“If you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you'd pretty much be left with 'Let's Make a Deal.'”
Fran Lebowitz
With all the exciting news last week - the Supreme Court healthcare ruling and the TomKat divorce - I overlooked another piece of good news for the reality based world: Bristol Palin's reality show has been cancelled after only two episodes. Bristol Palin: Life's a Tripp in which she used her baby as a prop just like her mom, did so poorly in the ratings that it's being replaced with reruns of Dance Moms. The rest of the already-taped episodes will be burned off during the graveyard shift. When you're replaced with reruns of Dance Moms, it's time to reevaluate your life. Seriously.
The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the Affordable Care Act, including the mandate. It took some time for the news to sink in at Fox News. The decision was written by Chief Justice Roberts who voted with the majority to give President Obama a major election year victory. You can read a real news account of the decision here.
This is a tragic story out of Portland, TX, near Corpus Christi. Two girls, Mollie Judith Olgin, 19, and Mary Christine Chapa, 18, were found shot in the head in a park. Olgin died while Chapa fights for her life in a hospital. The two girls had been dating for five months and were apparently open about their relationship. Currently, there are no suspects or motives, although police are looking into the possibility that the girls' sexual orientation played a role in the shootings.
Filmmaker Nora Ephron has died after a long battle with leukemia. She was a best selling author, Academy Award nominated screenwriter, director, and playwright whose hits included When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and Julie and Julia. Her most recent play, Lucky Guy, is expected to open on Broadway in 2013 with Tom Hanks as the star. She and her sister Delia co-wrote the hit play Love, Loss, and What I Wore. This only scratches the surface of her prolific career. She is survived by Delia as well as her husband of 25 years, Nicholas Pileggi.
You have got to go to Kenneth in the 212 and see the extraordinary clip of Kate Jackson on The Tonight Show with guest host David Brenner in 1982. She was there to promote Making Love and the audience turned hostile when she revealed the film's subject matter. I clearly remember going to see it at the theater when I was 21. I went by myself and was scared to death that someone would see me. At the end of the film when I got a glimpse of Michael Ontkean living with his handsome new boyfriend, it was the first time I ever had the idea that two men could make a life together. It had never occurred to me before. Go watch the clip and remember how far we've come.
Were you wondering why Smash, which didn't exactly kill it in the ratings, get a second season? According to The New York Times, the answer lies in the DVR. It seems that Smash had by far the highest "live + 7" ratings among the 18-49 demographic, which reflects the number of people watching the program via DVR within a week of the original air date. The show got a huge 3.3 Live +7 rating with coveted young viewers. No other show did better in Smash's time slot, although Hawaii Five-0 and CSI did as well. Live + 7 ratings don't help the network's bottom line because advertisers know people fast forward over the commercials, but Smash's big numbers give the networks a better idea of how "ardently a show is being followed." If Smash has that many people following it week to week, then the potential exists to turn Smash into a real Smash.
Have you seen the pictures of Cheyenne Jackson in the new Attitude Magazine? Just in case you needed to be reminded how incredibly hot he is, check them out:
Google has noted that today is the 100th birthday of Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician who was the father of the modern computer and who played the key role in breaking the secret German code during World War II. After the war, instead of being lauded as the war hero he was, he was treated like a dirty fag and convicted of homosexual acts in 1952. He submitted to a horrific chemical castration in lieu of jail and died two years later. In 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an official apology on behalf of the government for the way Turing was treated.
How did I not know that Zachary Quinto and Jonathan Groff were boyfriends? You'd think that anyone who spends as much time on the internet as I do would know these things.
That's a lot of cuteness strolling in the West Village.
David Blankenhorn has long been a high-profile opponent of marriage equality. In the Prop. 8 trial, he was perhaps the most coherent and persuasive witnesses to testify in support of the California marriage ban. He is the author of The Future of Marriage and is a founder of the conservative Institute for American Values. Today, he announced on the pages of The New York Times that he has changed his position and now supports marriage rights. He still stands by everything he ever said about the importance of heterosexual marriage, but he is a big enough man to recognize that "there are more things under heaven" than his beliefs and that "the dignity of homosexual love" demands legal recognition of our marriages. He calls this "a victory for basic fairness." He goes on to explain his disenchantment with the anti-gay marriage movement:
"I had hoped that the gay marriage debate would be mostly about marriage’s relationship to parenthood. But it hasn’t been. Or perhaps it’s fairer to say that I and others have made that argument, and that we have largely failed to persuade. In the mind of today’s public, gay marriage is almost entirely about accepting lesbians and gay men as equal citizens. And to my deep regret, much of the opposition to gay marriage seems to stem, at least in part, from an underlying anti-gay animus. To me, a Southerner by birth whose formative moral experience was the civil rights movement, this fact is profoundly disturbing."
