Riley Polanski: Insane Girls, Xanadu, Ashes, Michael J. Fox, and the darkest demons of gay romance

 

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Instagram recommended another guy I never heard of: Riley Polanski.  Be sure to include the -n, or you'll get a lot of ladies.  I checked the IMDB to make sure he's an actor.  But before looking at his work, let's check his Instagram to see if he is gay.

Over 150 posts, a lot of muscle-shots (nice swimmer's build), architecture, design, music. No girl-hugging in the first 100 or so, unless you look very carefully: notice the girl in the top photo on the far left.  

Nicely decorated apartment, but if you look carefully, you'll see a framed 1960 ad from Christian Dior, with a swimsuit lady in the forground.

In the last 50, it's girl-hugging all the way down.

And no guy-huggin. This looks promising, but Riley states that this is his best friend, not a boyfriend, and they're at the Hotel Cafe on Cahuenga, just south of Hollywood Boulevard, near the famous corner of Hollywood and Vine: one of the more heterosexual parts of Los Angeles, a good three miles from the border of West Hollywood.  Dudes are straight.

I pieced together a biography from the IMDB, Backstage, Facebook, and Linkedin.  Riley was born in Pomona, California in 2000, and started acting when he was 10 years old: the Western 6- Guns (2010),  starring 1980s staples Barry Van Dyke and Greg Evigan; Airline Disaster (2011), starring former Family Ties cast members Meredith Baxter-Birney and Scott Valentine; Baseball, Dennis, & the French (2011). 

On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends:  In case you are interested, the first celebrity I met when I moved to Los Angeles was Michael J. Fox, who played Alex on "Family Ties,"  We just had lunch, but I told my friends that it was an energetic hookup.  

When he was a teenager, Riley had to put his career on hold due to "family illness."  Turns out to be cancer.

More after the break

Aidan Merwarth: Finn's wannabe boyfriend, pencil company exec, juvenile delinquent, brat. With 3 d*cks and inconclusive social media

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In Season 2 of Unprisoned, gay-coded Finn (Faly Rakotohavana) and his family go to group therapy. Mom complains  that he spends all day online, not interacting with anyone in real life, so he'll never "fall in love, get married, and have a nice life."  I'm not getting into the assumption that you have to be married to have a nice life.  The therapist assigns Finn to "make a friend," presumably a friend that he could fall in love with.

He invites Spencer (Aidan Merwarth) to his room, but doesn't want to play video games or watch tv or anything.  Dude, if you're not going to make out with him, at least give him something to do.

Spencer plays with his phone for awhile, gets bored, calls Finn a "baby" (you wanted a real man?), and leaves.  He re-appears at the college fair to taunt Finn again.  Well, can you blame him?  Dude thought he was going to at least get some smooching.

Finn remains gay-vague, his s&xual identity unconfirmed through two seasons.  

I wanted to know about this guy who is playing a gay subtext or maybe gay-text teenager.

He was born in July 2002, so as of this writing he's 22 years old. He's from San Antonio, and homeschooled, which means either he's a fundamentalist Christian, or he goes on so many auditions that he has no time for school. 

 

He has 133 friends on Facebook.  

He's an acrobatic gymnast.  In 2015, at the International Acro Cup in Poland. Aidan and his sister Devon won second place in the mixed pair 11-16 age range

He attended the Los Angeles Film School, graduating with a B.S. in Animation in 2025.

He has eight acting credits on the IMDB.

A Girl Named Jo (2019). on Brat TV, features two girls trying to unravel a mystery at Attaway High School in 1963.  Aidan appears in four episodes as Felix, apparently Jo's boyfriend.

Another Brat TV series, Crazy Fast (2019), has a group of outsiders join the track team at Attaway High. Colin McCalla (n*de picture on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) stars.  Aidan plays Eamon, a runner "whose past with Rowan threatens everything."

Another straight guy, darn it.

The Forgotten Place is a short about Eric (Jeff Locker), who wants a friend.  He finds one (Brian Flaccus), but apparently he means a platonic friendship.

