Harvey Milk: Shit Ship

Guardian.

Yeah, great, let's kill some Arabs for Harvey!

Stonewall: Straight Power!

Danny is the centerpiece of Stonewall, a decision Emmerich made, in part, in an effort to attract a wider audience who could connect with him.“You have to understand one thing: I didn’t make this movie only for gay people, I made it also for straight people," he says. I kind of found out, in the testing process, that actually, for straight people, [Danny] is a very easy in. Danny’s very straight-acting. He gets mistreated because of that. [Straight audiences] can feel for him.”
Roland Emmerich talks to BuzzFeed LGBT about his Stonewall movie.

Dear.

Maybe they should have made Harvey Milk a straight dude in Milk, 'in an effort to attract a wider audience who could connect with him'?

The almost painful pay-off here? Roland keeps right on digging!

The petition to boycott Stonewall also takes issue with Ray, the most prominent character of color, falling in love with Danny — critics read that particular arc as a White Savior narrative. Emmerich, for his part, thinks that Ray and the other street hustlers benefit from Danny’s presence, even after Danny leaves the Village to begin his freshman year at Columbia.

“They learned something from Danny — that you can make it, that you can study, you can maybe have a more regular life,” Emmerich said. “I also don’t have the feeling at the end that they are so much on the streets anymore.”

Poster released after the whitewash furore blew up.

You may also enjoy; The Problem With Stonewall: It Isn't About Stonewall, Keving O'Keefe, Mic. Stonewall Is Terribly Offensive, And Offensively Terrible, Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair. There Aren't Enough Bricks in the World to Throw at Roland Emmerich’s Appalling Stonewall, Rich Juzwiak, Gawker, and an untitled absolute stinker of a review on IndieWire; 'The thick blanket of badness that covers the entirety of the film doesn’t do its problematic subtextual politics any favors, either. At the very least, Emmerich can hold his head high in the knowledge that he wasn’t responsible for the astonishingly thick script...'

Oops!

Real-life Stonewall hero Marsha P. Johnson only gets a little screen time, and is played as comic relief, flatly, by Otoja Abit. Many of the characters who don’t look and sound like Danny are rendered as jokes, silly people who need Danny’s relatively rugged masculinity to get them angry and organized. Stonewall is ultimately yet another cartoonish fantasy about white saviors and square-jawed heroes; it should be called Independence Gay. Vanity Fair.

PS Boring Queerty interview.

Update: Not sure there's much point in listing all the articles listing all the flaws in this film - Salon's listed the most scathing - but Fagburn thinks Tim Teeman should have the last word with his fine essay for the Daily Beast, The Gay Shame Of Stonewall The Movie.

If the Stonewall Riots radicalized politics and culture—and their echo is still present, it is now an official New York landmark—then let this listless film be its own wake-up call for writers, directors, and mainstream cinema to mine the true variety of LGBT lives.

Fagburn: Backpfeifengesicht

Ver actual media is full of stuff about Ukip and that smug posh twat Nigel Farage today, but here's a quick round-up of some other stuff that caught my red eyes recently...

Chris Denning: Shameless Ex-BBC DJ busted BBC News.
Burn the witch! etc etc.

Unreported World: Jamaica's Underground Gays Channel 4.
Tonight at 8pm.
RT with a :( if you want to pretend you care, but won't actually watch it.

Gambo: Shameless BBC DJ hosts Ivor Novello Awards Daily Express.
The 30th year he's done it. Good for him. x

Adorable!: The most pukey kid reacts to gayers 'viral' video EVER! Daily Mail.
It's rather instructive that only naff right-wing dweebs like Mail Online and Gay Star News like sentimental gay crap like this.

Old Vic: Matthew Warchus taking over from Kevin Spacey Daily Telegraph.
Old Vic? Queen Vic more like!
[Edit: Apparently Warchus, director of the new film Pride, isn't gay so... 'Old Vic? Old queen more like!' Not that I'm suggesting Spacey is a big gayer, either].

Disco Damaged: London website relaunched!!! DiscoDamaged.com.
Good news.

Brian Paddick: Ex-lover 'threatened to kill me' Via Gay Star News.
No comment.

Brighton Pride: Will they charge for the St James's Street party? GScene.
Probably. They always do what Sussex Police tell them to.

Sitges: Never Mind The Buggers Guardian Travel.
Fagburn's stepsister [Is there a nicer term to use?] used to live there with her kids and they all loved it.

RuPaul: Responds to 'tranny' 'controversy' HuffPost Gay Voices. 
Context is all. If The Sun used 'tranny' in a cruel, sensationalist story about a trans woman that would be offensive, but I really don't think that's what going on here. 

