Giovanni Ribisi: Cute on "Friends," then dreary, depressing, homophobic art-house movies. At least he shows his d*ck

 

 Link to the Giovanni d*ck

I first saw Giovanni Ribisi on Friends, where he had a recurring role as Phoebe's cute, naive younger brother Frank (1995-2003).  

His plotlines were extensively heterosexist -- it was Friends, after all.   Eventually he falls in love with a much older woman (Debra Jo Rupp of That 70s Show), and asks Phoebe to be the surrogate mother for his child.

But at least he had nice biceps.

The 21-year old actor, son of a talent agent and a musician, had been on screen since he was 9 years old, with recurring roles in The New Leave It to Beaver, Davis Rules, My Two Dads, The Wonder Years, and Family Album, and guest shots practically everywhere.

Here Teddy and Boz (Giovanni, Stephen Dorff) rib their "dateless amigo" Bud Bundy on a 1989 episode of Married With Children. 

As a young adult, Giovanni had a lean, rugged frame and a handsome but quirky  face.  I got such a strong gay vibe that I expected a lot of gay characters or subtexts in his work.  Instead, he played a lot of brooding, depressed heterosexuals in art-house movies: 

SubUrbia (1996): a group of teens in small-town Austin, Texas (of all places) experience angst and want to escape.   Nice physique, buddy

Lost Highway (1997):  A neo-noir by David Lynch, so of course it makes no sense.  No men show their stuff, as one expects from Mr. Lynch, but there are lots of lady parts.

First Love, Last Rites (1997): Two Generation X-ers, Giovanni and a girl, do bedroom stuff and are bored.  

More after the break

Walker Bryant: Straight social influencer with...um...who cares? Just look at him. With bonus Manny d*ck

 

Link to the n*de photos

Walker Bryant is...um...he was born in Columbus, Ohio in 2006, and moved to...um

He moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as...um...an actor.  He's into bond*ge...I mean boogie boarding...and... c*ks..

Dang it, I can't concentrate on my profile.  Put some clothes on, dude!

Didn't help.

Ok, this helps.  You have that long ratboy face that I find unappealing.  And you're hetero -- every third photo on your Instagram shows you kissing, cuddling with, and groping your girlfriend.

More after the break

Gideon Gemstone's Secret Life, Part 2: Keefe singing, Jimmy twerking, and Gideon in his underwear

 

Link to the n*de dudes

Previous: Gideon Gemstone's Secret Life, Part 1: Jimmy Olsen finds out that the Gemstones do it big

In Part 1, Jimmy Olsen visits the Gemstones at the Lake House to write a story for The Daily Planet, and learns that something happened to Gideon that no one will talk about. On Friday, he interviews Jesse, Amber, Abraham, and Pontius.  It's Saturday morning, time for Kelvin and Keefe.  Then Gideon arrives.

Kelvin Gemstone: The Top Christ Following Man

On Saturday morning, Jimmy came downstairs to the staff bustling about, cleaning bedrooms, mopping, vacuuming.  Most of the family had already finished breakfast and scattered to the boat or the swimming pools, but Kelvin and Keefe were still in the breakfast nook.  The youngest of the Gemstones was short, sturdy, muscular, and femme, a Tom of Finland drag queen, married to a long-haired muscleman with a fading “Hail Satan” tattoo visible on his forearm. 

“Good morning!” Kelvin called, flashing the usual Look.  “I hope you got a lot of rest, ‘cause we have a full day planned.”

Jimmy sat next to him.  A waiter jumped forward to fill his coffee cup and hand him the breakfast menu.  He ordered the Denver omelet and sourdough toast. 

“To be honest, after the noise and honking horns of Metropolis, it was hard to sleep in the quiet.”  Especially with his superpower revealing who was going at it at 3 and 4 am.

“Back when I was in Satan’s Baby, we toured in Metropolis a lot,” Keefe said. “I used to be a regular in the gay club scene up there.  Have you been to The Metropolis Eagle?”

Why did Keefe think that Jimmy would be hanging out in gay clubs?  “Your heavy metal past is a story waiting to be told. Maybe I can interview you later?”

