The Shards: Rich kid in 1980s L.A., a Primal Urge Boy, two downlow boyfriends, a serial killer, and Tom Blythe's d*ck. Plus Wes Bentley when he was cute

 

Link to the n*de dudes

When I was researching my profile of soap opera kid Redding Munsell, I discovered that nihilistic author Brett Easton Ellis is gay!  I did a conference presentation on some of his novels awhile ago, when I was at USC, and had him pegged as heterosexual -- and homophobic.  Now I'm interested in The Shards on Hulu, a tv series about Brett's years as an alienated, nihilistic teenager facing a serial killer.  Plus it's set in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, so maybe it has nostalgia value. 

Warning: It's produced by Ryan Murphy, who usually presents his gay characters as amoral monsters.

Scene 1: Brett (Igby Rigney, left) tells us that The Shining opened on May 23rd, 1980, and he wanted to see it as soon as possible, because the original novel made him want to become a writer. In fact, he had already started Less than Zero.  So he had to go without the gang.  

Igby is nearly n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Smoking a cigarette, he drives his dad's Mercedes down the streets of Westwood (near UCLA). He parks right outside the theater (tv cliche), buys his Junior Mints, and sits down to see a tall, tan "stunningly handsome" boy who aroused "some primal urge."  After some lingering glances, the boy walks out.  Wrong screen, buddy?

After the movie, Brett can't find the boy. That's because he left the theater.  "His name was Robert Mallory (Homer Gere, left the son of Richard Gere. n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), and his arrival at my high school will coincide with a season of horror and murder that will destroy us all."  Don't give away the story!

Scene 2: Brett tells us that kids today have it easy, with no problems (except for global warming, fascism, racism, homophobia, transphobia...) His generation fought serial killers, including the most sadistic of them all.  Brett, stop giving away the story!  It's annoying!   

A girl arrives at her gigantic palace, and can't find her dog, the fish tank is half empty, and everything in the medicine chest is turned upside-down.  

Later, she goes to the supermarket to put her lost dog flier up amid the dozens of others, and sees the one for her dog, up already!  As she gets into her car, she is grabbed, knocked out, and shoved in a van.

Scene 3: Brett and his girlfriend zoom down the Pacific Coast Highway, exuberant about being sixteen and able to drive, so they have infinite freedom!   Cut to the group having patty melts at the Hamburger Habit (I remember that place): a guy, a boy-girl couple, and a girl on each side of Brett moving in to kiss him.  Geez. at least let him finish his burger.

The group shrinks to four as they have dinner at the Galleria before playing at the video arcade, browsing at Tower Records or buying books at "any of the large bookstores that dotted the streets" in those days before Amazon took over.   I'm all for nostalgia, but this is getting egregious.  Tell me more about how everything was perfect in the Good Old Days, Grandpa.  Besides, I was there, and he's exaggerating the number of bookstores. 

I think the flashbacks have stopped.  They're at Girlfriend Debbie's place, and she's warning them not to spook her $1,000,000 Arabian horse.  Girl of His Dreams Susan and her boyfriend Thom (Graham Campbell) start making out.  Brett looks on longingly.  Adult Brett explains that Susan was the most beautiful girl in the world, and he still considers her the Love of His Life, although they never dated.  Debbie just started making out with him one day, so what are you going to do?  Are you sure you're gay, buddy?

Cut to a montage of Brett diving into his pool, getting dinner from the housekeeper, working on his writing, and doing under-the-covers stuff. 

Scene 4: Brett asks Girl of His Dreams Susan and her boyfriend if  they're coming to the last party of the summer at Debbie's house.  Thom says they'll be there, but Debbie's dad makes him uncomfortable: "He's so goddam gay!"  Got a problem with gay people, Thom?  Good thing your buddy Brett is straight.

"Yeah, he's pretty gay," Brett agrees, "But he's won two Oscars. Maybe he can help get my book made into a movie.  Ok, I checked the producers of "Less Than Zero."  Google AI insists that they're all "not gay" and make "family films."  

More after the break

"High Potential," Episode 1.13: This one has gay characters, a ridiculous plot, and a last-scene twist. Plus some cast members' members

  

I reviewed an episode of the Hulu series High Potential earlier, but it didn't get enough page views to keep on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.  The G-rated version is still up, on NySocBoy's Beefcake and Bonding.

Most likely the problem was representation: the show -- about genius cleaning lady Megan (Kaitlin Olson), a "flashy girl from Flushing" hired to help the staid, stick-in-the-mud cops solve murders -- was skittish about identifying gay characters, with only "no expressed heterosexual interest" to go on.  