Harvey Milk: A frigging stamp unveiled at the White House! The Independent. 
A stamp!!!! Wow. It's the least they could do - they checked.

Edward Carpenter: Fundraising drive for a memorial in Sheffield Morning Star.
The pioneering radical gay socialist Edward Carpenter is one of Fagburn's heroes. Born in Hove, he didn't stay long...

Fred Phelps: Did a dying Fred come out for LGBT rights? Via Queerty.
Doubt it. This has apparently come from a member of the Phelps clan and they say all kinds of crazy shit.

Giovanni's Room: The last day at America's oldest gay bookstore Rolling Stone.
Thanks amazon! Maybe since your minimum wage slavery and tax avoidance helped put them out of business, some of the money you so publicly gave for mc same-sex marriage could go to help a community LGBT bookshop for gay people who like books. Ah, just realised the flaw in that plan...

PS Backpfeifengesicht is a German word for a person who should be punched in the face.

No idea why Fagburn kept thinking of that today.

Anyway, here is the real news!

Leave me alone, I can't fucking take it anymore

Harvey Milk: Day

The Independent marks Harvey Milk Day by publishing this moving essay by a 12 year-old.

Can viewers think of someone who might contest the claim Milk is 'the most influential LGBT activist'?

Wonder if Dustin Lance Black is working on a screenplay?

Tom Of Finland: Stamps Of Finland

In September-October 2014, Itella Posti will release seven new sets of stamps, containing a total of 33 new designs. It is a great collection to choose from; the subjects of the new stamps include male drawings by Tom of Finland, autumnal yard and garden scenes painted by Urpo Martikainen, and Jaakko Tähti's photos of Finnish bridges. Other subjects for the end-of-the-year stamps include signs of sky and the change in everyday Finland - and, of course, Christmas.

Apparently this is an actual thing.

Can anyone verify this?

Meanwhile, back in the USA, the postal office show slightly more decorum...

Update: This 'gay stamps' story became quite a thing. I don't like to endlessly go on about how hopeless many journalists are, but, by way of but one example, type 'Tom Finland' into Google News and see how it took three to four days for both the gay and straight media to notice this was happening.

I do this as a hobby, why can't you do your job?

San Francisco: There's No Place Like Home

Thanks to the equality rights work of pioneers such as the politician and activist Harvey Milk, San Francisco has a reputation as the gay capital of the world. But as the city recovers from its 43rd gay Pride festival at the weekend, attended by more than 1.5 million people [sic], it must confront an uncomfortable issue. The streets through which about 200 colourful parades – from drag queens to the motorcycle-riding Dykes on Bikes – travelled, are also home to increasing numbers of gay homeless people, many of whom are exceptionally vulnerable to prejudice and violence.
Research produced by the Human Services Agency of San Francisco (SF-HSA) has revealed that 29 per cent of the city’s homeless population are from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. “Strawberry” is now living in a shelter but says his sexuality places him at risk.
“I feel that eyes are on me and they’re watching every move I make. Even in the shelter I’m confronted with being gay – it’s a really difficult situation.”

The Independent.

A depressing article - but is anyone surprised by this?
I wonder how many homeless queers there were back in Harvey Milk's day?
The media love "Trouble in paradise" and/or Declinism features like these.
And Fagburn has to ask the obvious question, why is a British newspaper running a story on LGBT homelessness in San Francisco, and not in London, Brighton, Glasgow, Manchester...

22-5-2013: Harvey Milk Day

Via Joe My God.

Film: Hooray For Hollywood!

No matter who we are, no matter what we are, no matter where we come from, we learn about ourselves and each other in two ways. The first way is what we hear – in our families, from our friends, and from our schoolmates. The second way is what we see – on television and in the movie theater. Now, there is not much any of us can do about what people hear from families and friends, but there is a whole hell of a lot we can do about what people see.
The images that impacted me as a teenager had lasting influences on my entire life and I bet that is true for most of us. What we see in the media today affects everybody, whether it’s film, TV, radio, magazines or the internet. What the media says about your sexual orientation, and the color of your skin, and the shape of your eyes, and your ethnicity… what you look like, what you weigh, what you wear, how poor you are, how awkward you are, how educated you are, and how different you are… this stuff really sinks in. What we see teaches us about how to feel about ourselves and how to feel about each other.
And now, I’m talking about kids who are gay and I’m talking about kids who aren’t gay. One group needs affirmation and the other group needs education. And, if I’m being honest, neither of those issues are high on any movie studio or TV network’s agenda…

