Justin Morrit, the Guy Who Shared Rob Lowe

Have you seen the famous Rob Lowe sex tape?  It depicts then-Brat Pack star Rob Lowe and a friend having sex with two women in a hotel room in Atlanta in 1988, on the night before the Democratic National Convention.

Only one of the women appears on the tape, plus Rob Lowe and his friend.

I didn't know that heterosexuals had the West Hollywood custom of "sharing."

They don't do anything specifically with each other, but one assumes that they did off-cameras.

Unfortunately, the tape doesn't show much of the second guy other than a muscular silhouette.  This is a better picture.

Not a bad boyfriend candidate.  I can see why Rob invited him to Atlanta.







His name is Justin Moritt.  He doesn't have any credits on IMDB before 1988, so I don't know how he and Rob met.  Since then he's worked as a production assistant, then a production manager, and finally a producer, of films like Ghost (1990), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995).

 He was married to actress Krista Allen from 1996 to 1999.

They have a son, Jake Moritt, born in 1997, now working as a production assistant.

According to his Facebook page, Justin likes Tim Allen, Radiohead, bodybuilder Casa Wilson, and the Marani Hair Salon in L.A.

When you search Google Images for "Justin Morrit," this picture pops up of a tall guy with a tattooed nipple and his pants falling off.  Obviously not our Justin Morrit, but maybe a relation.

And some pictures from one of Rob Lowe's many on-screen homoerotic relationships, this one with Doug Savant in Masquerade (1988).

Is this what was going on in the hotel room in Atlanta that night?

See also: Mario's Date with Rob Lowe

Dan Byrd: Nearly Gay

For someone who is just over 30 years old, Dan Byrd has an enormous number of acting credits, including more gay, mistaken-for-gay, and nearly-gay roles than any actor in Hollywood.

Born in 1985, the Georgia boy arrived in Hollywood in at the age of 14, and was soon guest starring on tv, in Er, Camp Nowhere, State of Grace, Touched by an Angel, and The Nightmare Room.  

In his first starring big-screen role,. A Cinderella Story (2004), he played gay-vague best buddy of Cinderella Hillary Duff

Then, in Salem's Lot (2004), he reprised the homoerotic-subtext role that Lance Kerwin originated  in 1977.  Rob Lowe played his boyfriend.

 By 2005, the 20-year old had developed a pleasantly muscular physique, and, surprisingly for someone who often played victims or comic-relief sidekicks, he was not averse to showing it off with semi-nude shower or swimsuit scenes.

In Mortuary (2005), Dan played boyfriend of a girl who has a gay best buddy.

In The Hills Have Eyes (2006), a remake of the Wes Craven classic, Dan played a gay-vague teenager who is waylaid while traveling through Appalachia by a family of mutants.

In Easy A (2010), an adaption of Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, he played a gay student who  pretends to be straight to avoid harassment, but ends up with a boyfriend -- older, and black, which has to be a first in American cinema.

 Suburgatory (2012): An undercover cop who infilitrates the school to check for steroid use, but is assumed gay due to his interest in muscles (which, as we know, Suburgatory specializes in).




On Cougar Town (2009-2013), Dan plays Travis Cox, the college-aged son of Jules (Courtney Cox), heterosexual, but often assumed gay, and fond of "fake coming out" to people.

In 2019, Dan is set to star in the Amazon series Utopia, about secret societies, conspiracies, and an underground graphic novel.  I don't know much about his character, but his costar will be Cory Michael Smith, who identifies as queer, so maybe there's a gay romance.  Or a subtext.

  Why is Dan so good at playing nearly-gay roles?  Maybe it's his deadpan wit, or his unimposing hotness.  Or maybe he's just lucky.

Rob Lowe

Rob Lowe started his career as one of the slim, androgynous prettyboys who populated the 1980s (others included Tom Cruise, Peter Barton, Corey Haim, and John Stamos).  He played a teenage father in an Afterschool Special; he was in the small-town Angst drama The Outsiders (1983), along with every other young-adult hunk in Hollywood (Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, Tom Cruise, even Leif Garrett).

He played a teenage operator who buddy-bonds with the naive Andrew McCarthy in Class (1983).

He did the "Yank skewers the pretentions of stuffy Brits" thing in Oxford Blues (1984).

There was some buddy-bonding, some homophobic slurs, lots of shirtless, underwear, towel, and jockstrap shots.