So I'm trying another, Episode 1.13, "Let's Play."  It has an open, out gay character -- an interior decorator, yet -- played by Broadway actor Adam Kantor, who is queer in real life, bulged on the cover of Next, and showed us his backside, although I can't find a c ock. 

Scene 1: Obligatory "home life" scene, with Megan's ex-husband (Taran Killan) teaching her daughter to drive.  She almost runs over the whole family. Don't you take driver's ed in high school?

Cut to the police station, where Megan is asking the homicide detectives to pull over her daughter, because when she was a teenager, she got in a lot of trouble while driving, har har.

In other news, everyone is required to attend the big, important Police Gala, so the higher-ups can see that they're all team players. 

Time for the case of the week: They got an email saying "Spencer Wallace wouldn't play with me, will you?" And a photo of the scared, tied-up Spencer.  "Two hours to make your move."

They look up Spencer: 37 years old, unmarried.  Gay.  Interior designer.  Gay stereotype.

The cops insist that it's just a joke or a weirdo bondage scene that got out of hand, but Megan thinks that they should at least contact Spencer to see if he's ok. 

Scene 2:  Spencer's apartment. It's daytime.  Wouldn't he be at work? They find a black box with a jigsaw puzzle and a note: "Let's play."

Back at the station, Megan completes the puzzle in a few seconds (she's got all types of intelligence, apparently).  It's a map of Mulholland Trail, with a piece missing.  That's where they have to go for the next clue.

Scene 3:  Megan and Detective Karadec hike to the spot, and find a lot of Loco Ocho (Crazy Eights) cards hanging from a tree, with a note: "Pick a card, and then you'll go down a path and through the shade, before dear Spencer starts to fade."  The cops at the station call to reveal that Spencer is diabetic, and needs insulin by the end of the two hours, or he'll die. 

Megan and Detective Karadec play the Loco Ocho game.  The last card is two, so they have to take the second path.  Wait -- wouldn't that vary, depending on the starting card?

They find a hopscotch game with numbers.  Megan plays and adds them up to -10 and 240, the coordinates they have to check with the viewers: it looks directly down onto Valley Days Storage.  Spencer is in a storage locker!  This is ridiculous.  Who would set up a series of games like this? There's one chance in a thousand that the cops will figure it out. 

Scene 4:  The cops banging on storage locker doors and yelling for Spencer.  Then they get the bright idea of asking the manager: Spencer rents Unit L-4.   Yep, he's in there.  And they brought insulin from his apartment to administer.  He'll be fine.  Wait -- we're done?  That was a short episode.

Scene 5: In the hospital, Spencer tells the cops that he doesn't know who kidnapped him. They grabbed him, took him to a dark room, and tried to get him to play board games, but he was too scared.  Then they got frustrated and started the game with the cops. Description: wearing a white anime mask, rosy cheeks, big eyes. 

Megan: "Why was your storage locker empty?"

Spencer: "I rented it with James.  He was my partner for nine years.  He died in an auto accident four years ago"  Gay identity established at Minute 8, except for the interior designer stereotype.  They were going to fill the storage locker with their stuff while they traveled to Europe, and now he can't bring himself to get rid of it.

With that revelation, Stuart leaves the show.  But we still have two victims left.

Scene 6: At the station, the cops figure that Spencer was a random victim; the Kidnapper was actually targeting them.  So who has a grudge against the LAPD? 

Megan isn't so sure.  The Kidnapper wanted to play kids' games with Spencer.  Maybe a childhood friend, or someone who wanted to be a friend and was rejected?

Cut to evening, with Megan picking up the to-go dinner orders for her family.  But a guy has already paid for them:  Domeneck Lombardozzi (left) playing the gruff, abrasive private detective who is looking for Megan's missing husband.  More of that ongoing plot arc, then some home stuff, and an invitation to the Police Gala from a cute guy. 

Scene 7:  Detective Oz (Deniz Akdeniz) comes in early to stare at the suspect board.  They have a lead at the Marina Park Hotel, coincidentally where the Police Gala will be held:  a carriage full of scary dolls, and "The fun has just begun" written in Scrabble letters. 

At the station, Detective Oz, reveals his connection to the case: He lost his Dad last year, so he's been going to a grief group.  He doesn't go all the time, so he didn't recognize Spencer at first, but he's a member, too. And he told them all the story of the empty storage locker.  Somebody in that group is the Kidnapper!

Scene 8: Detectives Oz and Daphne go to the grief group and interview the members. 

I predict that the Kidnapper will be group leader Chris, played by Maurice Hall (the one with the bulge, not the chest).

Back to the grief group: one woman says that she had a crush on Spencer, before "I realized I was not his type."  Just say gay.