In Saving Paradise (2021), a "ruthless corporate executive" (William Moseley) has to return to his small town when he inherits his father's struggling pencil factory. At Christmastime.  He has to save it and win The Girl (named Charlie, just to fool you into thinking there's a gay romance).

So Paradise is a pencil factory?  I guess it beats saving the annual Christmas festival.  Aidan plays the  rutless corporate executive as a teenager, already in love with The Girl.

But a pencil factory?  When was the last time you used a pencil?  Or saw one?

More after the break

Is the gay ghost couple on Disney's "Ghost and Molly McGee" enough? With Vincent Rodriguez and Camilo d*ck

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I try to review all of the Disney Channel shows for LGBTQ representation, but I skipped over The Ghost and Molly McPhee (2021, 2023, 2024) because it was reminiscent of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1968-70),  about a middle-aged widow who falls in love with the ghost of a sea captain.  Who wants to watch a show about a ghost-human hetero-romance?

I didn't even realize that the actual title is The Ghost and Molly McGee. 

But it turns out that the ghost and Molly are just friends.  And there's a ghost gay couple.

The premise: when 13-year old Molly McGee moves into a haunted house, grumpy ghost Scratch (Dana Snyder) is assigned to haunt her, but he accidentally binds their souls together for all eternity.  After some initial fussing, they become best friends, and Scratch rebels against the ghost mandate to make human lives miserable, causing friction with the Ghost Council.

Researching this show is difficult, since the voice actors have extremely common names.  Google lists over 20 Dana Schneiders and Snyders: the senior vice president at a realty company, the senior talent acquisition partner at a university, a jeweler, a "producer and creative with a passion for visual storytelling," a rugby coach, a wife and mom, an opthamologist. I think this is the right one.

The plotlines involve both Other Realm and standard middle-school problems.  Molly has a best friend, a Mean Girl frenemy, a bratty little brother, and a boyfriend (Alan Lee), who happens to be an anti-ghost paranormal researcher. 

Another extremely common name. Facebook lists over 50 Alan Lees, including a hospital president, a Cajun Zen Monk, a magician, the director of a choral music society, and a lot of "husband and fathers."  I think I put the right one on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

More after the break. 

"Cheaper by the Dozen": Twelve Kids, Some Beefcake

This is one of the iconic beefcake scenes of the 1960s, at least for the kids in the era when bare chests were as rare as gay characters in the movies: the hunky 18-year old Tim Matheson takes his shirt off, for no apparent reason except to give teenagers something to look at.  The movie is Yours, Mine, and Ours (1968), about a  widow with 10 kids who marries a widower with 8 kids, resulting in a very large blended family,  The Brady Bunch times three.

It's all very heteronormative, promoting the value of excessive reproduction, in spite of world overpopulation and the economic problems of feeding that many people.  But who cares?  There was a hunk.

The 2005 remake stars Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo as the highly prolific parents.  Sean Faris, playing the oldest son, gets an extensive beefcake scene.  He's in the midst of shaving when he's called away for an emergency, so there's lather all over his face, but still, beefcake is beefcake.

The 1950 movie Cheaper by the Dozen, based on the memoirs of Frank Gilbreath, has a similar theme: Myra Loy and Clifton Webb star as the parents of twelve kids.  No blended family here; they actually reproduced twelve times.  Clifton Webb was gay in real life, and extremely swishy, so it seems difficult to imagine him having sex with a woman at all.  But that was probably the point: to "redeem" him by demonstrating that even swishy guys are heterosexual.

No beefcake here; the teenage children are both girls.  

In the 2003 remake and its 2005 sequel, Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt became the parents of the brood.  I haven't seen them -- I avoid movies starring Steve Martin -- but apparently Tom Welling as the oldest son gives us a requisite beefcake shot.  Some of the actors playing the younger kids have also grown up into hunks, such as twins Brent and Shane Kinsman.

Disney+ released heir version of Cheaper by the Dozen in 2022, with Zach Branff and Gabrielle Union as the parents.  It's modernized -- the family is interracial, the parents are divorced rather than widowed, and some of the kids are adopted.  But not too modernized: signs tell us that Black Lives Matter and that we should Resist Hate, but everyone is still heterosexual.  

