Hollywood: Who Cares?

Press released stupid excuse for 'research' + stupid posh intern = moronic filler!

Hollywood: We Built This City

It could seem puzzling that a business that depends so heavily on the talents and gifts of gay people would be obsessed with obscuring the true sexual orientation of it’s leading players and public faces. Usually this boils down to some variation of “the audience won’t believe so-and-so is playing a straight man if they really know he’s gay”. Its an amusing ploy on the film industry’s part, feigning concern over our belief in a hero’s sexual desires while he or she is surrounded by flying dragons and belligerent aliens.

Who, exactly, is this mystery audience confounded by movie leads acting straight? Gay men would believe it. Hell, we’re experts on that grift. I can’t imagine women really care. The ultimate concern of course is that precious young male heterosexual demographic, the one whose buying powers are legend. Just knowing your screen hero is gay could call into question what it means to be masculine, what it means to be yourself, what it really is to be a man who is honest about who he loves. Perish the thought. What would ever happen then? 

Hugh Elliott, Guardian Cif.

Hollywood: World Centre Of Homophobia

A new report has condemned Hollywood film and television studios for not giving enough screen time to the LGBT community and other minorities.

Just days before the Oscars, the study produced by the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern Cali­for­nia found that across ten major outlets, everyone of them failed to be diverse.

“We don’t have a diversity problem. We have an inclusion crisis,” said Professor Stacy L. Smith – one of the reports authors.

The study examined 109 films and 305 first run TV shows between 2014 and 2015 and found that after analysing more than 11,000 speaking roles, less than two percent identified as LGBT.

Of this, only seven were transgender and four of them from the same TV show.

The report also condemned the fact that women and ethnic minorities are underrepresented and accused Hollywood of “whitewashing”.When we start to step back to see this larger ecology, I think we see a picture of exclusion," added Professor Smith. "And it doesn't match the norms of the population of the United States." ...

Pink News.

This really is first class nonsense.

LOL! etc.

This is the kind of junk GLAAD do with their annual surveys of LGBT representation in the media - sit and watch a film, stopwatch in hand.

• Hollywood still 'straight, white, boys club' finds major diversity survey, Guardian.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Behind The Spandex

One of the original Power Rangers stars quit because he was the victim of homophobic bullying.

David Yost played the original Blue Ranger/Billy Cranston in the 1990s TV series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and became a fan favourite.

In a 2010 interview that has resurfaced online this week, Yost opened up about his reasons for quitting the show in 1996 – and the reasons might ruin your childhood memories.

Speaking at the Anime Festival Orlando 2010, he said he fell out with the show’s production team and creators because of his sexuality.

He said that his co-stars were repeatedly quizzed about what they knew about his sexuality, and he was also the victim of vile homophobic abuse.

He said: “I walked off set one day during the middle of lunch – I had made a decision, I had been thinking about it for a good week, and the reason I walked off was because I was called faggot one too many times.

“I had heard that several times while working on the show from creators, producers, writers, directors.

“It’s not that people can’t talk about me, and have their opinion about me – but continuing to work in an environment like that is really difficult."

He added: “That’s the vibe I was getting. I know my co-stars were getting called in a couple times to different producers’ offices to be questioned about my sexuality, which is a humiliating experience.

“There were a lot of issues – it felt like a bad marriage. I could either stay and finish six more months, or just go – and I was worried about my life. “I was worried I might take my own life, and in order to get a handle in what was going on, I needed to leave when I left. That’s why I left the show.” ...

Pink News. 

When two notoriously homophobic worlds - Hollywood and kids' TV - collide!

I am convinced this happened exactly as described!

Ellen Page: On Acting

Ellen Page has accused Hollywood of double standards on homosexuality, arguing that she should be able to play roles of any sexuality despite having recently come out as gay.*

The Oscar-nominated star of Juno and Hard Candy said she had been asked if she feared becoming pigeonholed after signing up for a number of gay-themed roles over the past two years. However, she also conceded that Hollywood was slowly improving in its attitudes to diversity.

“Zachary Quinto [of Star Trek fame] is out, and he stars in one of the biggest blockbuster franchises,” the 28-year-old Canadian actor told Elle magazine. “I have four projects coming up – all gay roles. People ask if I’m concerned about getting pigeonholed. No one asks: ‘Ellen, you’ve done seven straight roles in a row – shouldn’t you shake it up and do something queer?’ 

“There’s still that double standard. I look at all the things I’ve done in movies: I’ve drugged a guy, tortured someone, become a roller-derby star overnight. But now I’m gay, I can’t play a straight person?” ...

