Proceed at your own risk

LOVE IS IN THE AIR

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.

I THOUGHT I WAS OVER HIM, MAYBE NOT...

UN AMOUR A TAIRE

I'm running out of drinking buddies for two reasons.  The first is their fault, the second is mine.  If you want an evening of light banter, do not ask me for my opinion on something of import.  My blame lies in the fact that I'm incapable of resisting a soap box and if you're stupid enough to put one at my feet--and in a bar--you're even more stupid if you think I'm not going to jump on top of it.

The other night one of my friends committed the cardinal sin of using the words "breakthrough" and "Brokeback" in the same sentence.  You might as well have thrown raw steak at a ravenous lion with the expectation that the wild beast would just yawn and turn away.

Don't get me wrong, Brokeback Mountain was a great little flic and a gut wrenching story and while it might have provided Jake and Heath with bragging rights to the claim that they're so cool they dared to play gay for pay, it did nothing for gay rights.  It changed nothing in Hollywood, it changed nothing in Washington and it changed nothing for 15-year-old Larry King or Republican Sally Kern.  And it added nothing to our knowledge base.

And the other "Brokeback" issue that pisses me even more than the "breakthrough" nonsense is the notion that if it ain't made in America, it ain't made.  American hubris.  I'm guessing that one of the things that ultimately leads to the violent and painful collapse of empires is hubris.  And America is suffering from a serious case.

Republicans and Democrats, Evangelicals and atheists, the old and the young alike--few of us can resist referring to ourselves as the "greatest nation on earth."  I would certainly accept the greatest show on earth, but the greatest nation?  By what standard?  We're way down on every list that counts: literacy, freedom, civil rights, human rights, health care, life expectancy, standard of living, environment, economic growth, crime, and so on and so forth.  And on a more light note, other nations also make better movies.

Some months before the December 2005 release of Brokeback Mountain, a magnificent and authentically breakthrough movie was also released, A Love to Hide (March 2005), a movie that I would argue was and is the most important gay film made to date. 

Of course it wasn't made in America so it didn't count, it didn't matter.  It didn't star hot young gossip magnets off the pages of PEOPLE or US Weekly.  It didn't provide juicy material for Entertainment Tonight or Inside Hollywood.  Oprah didn't notice it.  And it wasn't made in English but rather in French--so a big old Texas yawn.

As far as I know, A Love to Hide wasn't even reviewed by most American critics, not even the illustrious New York Times.  Again, it's as if a film not made in America is a  film not made.

Without even going into the content of A Love to Hide, I will say that in my opinion this movie is not only the most important gay film ever made, it will change you and change your understanding of the world as you now know it.  And while the story is set in World War II Paris, it speaks very much to the America of today.

The film also faces the fact that the only "racial cleansing" law not swept away by the American liberation of Europe from the Nazi occupation was for homosexuals.  In fact the Nazi laws criminalizing homosexuality remained on the books until 1969.  As is the case with queers being slaughtered by our allies today, in post World War II Europe, Washington didn't give a crap.

Speaking as a Jew, as a queer and as an American, I must say, as I have said before, that it is only through hubris and dishonesty that we are able to demonize the Nazis as much as we have.  By lying to history and by lying to ourselves we are able to define and describe the Nazi atrocities as "them" and not us--and nothing could be further from the truth.

It is breathtaking to consider how we have managed to define the genocide of Native Americans, the atrocities of slavery and mass murder of the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as not so bad compared to the Nazi labor and death camps.  American hubris.

One of the most horrible and agonizingly painful issues addressed in A Love to Hide is the monstrous medical experiments that were conducted on gay men during the 30s and 40s.  In fact the very same hormone treatments and brain experiments were practiced in these United States on gay minors against their will--and with the consent of their parents--continuing into the early 60s.

Lobotomies of homosexuals stopped in Western Germany only in 1979. In the 17 years since 1962, 30 homosexuals underwent operations on the hypothalamus. In Norway lobotomy victims got 100,000 nkr. in compensation (18 of the 35 first operations in Norway were fatal for the patients).   In Sweden more than 3,300 were lobotomized, the Danish number was a record high 3, 500, the Norwegian number was 2, 500. Denmark was the world leader numerically in proportion to the population with lobotomies and the last operation took place as late as 1981.

According to a 1998 Swedish television documentary which examined an example of a lobotomy used to "cure" a lesbian, lobotomies were pioneered by the Portuguese Dr. Egas Moniz (1874-1955) in 1935 , for which he was awarded the Nobel-price in 1949.

