The Last Frontier

Gus Van Sant's "Milk" isn't just a mainstream-minded Oscar candidate; it's also a rallying cry.

With Sean Penn starring as Harvey Milk, the openly gay San Francisco supervisor who was gunned down along with Mayor George Moscone in 1978, the movie (which opens Wednesday) makes its message clear: Gay people must be "out" to be counted.

This theme is particularly timely given California's passage of anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 this month, but there's also a certain irony:

Here's a broadly targeted movie with marquee actors (James Franco, Josh Brolin and Emile Hirsch co-star), yet not only is none of the featured players openly gay, but there isn't one openly gay leading man in all of Hollywood. Even as gay people have become far more prominent and comfortable in culture and everyday life in the 30 years since Milk's death, not a single current A-list movie actor is "out."

Could it be that big movie stars simply don't swing that way? That lead actors defy all percentages and likelihood to remain a strictly heterosexual crowd?

Or is the more logical explanation that while Hollywood preaches openness, it is fearful to practice it?

"It's the last frontier, and it will remain the last frontier for quite some time," said Bruce Bibby, who as Ted Casablanca writes the popular gossip column "The Awful Truth" for E! Online. "Some of our biggest moneymakers right now are absolute boy-on-boy kind of boys. It's America's dirty little secret. If they only knew."

We won't play the who-is-and-who-isn't game here.

But it's worth noting that at a time when everyone seems to know everything about everyone, and careers move on in spite of arrests, sex tapes, addiction-rehab cycles, affairs and babies out of wedlock, public acknowledgment of homosexuality remains a formidable taboo among top movie talent.

The most cited reason is money.

Van Sant, who is openly gay, laughingly called this an issue of "merchandising," noting that over the last decade leading men have become "industries within themselves. They're almost like industrial conglomerates."

"Hollywood does not like anything that's going to threaten its bottom line," said Michael Jensen, editor of afterelton.com, a Web site devoted to gay and bisexual men in entertainment. "The idea of a gay leading man in a movie that's going to have a budget around $100 million—getting a studio to be the first one to take that chance is a challenging thing to do."

As for the actors, Jensen continued, "there are already so many reasons for a casting director to turn a person down, and being an openly gay actor trying to get a romantic lead role, you're just giving them another reason."

The absence of gay lead actors—and, yes, we are talking primarily of men—stands in stark contrast to the progress activists say has been made in other areas.

"The images in the media 30 years ago and the images today are vastly, vastly different," said Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). "You had 'Three's Company,' an over-the-top caricature of a gay man, and the other characters ridiculed him. Today a show like that would not be aired. We have 'Brothers & Sisters,' we have 'Desperate Housewives,' 'Ugly Betty.' Those are real portrayals."

A gay character on a TV show is no longer news, though GLAAD has tabulated that just 16 of 663 prime-time characters, or 2.6 percent, are gay. Openly gay celebrities in themselves also are no longer such an anomaly.

Singers Clay Aiken and Lance Bass have come out, as did comedian Wanda Sykes just last week. Elton John remains a huge concert draw and classic-rock fixture, and Ellen DeGeneres is welcomed into millions of American homes on her daytime talk show, just as Rosie O'Donnell was on "The View" and her own show.

"People who watch and adore Ellen DeGeneres don't care one iota that she is gay, and they've known she is for a long time," said Mark Urman, distribution president for Summit Entertainment. "That is a very mainstream audience."

Then again, DeGeneres and O'Donnell have done little acting since they opened up about their sexuality. People accept them for themselves, but it's unclear whether they'd accept them as anyone else.

This leads to a dynamic in which heterosexual actors such as Penn or Tom Hanks (in "Philadelphia") have no problems being believed as gay men—or murderers or mentally challenged characters—yet there's much doubt that an openly gay actor could be convincing carrying a romance with the opposite sex.

“I don’t know why that is,” Urman said. “We know for a fact they’re acting.”

There also may be different standards for women and men. Although Jodie Foster does not discuss her personal life, while accepting an award late last year she thanked "my beautiful Cydney" in reference to the woman widely acknowledged to be her partner. Cynthia Nixon's revelation that she is a lesbian had no effect on her participation in this year's smash "Sex and the City" movie, and if anything, Lindsay Lohan has received more sympathetic press since she began dating DJ Samantha Ronson (and stopped acting so erratically).

Back on the male side, Ian McKellen is probably the most prominent "out" movie actor, having co-starred in the lucrative "Lord of the Rings" and "X-Men" franchises. But at 69, McKellen is well beyond the typical leading-man age, and he's British, which comes with a different set of cultural associations. The dashing Rupert Everett also is British, and his career never took off after he opened up about his sexuality, though making the Madonna bomb “The Next Best Thing” didn’t help.

The greatest male success story may be TV's Neil Patrick Harris, who is openly gay yet plays an enjoyably obnoxious straight man on "How I Met Your Mother." T.R. Knight also continues to fare well on "Grey's Anatomy" despite having essentially been outed by reports of former co-star Isaiah Washington's directing an anti-gay slur at him on set.

