"Huge in France": Watch It for the Beefcake

Huge in France (2019) stars Gad  (Gad Elmileh, a comedian who actually is huge in France).  He comes to America and is shocked to find that no one recognizes him.  He is constantly walking into a room, announcing "C'est Gad!", and expecting people to fawn over him.

He's come to reunite with his long-estranged son Luke  (Jordan Ver Hoeve), who wants to become a professional model, and...

um, sorry, I lost my train of thought.

Maybe just one more photo, to get me through the rest of the review.

23-year old Jordan is from San Diego (I would have guessed Amsterdam).  He's represented by Brand Model and Talent, which offers a large portfolio of his work.  His instagram offers some even more revealing shots.

Ok, this is the last one.

Luke is being managed and trained by his mom's boyfriend, failed actor Jason (Matthew Del Negro).

The beefcake is amazing.  Luke and Jason don't own shirts, and there are ample bulge and bare butt shots.  But beefcake will only take you so far.

Jason veers between annoyingly obsequious and borderline abusive, and Luke is entitled, whining, rude, and generally obnoxious.

Jason:  I can't come up with the money for your pec implants.
Luke: You idiot!  Can't you do anything right?  My modeling career is over because of you!

Gad: I spent $25,000 to arrange for us to have dinner with your modeling idol.
Jason:  Too bad.  You were never there for me when I was a kid, so I'm going to blow you off.

Plus we're expected to believe that Luke has "girl problems": a crush on the school it-girl, who thinks of him as a friend because she's dating fellow model Zene (Austin Fryberger).  Zene, by the way, comes off as incredibly nice, so nice that one wonders why he wants to hang out with Luke at all.  But the three of them go bowling.

Meanwhile, "C'est Gad!" is only funny the first two or three times.  You'd think that Gad would eventually realize that, since he knows nothing about American pop culture, it makes sense that Americans wouldn't recognize him, and stop trying to use his fame to cut in lines or pick up girls.

There are some funny penis references.  Apparently comedians use the phrase "He gets my dick hard" to mean "I like him" but non-comedians misunderstand.

Jerry Seinfeld has a cameo.  For someone who hasn't seen him since the series finale of Seinfeld twenty years ago, the aging is a bit of a shock.

There are some buddy-bonding moments between Gad and his puppy-dog-cute assistant, Brian (Scott Keii Takeda), but no gay characters that I know of, just a few gay references that veer toward the homophobic:

Jason: I need you to pay for this trip with your credit card.
Brian: It's for emergencies only.
Jason: Whip it out!  Whip it out, or I'll whip it out for you!
Brian (Uncomfortable): Are we still talking about credit cards?

Desperate for money, Jason signs up to "deposit" at a sperm bank.  The manager offers to give him an advance on his fee, if he can watch Jason in the act. 

Later:
Girlfriend:  How did you get the money?  Did you suck someone's cock?
Jason: No, I didn't suck anyone's cock.
Girlfriend: Because I couldn't be with someone who would suck someone's cock for a pec implant.


Watch it for the beefcake.

C+

Doug Davidson: Failed Teen Idol turned Soap Superstar

Speaking of forgotten teen idols, who is this "Doug Davidson" photographed next to Shawn Stevens as the latest Tiger Beat fave raves circa 1978?

According to IMDB, the 64-year old actor's most memorable character is Paul Williams on the soap The Young and the Restless from 1978 to 2018.

40 years playing the same character!  Five Daytime Emmies!

Paul Williams began as a teenage hoodlum who romanced series regular Nikki and gave her an STD, but soon he retooled his chaotic energy into more respectable pursuits.  He became a private investigator, and later police chief.  He's had a series of romances, one of which produced the bad boy for the new generation, Ricky (Pete Porte).

Whoa.  Could we make this post about Peter Porte instead?

Born in 1954 in Glendale, California, Doug was a theater and marine biology at Occidental College when he appeared in Fraternity Row (1977), a drama about a fraternity hazing that results in a student's death.  It hasn't been released on DVD or streaming video, but apparently it starred Gregory Harrison, the future star of Trapper John, MD

Next Doug had an uncredited role in The Initiation of Sarah, about a sorority girl who uses her Carrie-like superpowers to wreak havoc on a rival sorority.