The Guardian.

* Not really her point. 

Hollywood HIV Panic: Oh, It's Charlie Sheen!

There you go, 'panic' over.

Maybe we'll go back to scaremongering about chemsex now?

NB Dan Wootton has not taken credit for the Mirror's story this time.

PS And the Telegraph re-run This is what it's really like to live with HIV (first published in April).

PPS What is HIV? The Express finds out!

Update: Fact-checking the [US] media on Charlie Sheen and HIV - and more on 'inflammatory media coverage'.

Thought For The Day: Ian McKellen

'That's my message to anyone in this town who thinks 'I've got to stay in the closet to be successful in films'... I didn't.

'Do you want to be a famous movie star who has love scenes with ladies and in private be an unhappy gay? There's no choice. Forget the career, dear. Go and do something else ... A closet's a really nasty place to live, you know? It's dirty, it's dusty, it's full of skeletons. You don't want it. Open that door — fling it wide and be yourself.'

Hollywood Reporter.

Sireena came out when she was 48, long after her 'leading man' days were over.

She is now cast as elderly wizards and vicious old queens.

So let that be a lesson to you, aspiring gay actors.

Matt Damon: You Can't Say That!

Today in Matt Damon Mansplains It All, the Martian star suggests gay actors shouldn’t publicly come out of the closet if they want to be successful. We suggest he stop talking.

Kevin Fallon, The Daily Beast.

The article is actually quite nuanced, but the line 'Damon posits that gay actors should stay in the closet if they want their careers to thrive' is such a silly misreprentation of what he meant.

This article - but of course - caused the inevitable Twitterstorm from hysterical gaybores.

Here's Matt Damon's rather bland comment to The Observer.

“I think it must be really hard for actors to be out publicly. But in terms of actors, I think you’re a better actor the less people know about you period. And sexuality is a huge part of that. Whether you’re straight or gay, people shouldn’t know anything about your sexuality because that’s one of the mysteries that you should be able to play.”

But why not twist it so you can all play the victim and have a jolly good online whine?

PS Obligatory Guardian Cif liberal winky-wank.

Edit: To clarify, I think Matt's point was that great stars tend to be mysterious and enigmatic. That. Is. All.

GLAAD: Hollywood Must Do Better

This video compiles some of the anti-LGBT moments GLAAD has encountered in Hollywood film over the last five years.

In which some people get called bad words like 'fag', just like happens in the real world they're trying to portray.

Oh boo hoo squish.

Roland Emmerich: That's Easy For You To Say

“For me, being gay in Hollywood was easy,” he said. “I never made a big deal out of it. I was just openly gay. It happened late because I never wanted to have the words ‘gay director’ in front of my name. I wanted to make such different films. It’s not befitting but now I can be openly gay and still make these films.”

The initial release of the Stonewall trailer caused some controversy with claims that the film was focusing on the white male experience over all others as well as a suggestion that a brick through a window is what started the riots. Emmerich defined the uproar as “strange”.

“A friend of mine was executive for Tristar at the time of Philadelphia,” he said. “They got so much shit from the gay audience and when this whole controversy over my trailer started, he actually just sent me a couple of quotes people had said about Philadelphia just to make me feel that there’s a precedent for this.”

He compared the LGBT community to the “democratic party of America”, saying that: “Everybody has their own agenda and everyone wants to have their say”...

Guardian.

I'm alright, Jill?

Adam Lambert: If You Say So

Queen singer Adam Lambert boasted that he's romped with very famous fellas who unfortunately feel they have to hide their sexuality.

The 33-year-old refused to identify his high-profile lovers, but he did say: "I've been with a few of them."

The American Idol graduate blames Tinseltown's macho culture for preventing folk from expressing their true sexuality, suggesting it stops many stars from coming out of the closet publicly through fear it may harm their career.

When quizzed about why they felt the need to disguise their sexual preferences, he told Glamour magazine: "Whether it's music or acting, you've got to remember that those industries are primarily run by men, so maybe it's about that."

Before truthfully adding: "But with women being the primary moviegoers and record-buyers, surely it shouldn't matter so much?"

Word. It shouldn't matter at all.

Daily Star.

Word!

Anyone could claim to have 'bedded secretly gay stars' they don't name.  

And seeing as Adam is as fugly as sin, I doubt there'd be much of a queue.