In other news, Group Leader Chris is worried because member Sierra, an ASL interpreter, never misses a meeting, usually comes early, and she's not there. 

The group member suggest David as a lead.  He hasn't been there for several months, but he used to be a regular.  His family played board games all the time, until his sister died, and then they stopped.  He was more and more upset about it every week.  

Megan is skeptical: dude tries to reclaim his childhood innocence by forcing Spencer to play board games?  Doesn't make sense.

Well, just before he left the group, he invited everyone to trivia night at a bar.  No one showed up. Well, they're grief-stricken.  What did he expect?  So maybe he's hurt, and forcing them to play?  

Megan is still skeptical: why would he force the police into the games?

More after the break

"No Good Deed": Four lesbians, a gay realtor, a gay son, Oedipus, some murderers, and Phoebe from "Friends"

   Link to n*de Luke and Denis

Braxton Alexander recommended No Good Deed, a Netflix tv series, so presumably he's in it. The trailer shows Ray Romano (Everybody Loves Raymond) and Lisa Kudrow (Friends) spying on the couples interested in buying their house, no doubt planning something nefarious.  Plus I thought I saw a lesbian couple, so here goes, Episode 1.1:

Scene 1: Establishing shots of Los Feliz, the gentrified L.A. neighborhood. near Dodger Stadium. A Spanish Colonial house for sale.  The swishy real estate agent (Matt Rogers)  tells various couples that the homeowner is very invested in selling, while Ray Romano and Lisa Kudrow watch on their cell phone.  Uh-oh, they're up to no good.  Are they trying to find the perfect buyer to kill?

There are four stories, not interconnected, so I'll go through each separately:

The Soap Star:A scary unshaven guy with dark glasses signs his name in the register as John Smithe, but he's not a villain, he just plays one on the soap opera Rising Tides.  A shady handyman who cheated on his stepdaughter and was killed off. The first incest reference.  There will be more.

He's played by Luke Wilson, left.

Later, high-heel shoes enter the house.  I hate that cinematographic cliche.  Then a woman's back, like it will be a big shock when we finally see her face.   Gasp!  It's someone I never saw before!  What a shock!

Swishy Real Estate Agent Greg criticizes her for being a Lookie Louise, looking at houses but never buying one, but her real name is Margo.  

Ray and Lisa, watching from their secret lair, criticize her purse: "She looks like an AI-generated bitch."   They definitely don't want to sell to her, unless she pays cash: "Then I will bend over and take the cash up my *ss," Ray says.  

Cut to the Soap Star talking to his manager on the phone. Back story: he's so deeply in love with his wife that he bought her an expensive house, some cars, and a boat, and now he's going bankrupt. But he can't help it: she wanted them, so what else can he do?  "Maybe buy a house you can afford?"  So that's why he was looking at the Spanish Colonial.

In bed, John's overbearing, painfully elitist, super-snob wife turns out to be high-heel Margo!  They discuss why Ray and Lisa are selling their house. 

Oedipus: A m-f couple, the man O.T. Fagbenle, the woman an architect and highly pregnant, tour the kitchen.  They discuss how much they love each other and smooch a few dozen times until Mom tells them to knock it off.  Way to go, Mom!  

She also complains that they didn't have a wedding, when her son has dreamed of it since he was a kid.  Really?  I thought just girls planned their weddings.  When I was a kid, I was imagining my future career as an astronaut or Indiana Jones-style archaeologist.

Cut to Oedipus and Mom staking out the house.  Mom complains that they used to spend every moment of the day together, but now she sees him barely twice a year.  He explains: she used to be his whole world, his reason for living, but then he fell in love with someone else.  Be thankful for twice a year, Mom.  Some guys don't want to see their ex-lovers at all.

What's going to happen when the baby comes, and they both need to work?  They'll need someone to stay home with the baby, hint hint.  Dude, don't hire your mother/ex lover as your nanny!  She'll try to murder your wife to get you back.

In their next scene, Oedipus tells his wife that they can't afford the house on his novel royalties and her architecture, so why not have Mom chip in?  She is loaded.  Of course, she'll want to live with them.   Wife hates the idea.  Her husband's ex-lover, right there in the house with them? 

The First Lesbian Couple: Leslie, forceful and practical, and Sarah, quiet and mystical, examine the upstairs.  Sarah thinks it's "more of a family house," and it has a "dark vibe." 

They find a locked door.  It leads to the room where Ray and Lisa are hiding out and spying on everyone.  So, they're going to murder whoever buys the house?

On the way out, Practical Leslie is ready to make an offer, but Mystical Sarah doesn't want to spend all their money.  Besides, the neighborhood has a dark vibe.