He pretended to look down at his mostly-eaten frittata.  “Thanks, but I like to stay out of the spotlight.  I’m the roots of the tree, and Kelvin is the branches.” 

Ok, so he wouldn’t be getting much information from Keefe.  Time to interrogate Kelvin. “So you came out publicly last year, but I’m sure the family knew long before that.  How did you come out to them?”

“Well, I didn’t really need to come out to them – they knew long before I did, back when I was a kid and sneaked peeks at my sister’s teen magazines. It took me forever to figure it out for myself.  I was in denial for years, until…”  He hesitated.  “I guess the kidnapping.”

But that was in 2023.  He had the God Squad, a cadre of bodybuilders living in yurts on his front lawn, in 2022.  How could he not know?

Keefe objected, too: “But we were doing stuff back when we first met, when Gideon and Scotty….” Kelvin shot him a harsh look, and he trailed off.

Obviously Kelvin was trying to control the narrative, present himself as unaware until 2023, so he could claim not to know about Gideon and Scotty….who the heck was Scotty, and what did it have to do with Kelvin?

“Keefe, are you sure you won’t reconsider that interview?  Maybe we can do it while swimming later.  I heard that the Lake House was clothing optional?”'

Keefe flashed the Look and glanced at Kelvin, who nodded his consent.

Kelvin Gemstone is short in stature, but he knows how to Do It Big: with puffy muscles, flamboyant outfits, and a series of revolutionary ministry innovations.  His most recent, a daily reflection for queer youth, averages 200 people in the on-site meeting and over a million views on the Gemstone streaming service, and won him the Top Christ Following Man of the Year Award.  Yet at home he is the quintessential nerd, a quiet, shy guy who collects comic books, plays arcade games with his husband, and can name all of the planets in the “Star Wars” universe.

Keefe Chambers: the Heavy Metal Rocker

City boy Jimmy learned to swim in a public pool, had been rescued from a sinking ship by Beast Boy, and was trembling with fear on the floating dock as Keefe dove into the 200-foot deep water of Lake Murray   (Kelvin stayed behind to do some work with Prism.)  He pulled himself up, rocking the dock – the guy weighed 200 pounds – and climbed up to the slide. 

He paused.  “Aren’t you coming in, Jimmy?” 

“No, thanks -- I’ll just work on my tan.  But I’m enjoying watching you.”  Jimmy hesitated, realizing that it sounded like he was interested – and maybe he was.  The guy was massive everywhere.  If he was going to accept one of the three-way hints this weekend, it would be with Kelvin and Keefe.

Keefe tumbled down the slide, dove in again, and then lay on the beach towel next to Jimmy – so close that they were touching, of course. 

“Tell me about how you and Kelvin met,” Jimmy suggested.

He grinned at the memory.  “It was at Charleston Pride 2019.  I was passing out fliers for Baby Queef – my solo act after I quit Satan’s Baby.  Kelvin came to one of my performances, and that was it.  For me, anyway.  It took like three years to convince him that we should be more than s*x buddies, and five years to talk him into marrying me.”

Keefe Chambers was on his way to an impressive career – lead singer in a heavy metal band, a solo act as a Satanic comedian, friends with musical giants Ozzie Osborne and Trent Reznor, covers of “It’s Raining Men” and “I’m Coming Out” that charted in France. But he gave it all up to stand in the wings, quietly supporting Kelvin Gemstone, his best friend, boyfriend, and eventually his husband.

“So Charleston Pride, June 2019, right?”  Jimmy fished. "Was that before or after Gideon and Scotty?”

“Gideon came home from California later, after I moved into Kelvin's house.  Maybe in January or February?  Scotty came up a week or so later, and stayed through...well, stayed awhile.”

“A boyfriend?”

“Probably.  I mean, we had them over for dinner, like they were a couple.”

“So Gideon is gay?”

Keefe patted his shoulder. “You'd better ask him yourself.  He likes irises and Greek food.”  He dove into the water again.