In the spring of 1978, he visited a friend at CBS Studios and was spotted by Young and the Restless producer John Conboy, who asked him to test for the new bad boy character.  His first episode was in May 1978, just after he graduated, and the rest is history.

His aborted teen idol career seems to have occurred around 1980 and 1981, just as his Young and the Restless character was getting started.  Usually teen magazines ignore soap operas, assuming that only middle-aged housewives are watching, but apparently Doug had something special that drew the photographers to him.

What was it?  Three guesses.

But Doug's teen idol fame only lasted for a few issues, as he failed to do any teen-oriented projects.  Soaps keep you busy with a five-day-a-week shooting schedule, so he hasn't had time for much more screen work at all: a male model on I'll Take Manhattan (1987), Paul Reiser's best friend on Mr. Write (1994), himself on a Diagnosis: Murder episode that takes place on a soap opera set.  He has also hosted The New Price is Right and its Las Vegas stage version, The Hollywood Christmas Parade, and the Tournament of Roses Parade. 

Since 2000, Y&R has had several gay and bisexual characters, but none with particularly major or positive storylines. 

I guess we'll have to make do with Doug Davidson's chest.

Chris Galya: Actor Slash Model

David DeCoteau directs horrible closet-gay movies in which lots of cute guys lounge around in their underwear while awaiting monsters or psycho-killers.  But none of them are gay. Like Playgirl, DeCoteau pretends not to know that gay men exist.  Even the reviewers pretend not to know, and say things like "the guys take their shirts off for the ladies."

 In his latest, 1313: Actor Slash Model (2011), you get what the title says: a disgruntled actor loses an important role to a beefcake body, and starts slashing some male models. Mostly amateurs, or professional models with only a few acting credits: Chase Bennett, Jared Edwards, David Flannery, Christian Lake, Wagner Sandoval -- and Chris Galya.

I thought I recognized that name from the Disney Channel's Jessie (2011-2013), about a girl who gets a job as a nanny for the adopted children of a wealthy couple (while waiting for her big break as a singer/actress, naturally).  Chris plays Tony, the teenage doorman at her building, and her main love interest.

I've only seen a few episodes: no nudity, so Chris is one of those unexpected Disney hunks.

And no gay subtexts.  In fact, it's one of the Disney Channel's more heterosexist vehicles, with all of the kids, even the youngest, expressing hetero-horniness.

Chris also appears in Isolated (2013), about a group of surfers and Ambassadors for Peace who visit New Guinea, discover human rights violations, and take their shirts off (also starring Booboo Stewart).

And on the teencom Jesse (2011-2015)

And he's a real model, with runway work in London, New York, and Milan, and photos in Saks Fifth Avenue Men, Ford L.A. Men, Chaos Magazine, and elsewhere.  Vera's Big Gay Blog has lots more pictures of his work.

His tweets don't say anything specific, but he's shown with guys often enough.  He's got to be gay or at least gay-friendly. 

On the other hand, he's a big sports fan, clogging his twitter feed with play-by-plays of football and baseball games.. 

Superboy in West Hollywood

Seems like there's always a version of the Superman mythos on tv or in the theater.

One of the more obscure was Superboy (1988-92), a syndicated reboot that was, for obvious reasons, very popular in West Hollywood.

It sends the teenage Clark Kent to Schuster University (named after his creator), where he rooms with Daily Planet editor Perry White's son T. J. (James Calvert), moons over co-ed Lana Lang (Stacey Haiduk), and butts heads with villain-to-be Lex Luther (Sherman Howard).

23-year old stage actor John Haymes Newton was not quite as muscular as other Men of Steel, but he was handsome, and he could fill out a Superman costume better.

In fact, he's probably the biggest Superman of all time.

After the first season, Newton left the series.

He spent the 1990s capitalizing on his good looks and superlative physique, sometimes in missteps, such as the self-explanatory Desert Kickboxer (1992) and the tv schlock Models Inc (1994-95), but also in some blockbuster series like Melrose Place: he played Ryan McBride, younger brother of restaurant owner Kyle McBride (Rob Estes).