Back story: They've been trying to get pregnant with IVF, but it doesn't work.  

That night, Practical Leslie drives through the neighborhood to prove that it is safe.  She sneaks into the garden of the house, planning to climb to the secret room's window and look inside, but instead she sets off the security alarm and the sprinklers.  Hiding in the bushes, she sees Homeowner Ray hide a gun in the piano. 

Meanwhile, at home, Mystical Sarah injects herself with something in secret.  She's either dying or a drug addict.

 The Second Lesbian Couple:  In bed, they discuss the house:  They could fix it up, put in a pool, and make a fortune off it.  They hatch an evil scheme to get it for under market value, and smoochify. 

More secrets after the break

"Holiday Exchange": Entitled, elitist A-gays find Christmas magic in an idyllic village in Britain/L.A.

 

Link to the uncensored version

It's not even Halloween yet, but the romcoms are started.  

Darn, they all have such interchangeable titles that I forgot which one I'm reviewing. Oh, right, The Holiday Exchange, on Amazon Prime.  

The icon shows a woman torn between two men, and the blurb is about a guy going on a "holiday exchange" that he found on a gay app, so I suspect some "mistaken for gay" jokes as the guy finds the Girl of His Dreams.

Scene 1: A guy wearing an eye mask and a frilly shirt wakes up -- gay. Close-up of a photo of him and his boyfriend -- gay.  He knocks it over, drinks some booze, and shaves and applies femme moisterizer products -- gay. 

A guy texts: "Wilde, call me back," but he ignores it.  Moisturizer guy is named Wilde, like Oscar?  Gay. He's played by Taylor Frey, top photo, who also wrote the screenplay.

Knock on the door: It's femme fashion designer Chase, Colton Tran, and a woman, with ideas for his wedding outfit: "Your Mom told us that your Big Day was coming."

"Nope, you misunderstood, I'm not getting married, I'm selling my company."

"Oh, well, we have ideas for that, too."

Wilde goes annoyingly over the top complementing Fashion Designer Chase; he is an angel, a shining light, goodness personified; he has created everlasting happiness for literally thousands of people by...um...designing their clothes. 

Back story: Wilde just dumped his boyfriend, Sean.

Scene 2:  An idyllic village, over the top idyllic, Currier & Ives idyllic. 

George tells his business partner Oliver, Rick Cosnett, how they met, confesses to drinking too much, and then lays on the over-effusive praise.  

Oliver is also an angel, goodness personified, spearheading drives that raise billions for charity. He's single-handedly wiped out world hunger.  Don't introduce Oliver to Chase the Fashion Designer, or they'll cancel each other out.  

His problems: he is too busy with his day job as a divorce lawyer, his numerous charities, and taking over Dad's business when he retires to get a boyfriend. Coworker George is in favor of being single. This must be the "mistaken for gay" guy.

Wait -- they specifically state that they live in Los Angeles.  The establishing shot was a New England Currier & Ives village. What the fudge?

Out in the elegant party, Saintly Oliver talks to James, who works in his company.  They hedge around the discussion of why their last date was so awful. So Saintly Oliver and Moisturizer Wilde are both gay?  Who's going to hook up with the lady in the middle of the icon?  

No,  James "can't" get together during the holidays: he'll be seeing family, driving up the coast. Dude's not into you. 

I'm watching with subtitles, so I can't hear the accents, but these people are saying "Happy Christmas" to each other.  Could they live in Britain, but be having an elegant party in L.A.?

More after the break.

Joseph Cali: Nude model before Stonewall, John Travolta's disco buddy, soap opera hunk, Adonis Male

  

Link to the nude photos

In 1968, a year before Stonewall, 18-year old Joseph Cali was playing chess and cruising in Washington Square Park in Manhattan when he was approached by George Haimsohn, author of Stories of the Homosexual Life, The Gay Psychedelic Sex Book, The Gay Coloring Book, A Summer on Fire Island, and the book and libretto for the musical Dames at Sea, which was currently playing off-Broadway.

Haimsohn was also a photographer, working under the name Plato, and invited Joe to model. 

His first full frontal photo appears in a 1968 issue of Go Guys.  The text says that Joe is a "fast shooting star on the physique horizon....well equipped to handle himself in any tight spot." Tell me more, tell me more, did he get very far?

  

The photo set and magazine work paid for Joe's tuition at Siena College, where he led anti-war protests, starred in the play Drunkard, and worked as a stage manager for The Gingham Dog. 

 

He moved to Los Angeles in 1973, and continued to pose for the Model of the Month Club and Photozique, while making the rounds of auditions.