I had high hopes for Luke Prael as the troubled teenager Seth.  But he displays no interest in boys or girls.

At least Zach Branff takes off his shirt a lot.

And his last name is actually Braff, not Branff.  It's just pronounced with an n, like that town in Canada.

See also: James Dumont's teen idol career, with Tim Matheson, Rob Lowe, and Andrew McCarthy

"Oz, the Great and Powerful": A walking p* enis (not in a good way) finds true love, two wicked witches, and a flying monkey

"And Just Like That": Carrie's return has elitism, bisexuals, d*cks, musems, marital spats, s'mores, and shoes. Lots of shoes.

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I never watched the original S*ex and the City series when it first aired on HBO (1998-2004), although I knew about Mr. Big (Chris Noth), for obvious reasons.  Who wants to watch four super-entitled New York-centric ladies having lunch? The only episode I watched featured Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) investigating bisexuals for her newspaper column.  

Her conclusion: they are all gay, and fooling themselves.  Bisexuals don't exist. 

So much for bi representation. 

Researching this review, I discovered that Carrie has a stereotypic gay best friend with the incredible name Stanford Blatch (why, was Bruce Van Swishington taken?).  

Having never watched the original, I've never been interested in the 2021-25 sequel, And Just Like That (presumably the title means that 20 years have passed "just like that"). But I've seen n*de guys parading around on occasion, and the plot synopses mention several LGBTQ characters.  We'll see if the portrayals are cringy.

I'll identify the five main ladies by their careers.  From left to right, Filmmaker Lisa, Art Dealer Charlotte, Columnist Carrie, Realtor Seema, Lawyer Miranda. 

Episode 3.5, "Under the Table," has three main plot threads.

The Charlotte/Lisa Plot:

Scene 1: The Guggenheim.  I love that museum.  Wait -- they didn't visit, they're just walking past. Art Dealer Charlotte's boyfriend Harry (Evan Handler) reveals that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but they found it early, so he has a 98% chance of full recovery. 

In other news, they're going glamping (glamor camping) with the kids at Governors Island this weekend.

Scene 2:  Nuclear family breakfast in a huge, super-elegant kitchen. Filmmaker Lisa won't be back from filming her documentary until late Friday, so she tells her husband, Herbert Wexley (wow, what unrealistic entitled name), to take their children to Governors Island for glamping with Charlotte and her boyfriend. 

Husband is played by Chris Jackson

Wait -- this is the first he's heard of it. "No, I've told you several times." "No you haven't."

 

"Sorry, I can't do it.  I have a photo shoot for my campaign."  He has to pretend to be a "regular guy," eat one of those...um...frankfurter sausage things...and ride on the...you know, the poor people train...the subway.  

"You can do the 'regular guy' shoot on Monday, " Filmmaker Lisa commands. "This weekend we're going glamping with the Goldblatts."

Scene 3: Art Dealer Charlotte is trying to cook, but she's too distracted.  Her friend Anthony (Mario Cantone) asks if she's ok. 

Her children, a girl and a nonbinary person, ask if they can skip glamping.  "No, you're going" It's important because her boyfriend has prostate cancer, but he doesn't want them knowing that.

Scene 4: Governors Island (no apostrophe), just south of Manhattan, with views of the skyline.   The nonbinary child notes that there's a spa and go-karts. 

Art Dealer Charlotte's boyfriend complains about the mosquitos. 

 Filmmaker Lisa bursts in, and her husband criticizes her for being late. "Well, four hours ago, I was in Atlanta."  Then they bicker because one of them told the other to buy chocolate to make s'mores.  This couple is on the outs.

Scene 5: A tent big enough for three beds and a living room set. The boyfriend and the kids are lounging around, playing on their cell phones, when Art Dealer Charlotte bursts in and complains that they should be doing outdoor activities. They refuse. My parents used to say that on family vacations.  "You shouldn't be lounging around the cabin reading comic books.  Go enjoy the outdoors."  How does one "enjoy" the outdoors?  It's a place you go through on the way to enjoying things.