Brave man. I'm sure the character assassination on right-wing sites has already started.
"At least since the 1970s, gay men have been drawing invidious generational comparisons between gay boys in their teens and 20s — modern, liberated, enlightened, untouched by gay culture, “utterly indistinguishable from straight boys” and “completely calm about being gay” (as Andrew Holleran put it in his 1978 novel, “Dancer From the Dance”) — and older gay men, fanatically attached to an outdated gay culture and convinced that it is the only gay culture there is."
--David M. Halperin, historian, professor and author of "How to Be Gay," in a fascinating New York Times piece on style and the meaning of gay culture. He takes on the notion that gay culture is dying (remember those recent "end of Judyism" articles?) and asks "why is it so important, particularly at this moment, that gay culture be pronounced, if not dead, then on its way out?"Read it all here.
This is a clip of 11 years-old Ryan Gosling in 1991 singing Michael Bolton and dancing to C&C Music Factory at a talent show for Mormon kids. Adorable!
It turns out they're big in Germany where there was a QAF convention in Cologne. If you sprechen Deutsch, check out the video. If you ask me, the guys look better today than they did when the show went off the air in 2005, especially Peter Paige who is totally working that bald look:
By the way, Thea Gill sat next to me at a screening of her film Mulligans at the Outfest Gay and Lesbian film festival in Dallas in 2008. She is exquisitely beautiful in person.
Me neither, but in case your curiosity is peeked, here he is in this Sigur Ros "mystery film experiment." Shia's no Fassbender, but the video is strangely beautiful at times and extremely NSFW. It 's so NSFW that I'm not going to post it. Again, if you're into Shia, you can watch it on You Tube here.
Finally, a Democrat who's willing to go on the offensive with health care reform. North Dakota's Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, former state attorney general Heidi Heitkamp, is not going to let the Republicans control the health care narrative. Watch:
This is what the Dems should have been doing all along.
I finally got around to seeing Shame last night, which starred Michael Fassbender and his enormous, um, acting talent. At the risk of being blunt, I thought the movie was dumb and, at times, insulting, but it was worth seeing Fassbender in all his glory. Maybe.
I mean come on, Fassbender plays a gorgeous, rich New Yorker with an amazing body, a fabulous Manhattan apartment, and a third leg but we're supposed to feel sorry for him because he has too much sex? Oh, the humanity. The poor guy can screw anyone he wants with just a look. Who would want that life?
Then there's his sister, played by Carey Mulligan in what might just be the single most annoying performance in film history. I suppose some would think her brave for daring the audience not to like her, and it worked. She played the Jennifer Jason Leigh in Georgia screwed up sister, but while Jennifer's performance made you feel her pain, Carey's was just painful. She was out of her depth. Don't even get me started on her singing.
The insulting part came toward the end of the film during the Rock Bottom sequence. Fassbender's sex addict sinks to the lowest depths by, brace yourself, going to a gay bar. Naturally, only broken, self-loathing bastards to go to gay bars. And this was not just any gay bar, but one that time-traveled from 40 years ago: No sign, unmarked door, gritty 70s New York neighborhood, dark and spooky inside with a back room where men do unspeakable things to each other. It was Bryan Fischer's idea of a gay bar. Once there, Fassbender actuallyallows a man to blow him! Horrors!
In other words, I didn't like the movie. Forgive me for turning a Monday's Man post into a months-late movie review. Just to lighten things up, here's Michael in a pre-fame commercial for the airline SAS. Very unsafe for work, but apparently safe for Scandinavian TV:
The Queen's Birthday List was announced today and among those receiving the Order of the British Empire is April Ashley. Who is she, you may ask? She is an actress and activist who was one of the first Britons to undergo gender reassignment surgery. She is being honored for her "services to transgender equality."
The stunning young April Ashley, working as a model in 1959.
The elegant Ms. Ashley today. Her lovers are reported to have included Omar Sharif and Peter O'Toole. No wonder she's smiling.
Other honorees include Kate Winslet, Kenneth Branagh and Logan's Run star Jenny Agutter.
The President today announced that, effective immediately, deportations of Dream Act eligible young immigrants would cease. The policy applies to immigrants no older than 30 who arrived in the US before they turned 16, have no criminal record, and have either gone to college or served in the military. Those who qualify will not be granted legal status, but won't be deported and will be able to get work permits. Congress has never had the balls to deal with immigration in a meaningful way, so the President acted.
During the announcement, the President was rudely interrupted by Neil Munro, a reporter of sorts for the bullshit wingnut website Daily Caller. Here's the clip:
Meanwhile, this is Republican Latino outreach:
This is from the Republican National Committee's website, rnc.com and that's a stock photo of Asian kids playing.
Have you seen the glittering collection of stars assembled to celebrate the 100th birthday of Paramount Studios?