If Rev. Gemstone allowed Gideon and his boyfriend to live openly in his house in the spring of 2020, the thing that happened couldn’t be about being gay.  Unless he started homophobic, kicked Gideon out of the house, and somehow the relationship was restored.

Gideon Gemstone: The Superhero

They returned to the house, changed clothes, and joined Kelvin and BJ for a game of cornhole (yes, that was the name) on the veranda.

Gideon drove up on his motorcycle just before lunch.  He was in his mid-20s, a little shorter than Kelvin, with a tight, firm physique and an open, slightly freckled face. 

“Sorry I didn’t come up earlier, Mr. Olsen. I had an emergency at the skatepark to take care of.”

“It’s Jimmy.”

“Then I’m Gideon.”  He smiled as they shook hands.

Wait – a smile, but no Look.  This hardly ever happened!  It was an immense relief to touch someone without seeing that rush -- he didn’t want to stop holding Gideon’s hand. Then he realized that Gideon was staring at him, and dropped it.  His face begain to burn.

Keefe nudged Kelvin and whispered something.  They both beamed.  Matchmakers?  But this was the opposite of matchmaking – Gideon was the first person he’d met in a long time who wasn’t interested!

 Gideon shooed away a staff member and grabbed his own bag.  Jimmy took his arm as they walked into the house – still no Look.  Kelvin and Keefe followed.   “I want to hear about the skatepark ministry, but I think the Daily Planet readers will be more interested in the times you saved the day.”

“Me – saved the day?  What do you mean?”

“You helped your Grandfather escape the militia thugs, rescued your Dad from the kidnappers, hunted down the Cycle Ninjas...”

“He’s like Superman,” Keefe exclaimed.

Gideon laughed.  “Wait – aren’t you friends with the real Superman, Jimmy?”

“No, but I used to date the Green Lantern.”  Coming out as bi – well, in this family, straight people were in the minority.

Jimmy couldn’t ask Gideon about “the thing that happened” at lunch, with everyone around, but afterwards, as the others were prepping for the talent show or lounging on the veranda, he tried.  He sat down with Gideon in the Game Room, pulled out his recorder as if it was a formal interview, and began with: “You moved between California and South Carolina several times.  What brought you out there the first time?”

“I wanted a career as a stuntman, and California is the place to be.”

“Oh.”  Jimmy was disappointed, but he knew that interview subjects need some human connection to feel comfortable enough to open up. “Same thing with me.  I wanted to be a journalist, and I couldn’t do that, not really, in Asheville.  It had to be Metropolis, a thousand miles from home.”

“Do you miss your family and friends?” Gideon asked. 

Wait, was he trying the human-connection bit?  Maybe it was what preachers did.  “Sure.  But I talk to my folks every week, and Chloe – that’s my high school sweetheart, or at least she thinks she is – once a month or so.  She’s married to the Green Arrow now.”

Gideon laughed. “Green Lantern, Green Arrow – you guys are really into green.  I should fix you up with Kelvin – everything in his wardrobe is emerald, or teal, or chartreuse.”

It was a pleasure being around Gideon, not having to worry about the subtle caresses, the carefully veiled – or not so carefully veiled – flirtations.  Jimmy wished that they could just hang out and talk about regular things, but he was on a schedule, and he needed a Gideon profile for his article. 

“What about you?  I already heard about your ex-boyfriend Scotty, but have you dated anyone lately?"

Gideon stood and walked away – or rather, stomped away -- without another word.

The Talent Show

When Jimmy came down for the Talent Show, Gideon was sitting in the front row.  Like Judy yesterday, he gestured for Jimmy to join him. 

“I’m sorry I left so abruptly before,” he began.  “It’s just that Scotty is a sore spot for me.”

Before Jimmy could ask for more details, the show began with Rev. Gemstone dressed as Elvis Presley, singing “Love Me, Tender" to a teddy bear.

Gideon nudged Jimmy to offer him some of his popcorn.  Where was the popcorn?