This spurred doctors like American Walter Freeman to brutally operate on no less than several hundred American homosexuals during the 1940s using a golden ice pick.  In fact, young homosexuals and homosexual prisoners were cured of their sexual deviancy through the use of lobotomies, hormone treatments, electro-shock aversion therapy at least through 1960.

A Love to Hide demands an answer to the very compelling question: who is to be held accountable for what has been done to the gay community, even today in 21st Century Europe.  And anyone of us in this country who experiences A Love to Hide must ask that very same question about gay Americans.  And if no one is held accountable for these American crimes and horrors, how are we as a nation ever going to move forward?  We must make room for true breakthroughs and not just the fake breakthroughs like Brokeback Mountain and in order to do that we must look beyond ourselves.  The Europeans are doing so as evidenced by masterpieces like A Love to Hide and the results are magnificent.

ADAM SANDLER AND THE "F" WORD

Against my better judgment and propensity to bear a grudge (Chuck & Larry), I listened to a friend's recommendation and rented Adam Sandler's 9/11 pop psychology movie, Reign Over Me.  For those of you who haven't seen it (probably most of you), Reign Over Me is Sandler's homage to the enduring psychological damage of 9/11.  Overall, the movie was interesting, predictably Adam Sandler and I might have survived the full 124 minutes unscathed and with calm if not for Sandler's little tribute to Chuck & Larry when he called his best friend a "faggot."

I've never liked Adam Sandler and ever since Chuck & Larry I've longed to see his career fizzle.  Sandler brings a stereotypical frat boy arrogance, relentlessly sophomoric sensibility and childish pomposity to most of his films and characters; and Reign Over Me is no exception.  Oh, I'm sure this movie has earned many fans among those of us who think Dr. Phil is an insightful therapist, but, although far from being as offensive as Chuck & Larry, Reign Over Me delivers a simple-minded pop psychology heavy handedness to a very sensitive issue in that special Adam Sandler way that makes my skin crawl.  Between Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler, it's amazing to me that the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association haven't filed a lawsuit against the entire city of Los Angeles.

Considering that Adam Sandler's core demographic mostly consists of drunk frat boys and teen girls who aspire to a C average, I really shouldn't care about his films, but it is precisely because of the nature of his fan base that I do.  And it mostly has to do with the faggot word.

Sandler clearly has this arrogant sense of "I'm a liberal progressive Jew who made Chuck & Larry" that gives him a sense of entitlement when it comes to using the faggot word.   After he uses the faggot word in Reign Over Me to affectionately express his view that his buddy is a gutless wimp, he takes a brief and jarring step out of character to deliver a little Adam Sandler pop morality, explaining to his bud that when you call a queer a faggot that's insulting, but when you call a straight man a faggot it's just a way of expressing the fact that he's a wuss.  Don Cheadle, the straight dude who has just been called a faggot, accepts this explanation, learns from it and eventually rediscovers his balls, finally fixing his pussy whipped relationship with his stereotypical nag of a wife.

This kind of pernicious and pervasive "good-natured" homophobia runs through our society like lead poisoning; and Adam Sandler is as guilty of homophobia as Fred Phelps--perhaps even more so.  He gives license to teen girls and frat boys to use faggot as a pejorative expressing impotence and cowardice, and no matter what blather comes out of Adam Sandler's mouth, the message he champions --intentionally or just out of stupidity--is clear: queers are impotent and cowardly, and fair game for adolescent-brand humor.

One might argue that Sandler is just reflecting authenticity in his portrayal of certain characters in certain situations; but that is just plain crap.  There is nothing authentic about a Sandler movie or character and his story lines are a heap of contrivance.  Reign Over Me is no exception and a serious issue is quickly turned into an after-school special crushed by Sandler's special brand of adolescent pop psychology and treacly morality.

Sandler, who clearly sees himself as some kind of one man morality play, likely thought Reign Over Me would show his serious dramatic side and his Oscar-worthy acting skills. In fact, his character is the usual Adam Sandler emotionally-retarded perennial adolescent--but just much less funny (and that's funny by frat boy kegger standards).

Sandler's reckless use of the silver screen perpetuates homophobia and the appalling notion that while bigotry is wrong, making fun of queers is cool.  The worst part of it is that Sandler packs his flic with all kinds of heavy-handed moral messages and clearly good--albeit contrived--characters--so at the end of the day, it legitimizes use of the fag word.  And that is a very bad thing.

THE WORST WORD IN AMERICA?