Meanwhile, Filmmaker Lisa and her husband bicker. She takes a photo of him and their kids.  When he looks at it, he accidentally scrolls to the last one she took: a selfie with her editor Marion (Mehcad Brooks).

"Are you having an affair with Michael B. Handsome?  Talk about getting your chocolate in Atlanta!"

"No, it's just a work crush."

He continues to growl, so Lisa stomps off, and runs into Charlotte at the pier.  They complain about their partners, and decide to ditch them and take a spa day. 

Cut to the spa. Close up of ladies in bikinis.  They're really pushing the heterosexual male gaze. 

Carrie/Miranda and Seema after the break

David Labiosa: the Biggest Bulge on Seinfeld

Seinfeld was not well known for its beefcake. There were some spongworthy guest stars, such as Anthony Starke in "The Jimmy" (1995), but they were rarely displayed shirtless or in swimsuits. But in "The Busboy" (June 26, 1991), fans saw "all that and more."

The most gigantic beneath-the-belt bulge in history.

George accidentally gets a busboy named Antonio fired, and goes to his apartment to apologize. Antonio is angry, taciturn -- and a Greek god. Viewers wanted to know, who is this Michelangelo's David come to life? This Apollo masquerading as a mortal? And why did the producers squeeze him into jeans so tight that his superheroic endowment was so completely and obviously visible?

 Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Were they trying to make him look more threatening?  If so, it didn't work.

29-year old David Labios had never had such a gender-transgressive role.  Antonio resists macho gender expectations by having a pet cat named Pequita, and by effusively hugging George at the end of the episode.

Maybe that was the point: the stereotyped super-macho guy turns out to be sensitive and sweet, i.e., gay.

Born in 1961, David studied acting at New York University, and first appeared on screen as Carlos Rivera, a boy accused of murder, in the tv movie Death Penalty (1980).

 

 

One of his more iconic roles was a change of pace from the stereotyping: The Entity (1982), about a single mother (1970s staple Barbara Hershey)  plagued by a murderous poltergeist.  The director removed a scene where, under the control of the evil spirit, she tries to her teenage son (David), but also deprived audiences from the opportunity to see him shirtless.

He went on to appear in many of the iconic tv series of the 1980s and 1990s, including The White Shadow, Falcon Crest, The Powers of Matthew Star, Hill Street Blues, and Hunter, often as a Hispanic-stereotyped thug, gang member, or streetwise cop, but also a pr guy in The Guardian (1984); a heterosexual hookup in A Sinful Life (1989); and a singer in There Goes My Baby (1994), with Dermot Mulroney and Ricky Schroeder, 

 His war hero Juan Medina in An American Story (1992) won him an Emmy nomination. 

More after the break

Junior and the Tall Man: A "Righteous Gemstones" Romance

 

 

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Note: This story takes place during Righteous Gemstones Episode 2.6.  Believing that Eli's old friend Junior Marsh (Eric Roberts) sent the Cycle Ninjas to try to assassinate him and other family members, Jesse and his men's group go to Memphis to tell him to back off.  

Actually, Junior had nothing to do with the Cycle Ninjas and has no idea why Jesse is so upset:

The Southern Slam Championship was not very exciting: it was basically two tag teams pounding on each other for a crowd of about 30 people who had no idea how to watch professional wrestling.  And held at the Memphis American Legion!  Sure, Junior's assistant, the Tall Man, did his best with their limited resources, but he remembered the days when he and his father promoted the biggest names in the business, and packed the 10,000 seats in the Mid-South Coliseum -- where Elvis Presley performed!

Junior was having trouble pretending to be enthusiastic, so he asked the Tall Man for some blow, and ducked out to urinate and get high. 

His day was about to get much worse.

While he was urinating on an old arcade game, symbolically punishing his father for vanishing with the $2 million that could have saved their wrestling business, Jesse Gemstone stepped out of the shadows.

The son of his old friend Eli, who Junior visited in Charleston two weeks ago.  What was he doing here?