And in 2004-2005, he played the gay Jonathan Lithgow on Desperate Housewives.

Meanwhile, Superboy was retooled, becoming less gimmicky, more realistic, and the Boy of Steel was recast with bodybuilder and romance novel cover model Gerard Christopher.  Not as impressive beneath the belt, but considerably more muscular.

There's a sausage sighting story about Gerard Christopher, Billy Mumy (Lost in Space), and Jon Bon Jovi on Tales of West Hollywood.

The series lasted another year before folding.

Since Superman, Christopher has done mostly soap operas.

No particular gay content in his work, but:

See also: Sausage Sighting of Bill Mumy and Jon Bon Jovi.; and My Hookup with Superman

Ansel Elgort: The Post-Gay Carrie Hunk

You may remember Ansel Elgort from the 2013 revision of Stephen King's Carrie: he played Tommy Ross, who takes the repressed schoolgirl with psychic powers to the prom, and gets doused with pig blood.   The 2013 version emphasizes the bullying and the gay symbolism of Carrie's "difference."

The 24-year actor also starred in Divergent (2014) is about a dystopian society that hunts down people who don't fit in to one of the five social categories: "what makes you different, makes you dangerous."  Let the gay symbolism begin! 

The Fault in Our Stars (2014) is a heterosexual romance about two teens who fall in love in a cancer support group.  After the replicated the romantic poster with co-star Nat Wolff, he had to specify: "I like girls.  A lot.  But if I was gay, I wouldn't hide it."

The son of photographer Arthur Elgort, Ansel has naturally gravitated toward modeling, appearing Teen Vogue, American Vogue, and elsewhere.

Also the son of an opera director, he has naturally gravitated toward music.  He has Facebook and Soundcloud pages where you can check out his tunes.

Ansel belongs to the laid-back "post-gay" world.  When he took off his shirt for a spread in the spring 2013 issue of Flaunt magazine, he stated that he had a girlfriend, but "would go gay for Tom Hardy."

Ken Olandt

During the 1980s, it seemed that every adult actor and teen idol spent eight hours per day pumping iron, so physiques that were merely stunning risked being overlooked in the exalted company of Robby Benson, Allan Kayser, Jon-Erik Hexum, Adrian Zmed, and Sylvester Stallone.

Ken Olandt was almost overlooked.  Trained as an advertising agent, he and his physique started making the rounds of tv guest shots in 1983 -- Love Boat, The A-Team, Simon & Simon, Hotel.  He got a recurring role as a streetwise dock boy on the short-lived Riptide (1984-85).  But he was rarely asked to do as much as unbutton a button by casting agents accustomed to walking, talking versions of Michelangelo's David.

 And the teen magazines, when they paid attention to him at all, showed off his smile (which, to be fair, was very nice).

In 1986, Ken -- or his agent -- hit on a gimmick to get him noticed.  If his pecs and abs were merely spectacular, why not show off the regions where he really surpassed mortal expectatons?  Most other actors were too timid or inadequately superhuman to agree to underwear and jockstrap shots, but Ken was more than qualified, and not at all timid.

April Fool's Day (1986) was a psycho-slasher -- a genre not generally known for male nudity, with the possible exception of Hell Night -- but Ken spent a long scene in his underwear (and, incidentally, buddy-bonding), and gay men and straight women finally started paying attention.

Summer School (1987), a comedy about a substitute teacher (Mark Harmon) who bonds with his students on the way to the beach, featured Ken as a student moonlighting as a stripper.

And so it went for the next decade.  Whether he guest-starred on a remake of the 1960s tv show Gidget,  set mostly on the beach, or Murder, She Wrote, set elsewhere, more likely than not, Ken would be asked to strip down to his underwear or appear nude except for a g-string or swimsuit.

Not that anyone was complaining.

Dylan Playfair: Some Assembly Required

Speaking of retreads, Disney's True Jackson, VP was about a 15-year old girl who becomes the vice president of a quirky fashion company.  The Canadian series Some Assembly Required (2014-) goes one step farther: when a defective chemistry set destroys Jarvis Raines' house, he sues the toy company, and ends up owning it!