Next, Mrs. Gemstone played Beethoven’s Sonata 8, Pathéthique, on the piano, BJ did his magic act (badly), and Judy sang her mother’s hit, “Toodles Until Tomorrow”

These things, they cannot last, the past is the past
If you look back, you'd see them behind us
For the road leads us on with the moon and the sun
 Wake up, move along and say goodbye

Gideon sniffed and brought a handkerchief to his eyes – allergies, or was he crying?  

It was Pontius and Stacy's turn.  Dressed as surfer dudes, they performed “Summer Lovin’”, turning it into two gay guys describing their summer boyfriends.

Summer loving, had me a blast - Summer lovin', happened so fast
 I met a boy, crazy for me  -- I met a boy, cute as can be.
Tell me more, tell me more, 'cause the evening sounds sick.
Tell me more, tell me more, like how big was his...car?

He got friendly, sittin' on the grass -- he got horny, grabbin' my...beach towel
We stayed out 'til nine o'clock....we made out, I sucked his...dreamsicle
Tell me more, tell me more -- did you meet Mom and Pop?
Tell me more, tell me m ore -- did he bottom or top?

 Gideon wrapped his arm around Jimmy’s shoulders, and Jimmy relaxed into him.  It was different, touching someone who didn’t have the Look, wasn’t overwhelmed with desire.  Comfortable – relaxing. 

Next, Kelvin and Keefe stood.  "We need two volunteers for our act," Keefe announced.

"I see two hands up," Kelvin announced.  "Jimmy and...what's that guy's name?...Gideon.  Come on, you can hold hands later."

They dragged the guys into the music room, and had them change into swimsuits and raincoats: "You dance along.  When I point, pull off your raincoats and do a sort of stripper routine, got it?"

The song was "It's Raining Men."

Humidity is rising, barometer's getting low  -- how low, dude?
According to gay sources -- like Lambda Legal?
The street's the place to go -- get going, boy!
'Cause tonight for the first time -- just about half-past ten
For the first time in history, it's gonna start raining men!

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

See also: Is There S*x After Death?: A Gideon and Scotty story

Santa Clarita Diet, Episode 1.9: A Medieval Serbian book, a gay subtext, twink pics, and maybe a Skyler d*ck

It's Raining Men

Icarus: The boy who flew too close to the sun

I mentioned before that artists interested in depicting men without women around have only limited mythological and religious themes to choose from, and most involve tragedy.

Take the tragedy of Icarus:
According to Greek mythology, skilled inventor Daedalus and his son Icarus were imprisoned in Crete.  To escape, Daedalus made them wings from bird feathers, held together with wax.  The plan would have worked, except that Icarus flew too close to the sun, so the wax on his wings melted, and he plunged to his death.




In the ancient world, and through the Middle Ages, the story was used to illustrate the folly of over-confidence, trying to do more than you are able.  But more recent artists and writers have a different take: strive to be all that you can.  You may fail, but at least you were able to fly.

Or they just like to portray a muscular nude Athenian youth, before, during, or after his flight.

Daedalus and Icarus (1645), by French painter Charles LeBrun, shows the moment when Daedalus rouses Icarus to try on his wings.

Icarus and Daedalus (1869), by Lord Leighton shows the same scene, but now they're on top of the tower, and a thin swath of fabric keeps Icarus from full nudity.

The Lament for Icarus (1898), by Herbert James Draper, substitutes naked nymphs for the mourning Daedalus, but it has a particularly striking dead hero (modeled by Luigi di Luca)












More Icarus after the break

"The Secret of Boyne Castle": Kurt Russell, a dreary November night, and the smile that changed the world

We usually went to church on Sunday nights, but for some reason I was home one night in the early 1970s to see the last half of the best movie ever made, The Secret of Boyne Castle, on the anthology series Wonderful World of Color.
This was former child star Kurt Russell's only movie as a Disney Adventure Boy (others included Peter McEnery, Tommy Kirk, Tim Considine, and Jeff East) before he moved on to playing oddball outsider Dexter Riley in a series of Disney comedies.