Owen Jones: Unreal

One-dimensional uber-camp clowns, storylines centred on “being gay”, potential sexual menaces who want to get into the pants of straight men, lesbians whose sexuality makes them a challenge for men to turn: here are how LGBT characters often appear on our screens. But that’s if they even appear at all. According to a new study by Glaad – which campaigns for LGBT representation in the media – there has been a small increase in films with LGBT characters, but from a low base. Out of 114 films they looked at, released in 2014, 17.5% featured non-straight characters, up from 16.7% the year before. Many of these depictions were problematic, with only just over half passing the “Vito Russo test”, which measures the quality of the representations. (A film only passes the Vito Russo test if it includes a LGBT character, where they are not entirely defined by their sexual orientation or gender, and they have a significant impact on the plot.) ...

LGBT people are as complex and varied as anybody else. They are still all too often invisible on our screens, and portrayed simplistically and problematically when they do appear. That will only change when we overcome the general prejudices in society that still exist. But that’s not an excuse. The films and TV shows of today will surely provoke bafflement in the future: “Where are all the realistic gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people?” they will ask. It will be a good question.

The Guardian.

You can't help feeling that Owen here is expressing his own fears and loathing about gay men; of the scary bad gays, the camp queens and the sexually rapacious, 'toxic' self-caricatures he wants to disown and distance himself from.

[I think OJ's self-imposed exile from the merry old land of gay is why this highly perceptive and intelligent writer writes such pedestrian guff about The Gays].

Why does he put "being gay" in scare quotes? Does Owen think it doesn't exist? Why shouldn't a storyline centre on this?

'A character being gay is often a storyline in and of itself,' he comments, 'surely we need characters who simply happen to be gay, rather than being defined by it.'

A statement that is every bit as banal and silly as it is clichéd. 

Does anyone 'simply happen to be gay'? What would be the point of having such characters in popular culture?

Perhaps OJ does not really want 'realistic' portrayals of gay people? 

Rather he wants them - and us - to be normal and boring, joyless and sexless, indistinguishable from straights.

Just like...

PS On GLAAD's headcounting, box-ticking, stopwatch watching not very useful surveys.

PPS On Owen Jones and the demonisation of gay men.

Rock Hudson: Once I Had A Secret Love

"He was a sweetheart," says Garlington, 77, a retired stockbroker. "I adored him." ...

Garlington was a young film extra when he first met Hudson in 1962.

"He was the biggest movie star in the world, and the rumors were that he was gay," he says. "So I thought, 'Let me get an eye on him.' I stood outside his cottage on the Universal lot, pretending to read Variety, which was probably upside down at the time. He walked out and down the street. He looked back once. That was it."

A year later, after Garlington had broken up with his boyfriend, he got a call from one of Hudson's friends, asking if he'd like to meet the actor. "I think he had me checked out," he says.

"I was scared to death," Garlington says of their first meeting at Hudson's mansion on Beverly Crest Drive in Beverly Hills. "Of course, he was 6-foot-4, a monster. He offered me a beer, but nothing happened. Literally. I was too scared. He said, 'Well, let's get together,' and we did."

"I'd come over after work, spend the night and leave the next morning," Garlington says. "I'd sneak out at 6 a.m. in my Chevy Nova and coast down the street without turning on the engine so the neighbors wouldn't hear. We thought we were being so clever."

The two went to move premieres together, but each brought a female date.

"Nobody in their right mind came out," Garlington says. "It was career suicide. We all pretended to be straight. Once we met Paul Newman and his wife [Joanne Woodward] at a premiere. He looked at me and smiled. I just read in his face – that maybe he knew Rock and I were together. We kind of laughed about it."

Hudson never had to ask him to keep their relationship a secret. "He assumed I would and I did," Garlington says. "He wasn't paranoid." ...

Lee Garlington, Rock Hudson's lover between 1962 and 1965, talks to People magazine.

PS And in case you're so daft you think this doesn't happen these days, Jonathan Groff come on down!

Get Hard: Go Home

After much boo hoo squish squish *sadface* the Guardian piece concludes with these non-hysterical words...

However Dr Andrew Moor, who specialises in the relationship between Hollywood and homosexuality, was unconvinced Get Hard offered any lasting damage. “Sure, it peddles lazy clichés about homosexuality and has tired old stereotypes, and yes that can be offensive,” he said. “LGBT culture has campaigned against toxic representation for so so long now, and it’s still important....I’m not sure a piece of throwaway pop like this is worthy of any big campaign though.”

PS See also Why is Hollywood suffering another gay panic attack?

It's not really, it's just some lame jokes about dicks and bumming in prison (he says not having seen it). 