Jarvis (Kolton Stewart, right, previously the star of the dance drama The Next Step) has a lot of ideas for interesting toys, so he moves in, along with an eclectic group of employees from his school:

1. Piper (Charlie Storwick, a center), a computer whiz who has a crush on Jarvis.

2. The gay-coded fashion-plate Aster (Travis Turner, left), hired as designer.

3, Geneva (Sydney Scotia), an it-girl hired to be Jarvis's  assistant.

4.  Bowie (Harrison Houde of the YTV series Spooksville), his best friend, who later becomes company president.

5. Knox (Dylan Playfair, right), a jock recruited as the product tester.

The former owner, Candace (Ellie Harvey of The New Addams Family) sneaks in as cleaning lady "Mrs. Bupkis" to undermine the company.

Heterosexual romance is in the air: Piper has a crush on Jarvis, and Knox has a crush on Candace. But there is also a nearly-gay character, and Jarvis can't seem to keep his eyes off Knox's muscles.  

By the way, Dylan Playfair is the son of Jim Playfair, a former Canadian hockey star who is now an assistant coach for the Phoenix Coyotes.  Groomed for a career in hockey, Dylan played all through high school, but after suffering a concussion during a game, decided that he wanted to do something else with his life: act.

How did Dad respond to this less than macho career ambition?

He was surprisingly supportive.

So Dylan attended Vancouver Acting School, did some modeling, and worked as a bartender while auditioning. Within a year, he was cast in Grave Encounters 2 (2012)

His character is introduced smoking marijuana.

Dad wasn't happy.

Since 2012, Dylan has been very busy, playing three hockey players, a college student in a murder mystery, and a high school runner in a buddy-bonding movie.  In 2016, he starred in the tv series Haters Back Off.  

Good advice.

He's gay-positive.  In 2012 he tweeted about gay marriage in the U.S.: "it's the Apocalypse for redneck, homophobic, racist, prohibitionist, religious extremist ignorants.  Everyone else is ok."

See also: Mr. Young

Kyle Bornheimer: Bear Bares It All

Kyle Bornheimer has been in the business for less than 10 years, but he is already getting a reputation for failed sitcoms: Worst Week, Perfect Couples, Romantically Challenged, and most recently Family Tools.  In all of them, he plays the same kind of character, a likeable nebbish who is clueless about matters of hetero-romance.  

I suggest some of his non-heterosexist comedy shorts instead, such as Gym Day, about a man who goes through endless hassles to get to the gym, only to find it closed, or God Reschedules Rapture, about...well, God being too busy to hold the Rapture as scheduled.  Some appear on the Funny or Die website.

Kyle has also played  likeable nebbish characters who are clueless about matters of gay romance:

In Spokane (2004): a straight guy falls for a gay guy at a wedding, resulting in a naked hotel room encounter.  You can see it on the collection Boys Life 7 (2010).

In a 2006 episode of the shortlived Lovespring International, about a dating service,  he played a clueless gay nebbish looking for a date.

He also "hints" about same-sex desire, as on Perfect Couples (2010-2011), when Dave (Kyle) makes a gay friend, and his wife is jealous.

Bachelorette (2012) is a raunchy comedy about four women preparing for their friend's wedding.  A gay guy does a striptease for them.

Or most recently, on Family Tools (2013), his character has a requisite crush on a girl, but also cozies up to his assistant, Darren (Edi Gathegi).

I understand he's on the current reboot of Will and Grace as a security guard.

And in all of his performances, we get shirtless and nude shots of his muscular bear physique, often hiding his private parts behind humorous objects.  In Spokane, he bares it all.

Who is Tony Dow's Boyfriend?

This photo is causing a bit of speculation.

It looks like Venice Beach in Los Angeles (the cabana in the background says "Charter 0").

The guy on the right is Tony Dow, the teen hunk of Leave It to Beaver, shirtless, in his standard white shorts. Sometime in the early 1960s.

He's with a guy who is about his height and age, buffed, with a severe military haircut, wearing a dark t-shirt and cut-off jeans. They're both barefoot, and they both bulge to the left.