Here Kurt plays Rich, an American exchange student in Dublin who learns that his older brother Tom (bisexual muscleman Glenn Corbett, previously a model for Physique Pictorial and star of Route 66) is not a steel company executive after all, but a spy charged with delivering essential information to Boyne Castle, in the west of Ireland. When Tom is captured by Russian agents, Rich must take over the mission, racing through the quaint villages and lush green hills of Ireland, hoping to elude capture and reach Boyne Castle before the Russians. Fellow student Sean (long-faced, steely-eyed Patrick Dawson) tags along, throwing himself into deadly danger for no logical reason except that he rather likes Rich.

The two are presented as more intimate than mere buddies, framed in tight shots, their faces together in close ups. While they are sleeping on the heather, Rich hears a suspicious noise, and wakes Sean by moving his own body slightly. Although all we see are their faces and necks, to wake someone with such a small gesture means that they must be cuddling together. They rescue each other a dozen times, and are eventually rescued by big brother Tom.

But the most important scene, the scene I have remembered fondly for 40 years:

At an inn, Rich flirts with a waitress.

“You didn’t tell me you had an eye for the ladies!” Sean exclaims, as if he hadn’t anticipated any competition.

Rich responds by asking the waitress if she has any rooms to rent for “for a few hours.” Suspicious, she wants to know why the two boys would need a room for such a short period.

Rich looks at Sean and smiles.

I was entranced by that smile. I knew that it was a clue to the secret. If only I could decipher it, I could find my way to that other world, Oz or Living Island or Middle Earth, the world where boys could fall in love and got married.

How might we account for the not-so-subtle homoerotic bantr between the Rich and Sean? Certainly Glenn Corbett might be a gay ally: he began as a model for the Athletic Model Guild, the Advocate Men of its day, and made a career as a buddy-bonding “man’s man. Kurt Russell was never particularly gay-friendly.

Patrick Dawson works mostly in Irish radio, but his limited filmography includes the gay-vague Ginger in The Jigsaw Man (1983). We should look at the director, Robert Butler, who in the 1960’s specialized in dramas with strong male leads, such as Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, and I Spy, and later directed such hunk-fests as Remington Steele, Moonlighting, and Lois and Clark. Whether he was working with Bruce Willis, Dean Cane, Pierce Brosnan, or Kurt Russell, Butler neither minimized nor hid their physicality, allowing and even directing them to be open as objects of desire, both to male viewers and to each other.

Robert Silverberg: Buddy-bonding adventures in outer space shift to "Girls! Girls! Girls!, ruining my childhood.

During the 1960s and 1970s, space exploration was everywhere, on the news, in the toys we unwrapped under the Christmas tree, in our favorite tv shows, and in our before-bed reading.  Robert Silverberg was one of the deans of  juvenile science fiction, presenting us with novel after novel about teenage boys caught up in outlandish outer-space adventures, with intense buddy bonds and girls barely mentioned.  Good beyond hope. 

I read them long after the publication date, and not in chronological order:

The Lost Race of Mars (1960), from my junior high library: a brother and sister living in a colony on Mars get lost, and are rescued by the Older Martians hiding in caves (because they know what happens to the aboriginal population when colonists arrive?) 

Revolt on Alpha C (1955) came from Scholastic Book Club, catalogs that were passed out in class several times a years: you ordered up to five books, and they arrived a few weeks later (my parents disapproved of reading, so I claimed that they were all "for school"): On a colony on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, 20-year old Larry rejects his father's plans for his life and rebels against the Establishment. Groovy, man!   The cover art, a boy floating through space upside down, was reminiscent of Will Robinson in the opening credits of Lost in Space.

Left: the modern Will Robinson and his boyfriend

Starman's Quest (1958): Twin brothers buddy-bond in space.  The version I checked out of the Rock Island Public Library was generic, line-drawings of the two boys in space suits, with no Martian beefcake statue or muscle-suits.

More after the break

Jackson Tessmer: From Hebrew School to toga parties, with angst tv, Christian drama, Asa Butterfield, and n*de selfies

 

Link to the n*de photos

Jackson Tessmer was born in Hermosa Beach, California, about 20 miles south of West Hollywood.  When he was a teenager, he moved to Inverness, Florida, where he graduated from Citrus High School in 2022.