To research her fascinating sociological doctoral dissertation turned book, Dude You're  A Fag, Dr. C.J. Pascoe spent a year and a half hanging out in a high-school weight room, auto shop, and drama class.  She learned what frightens adolescent males most. “Being called a fag is the specter that constantly lurks” in the minds of high-school boys, explains Pascoe, a postdoctoral scholar at the Institute for Social Change.

As a Ph.D. student in sociology at Berkeley, Pascoe wrote her doctoral dissertation on what she saw and heard at the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta suburban school she called River High. In June 2007, University of California Press published Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, a book based on her dissertation.  I highly recommend it.  It provides an extraordinary set of insights into the continuing failure of our society to effectively address homophobia, racism and sexism.

During her investigation into how boys define masculinity, Pascoe found what she calls “fag discourse” and a corresponding value placed on sexuality, power, control, and domination.  Pascoe formally interviewed 50 students, observed countless others, and spoke with teachers, counselors, and administrators.  She heard male students imitate homosexuality humorously and use the “fag” epithet constantly as a way to shore up their own masculinity.

A boy could get called a “fag” for any sort of behavior deemed not quite masculine (though not necessarily feminine), including “being stupid or incompetent, dancing, caring too much about clothing, being too emotional, or expressing interest (sexual or platonic) in other guys,” writes Pascoe in her book.  s a kind of corollary, boys asserted their masculinity — and repudiated the threat of the “fag” identity— by talking about girls’ bodies in heterosexist terms and bragging about their sexual experiences.

Sound familiar?  What Pascoe describes is the heart and soul of almost every Adam Sandler movie.

While Pascoe points out that such teasing may be a part of a normal American adolescent masculinity, homophobic taunting and homophobia have fed into recent tragedies, including the Columbine High School shootings in 1999 and the murder in Fremont of Gwen Araujo in 2002. Pascoe acknowledges that those two incidents are unusual, even as she notes that “parents have started to hold schools accountable for allowing this sort of harassment to go unchecked.”

Masculinity and its underpinnings have been Pascoe’s area of interest since her undergraduate days, when she wrote her senior thesis on pledging and other rituals at a fraternity. “They turned everything into a competition,” recalls Pascoe.  For her master’s thesis in sociology (which she obtained at Berkeley), Pascoe interviewed boys about their definitions of masculinity, then delved deeper into the topic for her doctoral studies.

For her fieldwork, beginning in 2002, she sought out a high school with demographics that roughly reflected California’s and was not too close to the Bay Area, where tolerance for alternative sexual lifestyles runs famously high. The student body of River High approximated the racial diversity Pascoe was seeking: approximately 50 percent white, 30 percent Latino, and the remainder divided among Asian, African American, and other ethnicities. Most of River High’s approximately 2,000 students came from working-class families, though some came from middle-class or poor backgrounds. With its emphases on tradition, sports, and community, it’s an archetypical high school, says Pascoe.

Three days a week, Pascoe sat in on various classes to observe students in both gender-specific settings (weight room, auto shop, drama class) and gender-neutral ones (senior government class). She also attended meetings of the school’s Gay/Straight Alliance as well as football games, school assemblies, and proms.

The River High boys she interviewed equated masculinity with “being powerful and having the ability to assert your will and control on the world around you,” explains Pascoe.  On the other hand, “a fag was a person who had no power and no control and no ability to assert his will, and that was the worst thing you could be.”

A young, gay student called Ricky was permanently stuck with the “fag” label. A talented dancer, Ricky’s mere presence could inspire violent comments from other boys.

“Not only could he not ‘throw a football,’ he actively flaunted his non-masculine gender identification by dancing provocatively at school events and wearing cross-gendered clothing,” Pascoe wrote. “Through his gender practices, Ricky embodied the threatening specter of the ‘fag.’ He bore the weight of the fears and anxieties of the boys in the school who frantically lobbed the ‘fag’ epithet at one another.”

When Ricky requested help from the school’s authorities, he was ignored, in spite of the fact that there is a law in California protecting students from discrimination based on sexual identity.

Our society has worked hard over many decades to minimize sexism and racism in schools and in society at large--homophobia not so much. 

Adam Sandler is not just a maker of frivolous and sporadically funny movies, he is an enabler of homophobia, teen suicide, teen substance abuse and teen depression.

And if you still can't see the seriousness of Sandler's cavalier use of the "F" word, consider the impact and reaction of Adam Sandler turning to Don Cheadle in Reign Over Me and shouting, "You are such a nigger" to describe the character's irresponsible behavior.

