HAVE YOU HEARD THE ONE ABOUT THE GAY MAN WHO WALKS INTO A BAR?

Hollywood thinks we're funny and little else.  While European and Israeli filmmakers churn out brilliant dramas year after year on the realities and challenges of gay life, Hollywood can't make it past punchlines.

Another pair of straight Hollywood stars, Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey are stepping up to the plate with a gay prison sex comedy, I Love You Phillip Morris.  And it may very well turn out to be a great flic, but once again exposing American audiences to little more than the fringes of gay life with a few good yucks thrown in.

At the very least, Phillip Morris will be a considerable step up from Chuck & Larry--but then Holocaust jokes would be a step up from Chuck & Larry.

Of course, here we are some three years beyond the Brokeback 'breakthrough", and our third pair of straight actors will take on gay roles--because there are no good gay actors, and our third major gay Hollywood flick, like the second one will be a few good yucks at queer expense.

I realize I shouldn't be so impatient.  Eventually Hollywood will get around to casting real gay actors in gay parts.  But I suppose we should wait our turn.  First we should have women's roles played by real women and then black roles played by real African-Americans--after those two groups have broken the grip that white straight (or closeted) males hold on casting.  Or were those practices discarded as offensive and ridiculous in some long ago other century?

But perhaps the most offensive part of this situation are the media and publicity reports that McGregor and Carrey are researching how to be gay by hanging out night after night in a South Beach gay bar because where else would you learn how to be a gay man than in an Ecstasy-obsessed South Beach man meat factory?  If you're going to play gay for pay, you'd better learn how to party beyond dawn, hold your own with a witty drag queen and navigate the complex tipping protocols of go-go boys.

The media has been following the progression of this new straight "gay" film since early 2007 and now that the filming has begun in earnest, the publicists are churning out the accidental "leaks" from location shoots and the rumor mill.  Let's get that buzz going asap.

Carey and McGregor will portray two prisoners who fall in love behind bars.  The new movie is based on the true story of Steven Russell and fellow jailbird Phillip Morris.

Carrey stars as Russell, a married dad who is jailed after he is found guilty of being a con artist in Texas.

But he falls head over heels for strawberry-blond, blue-eyed cell mate McGregor's character Morris when he ends up in jail.

They become inseparable and Russell begins plotting a series of escapes to be reunited with his lover when Morris is released.

Again, this may turn out to be an excellent movie, but at what expense?  Gay actors shunned, again.  Gay life portrayed in the mass media as a source of wit and humor, again.  Gay characters based on Martini and Ecstasy-fueled caricatures slithering around drag queens and go go boys at 3 in the morning, again.

Don't get me wrong, I've slithered around with the best (or worst) of them--and will likely slither again at some point over the next few weeks, but researching Russell and Morris by observing party boys at Halo would be like a straight man preparing to portray Ruth Bader Ginsburg by hanging out late nights at the Hustler Magazine Gentleman's Club over by the Lincoln Tunnel.  Nothing helps you understand the true nature of woman more than a lap dance.

A leading UK gay advocate recently speaking to BBC about Hollywood said:  "The pitifully low number of openly lesbian or gay actors suggests that there is a problem. The film industry needs to think about why it is that gay actors choose not to come out."

Openly gay British actors, Alan Cumming, Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry (pictured right with Jude Law) and Rupert  Everett have all recently expressed a range of emotions from annoyance to rage over the pervasive homophobia that drives an environment not dissimilar from a 1920s nd 1930s Hollywood world in which African Americans were portrayed by whites in black makeup.  It's nothing less than disgusting and profoundly offensive.  Acting is one thing, but burying our lives and our culture is quite another matter.

And while the studios can make the argument that it's all about box office, they put themselves in the company of those who committed cultural genocide against native Americans because it was all about real estate.

I am not grateful that straight actors are finding the "courage" to portray gay characters.  In fact, in a certain context, it's called collaboration.

Comments

[Alan down in Florida]

"because there are no good gay actors"

There are plenty of good gay actors out there however they are either not out and terrified of having their carefully constructed closets torn open (Mr. Cruise? Mr. Smith?) or they simply do not have the clout at the box office to open a film. And in it's misguided logic opening big is all that matters.

Like anything else - if we want quality films on GLBT subject matter we need to do it ourselves and make them universally appealing. Do you think that the whole gay marriage story line on Brothers & Sisters would exist outside of the context of a larger program with broader appeal or that Desperate Housewives would have gotten away with a gay couple in season one before it became popular. Obviously not.

Richard, you are a brilliant writer and have had a pain and joy-filled life. Try a screenplay sometime, although I warn you that finding someone to actually make the movie is a lot harder than writing the screenplay. BTDT.