gay
Can’t Buy Me Love: “Sauvage/Wild”
“You were made to be loved,” Ahd (Eric Bernard) tells Léo (Félix Maritaud) just a day before he’s about the leave the country, cementing his absence from the same plane of existence as Léo. Long the object of affection for the passive, yearnful, almost puppy-eyed Léo, Ahd is, for the intents and purposes of Sauvage/Wild, directed by Camille Vidal-Naquet an all but explicitly said gay4pay street hustler who has since left the street and traded the unsustainable, unpredictable life cruising for clients on roads outside of Paris for the comfortable living room and gated flat world of being a kept boy, a bourgeois paradise. It’s a trade-off, a transaction, as all sex and love is. But, as much as Ahd is inclined to encourage Léo that he was “made to be loved”, he is, for the bulk of Sauvage/Wild the one loving. Read the rest of this entry »
Angels and Demons: On Andrew Garfield
“What sort of resources did you have in terms of resource for research, or did it all just come during rehearsals?” an audience member asked an actor during a NT Platform panel regarding a six hour long play, reports GayTimes UK.
The actor responded, per GayTimes’ reportage:
“The preparation had begun before (rehearsals began) with a lot of my friends. (The play is) As much devoted to my friends in the gay community as it is those that passed during the epidemic.”
[He] later revealed that a certain drag superstar’s show has helped him find his character: “I mean every single series of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I mean every series.
“My only time off during rehearsals – every Sunday I would have eight friends over and we would just watch Ru. This is my life outside of this play. I am a gay man right now just without the physical act – that’s all.”
The play was Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The actor was Andrew Garfield. His role as Prior Walter leaves him with the difficult work of playing a gay man living with AIDS and a prophet, whose message to humanity is overwhelming.
This isn’t really a story, more of a quick anecdote about his acting process. But a story was picked up nonetheless, with places like Attitude and Out Magazine decrying the actor’s comments as insensitive, specifically regarding the “I am a gay man right now, just without the physical act” bit. Read the rest of this entry »
The Big, Bad Wolf: “Creep” and Gay Panic as Horror
Josef (Mark Duplass) has a penchant for scaring people. With love. It’s kind of an eye roll worthy thing, actually. On the behest of his invitation, Aaron (director Patrick Brice) brings him camera, under the assumption he’ll be filming Josef’s time capsule video for his as yet unborn son Buddy. And, as always when following up with a Craigslist ad, there’s something off. Josef is weird. Josef is odd. With his overbearing saccharine personality that often manifests in inappropriate hugs, lack of awareness of others’ personal space, and explicit outpourings of affection, Josef is kind of a creep. Maybe more implicitly, a straight guy’s nightmare. Read the rest of this entry »
Sex Work and Play: Bruce LaBruce and Rick Castro’s “Hustler White”
One can’t accuse of queer filmmaking icon Bruce LaBruce of not being daring, with films like No Skin Off My Ass, Otto, Super 8 ½, and, most recently Geontophilia (which is considerably tamer than this film), each unapologetically tackling not only issues of queerness, but of different facets of sexuality, identity, and their intersections. And Hustler White, a ‘90s films that has ‘80s sex appeal written all over it, is LaBruce perfectly balancing those discourses, but with an injection of cleverness, and a dose of emotionality. Read the rest of this entry »
I Like Things That Look Like Mistakes 