He was a swimmer and powerlifter, winning first place in the Orlando Open Championships in 2022 with a bench of 170 and a deadlift of 211.  Sorry, I couldn't find any powerlifting photos.

He was also very busy with Hebrew School and  temple activities.  It's a wonder that he had time to go on auditions.

Jackson's on-screen acting credits begin with a series of shorts: Show and Tell (2013), Birthday Boy (2014),  Table Manners (2015).  He starred with Michael Berthold in Dear Ones (2014), On Your Street (2016), and Ranger Things (2017).

Plus walk-ons in Tomorrowland (2015) with George Clooney, Modern Family (2016) with Mitch dressed as Little Orphan Annie, and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016), with Asa Butterfield 

Jackson's first starring role came in Schoolbus Diaries (2016-17), with "the everyday lives of children and teenagers" mediated by their surprisingly wise bus driver. 

No Place in the World (2017) is a Christian movie featuring two sisters with problems at home and school, "trying to survive in a disconnected, self-centered world."  I'll bet they find God.  Jackson seems to play a school shooter.

I can't find the tv series Mohawk (2018) streaming anywhere, but Jackson's demo reel shows his father, who has just crucified someone, punching and strangling him.  He's saved by the spirit of a Native American woman.

Paradise Lost (2018) is another show that is impossible to find on streaming services. All I can figure out is a guy (Josh Hartnett) and his wife and kids returning to his home town to confront the demons of his past. Jackson plays his son. Shane McRae plays Dickie Barnett, his enemy.

More after the break

Michael Sayfou: Ethiopian-American model/theater major with a cat, a physique, and a lot of queer codes. Plus some Ethiopian d*cks

Link to Michael and the Ethiopian d*cks

Michael Sayfou played Ash, one of Pontius' skateboarding friends, on two episodes of The Righteous Gemstones.  I don't think he had any lines, but Gideon Gemstone called him by name and hugged him, and he was standing directly behind  Gideon's brother Abraham at the opening of the new Christian skate park.  That was enough for me to write an Ash-Abraham romance, "My Dad Can't Know That I'm Gay"  

According to his IMDB page, Michael is straight, but I'm not so sure.  He's wearing a lot of jewelry for a straight guy.  Maybe he closeted the listing because:

He is of mixed race, with one side of his family from Ethiopia.

Wow, Ethiopia!  The ancient city of Axum!  

The rock churches of Lalibella! 

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, one of the oldest in Christianity!

The Amharic language!  The second most widely spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, with its own distinctive alphabet.

Those dinners where you tear off a chunky of spongy injera bread and use it to scoop up the various dishes.

And the men!  In West Hollywood, I met an Ethiopian guy from the Tigrinya ethnic minority group.  One of the biggest ever.

But Ethiopia is extremely homophobic.  I can understand why Michael, immersed the Ethiopian immigrant subculture, might want to put "straight" on his IMDB profile,  where everybody from his priest to his Uncle Orono can read it. 

Michael was born in New Jersey in 2002, but went to high school in Mint Hill, a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina, where he was on the swim team.  

More after the break. 

Atticus Mitchell: "My Babysitter's a Vampire," "Stonewall," "Now I can be who I am," and n*de photos, but has he done anything gay lately?

  

Link to the n*de photos

When I was researching Star Trek, Strange New Worlds, I looked for nude photos of various cast members, and found several of Atticus Mitchell, who played an ensign "scared by a dog" in one episode.

You are probably more familiar with him as Benny Weir of My Babysitter's a Vampire (2010 movie, 2011-12 tv series):  teenager Ethan (Matthew Knight)  battles demons, zombies, and various paranormal perils with the help of his buddies, Benny (Atticus, left) and Rory (Cameron Kennedy), plus his sister's vampire babysitter. 

 

 Everyone was intensely hetero-horny, but there was a lot of beefcake. Here the guys agree to be sacrificed so an ancient Aztec goddess can be reunited with her boyfriend.  She's not interested in them, and they're going to die, but that's not important.  She's a girl, so whatever she wants, she gets. 

My earlier review of the series pointed out a lot of gay subtexts, although this is probably a back-stage shot of Atticus and Cameron hugging.  

