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?

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.

Telegraph: Questions To Which The Answer Is 'No'...

Daily Telegraph.

Film: Bodycount

Since Philadelphia there have been, by my count, 257 Academy Award-nominated portrayals of heterosexual characters, and 23 of gay, bisexual or transsexual characters. Of the heterosexual characters, 16.5% (59) die. Of the LGBT characters, 56.5% (13) die. Of the 10 LGBT characters who live, only four get happy endings. That's four characters in 19 years. Behind the Candelabra won't be eligible for any Academy Awards due to its cable TV distribution, but it's keeping Oscar's kill-the-gays mentality alive and kicking. Or rather, dying and haemorrhaging.
Whether it's suicide, Aids (a particularly maudlin Ed Harris performance in The Hours employs both), being beaten to death, state execution, getting shot, or getting raped and then shot, LGBT characters are just not allowed the happy endings that their straight counterparts enjoy. My personal favourite comes from A Single Man, in which Colin Firth simply drops dead for no reason. Presumably overwhelmed by sheer homosexuality, his heart can no longer keep beating. Beware, non-heterosexuals: Sudden Gay Death Syndrome can strike anywhere...

James Rawson writing for the Guardian Film blog. 

Vito Russo's 1981 book, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality In The Movies - genuinely groundbreaking, seminal etc etc - ended with a "Necrology" of over 30 gay characters on film and how they died.
Hollywood's clearly come a long way, eh?