Joe's big break came in 1977, when he was cast as Joey, best buddy of John Travolta's Tony in the disco drama Saturday Night Fever

More Brooklyn-disco roles followed, including Flatbush, a tv series about a gang called the Fungos.  Joe starred as Presto opposite Adrian Zmed as Socks.  It only lasted for six episodes.

He got 19 episodes of Today's FBI in 1981-82 as Nick, the "Ethnic" member of the team according to Wikipedia.  I'm not sure what his ethnicity was.

More Joseph Cali after the break. 

Los Angeles as Home: "The Lucy Show"

The Lucy Show (1962-68) was a fixture of my childhood.  I wasn't exactly entranced by the show -- no cute boys, no exciting outer-space adventures -- but it wasn't designed for kids.  Lucy had boring, mundane adult problems like sticking to a budget and worrying about her job, and she all but ignored the swirling social unrest in the world outside.  But my parents liked it, so it became a warm, comforting presence on Monday nights.

Apparently there were two versions.  The first (1962-65) was an early Kate and Allie:  Widowed Lucy Carmichael (Lucille Ball) and her divorced friend Viv (Vivian Vance) live in Danville, New York, with their children (Jimmy Garrett, Candy Moore, Ralph Hart).  Before my time.

I just remember the second version (1965-68), with Lucy Carmichael living in Los Angeles, where she worked for blustering bank president Mr. Mooney (Gale Gordon) and got into crazy predicaments.  

In spite of the lack of beefcake and space adventures, there were five points of interest:

1. Some of the guest stars were cute, like Frankie Avalon, Ken Berry, and Clint Walker (left). Not her son, Desi Arnaz Jr., though.

2. Years later, when I began watching classic movies and tv shows, I realized that many of the stars were familiar from guest appearances on The Lucy Show: Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, George Burns, Paul Winchell, John Wayne, Jack Benny, Sid Caesar.

3.  In later seasons, Lucy gets a sidekick, the hip, sprightly Mary Jane (Mary Jane Croft, right), who seems to "like" Lucy, and continues to hang around in spite of the constant scrapes and catastrophes.

4. Lucy and Mr. Mooney were two grown-ups, a man and a woman, but not married to each other.  In fact, they weren't married to anyone, nor did they express any interest in getting married (actually Mr. Mooney had a rarely-mentioneed wife off camera).   Maybe Los Angeles offered an escape from the endless man-woman couples that I saw in real life, that the adults insisted was my destiny.

5. Episodes involving movie stars, references to Graumann's Chinese Theater and the Brown Derby, even throwaway lines like "I was stuck on Santa Monica Boulevard" helped define Los Angeles as an Arcadia or Oz, a place that is intimately familiar, that you constantly long for, even though you have never actually been there.

Maybe Los Angeles was a "good place."

Was Elisa Lam Gay?

 

The Elisa Lam case has some undeniable fascination.  In January 2013, a 21 year old Canadian college student on a tour of California checks into the sleazy Hotel Cecil in downtown L.A. (why would anyone who knows anything about Los Angeles stay anywhere near downtown?).  She vanishes.  

Two weeks later, her body is discovered in a water tank on the hotel roof.  The only way to get there is through a door that will ring an alarm, or up a fire escape on the outside of the building.  In the middle of the night?

And the tank access lid was closed.  Elisa would not have been able to close it after jumping in.  Obviously someone was with her, helping or forcing her into the tank.

Then there's the security footage of Elisa in an elevator, crouching, pushing all of the buttons, making weird hand gestures, looking around as if she is waiting for someone, apparently talking to someone.  Who was with her?

The video went viral on the internet, with wild, crazy speculation.  She was playing a Korean game where, if you push elevator buttons in the proper order, you end up in a parallel world.  She was re-enacting (or being forced to re-enact) the plot of an old horror movie about a haunted hotel.  A ghost was holding the elevator doors open.

The bloated Netflix miniseries Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel plays up all the speculation, and adds some of its own.  Why did the police searching the hotel not check in the water tanks?  It took guests complaining that the water tasted funny for a staff member to think to take a look.  Why did the autopsy report take so long?  Were the police involved in a cover-up?  What about Morbid, a death-metal musician who stayed at the Cecil -- could he be the murderer?  What about the two men who delivered a mysterious package to Elisa the day before she disappeared -- could they be involved?

There are a lot of closeups of people's hands on keyboards, a lot of interviews with people who weren't involved in any way ("Yeah, we stayed at the Cecil two years before Elisa did.  It wasn't very nice"), and a lot of set-pieces about unrelated incidents at the Cecil (two serial killers stayed there...not at the same time as Elisa...and no hotel guests were victims..but still...).  Strangely, there are no interviews with Elisa's family or friends.  