Born in Toronto in 1993, Atticus became interested in acting in elementary school, and performed in four plays while at St. John Elementary School:

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs of the Black Forest

James and the Giant Peach

50 Below Zero

When he graduated to Malvern Collegiate Institute (a public high school, in spite of the ponderous name), Atticus switched to on-screen acting with the teencom How to Be Indie (2009-2011), which is about an Indian-Canadian girl, not indie rock. Dylan Everett (n*de photo on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) played her best friend.  Atticus played a bully.

Next came Vampire, followed by the teen movie Radio Rebel (2012), about a shy high school girl with a secret identity as an underground radio dj. So she's Hannah Montana.  Atticus plays Gabe, a musician who tries to sneak and snark his way into air time, and his future boyfriend or good buddy Adam DiMarco plays as Gavin, the girl's "love interest."  

Aside from Vampire, Atticus is best known for his role as Mickey Hess on Fargo (2014): he runs a shady trucking company with his dad and brother. No girlfriend, but he is established as heterosexual by playing with a female adult toy.

I was more interested in the role of Matthew in Stonewall (2015), about the 1969 riots that started the Gay Rights Movement, with Danny (Jeremy Irvine) as a white masculine Saviour from Indiana.  

Problem: Matthew doesn't appear in the synopsis, and I don't recall him from watching.  But surely he's gay.

More after the break

Max Casella after dating Dougie: Christian Bale's buddy, Tony Soprano's buddy, Timon, Bottom, bi. With a small d*ck bonus.

 

Link to the n*de dudes

In the early 1990s, if your parents belonged to a certain socioeconomic class, you were required to watch ABC's ultra-conservative programming block on Wednesday nights: 

The Wonder Years, with Fred Savage as a boy winning the Girl of His Dreams in the 1960s.

Home Improvement, with Tim Allen grunting with tools.

Coach, with Craig T. Nelson as a...football coach.

And Doogie Howser, MD, with Neil Patrick Harris as a 16-year old who somehow managed to finish medical school, become a doctor, and get girls.

I wasn't of a certain age, I was not living with parents of a certain socioeconomic class, so on Wednesday nights I was watching Seinfeld.   Not Doogie Howser, because of its ridiculous premise and "Girls are the meaning of life!" ideology.  

 But I did notice Max Casella, who played Doogie's buddy: 22-26 years, "cute as a bug's ear," as the oldsters would say, and a member of the Short Guy Brigade at 5'7".

As everyone knows, Neil Patrick Harris came out a few years after Doogie, and for some inscrutable reason agreed to play "himself' in the homophobic Harold & Kumar movies and heterosexual horndog Barney on How I Met Your Mother (2005-14).  More recently, in Uncoupled (2022), he played a gay man dealing with the death of his partner and suddenly becoming single at midlife. 

But what has Max Casella been doing?

I'm researching the three standard questions: 

1. Any gay roles?

2. Gay in real life?

3. Any n*ude photos?  

1. Any gay roles?

In Newsies (1992), a Disney movie about the newsboys' strike of 1899, Max plays Racetrack Higgins, who may be gay or bisexual.  When focus character Jack (Christian Bale) says that they can't beat up the newsboys who refuse to join the strike, he "jokingly" suggests kissing them.

In Ed Wood (1994), the biopic of the director known for crossdressing, Glen or Glenda? and Plan 9 from Outer Space, Max plays Paul Marco, the gay actor who often starred in Wood's films.  His sexual identity is not mentioned here.

Later Max moved into animation, voicing characters on Pepper Anne, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Kim Possible; and video games such as Jak and Daxter (a humanoid elf and his previously-human otter-weasel buddy) and Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony (he doesn't voice Gay Tony).

He appeared in 28 episodes of The Sopranos (2001-07) as Benny Fazio, who is partnered with Chris Moltisanti and sometimes works as Capo Tony's driver.  He's married with children.

Inside Llewelyn Davis (2013) depicts a day in the life of the folk singer (Oscar Davis) in the early 1960s Greenwich Village scene.  Max plays Club Manager Pappi Corsicato, who has s *ex with Llewelyn's girl.