Tony is looking at the photographer, while the other guy is facing away, not sure what to do.  It's not a posed photo, it's a candid, two guys caught in an informal moment.  Hanging out together, or on a date.

But who is Tony's boyfriend?

I cropped the photo, but the original doesn't display any more information.  There are three guys sitting on the left, and there's a partial watermark: eart.ltd edit

Three possibilities have been suggested:

1. In "Wally the Lifeguard," a episode of Leave It to Beaver that aired on October 22, 1960, Wally thinks he has been hired as a lifeguard, and is embarrassed to discover that he will be selling hot dogs in a ridiculous outfit instead.  Some scenes are set at the beach, where the real life guard is played by 25-year old Dick Gering. Maybe he and Tony Dow bonded.

Severe military haircut, but the guy in the photo doesn't look like him.

2. Tommy Rettig, the star of Lassie, four years older than Tony Dow, became one of his closest friends during the early 1960s, and starred with him in Never Too Young (1965-66)

The guy in the photo is definitely not Tommy Rettig.

3. John "Butchie" Davidson.  Not the actor, the physique model. He was in Los Angeles for only a few months in the spring of 1965 before shipping out to Vietnam (he died tragically en route).  But during those months, he starred in several Athletic Model Guild films and got the cover of Physique Pictorial.  

Same haircut, same hands, same face.

Tony Dow never appeared in Physique Pictorial, but he mostly likely knew about it.  It's not inconceivable that he met Butchie, and was showing him the sights that day when an anonymous photographer snapped his picture.

There are nude photos of John Davidson on Tales of West Hollywood.

See also: Tony Dow Dating and Hookup Stories

Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin

On winter afternoons in fourth or fifth grade, I was stuck in the house listening to my kid brother's Disney record.

He loved that darn thing, and played it over and over and over.  It was a small house, so there was no place to escape from the torture.

It begins with "From all of us to all of you, a very Merry Christmas," a song I've never heard anywhere else.  Then we get some non-Christmas stories:

1. Little Black Sambo, who has a New York accent: "All the tigahs have turned into buttah!"

2. Scrooge McDuck ships his money to the moon for safekeeping.

3. Winnie the Pooh, a fat, stupid bear with a chalkboard-grating voice, braves a natural disaster that floods his home.  Winnie is a girl's name, and "pooh" means feces, and it only goes downhill from there.  

Later I found that the nightmare-inducing hell-voice came from the evil Sterling Holloway (1904-1992), who also voiced the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland and Kaa the Snake (who hypnotizes and tries to eat Mowgli in The Jungle Book).

I've been blessedly spared the Disney movies, but in school I had the original books inflicted on me.  They are the diabolical work of A.A. Milne (1882-1956), who began his degradation and despair in poetry collected in When We Were Very Young (1924).

Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed,
Droops on the little hands little gold head.
Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

The teacher expected 10 year olds raised on a diet of Lost in Space, Star Trek, and Magnus Robot Fighter to read this?  And like it?  Really?

But the main atrocity, the Pooh Demon, comes from stories originally published in St. Nicholas, Punch, and other magazines before settling down into two books, Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House on Pooh Corner (1928).

 They star Milne's son,  Christopher Robin Milne, and his coterie of toy and real animals:  Rabbit; Owl (very creative names); Kanga and Roo (mother and child kangaroos); Piglet; Eeyore (a donkey), and the titular Winnie  (although Milne's teddy bear was actually named Edward).

The later book introduces Tigger (a tiger spelled wrong).

The short adventures generally involve Christopher Robin's demonic minions misunderstanding things.  For instance, when he writes a note explaining that he'll be back soon, his demonic minions misinterpret "Backson" as a person, conclude that he has been kidnapped, and mount a daring rescue operation.

Or Eeyore the clinically depressed donkey loses his tail in the woods. Owl finds it, thinks it's a doorbell, and takes it home.  Not to worry, he gives it up without a fuss, and Christopher Robin nails it on.

The beings all have separate houses in the 100 Acre Woods, based on the 500 Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest, East Sussex (100 acres is .15 miles, so about a block and a half square).  It's mostly not woods at all, but swampy fields and dreary sandpits, and a river full of boulders and "rox."   Nice.