"D*ck is out, Playboy," he complained.  Weird thing to comment on.  Son was just like his father -- Eli couldn't take his eyes of Junior's d*ck, either, in 1972 or 2022. 

"I'm aware.  I take it out when I urinate, Jesse."

"And to do other things, too."  Twenty or more of his goons stepped up, armed with slingshots!  Jesse pointed a gun at him.

Junior tried to laugh, but he was terrified.  Was Jesse going to murder him, just because he visited an old friend?  Ok, maybe they hooked up, but when Eli called things off, he high-tailed it back to Memphis.  Ok, maybe he sent the Tall Man to smoosh a tomato on Eli's windshield, but how did a smooshed tomato warrant murder?  And what was the army for? 

"You want to kill my family?" Jesse yelled.  

"What the heck are you talking about?"  Junior asked.  How could going to bed with Eli destroy the Gemstone family?  Aimee-Leigh was long gone, so it wasn't cheating. By outing him as bi?

"How about I kill your family? Grandparents, kids, special needs. Chop their heads off!"

 "Or we could r*pe them," one of the goons yelled.

"Just the men," another goon pointed out.  "We don't r*pe women."

Putting on a brave front, Junior sassed back: "I don't have a family, wise guy.  I'm 66 years old.  You think my granddaddy is still alive?  And I don't have any kids, that I know of.  Maybe you should ask your wife."

Uh-oh, too far!  Jesse was fool enough to believe that Junior had actually slept with his wife, and shoot him to restore his manhood. 

"Only one getting r*ped tonight is you," Jesse snarled.

Junior thought about trying to run back inside, but Jesse would probably shoot him in the back.  Besides, he couldn't show fear.  So he scoffed.

"We'll...show you how we handle sickos!"

Sickos?   The stuff they did was entirely consensual!  Jesse must be a homophobic bigot.  When you're gay in the wrestling world, you encounter a lot of homophobes, but he never imagined that the Gemstones would be homophobic.  Eli was bi.  So was his brother-in-law, Baby Billy.  And didn't his son Kelvin have a boyfriend?  

 "You got some b*lls on you, boy. Reminds me of your Daddy when he was a young man.  If you and your boys have d*cks as big as his, you got yourselves a date."

While Jesse continued to aim the gun at him, the goons started pelting him with stones from the slingshots!  He tried to jump out of the way, crouch down, hide behind a dumpster.  Those darn diots were going to stone him to death!  He remembered a sermon from long ago, about a woman taken in adultery.  Jesus spared her from being stoned.  Boy, he could use Jesus right now!

"Ok, ok, I'll stay away from your family."

"Too late, boy.  The guys are riled up.  I'm afraid this is the end for you."

The full story, with n*de photos and explicit s*xual situations, is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

See also: Gemstones Episode 2.6, Continued: Torsten gets ** up, Keefe holds Kelvin's di*k, and Sky is skyclad. With random skyclad dudes

Eric Roberts: a lifetime of sleazebag killers, hunks, and noble gay guys

"Blue Ridge" Episode 1.3: A wrestling promoter is murdered at a high school in the Hills. With lots of beefy suspects and Michael O'Hearn's d*ck

Gemstones Episode 4.2, Continued: Pontius' private parts, Gideon's bottom buddy, and JR's junk. Plus Karen from "Will and Grace" sings

  

Link to the NSFW version

Previous: Gemstones Episode 4.2: Baby Billy's dong, BJ's pole, Kelvin's pipe, and the Clobber Verses.

In Part 1, the conflicts of the seasons were introduced: Eli is looking for meaning, BJ for independence, and Keefe for a wedding ring. Next up: Jesse and his Cain-and-Abel sons, Pontius and Gideon.

Pontius' Private Parts: Jesse taping a commercial for his new line of Prayer Pods, like privacy pods except that inside you can pray, play Bible Bonkers, listen to a sermon, and so on.  He forces the entire family into one.  It's a tight fit: Pontius, sitting on his lap, deliberately f*arts in his face.