The Celluloid Closet was made almost 20 years ago and certainly attitudes have changed, but maybe not quite so much as you or I would want or hope. Television has been much more progressive and credit has to be given to producers like Max Mutchnick and David Kohan and Ryan Murphy for really changing things.
Now movies need to catch up. There are magnificent movies being made about gay subjects with gay characters, like Brokeback Mountain and Milk. Anyone would have been proud to have made those movies. I know I would be. But when you think about some of these films, even our favorite ones, there is a theme that runs through them.
Brokeback Mountain, Milk, Boys Don’t Cry, Philadelphia, The Hours, Gods and Monsters, The Talented Mr. Ripley, A Single Man, My Own Private Idaho, Cloud Atlas – in all these movies, the main character is murdered or martyred or commits suicide or just dies unhappily. And there are far more pernicious and dangerous images that confront gay kids and their parents: the lesbian murderer, the psychotic transvestite, the queen who is humiliated and sometimes tossed off a ship or a ledge. It’s a big joke. It still happens.
How many times have you heard a character imply to another that the worst thing about going to prison isn’t being locked up for the rest of your life, it’s the homosexuality? And old stereotypes still exist. The most benign stereotypes would have a gay kid believe that they will end up being the asexual, witty best friend of the pretty girl, or a drag queen, or a swishy hairdresser. The list goes on.
Of course, there are great images, too, like the family in The Kids Are All Right. The way the boy in Perks of Being a Wallflower and the middle-aged man in Hotel Marigold and the 75-year-old man in Beginners come out to a better, richer, more fulfilled life. It’s treated as a celebration.

And real credit has to be given to the filmmakers of ParaNorman, Chris Butler and Sam Fell, who had the first gay character in an animated movie, and he was the football hunk and it was totally incidental to the plot.
Now it’s time for all of us to take that step. Not every gay character needs to be defined by his or her sexuality. Can’t being gay just be one stitch in the fabric of someone’s life? Can’t we depict men and women who just so happen to be gay – perhaps a lawyer or soldier or business executive or scientist or engineer…
We need to create an atmosphere that encourages people to speak up, so we get this right.
How about next time, when any of us are reading a script and it says words like fag, or faggot – homo – dyke – take a pencil and just cross it out. Just don’t do it.
We can do better and we will do better. We have to. If we just think about that kid in North Dakota, or their parents, we might just do it a little differently.

Amy Pascal, chair of Sony Pictures, in a speech given last night.
Via Hollywood Deadline.

Thought this was interesting - but more because of who said it, than what it says.
It's a bit simplistic and resurrects a rather tired 80s argument about "positive images" in popular culture.
Haven't we got over this by now?
How can you show the fact of homophobia if someone can't say a word like "faggot"?
How can you film a movie about the life of Harvey Milk if you don't have him dying at the end?
And don't get me started on characters "who just happen to be gay"...
Can you imagine how arse-achingly awful a film about some nice gay men having a nice time would be?

PS For the record, can I stress that I find gay men who think they're saying something stunningly original and "radical" by complaining about non-existent gay straw men who they claim are arguing for "positive images" in popular culture as painfully tedious as anal bleaching. 

Interview: Dustin Lance Black

Oliver Stone interviews the adorable and eminently boyfriendable Dustin Lance Black in Interview.

Milk was a hero to many people. What attracted you to [J Edgar] Hoover?
"The attraction to Milk was pretty obvious. He's a father figure. I thought it might be worth investigating the opposite of Milk - what a cautionary historical figure would be like. This is a tale of a closet case, as opposed to an inspirational tale of a man brave enough to come out. It's almost the flip side. I'm always interested in getting to know people, and that means vilified people as much as those celebrated. You find out that heroes aren't always so heroic, and villains have some bit of humanity in them. As much as I went into this project not really liking Hoover and feeling upset with so much of what he did and what civil rights he violated, there is a person there, a human being. If you don't humanize him and try to show why he did the things he did, then you are left with this cardboard figure of Hoover-whether it's one with the "G-Man" machine gun or in a dress. I wanted to figure out who the guy really was..."

Gay Youth: It Gets Better

In response to the recent spate of suicides of American gay teenagers, Dan Savage has started the It Gets Better Project via YouTube.
Dan Savage writes:

"My heart breaks for the pain and torment you went through, Billy Lucas," a reader wrote after I posted about Billy Lucas to my blog . "I wish I could have told you that things get better."
I had the same reaction: I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.
But gay adults aren't allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don't bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.
Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don't have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.
So here's what you can do, GBVWS: Make a video. Tell them it gets better.
I've launched a channel on YouTube — www.youtube.com/itgetsbetterproject — to host these videos.
"You gotta give 'em hope," Harvey Milk said.
They need to know that it gets better. Submit a video. Give them hope.