The series waits for the last 10 minutes of the last episode to reveal that Elisa was bipolar, and had the habit of not taking her medication, which resulted in psychotic episodes where she thought people were trying to kill her.  She had been exhibiting bizarre behavior during her entire stay at the hotel.  On the night she died, she was probably fleeing from an imaginary assailant.  She climbed onto the roof, thought the water tank would be a good place to hide, climbed in, was unable to get out again, and drowned.  

The closed hatch? Probably a staff member noticed it the next day, and closed it without checking for a body at the bottom.

The elevator?  Elisa accidentally pushed the "stop elevator" button, got frustrated when the elevator wouldn't move, looked around for someone to help, and talked to herself before giving up.

The mysterous delivery? Some books she bought earlier that day.

Morbid?  Not even in the country at the time.

The four hours of wild speculation are not only annoying, they do Elisa a disservice, making her mental illness a "dirty secret."  And having to postpone it to the big reveal means that we learn nothing about her life before the visit to Los Angeles.  We learn nothing about her family and friends.  

 I assumed that the absence meant that Elisa was gay, and skittish producers closeted her.  But an internet search reveals several photographs of Elisa in chummy poses with male friends.  Buddies, or romantic partners?  It would be nice to know.

The Beverly Hillbillies

The Beverly Hillbillies, one of the 1960s line of hayseed comedies (others included Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, Gomer Pyle, and The Andy Griffith Show), slogged on from 1962 to 1971, and your parents watched every week, so you couldn't avoid it.  It was amazingly popular with adults: some of the regular episodes -- not even Christmas specials -- became the most watched episodes of all time.

The basic premise: a hillbilly from Bugtussle, Tennessee or Arkansas, Jed Clampett (Buddy Ebsen), becomes unbelievably rich when oil is discovered on his property, so he moves to a mansion in Beverly Hills, along with his crotchety mother-in-law Granny (Irene Ryan), his daughter Ellie Mae (Donna Douglas), and his dumb-lunk nephew Jethro (Max Baer Jr.).

Though they became marginally assimilated after nine years, they still wore hillbilly clothes, ate possum pie, and referred to their swimming pool as a "cement pond."  Plots usually involved big city types trying to dupe and manipulate them, but their backwoods wisdom, orneriness, or dumb luck win out in the end.

The message: big city life is dehumanizing.  Only in the country can real be real.

Other plots involved Ellie Mae's dating, Jethro's get-rich quick schemes (odd, since he already was rich), and Granny's dislike of all things big city.

There was never much beefcake in hillbilly comedies.  Max Baer Jr., son of the famous boxer Max Baer, had a nice physique, but rarely showed it on camera.  We were supposed to laugh at his dopiness, not sigh over his muscles.

Bonding was also rather uncommon.  Most of the primary relationships were platonically male-female: Jed and Granny, Ellie Mae and Jethro, bank president Mr. Drysdale and his secretary, Miss Hathaway (Nancy Culp, who incidentally was gay in real life.)









But gay-vague was everywhere.

1. Mr. Drysdale's son, Sonny (Louis Nye) is sophisticated, well-educated, and not interested in girls.  His parents keep trying to hook him up with Ellie Mae (so he will eventually inherit the Clampett millions), but he will have none of it.  He and Ellie are just friends.










2. Hollywood star Dash Riprock (Larry Pennell), a parody of Rock Hudson, is handsome, suave, and not interested in girls.  He vaguely courts Ellie Mae, but his heart isn't in it,  regardless of how much his studio pushes them together.


Apparently the producers thought it hilarious to keep having Ellie Mae run into men who were not interested in girls.







3. Jethro had a "twin sister," Jethrine.  She stayed back in the hills, and didn't show up often, but when she did, it was obvious that it was Jethro in drag.  I got the distinct impression that everyone was just playing along, responding to his drag persona as if she was a different person.

See also: Petticoat Junction; Green Acres

Edmund Teske, the Gay Photographer of East Los Angeles

Edmund Teske (1911-1996) was born in Chicago.  Trained as a pianist, he began to work in photography in 1933, when Frank Lloyd Wright hired him to do photographic montages of the relationship between architecture and the visual arts.

He also liked photographing men, catching them in moments of power, joy, erotic desire, or quiet reflection.

Richard Soakup, 1940 captures his first lover, whose parents ran a music studio in suburban Chicago.  Teske would photograph Soakup in many more nude and semi-nude poses.

During World War II, Teske was was rejected for military service for being gay, instead assigned to become a photographer for the Army Core of Engineers in Rock Island, where he photographed many of his friends, lovers, and coworkers nude.  They weren't physique photographs, however; he was trying to capture spirit, not muscle, the human condition rather than the human body.