He was widely rumored to be gay.  My friend Mario claims that they dated, or at least had sex a few times, in the spring of 1981.  But Rob doesn't mention any same-sex activity in either of his autobiographies.

Millions of heterosexual girls and gay boys had his poster on their bedroom walls (Corey Haim's Sam had this one in The Lost Boys).   

So far, not much different from the other slim, androgynous prettyboys of the 1980s.

Then something happened that changed Rob Lowe's life and career forever.  During the Democratic National Convention in 1988, Rob had sex with two women, one of them underage. A film of the act appeared, along with some footage of Rob and a friend having sex with another woman in Paris.  It was blurry and grainy, but you could see more than enough.  Rob Lowe at his most intimate.

The scandal rocked his career, forever marking him as  dangerous, deviant, and overtly sexual.  You knew things about him that you didn't about any other celebrity.

Rob capitalized on his new aura of danger in Bad Influence (1990), luring a yuppie (James Spader) onto the Dark Side, and The Dark Backward (1991), a dark comedy about a pair of garbage collectors who want to become standup comics.  Eventually he moved on, starring in a TV version of the gay-themed classic Suddenly, Last Summer (1993), and playing one of the "good guy" survivors of the plague, the deaf Nick Andros, in an adaption of Stephen King's The Stand  (1994).

A fixture on television in the 2000s, Rob Lowe has never played a gay character, though he has played many gay-subtext relationships.  Politically conservative, he is not a strong gay ally.

See also: Mario's Date or Trick with Rob Lowe; Justin Morrit, the Guy Who Shared Rob Lowe.

Cory Haim's Bubble Bath

The Lost Boys (1987) was directed by Joel Schumacher, who is gay, and starred teen idol Corey Haim, who was widely rumored to be gay at the time. The plot, about high schooler Sam Emerson (Corey) discovering that his older brother  Michael (Jason Patric) has been seduced by androgynous vampire David (Kiefer Sutherland), is overloaded with homoromantic same-sex bonds: Sam and and Michael, Michael and David, Sam and the vampire-hunting teen Frog (played by Corey's real-life best friend, Corey Feldman).


There are endless beefcake scenes and vows of same-sex commitment, but only one act of heterosexual intercourse, with Michael's body on display and the woman's hidden from view, instead of the usual scenes of a nude woman atop a fully-clothed man. Surely even the most oblivious heterosexual can find such blatant slippages and subtexts!

But not one of the nearly 200 user reviews on the Internet Movie Database or nearly 500 fans who posted to a Lost Boys message board noticed the beefcake, the lack of attention to girls, or the many homoromantic bonds.

 One fan did ask “Is Sam gay?” and as evidence, pointed out that:
1. He has a poster of contemporary heartthrob Rob Lowe on his bedroom wall
2. He wears a “Born to Shop” T-shirt
3. He takes bubble baths
4. He has a pet dog.
5. He sings an old novelty song with the line “I’m a lonely girl, ain’t got a man.”
That is, he uses gender-transgressive behavior (like owning a dog?) as proof.



But even those broadly-drawn gender-transgressions are lost on most fans. One stated, “I’ve seen that movie probably somewhere around fifty times, and never once stopped to think that [Sam] was supposed to be gay.”  They never stop to think that any fictional character is gay, unless he is Wearing a Sign.

 Fans commenting on the "Is Sam gay?" post enthusiastically pointed out that Sam was not Wearing a Sign, so he must necessarily be taken as heterosexual.

About the beefcake poster: “It was his grandfather’s idea, to give him a manly role model! It has nothing to do with being gay!” (Would Grandpa really consider androgynous prettyboy Rob Lowe a better candidate for displaying machismo than contemporary man-mountains like Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Sylvester Stallone or Chuck Norris?)

 About the “Born to Shop” t-shirt: “It was the fashion in 1987! It has nothing to do with being gay!”

Or they bring up the  myth that only adults are gay: "He’s fifteen years old, too young to be gay!”

Or the myth of the Discovery of Girls: “He hasn’t begun to notice girls yet, it doesn’t mean he’s gay!”

Anything they can think of that helps them keep on believing that the world of fiction belongs to heterosexuals only.

See also: Tad Hilgenbrink, Corey Haim for the 2000s.; and Clarence: Gay Characters on Kids' TV.