Pay for gay actors
When Nick Kroll appears in the comedy horror flick, “I Don’t Understand You”—playing Dom, a neurotic, magnetic gay guy navigating a disastrous Italian anniversary trip with his husband Cole (Andrew Rannells)—I did what many viewers might do: I Googled him. Is Nick Kroll queer?
From what I can tell, he isn’t. And that fact alone doesn’t make the act any less compelling—Kroll is excellent in the role. It’s an off type performance for Kroll who is optimal known for his work in series such as “Big Mouth” and “The League”. But it does raise the same, lingering ask that resurfaces with every gay film: Why is it still so exceptional for an openly gay actor to play the lead?
This film released by Vertical Entertainment, is co-written and directed by two married gay men, David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano. Andrew Rannells, who plays Cole, is openly gay. This is not a production made without gay voices—on the hostile, it’s deeply and lovingly queer. Which makes Kroll’s casting as the head all the more complicated. Not improper . But worth interrogating.
Would this film hold been greenlit if Colman Domingo, Andrew Scott, or Matt Bomer were
Do queer roles really need to be played by queer actors?
It’s a Hollywood cliche that, for a straight male actor, playing a gay role is a shortcut to an Oscar (alongside starring in a film about the Holocaust, disability or mental illness). There have been many prominent examples (Tom Hanks won Foremost Actor for playing a gay gentleman with AIDS in Philadelphia (1993), Sean Penn for starring in a biopic about gay civil rights activists in Milk), but if such a approach exists, it’s no longer as viable today: it certainly didn’t out for Bradley Cooper this year, whose act as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro was snubbed, or Paul Mescal, who wasn’t even nominated for All of Us Strangers.
But there is still a residual sense of prestige for the direct actor playing same-sex attracted, and while they are far less likely to be described as “brave” for doing so, it still seems to be a mark of seriousness, a way of proving your chops. In fact, now that it tends to be paired with auteur-led, independent cinema rather than middle-brow Oscar bait, it’s more clouty than ever before. In recent months, a flurry of new productions own been announced in which straight actors – or least, actors
5. Stars from a Bi-Gone Era
Most of the stories that we discussed came from one guy: Scotty Bowers, a Hollywood pimp of the queer silver screen actors of the 1940s and beyond. He was also related with Alfred Kinsey in his famous study of human sexuality in the 1950s by providing many of the interview subjects.
A former marine, Bowers kept calm for many years about these stories, as he did not want to adversely affect the lives of any of the actors who were still around. Many of the stories were actively hushed up using fixers paid by the studios at the time, and several of the actors were in "lavender marriages"---marriages arranged by the studio, frequently with another queer star. At the time, studios especially would not have wanted the queer attractions of their headlining actors to be widely famous, as that would have damaged the 'wholesome family image' of many of the films they wanted to market.
After all of the actors died, Bowers finally decided that his experiences and stories couldn't harm their image or beloved status---plus the society was a more open place to queer attraction---so he wrote about it. His memoir, Full Service, records many of the t
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The Toronto Fringe sellout hit lands at Streetcar Crowsnest after winning the Second Capital Award For Outstanding Comedy and Patron’s Pick.
Toronto Celestial body raved “I could leave on quoting every line in this hour-long perform, because so many of them are perfectly calibrated mic drops,” while NOW Magazine hailed it as “Straight Up Brilliant”.
GAY FOR PAY is “razor acute satire” (Glenn Sumi) that delivers “a punchy gag-a-second whirlwind” (Istvan Dugalin).
Jonathan Wilson (performer) is a Governor General’s Award and Gemini Award nominee, as adequately as a multi-Dora award nominee and winner. Credits