What has Ian Winningkoff been up to lately? Hint: you'll need several n*de dudes, one going downtown, to get through it all

  

Link to the n*de photos

In October 2023, I posted a profile of Ian Winningkoff: Young Chuck Montgomery in Righteous Gemstones Season 3, Classmate #2 in an episode of Secrets of Sulphur Springs, and Danny Zuko in a local production of Grease.  There were a lot of page views during the first week or so, and then they dwindled to near zero, the usual fate of profiles of actors who aren't particularly famous. 

 But during the last few days, the number of page views has skyrocketed, leading me to wonder if something has happened.  Did Ian get a starring role in a big production?  Did he come out?  Did he get arrested?

So let's check Ian's Instagram, his dad's Facebook page, and his high school website to see what he's been up to lately.

In the summer of 2024, Ian starred as Troy Bolton in a local production of High School Musical.

2024-25 was his senior year at Ben Franklin High in New Orleans.  We see him in January 2025, filling out a profile for the NCSA college recruiting website: "I love the game of basketball on a larger note then just playing, but my dream is to play for a college program."

And he's got a goatee that makes him look like a Disney villain.  Not just Disney:  Leonardo DiCaprio, Wes Bentley, Tom Cruise, Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman, and Spock got bearded up when their character went dark.

Mardi Gras, 2025: Ian is hanging with some rather hot homies, no girls. So, into guys, buddy? 

In April 2025, Ian's dad notes that he is starring in the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

A photo dump from April 2025 shows Ian hugging his buddy Xander, who will receive the Louis Armstrong Jazz Award and be named to the LHSAA All-Academic Team.  Quite an impressive boyfriend -- oh, wait, the rest of the photos show Ian hugging, kissing, and pretending to strangle a girl.

Next comes a n*de dude on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.  You'll need it to get through what comes next:

May 2025, Ian's Senior Prom photo dump: multiple scenes of hugging, kissing, pretending to strangle, dancing in his underwear with, sticking his tongue out at, and licking the corsage of a girl. Here he winks so we will congratulate him on being heterosexual. 

N*de photos on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

More after the break.  

Ian Winningkoff: From "Sulphur Springs" to "Grease," with some teen idol co-stars and hunky Danny Zukos

   

 Link to the nude photos

The New Orleans-based actor, model, and basketball star Ian Winningkoff has eight acting credits on the IMDB.

Including Secrets of Sulphur Springs, a Disney Channel teen thriller about kids who travel back in time to uncover the secrets. Preston Oliver plays focus character Griffin.

And several locally-produced shorts, including Revelation, Dies Irae, Good Girl, and Birthday Surprise. Eli Barron is his usual costar.

Ian's most famous role to date is Young Chuck Montgomery in Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones.  In a flashback to 2000, he plays a sort of backwoods Tom Sawyer/ Barefoot Boy with Cheek of Tan terrorized by his hard-core  fundamentalist parents.  He grows up to become one of his father's most loyal militia men, played by Lukas Haas. 

Ian is also deeply involved in local New Orleans theater.  He has appeared in Legally Blonde, The Addams Family, Shrek, and Into the Woods, Jr.

More Ian after the break

Grease Live: Still No Gay People at Rydell High

Grease (1978) was my coming-out movie, mostly because of the theme song, with lines I misheard::

The adults are lying, only real is real.
We stop the fight right now, we got to be what we feel. 

The movie itself was unremittingly hetero-horny heterosexist: boys and girls circle each other, preen, posture, try to hook up, and finally succeed, with some uncomfortable gender politics.

No gay content except for a couple of homophobic jokes.

I just saw Grease Live (2016), a live version that aired on Fox.  Nostalgia about nostalgia, a 2016 broadcast adapting a 1978 movie which was itself an adaption of a 1971 musical set in the year 1959.

Got all that?

The plot stays the same: at Rydell High in 1959, Danny, leader of the T-Birds, and Sandy, member of the Pink Ladies, play a game of desire and rejection, "cool" greaser vs. "good girl" amid such nostalgic settings as a malt shop,a sleepover, and a drag race.  In the end, Sandy abandons the good girl act and pretends to be sexually voracious, thus driving Danny wild and winning his heart.

Meanwhile, each of the other T-Birds hooks up with one of the Pink Ladies.

The T-Birds are:

Danny: Aaron Tveit (top photo)
Kenicke: Carlos Pena Vega (left)

Doody: Jordan Fisher (left)
Putzie: David Del Rio (below)
Sonny: Andrew Call

How did they update the 1970's classic?

1. The cast is multi-ethnic, with plenty of interracial couples.
2. Sandy is from Salt Lake City, Utah, not Australia.
3. Danny defends Eugene the Nerd, and eventually invites him to join the gang.  Eugene also gets a girlfriend, a female nerd, and shows killer moves at the dance contest.
4. Pink Lady Jan, previously ridiculed for being fat, is now ridiculed for being weird.
5. There are male and female cheerleaders, but the dialogue, oddly, assumes that they're all female.
6. They changed some of the dirty lyrics, but they kept the rape-promoting "Did she put up a fight?" from "Summer Nights"

Gay Changes
1. During the dance contest, the coach reads the rules: in 1978, "male-female couples only," followed by a homophobic joke against Eugene.  In 2016, the line was changed to "couples only, no singles, no triples."  Which would have been great if there were same-sex couples, but there were none.  As the scene stands, it completely erases even the awareness that gay people exist.

2.  In 1978, Kenicke asks Danny to be his "second" in the drag race at Thunder Road; they hug, then jump apart in homophobic panic.  In 2016, they see the other guys staring before jumping apart. Kenicke asks "What are you looking at?"  Seems more homophobic.

3. In "We Belong Together" in 1978, each T-Bird is paired with his respective Pink Lady, except for Sonny, who looks shocked when he is paired with a dog instead of Marty.  This shot was cut in 2016.

I looked carefully, and couldn't see anyone who looked like a same-sex couple in any of the crowd scenes, at all.  In "We Belong Together," everyone pairs off into male-female couples.  Even the curtain calls are male -female couples.

If director Thomas Kail could introduce interracial pairings as unremarkable and commonplace in the 1950s, when they were anything but, then surely he could have introduced a gay couple or two into the dance contest or the final carnival scene.

But he didn't.  38 years later, gay people are still not welcome in the world of Rydell High.

See also: Grease 2: The Gay Connection; I Lost It at the Movies.