In the dressing room, we get some back story:  Pontius (top photo and left) got kicked out of the Citadel for low grades, and  because he was posting videos of his buddies sticking firecrackers up each other's bottoms.  

That sounds like slang for gay activity, but apparently it's a real thing: people put fireworks in their friends' bottoms as a prank.  

I still think Ponty is hinting at same-sex interests.  

Amber notes that you can "hurt your privates doing things like that," but Pontius insists that his privates work fine, disgusting his parents.  Darn, now you have viewers checking out your bulge.

Gideon's Bottom Buddy: Jesse can't communicate with his father Eli, but Gideon has no trouble: "I call Granddad, or he calls me."  

This enrages Jesse, who calls them bottom buddies.  Amber points out that the phrase actually refers to "s*odomy," so he backs down: "I didn't mean it like that.  I'm not trying to say that he's trying to f*k Daddy."  Of course not, Gideon is a bottom.

This is a continuation of the Eli-Gideon relationship from Season 3, so it shouldn't come as a surprise.  I'm wondering, however, if Gideon is ever going to have a relationship with anyone outside the family.  His last friend or boyfriend was Scotty, who died at the end of Season 1.  Your Granddad has overcome his grief and moved on, Gid Baby; maybe you should, too.

Abraham's got nothing: Poor Gavin; his last plot arc was in Season 2, and it was about leaving secretions all over the house.  Looks like he's got nothing here, either; after the Prayer Pod commercial, he sits by himself and plays on his cell phone, just entering the conversation to laugh that his Dad is "b*utthurt" over Gideon's relationship with Eli.  

Amber criticizes that phrase as referencing "s*odomy" also.  What you got against gay stuff, girl?

Karen arrives:  The siblings are getting jetpack training from J.R. Rodriguez (good idea), when it's time for the friend or relative from Eli's past to arrive and shake things up: Baby Billy in Season 1; Junior in Season 2; May-May in Season 3; and now "Mama's bestie," Lori , played by Megan Mullaly, Karen on Will and Grace.   

Everyone rushes to hug her; Kelvin blurts out "I love you."  It sounds like he means it in a romantic way.  Is he going to dump Keefe for the old lady?  They discuss how much they miss Aimee-Leigh.

She explains that she hasn't visited for awhile because she's been doing dinner theater in Pigeon Forge -- the Smokey Mountains home of Dolly Parton's Dollywood and other countrified attractions.  An article in Focus, the Tennessee LGBTQ magazine, calls it a "Gay Mecca."

Maybe not a mecca; it's still overwhelmingly "family friendly" conservative fundamentalist Christian. They had a "Gay Day" at Dollywood in 2004, but horrified protests caused it to not be repeated.

More after the break. 

Alfie Williams: A missing p* enis, a youthful scoundrel, a zombie fighter. Is he or his character gay? Or both?

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I was checking my Instagram yesterday, when it recommended that I follow someone named Alfie Williams.  Never heard of him.  This is the first time Instagram has recommended someone other than a fitness trainer or bodybuilder.  I figured it must be either because he plays a gay character or he is gay in real life.

In the small photo on my cell phone, Alfie looked like a guy in his 20s, but when I checked his Instagram on my laptop, he turned out to be a young teenager.  14 in 2025.

So, an out-and-proud 14 year old, or playing an out-and-proud 14 year old?

Turns out that research wasn't at all difficult; there are a lot of interviews and articles about Alfie.

He was born in 2011 in Gateshead, across the river from shipping and partying center Newcastle-upon-Tyne in northern England.  His father is Alfie Dobson, an actor and bodybuilder with nine credits listed on the IMDB.

Alfie Jr. broke into acting with the short film Phallacy (2021): a 12-year old boy wakes up to find his p* enis missing. Doctors say there is nothing they can do (transmen get a working p* enis from their vaginal tissue, but the boy doesn't have anything to work with). Don't worry, when you grow up, you'll find a lot of things to do in the bedroom that don’t require one.

  Sounds like a lot of LGBTQ symbolism and hegemonic masculinity going on.  An inclusive start to your career, Alf.

