now that's short and to the point! Instead, it sounds like Johnny Depp is the front runner for the part--and, frankly, a better choice.

Katharine Heigl of Grey's Anatomy might be T.R.Knight's best friend, but that hasn't kept bisexual film director Mike White (who also wrote and starred in Chuck and Buck) from wondering if Heigl's upcoming relationship comedy Knocked Up isn't playing a little bit to the homophobes in the bleachers. Knocked Up is directed by White's colleague and friend Judd Apatow (The 40 Year Old Virgin) and White sees the "gay" jokes in both Virgin and Judd's latest as being bullying. Says White in a Sunday New York Times article:

To me, I definitely stand in the corner of wanting to give voice to the bullied, and not the bully. Here’s where comedy is catharsis for people who are picked on. There’s a strain in ‘Knocked Up’ where you sort of feel like something’s changed a little bit. My sense of it is that because those guys are idiosyncratic-looking, their perception is that they’re still the underdogs. But there is something about the spirit of the thing, that comes under the guise of comedy, where — it’s weird. At some point it starts feeling like comedy of the bullies, rather than the bullied.

The trailer for the movie (which looks like pretty well-trod ground) is after the jump. As for the potential homophobia, there is one creepy anal sex with a kid joke and a character who reads a little gay and not in a Neil Patrick Harris way.

Speaking of the Times and bullying, they've got a front page article on how pretty much nothing has changed on talk radio--including homophobic jokes--since Don Imus' firing. I'm a huge free speech advocate, but that doesn't mean guys like the ones in the article (or Imus) should make hundreds of thousands dollars for puerile jokes that pander to homophobia, racism, and sexism.

On a much brighter note the Sunday NY Times has a great Modern Love essay by Cindy Chupack about finding unexpected closure for her first marriage which happened to be to a gay man. Chupack, a TV writer best known for her work on Sex and the City, is quite touching as she writes about how she had to seek a special "Jewish" divorce before remarrying and some of the homophobia she found--and confronted--in doing so. She's also funny as she writes about her fears of inadvertently marrying another gay man. Here is my favorite line as she discusses how fluid sexuality has become for some:

My feeling, at this point, when everyone’s sexuality seemed to be in flux, was simply: Pick a side! I’m fine with it all! Just declare a major!

And I might as well wrap-up with a couple of more articles from yesterday's New York Times (hey, it was a very gay Sunday). This article is all about the rise of young gay artists and this one is about a photographer who is gay.