But neither star is being asked to sell millions of multiplex tickets. Nor are those actors who have come out well after the peaks of their careers, such as Richard Chamberlain. Rock Hudson acknowledged his homosexuality only after he was terminally ill with AIDS in 1985.

Bibby has written a number of much-speculated-about blind items about a closeted actor dubbed Toothy Tile, who he reported was close to going public with his sexuality until his agents and publicists persuaded him not to—a situation far from unique.

"Toothy Tile is a big star, but Toothy Tile wants to remain a big star, and that's the problem," said Bibby, who is gay himself. "Hollywood is a very creative community, and the creative arts have always been totally homo filled. But it's first and foremost a business. We've got to sell the product out to the masses in the rest of the country where it's not so gay filled."

The question is whether the industry's and actors' fears are justified or whether a megastar's coming out might not be such a big deal after all.

Giuliano hopes his own experience could serve as an example. He'd been the mayor of Tempe, Ariz., for two years when he came out, and he was re-elected four times to serve eight more years.

"I had a very misplaced understanding and a very misplaced fear of what life would be like if I was more authentic and more honest and more out," the GLAAD leader said.

McKellen considered coming out to be positive for his craft, saying in a 2005 interview:

"Acting in my case is no longer about disguise; it's about telling the truth, and my truth is that I'm gay. I'm very happy for people to know that, and then I can get on with telling the truth about the character that I'm playing. That's why I say to other actors: If you really want to be a good actor and a successful one, and you're gay, let everybody know about it."

Urman said that at this point, "I don't think that anything to do with anybody's sexual orientation would or could harm somebody's career."

Bibby isn't so optimistic. "My opinion is it would be painful at first because America has shown it has such a fear of gay people," he said. "It would be very rough going for an actor to find that out, and I don't blame them for not wanting to find that out. They're not politicians. They're performers. They don't want to be held accountable for America's discomfort about homosexuality."

Still, Giuliano, who has seen Van Sant’s film, hopes some Hollywood A-listers follow McKellen's and Milk’s lead.

“The message of ‘Milk’ is as important as it was 30 years ago, which is our visibility matters, and you need to be open,” the GLAAD leader said. “The changes we have seen in our society are because we are more open and the community is more visible than it ever has been.”

Source: Why are there no openly gay leading men in Hollywood?, Chicago Tribune

Gyllenspoon-Fed Merde

October 22, 2008

Dear Ted:
What's this you said in the last Truth, Lies & Ted about my favorite actor of all time, Paul Newman? You were talking about what a shame it would be if sham couple Jake and Reese tried to make like a "modern-day Paul and Joanne." I'll still love him anyway, but tell me one of H'wood's greatest love stories ain't a sham! Love you and your bitchin' bitchiness.
—Lauren, Chicago

Dear Newman's Own Fan:
No fakery we know of betwixt Paul and his longtime sweetie. Meant it would be heresy if J&R played house like those two, 'cause they ain't nothing like the real thing.


Dear Ted:
Are Reese and Jake the new TomKat? I think robot-boyfriend Jake is the new Katie.
—Gray

Dear GyllenKat:
I think they're both robots.

Source: Ted Casablanca's The Awful Truth
***

October 28, 2008

Morning Piss: Gyllenspoon-Fed Merde

J'adore Reese and Jake. Those sweethearts are two of the most talented, adorable and luscious babes to hit T-town in some time.

Don't agree?

Think Reese is just a pixie-ish little waif with pale sex appeal? Think again. And if you consider Jake all boyish 'n' bashful brooding, no real outward he-man stuff goin' down, think again on that score, as well. R 'n' J are both terrifically not of what you see in real life.

And this whole aw-shucks romance they've got going down is so not how both types really are — why in the world the public is lapping it up, hook, line and photo-op, is beyond me.

Just look at their pics together, everybody! They act like bro 'n' sis (and not even particularly close ones, at that). These babes have movies and careers and agendas to sell, oldest story in the world. Jen and Vince, anyone?

Ms. W is the craftiest broad alive; she's teaching J.G. spectacularly well. Just ask Ryan Phillippe if you don't believe this to be a high probability. But on the other hand, if this sorta white-bread, milquetoast romance is what you need to get your fantasy on every morning, then, dears, go right ahead, be my limp guest.

I just prefer my Awful readers to be fully informed consumers, that's all.

Source: Ted Casablanca's The Awful Truth

Join the Impact

Join the Impact on November 15th.

Join the Impact

Keith Olbermann's Prop 8 special comment:

Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.

Some parameters, as preface. This isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics, and this isn't really just about Prop-8. And I don't have a personal investment in this: I'm not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.

And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics.

This is about the... human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not... understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want -- a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Only now you are saying to them -- no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights -- even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?

Source: Keith Olbermann's Prop 8 Special Comment: It's "About The Human Heart" (VIDEO)

Every Vote Counts

Ticking Tile

October 16, 2008

Dear Ted:
Why is Toothy Tile bearding when he has a baby with his boyfriend? As much as I adore Family Tile, I think Gray Goose should take Baby Tile with him and leave Toothy. Enough is enough when manufacturing a fake image! The baby comes first and requires honesty. What do you think?
—Myla

Dear Honest Woman:
I think you know what I think. After all, your letter's first, isn't it?

