Proud: A young male model in Poland is gay, sleazy, frequently n*ked, and not at all proud.

 

Link to the n*de photos

The first episode of the TV series Proud has dropped on HBO MAX: "After a tragedy, a carefree young man must grow up or lose what he has left."  Nothing in the premise or episode synopsis suggests that he is a gay carefree young man, but dropping a show called Proud during Pride Month is a dirty trick if it's gay-free.  So we'll give it a try.   

Scene 1: Shaky hand-held camera follows the back of a Carefree Young Man's head as he walks past blurry people in a room.  They seem to be models waiting for an audition. The casting agent wants them all in underwear.   The Young Man sneaks into the bathroom, takes cocaine, does some push-ups, and heads for his audition.  

Wait -- they said underwear.  He strips, completely n*de, explaining "I don't do underwear."

One of the casting agents says it's fine, "The kid's a free spirit."  You just like his c*ck, buddy.   He starts choking, so the young man gives him Heimlich. 

Scene 2: A blurry club, very dark, very red, very crowded.  Looks like mostly men.  The Young Man does cocaine, is absorbed by gyrating body parts, then follows a group of guys through the kitchen and into the dark room.  Ok, he's gay. And this must be Europe, where every bar has a dark room.  They don't usually put them next to the kitchen,though. 

The dark room is even darker and blurrier than the main club, but I think I see some kissing and other stuff.

Whoops, a girl bursts in and opens the curtains: "Party's over!  Get out!"  

Ulp, this isn't a dark room.  The Young Man invited four guys to a wild night at his sister's apartment! Does the apartment open directly onto the kitchn of a gay club, or do we have to deal with inept editing as well as inept cinematography?

"I thought you weren't coming back until Monday," the Young Man says in a blurry, drug-addled voice.

"It is Monday, you idiot!"

"Dang, I have a very important meeting today!"

Scene 3:  After kicking the guys out, the Young Man -- Filip -- goes to the kitchen and asks Sis why she's so upset.  "We had an agreement -- no partying in the house! Plus you haven't taken out the trash or done the laundry.  Those are your two jobs!"

"I know.  I've been busy."

She wants him out.  She can't take his lack of responsibility, not doing any chores, always being drunk and high, strange men coming in and out all the time, with her child in the house. The child looks like she's about a year old. 

"But I'm broke."

"Then sell your motorcycle!" 

They argue for awhile.  Sister yells: "You think life is all fun and games, but today is the day you grow up.  Move out by this evening!"  This isn't carefree, it's pathological!

Scene 3: The n*ked Filip is getting dressed. We may get a brief c*ck shot, but it's too blurry to see anything.  A guy bangs on the door, asking for his money.  A lady walking down the hall says that she's walking Filip's dog, and he owes 50 zloty ($13) for dog food.  

The guy takes the dog.  Filip yells down after him, but he says "I want my money today!"

Filip pours some vodka into a coke bottle and jumps into a taxi to head to his very important meeting.  But he turns around to sell his motorcycle.

Scene 4: Two guys pick up the motorcycle, insisting that they'll only pay half of what it's worth. Hey, he has four of them!  And he's broke?  Maybe it's the cocaine.  The guy from his very important meeting calls, angry: "Where the hell are you?"

Left: The IMDB lists only Ignacy Liss, who plays Filip, but I found Mateusz Wieclawik in the closing credits (d*ck pic on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  I don't know who he plays; no one in the show has hair like that.

Filip takes a taxi downtown.  His agent meets him: "You're 45 minutes late!  Everyone is freaking out!  I'm tired of making excuses for you!"  Sort of a jerk, aren't you, Filip Baby?

Uh-oh, the guy he owes money to is there.  Filip pays with the motorcycle money, gets his dog back, and asks if he has any more cocaine.

On to the meeting!  They rush him into makeup, complaining that he reeks of alcohol and "things go better when the models actually show up." 

The makeup lady just got engaged, and her teenage daughter shows up and announces "I'm meeting someone."  This upsets her.  Must be a subplot brewing.

Scene 5: It's one of those daytime talk shows, show, just finishing a segment with an expert on marital conflicts.  Next up: the hosts will show you how to be chic on the beach. They approach the four models.

"Filip  is presenting a beautiful red brief cut."   

Uh-oh, Filip is high: he begins giggling, then throws up, then collapses -- on live tv!  They quickly cut to commercial. 

More after the break.  Spoiler alert: He lives.

10 Gay Movies I Hated

I haven't seen a lot of gay-themed movies since 2005, when I moved to small-town America, but before that, living in West Hollywood, New York, and Fort Lauderdale, I saw practically everything.  Some were good, but a lot were awful: angst-loaded melodramas set in worlds where there is no gay community, every heterosexual is homophobic, lesbians turn straight, and gay men keep falling in love with women.

Here is the list of the biggest offenders, excluding historical artifacts like Cruising and The Boys in the Band, and movies where the gay guy dies (which I never see in the first place).