Sandler is one of the chief enablers of homophobia in popular culture that drives much harm and damage; and until we stop accepting the American macho use of the "F" word as something "cool" and socially acceptable, life for queer kids will never improve.

QUEER CINEMA 2007: AT LEAST WE STILL KNOW HOW TO ACCESSORIZE

A reader recently asked me what I thought of the state of Queer Cinema in 2007.

I threw up a little in my mouth.

Two years since the Brokeback Mountain "revolution", queer cinema is, in my view, generally harmful, mostly offensive and profoundly lacking.  In fact, 2007 would more aptly be described as the year in homophobic cinema.  The biggest gay movie of the year, Chuck & Larry, was a piece of Hollywood trash that would have likely landed Adam Sandler and his co-star what's-his-name in jail if this country had hate crime laws equal to the ones found in most EU nations and Canada.

And then there was Wild Hogs.

Four of Hollywood's biggest names, John Revolting, William Macy, Martin Lawrence and Tim Allen starred in a film that could very well have been produced by Exodus International.  The film's premise is simple.  Four middle-aged heterosexual men realize their lives are a mess and that they have become ineffectual, impotent failures--incredibly gay, in fact.  And from the very beginning of the film until the four heteros regenerate testicles, the homophobic "that's so gay" jokes will make you long for the gay-loving humor of Chuck & Larry.  The homophobic gay jokes finally stop when the four friends stand up to bullies with their fists and rediscover their manhood.  Yes, Wild Hogs is as offensive as that.  And it does contain two gay characters that make the Chuck & Larry stereotypes seem benign.

I suppose I failed to do the obligatory gay blog post on the year's ten best in queer cinema 2007 because 2007 was a new low for Hollywood--and if Hollywood is any reflection of the state and nature of American society, America is not a healthy place for queers.  In fact, between Hollywood, YouTube celebrities, the failure of ENDA and Hate Crimes legislation, same sex marriage bans, all of the Republican Presidential candidates and all of the Democratic Presidential Candidates--except for crazy Dennis Kucinich, and the relentless attacks from Evangelicals and the Vatican, if you have any self-esteem left, its a testament to your strong and enduring character.

In fact, the production and distribution of Wild Hogs might suggest that queer visibility has done nothing but made us more high profile targets.

A footnote: Yes, there were some gems in 2007 (Small Town Gay Bar, The Bubble, Fat Girls and For The Bible Tells Me So)--but they were all Indies or foreign and had nothing to do with Hollywood and commercially viable distribution channels.

One of the most extraordinary aspects of America's gay minority is it's docile and even obsequious acceptance of the treatment doled out by Hollywood.  Consider the thriving film and TV presence for African-Americans, a community with less expendable income than queer America and only slightly greater in numbers, 13.4 percent of the United States population vs 10 percent for the gay and lesbian population.  Considering the numbers of gays and lesbian working in film and television in Los Angeles and New York, this disparity in service is even more dramatic--but closet life is a silent and homophobia-supportive world.

Where are our Denzel Washingtons, Will Smiths, Morgan Freemans and Jamie Foxes?  Where are the films representing our real lives, our real issues and our real achievements?  Hollywood cuts the gay out of Alexander but wouldn't dare cut the black out of Glory.

If racism was as easily and as glibly expressed in film and television as is homophobia, the reaction would be substantially different.

Ironically, who is more Christian than an American queer?  No one turns the other cheek with such charm and willingness.  We just keep getting slapped but, frankly, if you're like me, you're running out of cheeks to turn.

The state of queer culture in America is deplorable.  We squander our political clout on candidates who at best half-heartedly support us.  We accept representation by the most ineffectual and impotent advocacy groups in the history of the American Civil Rights movement.  And we worship slavishly at the alter of the most homophobic and anti-gay film industry in the western world.  Planning your Oscar party?

But as long as we have Carson Kressley telling heterosexual fat women how to look good naked, all is right with the queer world--at least that's how we seem to behave.  I'm coining a new term: gapathy, apathy taken to a heretofore unimaginable level by gay America.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

BROKEBACK TO AFRICA

Brace yourselves.  Hollywood, Bollywood, Nollywood and now Homophobiawood.

Award winning Nigerian director, Dickson Iruegbu will pollute silver screens around the world with his contribution to the burgeoning world of gay cinema.  Not be outdone by Chinese director Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, Dickson Iruegbu (dickhead for the purposes of this blog) is currently shooting Black Africa's first gay movie entitled Sinful Saints.