If you go here you can see a huge, sharp version of the pic with a neat close-up feature that identifies everyone. They assembled a wonderful collection of distinguished stars from Mickey Rooney and Jerry Lewis to Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman. There are some unexpected but welcome choices, including Bruce Greenwood, George Takei, Francis Fisher, and Mike White. There are also a few WTF choices including Rosie Huntington-Whiteley who's made like one movie, Katie Featherstone, whoever she is, Karl Urban, whoever he is, and Julianne Hough. I'm sure they're rising young future stars who have been in Paramount productions, but have they really earned a place alongside Eva Marie Saint and Barbra Streisand?
It's also fun to see how everyone looks. Jane Fonda is easily the hottest woman there and Sacha Baron Cohen takes the prize for the men. They should totally do a May/December romantic comedy. Demi Moore and Jamie Lee Curtis also look stand-out fabulous as do Paul Rudd and Eddie Murphy. Nick Nolte looks like Freddy Kruger. Shia LeBeouf looks like a total douche. Tom Cruise looks like a Disney animatronic figure. What are your thoughts?
A star of Hollywood's golden age has died at the age of 94. Ann Rutherford, best known for playing Carreen O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, died at home in Beverly Hills. She was a busy actress known for westerns and the Andy Hardy series, but it was for her small role as Scarlett O'Hara's youngest sister that she is best known. Close friend Ann Jeffreys, who was by her bedside as she died, said of her enduring GWTW fame, "She loved it. It really stimulated the last years of her life because she got thousands of emails from fans. She was in great demand."
Rutherford apparently had a grounded view of her place in the pantheon. In a 1969 interview with The Los Angeles Times, she said "My life has reached the point where I am now - camp."
The O'Hara sisters: Carreen, Scarlett, and Suellen.
I watched the Tony Awards and it was really, really, uh, well, it was really good. It was quite satisfactory. I give it a solid B. Obviously, the Tonys decided to go the way of the Grammys and focus on lots of theater at the expense of awards presentations to the extent that some pretty major awards, including the special Tony for Miss Bernadette Peters, were relegated to the pre-show "technical" awards. So, it should have been a fabulous night of Broadway! Right? Right? It reminded me of Best Musical nominee Nice Work If You Can Get It. All the pieces were there for greatness, yet it only achieved good. Reportedly the ratings reflected it and hit a record low. Here are my thoughts recorded as the show unfolded:
The Show is about to begin! Let's see, Commemorative Tony Program? Check! Citrus Manhattans from Neiman Marcus Restaurants' Summer Menu? Check! On with the show!
Hello! It's the Book of Mormon boys ringing dressing room doorbells and who should answer but Ricky Martin! Is that a gay porn set-up or what?
James Earl Jones answers ready to autograph Darth Vader head shots. Funny. It all seques into another Neil Patrick Harris Tony opening. Oh heck, as the Morman boys might say, instead of telling you about it, I'll show you!
NPH makes a perfect Mormon missionary, don't you think? Wouldn't it be brilliant if he did a few months as Elder Price?
First presenter is cute Paul Rudd, "soon to return to Broadway." Featured Actress in a Play is Judith Light for Other Desert Cities! Love her! I saw her in person at Joe Allen last year and held myself back from asking for her autograph. She looked so pretty and tonight she's a vision in ivory.
Nick Jonas! That was not me you heard squealing even though he's just too cute for words, especially with his newly buzzed hair. He introduces a scene from Newsies. Those Newsies boys are cute and HI NRG! They're about to dance themeslves into a froth! Or is it just me?
NPH again with Broadway/Hollywood mashups. "Towering InferNo No Nanette," "ExerSister Act," "PsychoCalcutta." I'd pay to see that last one.
A nervous Amanda Seyfried is presenting Featured Actor in a Musical. It's Michael McGrath for Nice Work If You Can Get It. Deserved. He and Judy Kaye saved that show. Apparently his name is pronounced "McGraahhth."
Fawless
The Ageless Bernadette Peters introduces a scene from Follies featuring Tony Nominee Danny Burstein. She is stunning. Easily the most gorgeous woman on stage all night. The scene from the musical though, is somehow annoying.
Next up is a scene from Ghost, The Musical. LC NY Bureau Chief Doug texts me: "This scene will hurt business."
It's John Larroquette. Doesn't he have like 1,000 Emmys and Tonys? I don't get why he wins everything. He presents Best Director of Musical and it goes to John Tiffany, the hot, bald director of Once.
John Tiffany. I love a bald guy with a tight body. And a Tony.
Best Director of a Play goes to Mike Nichols for Death of a Salesman. He kisses America's Junior Miss and accepts his record 6th Tony. The band tries to play him off. Even Mike Nichols can't get any respect in this town.
Ben Vereen, soon to return to Broadway, introduces a scene from Jesus Christ Superstar.