More after the break

Jimmy Olsen's Secret Life, Part 1: Jimmy discovers that the Gemstones Do It Big

 

Link to the n*de dudes

Rev. Jesse Gemstone: The Big Man

Jimmy was prepared for a mansion rivaling Bruce Wayne’s – after all, the Gemstone motto was “Do It Big!”  But he still wasn’t prepared for the Gemstone Lake House, on Lake Murray, South Carolina’s biggest reservoir.  Tudor-style, with three round towers, four decks, eight bedrooms, two swimming pools, two boat launches, and a gazebo decorated with statues of the Greek gods Aphrodite and Apollo. 

Jesse Gemstone himself met him at the door, casually dressed in a checkered shirt and white pants. He shook Jimmy's hand and said “Praise be to He,” as if it was a standard greeting.   Jimmy had interviewed presidents and superheroes, but he was still in awe.  Rev. Gemstone was not only one of the three heads of the most successful Evangelical organization in the world, he was constantly in the news for everything from a mismanaged Prayer Pod debacle to numerous attempts on his life.

“Thank you for agreeing to the interviews,” Jimmy said. 

“It’s a visit,” he corrected.  “You’re our guest for the weekend.  Think of yourself as family – a long lost cousin.  You want anything, just ask.”  Then he flashed The Look – everybody did, Jimmy should have expected it, but he was still taken aback.  This was Jesse Gemstone!

Since he was about 15 years old, everybody who saw Jimmy Olsen, except for kids and the very old, fell in love with him.  Man, woman, gay, straight, single, married – it made no difference.  Usually they weren’t really aware of what was happening, they just knew that they liked Jimmy and wanted to do things for him – he got a free dessert almost every time he ate in a restaurant, he was bumped to first class almost every time he flew, and he had never been turned down for a date or a hookup, except by Clark Kent – but sometimes they knew exactly what they wanted, and got a little aggressive.  God, he hoped that Jesse Gemstone wouldn’t get aggressive.

But all Rev. Gemstone did was caress Jimmy's arm a bit and lead him into the foyer and…the library, where the Gemstone siblings crawled after they were shot by Corey Milsap, and prayed for him as he died -- they prayed for their murderer!  

“I’m surprised that you want to spend time at this place, when you and your brother and sister were shot and almost died here.”

He chuckled.  “So, if I stayed away from every place where someone tried to kill me, I’d never go anywhere.”  Then he hesitated.  “This isn’t going to be one of those smear pieces, is it?   Frankly, I agreed to the visit because  I like some of your articles in the Daily Planet.  You’ve got heart -- not like that Lois Lane and her muckraking interviews with Superman”

“It's going to be about the Gemstone Miracle, how you survive and thrive after adversity.  I get you – I grew up in the South. In an Evangelical family.”

“But you’re not Evangelical anymore?”  Uh-oh, Jimmy felt soul-winning coming on.

“I’m a gay ally – my sister is trans.  And I just couldn't stand the homophobia in my home church."

“Believe me, that’s not a problem here.”  Next they moved into parlor where they held talent contests, and Corey Milsap did a Michael Jackson routine – before trying to murder his friends.  “Is there going to be a talent show this weekend?”

“Why, do you have a piece in mind?”

As Rev. Gemstone showed him the dining room, kitchen, sun room, and game room, Jimmy wrote his introduction in his head:

A cross between Elvis Presley and Conway Twitty, with the Van Buren sideburns and rings on every finger, Jesse Gemstone lives the Gemstone motto of “Do it big!”  He has been kidnapped by his uncle, assaulted by a close friend, and shot by another close friend, yet he doesn’t hesitate to open his home and his heart to a complete stranger.  

“My brother and sister and their spouses will be coming up for dinner, and my oldest, Gideon, will be arriving tomorrow.  Right now it’s just my wife and I, our other two kids, and their boyfriends.”

Wait – boyfriends?  Didn’t Jesse and Amber Gemstone have three sons?  Jimmy would have to check his notes.

More after the break