Lest ye think that this represents a breakthough for virulently homophobic Black Africa, Sinful Saints is actually taking Black African homophobia to an entirely new toxic and vile level.

Dickhead is telling the press that Sinful Saints is a very controversial movie dealing with a very sensitive and neglected topic: homosexuality.

Among the breakthrough messages that Sinful Saints will deliver to Black African audiences worldwide:

Homosexuality is not indigenous to Africa but has been spread by European and American Colonialism.  Dickhead will examine how Westerners infected the pure societies of Black Africa with the sin of Sodom.  "How did it creep into our society" asks Dickhead?

Sinful Saints will tell the sad story of a classically western model momma's boy  whose over protective mother sheltered him so much that at age 19, he’d had no contact with a woman.  With his adolescent hormones raging out of control, the young man turns to his fellow boys to satisfy his sexual needs.  Soon he is enmeshed in the tragic homosexual lifestyle.

According to Iruegbu: “ This is a topic we all shy from but it is there. People experience it every day and we have to talk about it and enlighten people. Some of us are trying to summon the courage to discuss it. For me it is high time we discussed it.” It features steamy scenes of man-to-man love. It is an intricate web of ignorance, jealousy, betrayal and ultimately murder.

“It took a long time to convince the artistes to play the roles. I paid three times what is obtainable for Nigerian movies. I know it will shock Nigerians but the story has to be told. It is happening everywhere and people want to talk about it.

One of the lead actors who plays 'Fag Lord', a homosexual pimp, defended his participation in this groundbreaking project:  "The movie is important to me. It is a tragedy that young men could find themselves gay and be proud of it. ”

With breakthroughs like this, it will likely be a very long time before human rights sees the light of day in nation's like Ghana and Nigeria.

Some background on Nollywood after the break:

SPINNING CINEMA GOLD INTO SHIT

I'm going to depart from my customarily bleak view of American culture and the cumulative IQ of the American public and suggest that as pop culturally brain dead as the American public may be, an intelligent film version of a story would be much more enjoyed by them than a copycat piece of crap.

Making this assumption is not done easily.  For example, I recently received a CD and press release asking me to review a new singer; the press release had a breakout quote across the top of the page with a ringing endorsement from Perez Hilton.  Are there those among us who are actually influenced by the taste of Perez Hilton? Heaven help us if that's the case.

I immediately smashed the CD and ripped the press release into tiny little shreds and then set them on fire.  If Perez Hilton loves this, it must be fecal matter and if the singer and her handler think Perez Hilton is an "expert" on anything other than utter trash, that's a career that deserves to end before it begins.

And then of course, there are the millions of Americans who believe that dinosaurs co-existed with man shortly after the earth was created, some 6,000 years ago.

But what came first?  The chicken or the egg? Did Hollywood and politics makes us stupid or are Hollywood and our political parties delivering products that are dumbed down enough for a population that thinks its own drool is a source of fresh water?

Chuck & Larry makes for an excellent test case. Chicken or the egg?  Did Adam Sandler blatantly rip off and destroy a reasonably clever and funny Australian film, Strange Bedfellows,  robbing Americans of the opportunity to think and learn as well as be entertained or was it and is it always necessary to take an intelligent product produced in great film-making nations like Australia, England, France, Japan and Germany and convert it into a pile of steaming American shit because we, as a people, are barely literate idiots?  Are we incapable of understanding humor above the level of an eight year old?  Is wit and subtlety as alien to the American mind as ancient Sanskrit?  Clearly Hollywood and Washington believe this to be so.

And as for Adam Sandler, the answer to all of the above is a resounding "fuckin' A".

It's likely that most you don't know that 2006 Chuck & Larry is a point by point rip off of a 2004 Australian film, Strange Bedfellows, starring Australian icon and superstar, Paul Hogan.  Some of the Chuck & Larry reviewers made passing reference to this fact.  But scrambled eggs for brains, Adam Sandler denied that he copied the Australian film (which he got away with because if ain't made here, it simply doesn't exist.)  And the film he denies copying...hmmm...let's see.  Two straight men fake a gay marriage in order to benefit from a new tax law.  These two men have been close buddies for life.  They belong to a fire company.  They get caught but because of a noble and heart-rending speech are forgiven by the authorities.  I could go on, but why bother.  On top of being a leading purveyor of bad taste and offensive stereotypes, Adam Sandler is a Pinocchio.