Next came Ghost Theo, a resident of the Land of the Dead in Episode 3.5 of the dark fantasy His Dark Materials (2022).  He only has one line.

An unspecified character in BBC Radio 4's adaption of the soap opera Our Friends in the North, about four Newcastle blokes whose lives intersect from 1964 to 2022.

Young John Henry Sayers in A New Breed of Criminal (2023).  The adult John Henry Sayers (played by Alfie's Dad) and his brother Stephen (Steve Wraith) were real-life gangsters who ran the city of Newcastle in the 1990s. 

But it is Alfie's starring role in 28 Years Later (2025) that prompted the flood of interviews and articles.

I saw the original 28 Days Later (2002), where bicycle courier Jim (Cillian Murphy) gets into an auto accident, and wakes up from a coma "28 days later" to discover that he's a survivor of a zombie apocalypse.  He meets two other survivors, Mark and Selena, but one is immediately killed.  The other announces that just because they're the last two people left on Earth, they're not going to f*ck; but they do.  They fall in love, adopt a survivor girl, and escape to an idyllic rural future together.  

Guess which is killed, and which falls in love.  

Right.  Offensively blatant erasure of gay potential in order to promote the myth of universal heterosexual desire and practice for the 10 millionth time. 

In 28 Years Later, 12-year old Spike (Alfie) is living with his parents in a survivor community on Lindisfarne, a tidal island that was home to a famous Medieval monastery and the Lindisfarne Gospels. Dad (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) takes him to the mainland for a coming-of-age ritual, and they are separated for some reason.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson's d*ck is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Later he takes his sick Mum to the mainland to see a doctor (Ralph Fiennes, right), who says that she is dying of brain cancer and must be euthanized. We see it happening.  That settles it: I'm not watching this movie.  F*ck the Sadness.

More after the break

"The Prince": The actor claims that his flashy-femme prince is "just sensitive." See for yourself. With gay-subtext homies and Turkish d*cks

 

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The Prince is unfortunately the title of about a dozen tv shows and movies, but the Turkish one (2023-25) stars Giray Altinok as the Prince of Bogonia, a fictional micro-kingdom somewhere in the Balkans during the Middle Ages.  The Prince (no other name because his father hates him) is so flashy-femme, and exhibits such a strong interest in men, that viewers began buzzing.  Altinok went on social media to clear up the "misunderstanding": The Prince isn't gay, he's just sensitive.  Funny, that's what my parents used to say about me.

Of course Altinok would claim that his character is straight: Turkey is the most homophobic country in Europe. It gets 4% on the Rainbow Map of LGBT legal status, while Russia gets 8%, and Poland 15%.  Let's take a look at Episode 1, and see how "not gay" the Prince is.

Scene 1: Establishing shot of Bogonia. Several n*de women, one chained up, snooze with semi-n*de guys (one bare backside shot).  Can you show n*de ladies on Turkish tv?   

A chained up man who has been cuddling with a man and a woman both awakens to a rap on the door, and yells at the Slave Köle (Canberk Gültekin, left).  Surprise -- he's the Prince!  Identified as bi in the first scene. Maybe Altinok meant "not gay, bi/pan."

 The King has summoned him.  "So what?"   "So what?" He returns to his orgy.

Scene 2: As everyone waits impatiently, the Prince bursts in.  He touches the cheek of one of the courtiers: "Come here, my black lamb."  He lectures against Turkish masculinity: to compete in the modern world, we need to be hugging and touching.  

The problem: The Hungarian army is at the border, and Bogonia doesn't have a big enough army to defeat them.  

"So, get help from our neighbors, like Bosnia?" "No, they all hate us."

Uncle Kalish (Serdar Orçin) suggests just surrendering and paying the tribute.  "No, we'd lose our proud history." "But this country is only twenty years old!"  This enrages the Prince's Older Brother Tenyo (Çagdas Onur Öztürk),  who threatens to kill Uncle Kalish for treason.

King to Older Brother: "I'm lucky to have you as a son.  Without you, my name would die with me."  So the Prince isn't going to have any kids.  Maybe he is gay, not bi. 