It's Still the 1950s

1. Get Real (1998). The only gay guy in the world (Ben Silverstone), who plasters his room with pictures of hunky footballers but still worries that his parents will "find out.  He falls for a local jock, who won't acknowledge his presence in public, continues to date girls, and beats him up to prove he is heterosexual.  But there are no other options.

2. Sordid Lives (1999).  In "modern" Texas, a drag queen named Brother Boy (Leslie Jordan) is in a mental hospital, undergoing de-homosexual therapy.  Meanwhile, a gay man (Kirk Geiger) moves from Texas to Los Angeles, where he undergoes 300 years of therapy to accept "who he is," but is still terrified that his theater-crowd friends will "find out."  Are you kidding me?  (Southern Baptist Sissies is in the same vein).

3. Cruel Intentions (1999).  Teenage brother and sister have fun destroying people's lives.  Fruity queen (Joshua Jackson, not even the most homophobic of the Jacksons) helps them blackmail his sex partner, a closeted footballer, who tries to turn hetero by throwing out his Judy Garland cds.  Excuse me?  Who researched this movie?

Gay Men Really Want Women

4. The Object of My Affection (1998).  Straight woman (Jennifer Anniston) and gay man (Paul Rudd) fall in love and begin a relationship.  Um. . .what exactly did they think the word "gay" meant?


5. The Opposite of Sex (1998). Teenage girl (Christina Ricci) shows up at her gay brother's house and seduces his lover (Ivan Sergei), who never once states that he's bisexual.  Apparently all gay men are into women, they just like men better -- until they find The Girl of Their Dreams.

6. Party Monster (2003).  Party boy (Macaulay Culkin) says he's gay, but he falls in love with a girl, who almost convinces him to abandon his "destructive lifestyle."  But it doesn't work, and he becomes a murderer.  Those are your choices: turn straight, or kill people

Gay Men are Really Women

7. The Birdcage (1996).  It may have been ok with La Cage aux Folles in 1978, but in 1996, the sight of one effeminate stereotype (Robin Williams) teaching another effeminate stereotype (Nathan Lane) how to butter his toast "like  a man" was infuriating.

8. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). East German boy (John Cameron Mitchell) falls in love with an American GI, and decides to become a woman for him.  Operation is botched, creating a transwoman with an "angry inch," who becomes a punk rocker and falls in love with a homophobic Bible-belt boy.  Same-sex desire doesn't exist; it's all male-female, regardless of the body you inhabit.

Lesbians Switch Teams a Lot

9. Chasing Amy (1997). Hetero man (Ben Affleck) falls in love with a lesbian and begins the task of converting her to heterosexuality.   Isn't that a debunked myth -- lesbians will "turn back" if they meet the right man?  It works, albeit temporarily.

10. Kissing Jessica Stein (2001).  Jessica meets a lesbian. She's astounded, utterly unaware that such things exist.  In Manhattan.  In 2001.  To be fair, she lives in a gay-free Manhattan, where people constantly make heterosexist statements ("Oh, you got flowers!  Who's the guy?").  They begin a relationship, but then Jessica switches back to heterosexual again.

Gay as Arrested Development

11. Chuck and Buck (2000).  The worst gay-themed movie since Cruising.  I'll save it for another post.

See also: 10 Gay Movies I Loved

"Cruising": Homophobic classic about sin, degradation, and dicks in a doomed gay world. With a nude Mr. Big.

The 39 Dumbest Things on TV

Hudson Yang: From "Fresh Off the Boat" to Harvard, cooking, dudes, and the best gay comedy of the year. With Hudson and Xu bedroom stuff

Link to the n*de photos

Fresh Off the Boat (2015-20) was nostalgia program based on the memoirs of celebrity chef Eddie Huang.  Hudson Yang (left) plays the 12-17 year old Eddie, growing up in the 1990s in a Taiwanese-American family "fresh off the boat."  

Dad (Randall Park), who runs a cowboy-themed restaurant in Orlando, pushes him to embrace the best (and worst) of American culture, while Mom pushes him to embrace his Taiwanese heritage, resulting in conflict and plot complications.

Eddie has two younger brothers (Ian Chen, Forrest Wheeler, right) and a surprising number of gay friends and acquaintance: 

Officer Bryson (Alex Quijano), a regular at the family restaurant.

Oscar Chow,  Mom's college boyfriend, whom she helped come out (Rex Lee, playing about the same character as on Suburgatory).  He brings his dull-as-dirt boyfriend to Thanksgiving dinner.

Randy and Andy, who buy a house from Realtor Mom.

Next door neighbor Nicole, whom Eddie helps come out (after dating her)

A good beginning for a gay-inclusive career.  Let's check on Hudson's other roles.

While on the Boat, Hudson appeared in a 2016 episode of the Disney Channel's Liv and Maddie, either as a basketball player or an art student.

The short Hum (2017), about a preteen boy-girl romance.