Strange Bedfellows is not a great film, but it's good fun and successfully delivers an interesting, occasionally witty and meaningful story that manages to make it through to the end without insulting the gay community, without resorting to rude gay stereotypes and with a meaningful and touching ending that actually makes sense. It relies on something that is of no interest to Mr. Sandler, credibility and authenticity.

And we're still left with the big question.  Why are we so disdainful of foreign cinema that we keep producing awful, superficial remakes?  The worst part is that our friends and neighbors around the world can simply compare A to B and easily conclude that we are a nation of idiots and not just a government of idiots.

BROKEBACK BREAD CRUMBS

This is one of the those "I told you so" posts.  And I'm glad of it.  During the year of Brokeback Mountain, the media, the gay blogosphere and every gay bar in town was abuzz with news of the revolution.

Brokeback Mountain was a breakthrough, a major advance for gay rights, the film that would turn Hollywood and America inside OUT.  Two major Hollywood straights had kissed and even barebacked on the silver screen.  The world has finally changed.

"Bullshit," I said.  "They've thrown us some bread crumbs which we pounce on like idiot pigeons.

Today, the real revolution starts as this weeks edition of Entertainment Weekly suggests, that "nothing has changed."

"...Brokeback was more than a movie. It was a phenomenon that commanded the cultural conversation for months, from Jay Leno to YouTube to the cover of The New Yorker. More important, it proved that straight audiences would snap up tickets to a same-sex romance. Since then, a few gay-themed films have been released (e.g., Notes on a Scandal). But seemingly no studio — nor any studio art-house division — has greenlit a film with a gay lead character. ''I don't think any studio responded by saying, 'Quick, dust off whatever gay dramas we have!''' says one former studio head. As surprising as it seemed that Brokeback could lose the Oscar to Crash, the real shock is just now setting in: Brokeback may have changed nothing."

Exactly.  Nothing.  Well, maybe something. The big gay movie written, directed and starring heterosexuals added yet another way to insult queers to the English language.  Brokeback Jeter and that's sooooo Brokeback.

Two years later, in the world that Brokeback didn't change, we remain second class citizens, anti-same sex marriage laws have advanced by almost 50%, and our civil rights remain, after some 40 years, a distant dream.  The myth of the pink dollar has just been poked full of holes by new research that demonstrates that gay men are paid on average 23% less than straight men in corporate America.

ENDA is a political and social joke and at best another bread crumb.  ENDA has publicly split the gay community in two and generated hostilities between gay advocacy groups and the leading out gay man in Congress.  We talk about the importance and impact of ENDA knowing full well it won't pass the Senate and even if it did there are far too few votes to override the guaranteed Presidential veto.  And, of course, ENDA even it were to pass, still permits the nation's two largest employers, the United States Military and organized religion to persecute and discriminate against queers.  We're like scavengers fighting over a dead carcass when we should be fierce predators demanding our rights in the streets of America.

We are a strange nation, straight and gay. In the 1950s we believed that the fantasy family world portrayed on television from Leave it to Beaver to The Donna Reed Show was a reflection of reality.  Today, we see LGBT characters snogging and prancing on major networks and we again delude ourselves into thinking that the fantasy world of television is a reflection of gay progress in American society.  Well, Ward and June Cleaver are divorced.  Wall Cleaver died in Vietnam and Beaver Cleaver is a junkie.  As for the reality of our lives vs the fantasy world of television?  We're paid less, have limited civil rights and our kids are bullied and beaten throughout the American school system (only 3-5 percent of American schools have gay straight alliances and programs designed to support and protect gay children.)

Faced with similar overwhelmingly odds and obstacles, black America and women staged a civil rights revolution, demanding their place at the table.  We, on the other hand. are content with board room meetings, blue suits, email campaigns and sending our hard earned dollars to gay advocacy organizations that seem to spend most of their time kissing up to the establishment, attending celebrity-studded galas and asking us for more and more money.

Until we take to the streets and demand our rights, until we use our outrage and collective anger to demand the attention of Washington and action from a place that takes no action unless it's about giving itself more money and more power, and without laws we will remain second class citizens and our lives will be happy and gay for as long as it suits the mainstream and seems trendy and fashionable, and no longer.

Brokeback Mountain was just another pretty bauble used to distract us.   It also turned a straight man into a gay sex symbol.  The hollowness and hopelessness of that says it all.

And as I've said many times in the past, visibility has nothing to do with equal rights.  In fact, all visibility means is that we're easier to find and manage.  And it won't be until we're unmanageable that laws will pass and we'll assume our rightful place at the Constitutional table.

I applaud Entertainment Weekly for finally catching up with me.  Now what about the rest of you?