They decide to fight the Hungarians.  Older Brother gets the horses ready for their 50 soldiers.

Scene 3: The King meets with the Prince in private: "Everyone has some regrets in life.  Mine is you.  I can't find the words to describe my hatred of you." You're just homophobic, Dad.

The King orders Slave Kole to bring his Very Important Sword  to the Blacksmith to get the handle fixed. "The Blacksmith is my oldest and dearest friend, and only he can fix my sword."  The Prince asks him to also fetch the "big ruby necklace" that the jeweler has for him.  Dude is into drag.

Whoops, the King decides to humiliate the Prince by making him take the sword in instead of the slave.

Scene 4: Older Brother Tenyo's Wife has just taken a home pregnancy test (the Medieval version).  Still not pregnant! He is not upset: "Don't obsess over it, it will happen in due time."  But the Queen has been putting pressure on her; she sent a gigantic crib, hint, hint.   Older Brother suggests trying again now.

Scene 5: The Prince and Slave Kole in the market.  He stops to look at some fabric.  Dude is gay.  A commoner complains that the people are starving while the royals live in luxury, "especially that Prince."  "Which one?" "The ugly one."  

Upset, the prince orders him executed.  Slave Kole suggest  they could give him a chance to apologize.  Nope, he's hanged.

Next stop: the Blacksmith, the only person who can fix the King's Very Important Sword.  Except he's the guy they just executed!

Scene 6: The Prince's Sister is practicing swordsmanship when her stepmother, the Queen, bursts in and throws her sword out the window.  "Act like a Princess!"  "No -- I don't want to be a princess!"

"Too bad -- I've arranged for you to marry the Duke of Saxony!"   

"What?  No!  This is the modern world.  I want to be more than just a wife!"

Ok, the main conflicts are established: Older Brother can't get his wife pregnant, Sister wants to be a liberated woman, and the Prince is gay.

More after the break

Dan Shor: Tron, Star Trek, an Excellent Adventure, the South Pacific, and the Backside that Changed the World.

Link to the n*de dudes

Sometime during the days of Blockbuster Video, we rented Strange Behavior (1981), mainly because the cover blurb said something about Galesburg, Illinois, which is near the Quad Cities. 

We weren't aware that it was written by a gay man (Bill Condon), it stars a gay man (Dan Shor), and it features something that would change movies forever.

It's got a silly plot about a crazed college professor named Dr. Le Sange (Dr. Blood), who mind-controls the town teenagers into blood-crazed monsters.

No Galesburg sites are appear mentioned; Apparently they just picked a random town in the Midwest so there would be cornfields and stereotyped farm folk. It was actually filmed in New Zealand.

The focus character is named Pete Brady, which no doubt caused a lot of eye-rolls and derisive laughs in 1981: Viewers would instantly think of the kid from The Brady Bunch (Christopher Knight, who grew up into a muscle hunk.)

This photo teases a gay-subtext buddy bond between focus character Pete Brady (har har) and Oliver (Marc McClure), but the movie is actually heteronormative, with boy-girl romance all the way down.  

I'd rather date Marc McClure, loveable nerd Jimmy Olsen in Superman (1978).

 And Dan Shor, the guy who plays Pete, is not handsome. He's got a long face, a Romanesque nose, and a lantern jaw.

But none of that is important.

What's important is a scene early in the movie where Pete Brady (har har) and his father (not Mike Brady, darn it) have just gotten up in the morning.  Pete approaches him to discuss something.  N*de.  He then moves toward the shower.  We get an extended shot of his backside.

 

It wasn't the first n*de backside on film, but it was the first extended shot that wasn't for a comedic purpose.

There is no other n*dity, male or female, in the film, not even a shirtless shot.  What was the directorial decision to film Dan Shor that way?

In an interview, Dan said that it was a political act, an acknowledgement of gay potential in the homophobic 1980s. It disrupted the heterosexual male gaze and paved the way for movies to present images of male beauty.

"And it sealed my popularity in West Hollywood," Dan joked.  Or maybe he wasn't joking.

More after the break