Source: Ted Casablanca's The Awful Truth
***


October 21, 2008

Dear Ted:
I, too, am tired of the Toothy Tile game...but just out of curiosity, how many people have sent you an email correctly identifying him?
—SanFriskyBabe

Dear Ticking Tile:
A few.

Source: Ted Casablanca's The Awful Truth

Every Day is Toothy Day

October 7, 2008

Dear Ted:
You so often told us that Toothy Tile knows he's Toothy and that he's proud of it. What about Gray Goose, is he a proud one, too?
—Robert

Dear Smile Like You Mean It:
Hardly. Grimacing through it all.


Dear Ted:
Who is the most loving, sweetest and hottest hubby: Toothy's or yours? Is Baby Tile old enough to walk?
—Grace

Dear Tile-icious:
Mine. No.


Dear Ted:
If Jake and Reese are just PR buddies, then as far as I can tell, he hasn't dated anyone since he broke up with Kirsten Dunst back in 2005. Is he that picky?
—Jill, M.E.

Dear Dump or Dunst:
Maybe he didn't date KiKi, either.

Source: Ted Casablanca's The Awful Truth
***


October 11, 2008

Dear Ted:
Would you answer the million-dollar question: Is Toothy Tile gay or bisexual? How about Gray Goose? What is the real nature of Toothy's relationship with his beard?
—Mia

Dear Tricky Tooth:
You mean the one on his face or the one on his publicist’s speed dial? Gay as my vocabulary, darling. Ditto on the real love in Toothy’s life.


Dear Ted:
I have so many questions for you! Is Daniel Craig Toothy Tile? Is Obama going to win? Will Brad Pitt pull a Woody Allen and marry Zahara 18 years from now?
—Jenna K

Dear Lot to Handle:
No. Hopefully. Better not.


Dear Ted:
Does Toothy Tile's GF/beard know that he's T.T.? Or if not, that he's gay?
—Pat, Chicago

Dear Loose Goose:
Enough with Toothy! He’s not even that good of an actor, what’s all the damn fuss, already? And, of course, Toothy's woman knows he's Toothy, as well as his mattress persuasions, duh. She's been down this road before, think she'd be over the swinging studs by now, but whatever.


Dear Ted:
You're so jaded about celebrity relationships. You seem to think like there's an expiration date to these couplings.
—Dnnro

Dear Downer:
No worries, every day is Toothy Day here at A.T.!

Source: Ted Casablanca's The Awful Truth

Remembering Matthew Shepard

We asked people: "What effect did Matthew Shepard’s murder have on you since it happened 10 years ago?"

Matthew Shepard’s murder has served as a reminder for me that even good can come out of the most heinous acts. Dennis and Judy argued against the death penalty for their son’s murderers, and after his death established the Matthew Shepard Foundation to promote lgbt equality.
Bryan Glick

I was heartbroken; at the time I was living life as if America was a safe and accepting place. Ten years later I have learned that, in order for America to be that safe and accepting place, I have to live a genuine, visible life and take every opportunity to stand up in support of my community.
Erika Church

Matthew Shepherd’s heinous murder made real for me the ugly bigotry that had been hidden too long by giving it a face and a soul. Whenever I read of homophobic statements and actions, I now see Matthew’s face and it reminds me to stay in the fight for equality for all.
Kurt Bestor

I remember where I was and what I was doing — morning rush hour traffic. It made me realize how vulnerable life can be, and that living in my little bubble in Salt Lake City couldn’t protect me. I am always paying attention to my surroundings and I take nothing for granted.
Matt Lyon

I realized that the time had come for me to pull my head out of my ass and begin to live my life as God intended; gay, courageous and out.
John Wood

Matthew Shepard’s murder put a face to the issue of hate crimes in this country and who the victims of homophobia really are. His death was not only a wake up call to society at large, it was a resounding bell for the GLBT community to stand up for equal treatment and protection under the law. May His Memory Be Eternal (Greek Orthodox blessing).
Connie Anast

Matthew Shepard died just a couple years before I came out at 17. He signifies to me both that it is important to stand up and be counted for who I am, but to always remember that it can be dangerous to do so.
Josh Adamson

I have become very sensitive of which strangers I am open with about my sexuality (at least when I am in a strange town). When I travel through small towns I imagine the frustration and fears that the local GLBTQ people may be going through and I hope that they find positive allies and friends who will help to protect them.
Jeremiah Maybee

I wondered to myself "How in the world could anyone kill such a beautiful young man with so much potential and so much more life to be lived?" I remember attending the vigil at the Captiol that cold fall night when our community gathered together lighting candles in remembering Matthew’s life. That memory will live for me forever. Unfortunately, even with Matthew Shepard’s passing, many today are still violently beaten or killed today. When will it stop?
Mark Swonson

Source: QStreet: 10 Years After Matthew Shepard

Matthew Shepard Foundation