Tab Hunter: Confidential

No idea when - or if - we'll see this in UK cinemas.

The Independent: Ask A Silly Question

Yes, obviously.

Anything else I can help you with?

Hollywood: A Normal Man

The problem isn’t just about the lack of gay characters and gay movies, it’s about the portrayal. Hollywood sees gays as the kind of camp caricatures you’d find in Modern Family and Adam Sandler movies – not “normal”. One of the best gay movies ever made, A Single Man, by fashion designer turned filmmaker Tom Ford (himself a gay man) plays homosexuality as inconsequential. It is almost entirely irrelevant to the characters and how they lead their lives...

Sam Moore, New Statesman. 

Hard to know where to start with this one.

Err, yeah, if only the gay characters in Hollywood movies weren't quite so... gay.

Camp queens? I say BOO!!!

How in the name of buggery is homosexuality 'inconsequential' in A Single Man?

Did you not notice that it's the story of a gay man whose long-term boyfriend's died, who starts obsessing over a hot younger man?

In what possible way is their sexuality 'almost entirely irrelevant to the characters and how they lead their lives'?

Oh, and being queer is not 'normal', love - that's kinda the point.

Next week: Why oh why did they have to keep going on about that black fellow's race in 12 Years A Slave?

Hollywood: Hotbed Of Homophobia!

More than half of gay actors in Hollywood believe film-makers are biased against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) performers,according to a new study (pdf).

The report from the Williams Institute, a thinktank on gay issues at UCLA, also found that more than 50% of respondents had heard directors and producers make anti-gay comments about actors. A third of gay respondents said they had witnessed disrespectful treatment of LGBT performers on set, while one in eight non-LGBT performers had seen gay actors treated poorly.

While 53% of lesbian and gay actors were “out” to all or most of their fellow actors, the report found that only 36% had revealed to agents they were gay, and only 13% had told industry executives. One-fifth of gay male respondents and 13% of lesbians said they had experienced discrimination in the work environment.

“We found that LGBT performers may have substantial barriers to overcome in their search for jobs,” said the authors of the study, the UCLA academics MV Lee Badgett, and Jody L Herman. However, 72% of gay or lesbian performers who had openly disclosed their sexuality said it had not affected their careers and would encourage others to do the same...

The Guardian.

Fagburn has long suspected Hollywood to be the most gay-hating industry in the US, if not the entire world, and this proves it.

This is why we so often hear of gay actors being beaten up while filming films.

And why so few of the gays work there.

Hollywood?

Hitlerwood more like!

PS How do you get to be an 'LGBT thinktank'?

Guess you just put that in your press release and ver media will print your 'findings' without question.

No matter how implausible your other 'research'.

Hollywood: Hooray For What?

'Personally I think the depiction of gay men in Hollywood is horrible...

'In Dallas Buyers' Club and Philadelphia there's there's this idea of a straight saviour. In both cases the lead character is not only a straight man but a homophobic straight man who saves the day and saves gay men.

'There are two things that really bother me about it; the first is that when the Aids crisis started gay men didn't really get much help from the straight community, and so they had to mobilise themselves and that is not honoured by those films. 

'And the second is that the characters are not just straight they're homophobic, and so there's an assumption on the part of the filmmakers that viewers need a homophobic character as a point of entry and I don't think that's true anymore.

'And of course there are other narratives - I mean now HBO made The Normal Heart, which is a great counter-narrative to those. So there is great stuff being done, but when you look at it on the whole, especially in feature films, I think it's a very sad depiction of gay culture.'

Screenwriter Abdi Nazemian talking to HuffPost Live.

Nazeiman first wrote about this last year in an essay for Hollywood Journal, Save Me, Straight Man.

Update: The Virtual Closet, Abdi's Op-Ed for The Advocate on the headless torsos of Grindr, and our 'online dating' shame/shaming.

Hollywood: Now Even Worse Than Russia!

A survey by the Screen Actors' Guild has concluded that significant discrimination against LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) performers persists in the entertainment industry. A third of respondents felt that the entertainment industry was biased against LGBT performers, while on-set prejudice appears to be rife: over half the LGB actors who responded said they had heard directors and actors make "anti-gay comments".

The Guardian et al.

Sorry?!!

Some people said they heard someone say "fag"?

Or another "cuss-word" or "anti-gay slur".

Even ironically?

How exactly am I meant to give a fuck?

PS Hollywood hates LGBT actors, new study reveals Could anyone but Gay Star News come up with such a ludicrous, inaccurate, hysterical headline?