The gender-bending "Winnie," with his rather obvious lack of sex organs, has raised the ire of the city council of Tuszyn, Poland, which banned him for being transgender or "a hermaphrodite."

Some internet pundits try to make Piglet into a gay character due to his sense of style and interest in flower arranging -- and desire to see Christopher Robin naked.

But I find no gay subtexts in the books.  Although the characters are all male, except for Kanga, and there is no hetero-romance, no one lives together.  They are isolated individuals, not domestic partners like Toad and Rat in The Wind in the Willows.

And there's no permanence.  Gay subtexts have partners walking off into the sunset together, but the Pooh books are informed by a disturbing transience.  This will all end.  Christopher Robin will learn to spell "rocks," not "rox," write "back soon," not "backson," and become too old for his relationships with imaginary beings.  The end of the second book has him going off to boarding school, leaving forever.

Same-sex bonds belong to childhood.  The cold, hard work of adulthood requires heterosexual marriage and reproduction.

In gay subtext stories, men don't leave!.

Besides...that grating, infuriating voice!

When Lane's mother was sick, he bought her a Winnie-the-Pooh figure, thinking it would cheer her up.  She threw the darn thing across the room.

Rosa and I didn't agree on much, but I have to applaud that act of resistance.

Christopher Robin Milne (1920-1996) was a fey little kid (by parental design: they liked to feminize their boys in those days).  When he left the bear to go to school, he was bullied mercilessly by his classmates, and took up boxing for relief.

  He served in World War II, married his cousin Lesley de Selincourt, and opened a bookshop in Dartmouth.  He wrote several autobiographies, but mostly tried to distance himself from Winnie the Pooh.

Wouldn't you?

The illustrations, by the way, are from actors who have played Christopher Robin during his 31 film and tv appearances, or others who are named Christopher Robin.

1. A model named Christopherobin
2. A costumed Christopher Robin character at Disneyland
3. Frankie Galasso
4. Alex Lawther
5. The real Christopher Robin, his dad, and his demonic hell-beast.
6. Tom Wheatley.

Maurice Deriaz: The Bodybuilder Who Submitted to the Artist

Maurice Deriaz, born in 1885 in Baulmes, Switzerland, was one of seven famous athletic brothers who performed weight lifting and gymnastic feats,

He also performed by himself.  Called le lion suisse and roi de la beauté plastique, he drew crowds all over Europe.

In 1907, he found himself in the Paris of the Belle Epoque, the Paris of  gay authors like Gide, Proust, Huysmans, and Collete.  The Paris of Impressionism, Fauvism, and Art Noveau.   And of 55-year old painter Gustave Courtois (1852-1923), who shared a studio with his roommate and partner since their art school days, Pascal Dagnan Bouveret (1852-1929).

Courtois was a painter of the "academic style": vast, grandiose,  pompous, with allegorical or historical subjects, rather old fashioned and outdated for the Belle Epoque.  Yet somehow he convinced the ultra-modern Deriaz to model for him.

One assumes that he offered more than monetary compensation.












Portrait de l'athlete Maurice Deriaz  appeared in 1907.

Deriaz returned in 1912 to model for Hercule au pied d'Omphale (Hercules at the feet of Omphale 1912), below, and Persée délivrant Andromède (Perseus rescuing Andromeda, 1913).
















Both represent myths of dominant-submissive relationships. Did Deriaz have a dominant-submissive relationship with the older Courtois that got coded into the paintings?

But these paintings were never for sale.  They were gifts to Deriaz.

When Deriaz retired from bodybuilding, he opened a factory that made reeds for musical instruments.  He died in  in 1975.

The three paintings that he modeled were hanging in his house.  He donated them to the city of Baulmes.

Why did the artist convince Deriaz to model for three paintings, and then not try to sell them?  Were they too personal, embedding, a secret language that only they could interpret?

This sketch, dating from 1913, is captioned "Se faire un chemin par la force," making a way through force, a quote from Virgil's Aeneid.

There are hints and glimmers of a gay relationship, perhaps one with BDSM as a theme.  But the details are lost to history.