In 1943 he moved to Los Angeles and went to work in the photo stills department at Paramount Studios.  He immersed himself in the gay life of 1950s Hollywood, befriending Christopher Isherwood, Joel McCrea, Man Ray, Rock Hudson, Anais Nin, Montgomery Clift, George Cukor, and Jim Morrison.

He began to experiment with photo montages, combining images of nude men to explore time and memory, beauty, decay, and erotic desire.

Don Mills and Jerry Kahn (1954-55) are photographed nude and clothed among abandoned ice boxes in Cornell, California (near Malibu).

The folk singer Ramblin' Jack Elliot, nude with guitar (1952)

During the 1960s and 1970s, Teske's work was on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, and in galleries around the world.

He lived alone in East Los Angeles, with lovers but no permanent partner.

In 2004, there was a retrospective exhibit at the Getty Museum.

To be on the safe side, I'm putting the photos with frontal nudity on Tales of West Hollywood.

The Shield: TV From the 2000s, Homophobia from the 1960s

You already know the most homophobic contemporary movie -- Chuck and Buck, the savagely homophobic "comedy" by Mike White.

Outside of Fox's animated sitcoms, TV series tend to go for erasing gay people from existence rather than excoriating them, but I found an exception.  Excoriations of gay people week after week for six years.

It's The Shield (2002-2008), a police drama set in contemporary Los Angeles.

Contemporary?

In the real L.A. in the 2000s, there were gay police offices.  The LAPD advertised for recruits at gay pride festivals.  Police cadets got  training in LGBT issues.

But on The Shield, all of the cops are intensely homophobic.  "Queers" and "fags" drop from their lips every five seconds, along with the usual heterosexism that we find everywhere on tv.

The key character, Detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis)  is a blustering homophobe -- but so is everybody, so not a problem.  But he is also boorish, stupid, vulgar, racist, sexist, violent, corrupt, and unfamiliar with the concept of "due process."

Oh, he loves his wife and kids -- so much so that when they leave him and go into hiding, fearing for their safety, he pays private investigators $20,000 to track them down.  Then he bursts in and starts yelling.

I guess that's supposed to be positive?

One of his nemeses is detective "Dutch" Wagenbach (Jay Karnes), who's actually intelligent and therefore the butt of constant jokes.  He grinds my gears by offering far-out psychoanalytic interpretations of every suspect, proclaiming that he "studied criminology."

Um...criminology doesn't teach you that nonsense.

But even Dutch is a first rate homophobe.  He asks, "What do they think causes people to be queer?  Is it biological, so they can't help themselves.  And if so, should we condemn them?"

Who's condemning them, Dutch?  I suppose the writers' perception of the intended audience as homophobic.

Criminals are homophobic too -- way homophobic.

There are occasional gay characters -- swishy queens who all have AIDS.
"Are you sure he has AIDS?"
 "Just look at him."

One of the cops, Julian Lowe (Michael Jace), happens to be gay.  Completely angst-ridden, overcome by guilt: it's a terrible urge inside him that he hates and can't get rid of.

He participates in a brutal gay-bashing with his fellow cops, tries to commit suicide, then tries to become "ex gay" through prayer and sex with a woman.

Oh, and he's also being blackmailed -- Vic is threatening to reveal his gayness to the precinct, where he will certainly be fired in disgrace.

Um...anti-discrimination laws for police officers have been in place in L.A. for 30 years.

By the way, the cops are uniformly racist, too.  When a Muslim asks why he is a suspect when he hasn't done anything, he is told: "Because a group of men who look like your twin brothers killed 3,000 Americans."

Um...there are Muslim Americans....

Even though I can't find shirtless shots of the regulars, there is a lot of beefcake on the show.  Criminals -- mostly drug dealers and gang bangers, with an occasional serial killer thrown in -- are often shown lounging around shirtless or in their underwear.  Danny Pino, a drug dealer that Vic extorts and then kills, always finds a way to cover up the bulge in his black briefs.

But, really, a precinct full of racist, sexist, homophobic jerks -- who writes this stuff?

Ok, it was created by Shawn Ryan, who was born in 1966 and grew up in Chicago, and was a staff writer on Nash Bridges and Angel.   In an interview, he said that the "Boys in the Bar" episode of Cheers, in which the bargoers recoil in homophobic horror from two guys that they think are gay, influenced how he "thought about homosexuals."

Homosexuals?  Is this, like, 1973?

On The Shield, it is.

See also: Chuck and Buck.