Jesus, great chest.
NPH is lowered in a very painful looking Spider-Man pose while Angela Lansbury and some guy explain all about the American Theater Wing.
NPH suffers for his art.
Jessica Chastain is lovely in a sparkly sheer nude gown. It's strikingly similar to what I'm wearing.
Jessica's no Bernadette, but she looks pretty good for a young gal.
It's Matthew Morrison with stubble! Very nice. He introduces a number from Nice Work If You Can Get It. They should have done the bathtub scene. Matthew Broderick, who I love, is somehow diminished by this show.
Cut to a pre-recorded bit from the technical awards. Once sure is winning a lot of them.
Cute James Marsden is presenting Featured Actress in a Musical. Judy Kaye! Deserved. Best thing about Nice Work If You Can Get It. She thanks her Daddy who just died a few days ago. Quite moving.
Ellen Barkin introduces scenes from the year in plays. Peter and the Starcatcher starts it off. The One Man/Two Guvnors guy is terrific. It's Tracie Bennett as Judy Garland! Oh my God, how could anyone else win?
Tracie Bennett IS Judy Garland.
Watch the segment and see if you don't agree:
NPH's best score medley is genius.
For some reason, Sheryl Crow is introducing Best Score. It goes to Newsies, breaking the Once run of awards?
BeBe Winans introduces a wonderful live Porgy and Bess montage. Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis are electrifying. Even with a grey beard, Norm is hot, hot, hot.
At the beginning of the show, NPH called the Tonys "50 Shades of Gay." Next up is Tyler Perry presenting Best Revival of a Play to Death of a Salesman.
The best shot ever of Andrew Garfield, star of Death of a Salesman.
"Multi-platinum singer and songwriter" Josh Groban introduces a scene from Once. That Steve Kazee sure is easy on the eyes.
It's Jim Parsons with his back to the audience, for some reason. He introduces scenes from the Best Play nominees. Didn't we already see this? Oh well, we're seeing it again. Best Play goes to Clyburn Park! Is this an upset over Peter and the Starcatcher? The two Clybourne guys accepting the award are totally cute.
Cute Clybourne guys.
Whoever Cody De Pablo is, she's introducing a scene from Evita. Ricky Martin is delicious, but he's no Mandy Patinkin. Sorry, but it's true. Elena Roger's Eva is strangely stern and off-putting. I don't think I like her.
It's Corbin Bleu and the cast of Godspell! That show hasn't closed yet?
Holy Rainbow High! It's Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin! They've still got it. They present Best Revival of a Musical to Porgy and Bess!
It's Harvey Fierstein ready for the high seas.
I love Harvey.
Harvey introduces a scene from Hairspray, live from a Royal Caribbean cruise! It stars the worst Tracy Turnblad I've ever seen, and I've seen a few. She's way too thin and way too low-energy. Corny Collins is worse. Edna Turnblad is tragic, and not in a good way. Remind me to skip Hairspray on my next cruise.
Surprise! It's Mrs. Hugh Jackman in a big bird costume and mile-high wedgies. How do you get Hugh Jackman at your awards show? Give him an honorary award!
Awkward!
Wait a minute, I only thought Mrs. Jackman was tragic. Candice Bergin looks like she escaped from the home and wandered onto the stage. I love her and I loved her in Gore Vidal's The Best Man, but that jacket looks like bathroom wallpaper I ripped down 30 years ago.
Candy auditions for Maude! The Musical.
Candice presents Best Actor in a Musical to Steve Kazee! What a Kutee!
Just Once I'd like to see Steve Kazee show some skin.
Best Actor in a Play is James Corden of One Man/Two Guvnors. Clearly, James Earl Jones thought he heard his name and reacted with shock. Or maybe that's because he didn't hear his name.
It's my next husband (don't tell my current one) Raul Esparza and the cast of the already-closed Leap of Faith.
Raul Esparza loves me, he just doesn't know it yet.
Christopher Plummer presents Leading Actress in a Play to...NOT TRACIE BENNETT!!!???!!!
WTF???!!!??? NO JUSTICE! They should have given Tracie a special award because what she does on that stage every night is unique in this world.
I don't care who won.
Best Actress in a Musical is Audra McDonald. This is her 5th Tony and her first as leading actress. She's engaged to Will Swinson of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert!
Trey Parker and Matt Stone award Best Musical to Once!!! Is this an upset over Newsies?
Today, I present 2012 Tony Winner for Best Actor in a Musical, Steve Kazee of Once. I haven't seen Once, but it's turning into a big hit, and will certainly blow up now that it's won the Tony for Best Musical.
Steve performs with Once co-star and fellow Tony nominee Cristin Milioti.
Wake up with Steve in an adorable video clip from Broadway.com (plus a preview of the new Sutton Foster TV show Bunheads).