A 2018 episode of Sofia the First, about a girl who becomes the Princess of Enchancia when her Mom marries the King.  Hudson's episode is about mermaids

Seven 2019 episodes of The Lion Guard, featuring Kion, son of Simba from The Lion King (voiced by Matthew Broderick, left in 1994, Rob Lowe here).  

After the Boat, Hudson appeared in Run & Gun (2022), with Ben Milliken as a criminal-on-the-run trying to live a quiet life with the heterosexist trajectory of job, house (well, trailer), girlfriend, and kid.   You know that won't work out well.  Hudson's character is not listed in the plot synopsis.

Next he played the Honor Student (2023), who loses his brother in a mass shooting, and gets revenge by holding a teacher hostage.  No indication that he's gay.

So, only one show with gay representation. That's  not....

Wait, I forgot to research Extremely Unique Dynamic (2024).

The premise: best friends (Harrison Xu, left, Ivan Leung) spend the weekend making a movie about making a movie.  Extremely Unique made the rounds of 17 film festivals and won five awards, plus a nomination from the Queerties. Reviews calls it "A new standard in LGBTQ and Asian-American representation" and "the dumbest, dopest gay meta comedy of the year."

More after the break

Pablo Castelblanco: The OCD guy from "Happy's Place" beefcakes, plays gay, but closets his Insta. With Steve Howey and Pablo p*nis

  

Link to the n*de photos

I was running low on tv series to review, so I clicked on Happy's Place on Netflix, in spite of the annoyingly manipulative title.

Making your way through the world today takes everything you got

Taking a break from all your worries sure would mean a lot

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name...

Whoops, wrong sitcom. 

Sometimes it feels like a big ol' fight

To get through the day and sleep on through the night

You can't complain because no one's here to hear it

But here you'll surely find a place that will lift your spirits...

Happy's Place (2024-) currently airing on NBC, stars Reba McIntyre as a woman (not named Happy) who inherits a Tennessee bar from her father.  Her co-owner is a much younger half sister that she never knew about.

I watched Episode 1.7, "Ho-Ho Howey," because of guest star Steve Howey, who played Reba's son-in-law on her earlier series (Reba, 2001-07),  and has played gay characters (and shown his stuff) often in movies and on tv.

His stuff is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

I wasn't impressed.  An old-fashioned sitcom plotline with jokes requiring your familiarity with the earlier Reba.  It reminded me of the Saturday-night shows that the old folks used to watch while we were out at the clubs.  

And only one cute guy in the regular cast. 

  

Not Tokala Black Elk as the sardonic bartender.  The n*de photo on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends must be of a different Tokala Black Elk; the guy behind the bar was grizzled, gaunt, and craggy.

The cute guy was Steve (Pablo Castelblanco, top photo), the bar's full-time  accountant, shy, awkward, germaphobic, suffering from OCD.  Could I hope that he was gay?

To explore further, I watched Episode 1.17, "The Doctor is Out": Steve has improved so much, moving from a giant bottle to a small bottle of hand sanitizer, able to handle someone else's pencil, that he gives up therapy.  But then he starts using Reba as a substitute therapist, and reverts, rearranging the spices in the kitchen.

Steve  doesn't express any heteros*xual interest in either episode, nor is a girlfriend mentioned in the Seasons 1-2 episode synopses.  Could a character in a sitcom for old people, set in Knoxville, Tennessee, starring a lady who tells us to seek out God's help for our problems, be canonically gay?  

Reba is an outspoken gay ally, so maybe...

I read two interviews, one from just last month.  Pablo Castelblanco says only that Happy's Place is the best gig he's ever had, he hopes it runs for years, and in future episodes he would like to explore Steve's "love life." 

That's a little vague, buddy.  Do you expect him to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend?  Which will the writers permit?

The articles also mention that Pablo is gay in real life.

Pablo Castelblanco, aka Pablo Esteban, grew up in Colombia, doing the usual school plays and watching Reba's earlier show.   His parents planned on him becoming an accountant, but he thought of engineering -- or acting. He studied at El Bosque University in Bogota and then the AMDA College of the Performing Arts in Los Angeles, where he appeared in Sálvese Quien Pueda, Yerma, Stage Door, Metamorphoses, and The Diary of Anna Frank.  

Pablo's first on-screen role was Tristan St. Pierre in a 2016 episode of Scream Queens: he writes lesbian fan fiction about the Chanels  (the It-Girls of the school), and is finally invited to join them, becoming the first male member.  According to the fan wiki, he is "homos*xual." 

A good start, buddy.

Then came some artsy shorts (Sedation, Admission, There's No Such Thing as a Dragon) and guest spots on some comedies (Dear White People, New Girl), and in 2022, a starring role on Alaska Daily: Hilary Swank plays a journalist seeking a "fresh start" in Anchorage after a career crash. She ends up investigating the murders of several Native women.  Philip Lewitski (left) played her photographer colleague Miles.

Pablo played another reporter, Gabriel Martin, aka Gabriel Tovar,  The show is no longer available on Hulu, and he's not mentioned in the plot synopses, so I can't tell if he is gay or not. 

More after the break