Victorious: Almost a Gay Victory

Like all tv programs aimed at a juvenile audience, Nickelodeon's Victorious (2010-2013) was set in a decidedly gay-free world: a high school for the performing arts in Hollywood (yeah, right, I'll believe that).

 Of course, the producers, writers, directors, and actors all knew that gay people existed, and they threw in occasional hints.














A love-hate gay subtext  between Tori (Victoria Justice, right) and frenemy Jade (Elizabeth Guilles, second from left), in spite of their respective boyfriends (and the rumor that Victoria Justice is homophobic).


The metrosexual Beck (far left), played by Avan Jogia, #5 on my list of Unexpected Nickelodeon Teen Hunks, who co-founded the gay-allied Straight But Not Narrow group with his bud Josh Hutcherson.

Leon Thomas III (second from right), who played Andre, is another Hollywood teen who is Straight But Not Narrow.  

Ventriloquist Robbie, who doesn't really like girls, in spite of his girl-dating episodes, is played by Matt Bennett.

Compare the utter silence about gay people from the cast of ICarly.

The nerd Sinjin (Michael Eric Reid) has a fairly obvious crush on him.

Gay-friendly cast, gay subtexts, gay references.  By this point, we have to start blaming the audience for a stubborn refusal to know.

When one of the teen characters mentioned visiting "my uncle and uncle" in San Francisco, fan boards went wild with hysterical protests that she couldn't have meant a gay couple.

"She has two uncles in San Francisco.  They're obviously two brothers living together, not gay!"

"She just means that she's going to visit one uncle, and then another one.  Not that they're gay!"

"Just because you live in San Francisco doesn't mean you're gay!"

And my favorite:
"Get a life!  This is a children's show!"
If it's aimed at an audience of kids, then by definition, they believe,  it can't have any references to gay people.

See also: Avan Jogia: The Johnny Depp of "Victorious" grows up, dates Beau Mirchoff, shows his d*ck, but is he gay?

Die Hard: The Gay Connection

New York cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) is having a very bad day.  He flies to L.A. to visit his estranged wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), during her company's Christmas party in the ritzy Nakatomi Tower.  But then a band of terrorists armed with heavy artillery take the partygoers hostage.  McClane, hiding, contacts the LAPD, but at first they don't believe him, and when they finally investigate, they think he's the bad guy.  It is up to McClane to single-handedly take out the terrorists (who are actually burglars with a very convoluted scheme).

McClane is in radio contact with the portly African-American sergeant Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson), the only LAPD officer who believes his story.  They chat, joke, and rather openly flirt with each other, and when the crisis is resolved, McClane leaves his wife to rush into Powell's arms.  A homoromantic hug capstones the movie.  The primary emotional bond in Die Hard (1988) is not between McClane and Holly, estranged or not, but between McClane and Powell.

But that's not all.

In the sequel, Die Hard 2 (1990), it's another Christmas Eve, and McClane goes to Washington's Dulles Airport to pick up Holly.  But terrorists take over the airport and forbid any planes from landing.  McClane must take them out before the plane carrying Holly runs out of fuel and crashes.  He commandeers the mousy African-American communications specialist  Leslie Barnes (Art Evans) for the adventure.  Buddy-bonding and some gender-role transgressions occur.  In spite of the obligatory "I love you so much" hug with the wife, the primary emotional bond comes between McClane and Barnes.

In the next installment, Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), a terrorist has planted explosives around New York to coerce McClane into participating in risky nursery-rhyme "games."  Black-separatist shopkeeper Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson) is accidentally involved, and the two go off on a wild ride full of love-hate buddy-bonding and "I'm not leaving without you!" speeches.

When the crisis is resolved, Carver continues to stick around.  In spite of the obligatory reconciliation with the again-estranged Holly (this time in the form of a telephone call), the primary emotional bond is between McClane and Carver.

Live Free or Die Hard (2007), about cyber-terrorists who have taken the entire country hostage, gives McClane a white partner: a young hacker named Matt Farrell (Justin Long).  This one ups the physicality of the bond, and makes Matt (along with McClane's daughter) the object of rescue.  Plus there's a promise of continuing relationship that the other installments lack.

4 installments, four homoromantic buddy-bonds, 3 with African-Americans.

Why?  Bruce Willis is no gay ally, and directors John McTiernan, Renny Harlan, and Len Wiseman are not known for their gay-positive filmmaking.

 But many recent buddy movies, aware of the possibility of gay subtext, pair a white man-mountain with a soft African-American comic relief character, hoping that because the relationship is interracial, no one will "read" it as romantic.  And Matt Farrell?  Maybe they thought that the 23-year age difference between Justin Long and Bruce Willis would make people "read" them as father-son figures, not older-younger boyfriends.

It didn't work.