Mat Botuchis: The chest that launched a thousand fantasies plays gay-adjacent and sassy-pants, becomes an artist and puppeteer

This is the face and bare chest that launched a thousand romantic fantasies during the 1990s, as gay boys dreamed of holding hands, kissing and cuddling with Mat Botuchis (spelled with one t).

Unfortunately, Mat's only semi-shirtless shots came from the same photo shoot.  He didn't want to be a teen idol.  He wanted to be a serious actor.

Born in a suburb of Cincinnati in 1983, son of a radio salesman and a teacher, Mat got his start in local commercials, but at age 12 moved to Los Angeles to stay with his older brother -- and audition.  After two months and a few small roles, he got his big break, playing the werewolf-boy Eddie in the tv movie Here Come the Munsters, based on the 1960s movie-monster comedy. (Other Eddies include Jason Marsden, Mason Cook, Bug Hall, and the original, Butch Patrick).

Next came episodes of Goosebumps, The Journey of Allen Strange, Days of Our Lives, and Mat's second big break, 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (1998), the fourth in the franchise about a trio of ninja brothers named Rocky, Colt, and Tum-Tum.  (Other actors who played Rocky include Michael Treanor and Sean Fox).  It didn't fare well with critics -- Collider rates it as one of the "worst action-adventure sequels of all time." but it got Mat some teen idol attention -- and that bare-chest photo shoot.

Now 18, Mat moved directly from teen idol cuteness to young adult sleaze with MTV's Undressed (1999-2002) was an anthology series about the romantic and s*xual relationships of high school and college students.  It was controversial at the time for mentioning the possibility that high schoolers might do things in the bedroom, and for stating that gay people exist.  Mat played the jerk Spike, who got herpes from one of his many one-night stands, in Season 4.

10 Attitudes (2001) was a mostly improv romantic comedy about a 30-ish West Hollywood guy (Jason Stuart) who ends his decade long relationship after his boyfriend cheats on him.  He makes a bet that he will find romance with one of the next ten guys he dates, or go back to Cleveland.  Unfortunately, he finds something wrong with each of the ten attitudes: #1 is a druggie;  #3 (David Faustino, Bud Bundy on Married...with Children) wants a bisexual three-way; %6 goes to bathhouses; #7 yells at the bartender; and so on. So he goes home to Cleveland, and finds true love with his old high school bully (Fritz Greves), now reformed and out. Mat plays the bully in high school.

More after the break

Ninja Kids of the 1990s

One of the legacies of Ralph Macchio's Karate Kid (1984), and ultimately Bruce Lee's popularization of Chinese martial arts, was a fad of ninja kids.  Unfortunately, they almost invariably limited buddy bonding to concentrate on making teenage or preteen martial artists, or both, improbably hetero-horny, contributing to the 1990s insistence that no gay kids could exist.

In 1993’s Surf Ninjas, hardbodied teenageJohnny (Ernie Reyes Jr., who also starred in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) gazes at girls and Playboy magazine.  His brother, Adam, claims lack of interest, but when Johnny’s potential bride shows up in a veil, he quips “Chick’s got a veil, dude better bail,” and when Johnny’s opening line to her is the lame “Wanna go to the mall sometime?” he says “Way to close the deal, Casanova.”  Though he expresses no interest of his own, he is aware of heterosexual desire at the age of eleven.








Born in September 1979, Ted Jan Roberts made several karate kid-type straight-to-video films before he retired to become a martial arts pro. In A Dangerous Place (1994), the fey thirteen-year old kicks, jabs, and buddy-bonds with William James Jones without glancing at girls, but in A Power Within (1995) and Tiger Heart (1996), the fourteen year old’s main goal in life is to ask a girl for a date.

3 Ninjas (1992) starred three martial arts-whiz brothers: Rocky (Michael Treanor), Colt (Max Elliot Slade), and Tum-Tum (Chad Power).  (Because they are strong, quick, and gluttonous, respectively).  Only the oldest, Rocky, is interested in girls, to the hilarious amusement of his brothers.  But none of them expresses any interest in boys, or even has a male friend.

The $29,000,000 gross ensured a sequel, The Three Ninjas Knuckle Up (1995).  This time it's the second brother, Colt, who -- on a vacation in the Southwest, flirts with – and rescues – the Native American girl Jo.  When his brothers tease him, saying “Colt’s gonna kiss Jo,” he happily agrees: “Maybe I will.”

The ninjas had remain to be kids, just on the edge of adolescence, in The Three Ninjas Kick Back (1995), only Max Elliott Slade remained of the original cast. Sean Fox now played Rocky, and J. Evan Bonifant Tum-Tum.   At fourteen Colt was obviously an adolescent, significantly taller, with a deeper voice.  Again, Colt is the one who grins at, almost-kisses, and rescues a teenage girl.

 In The Three Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (1998), there was a new group: fourteen-year old Mathew Botuchis, teen-idol cute in a red muscle shirt, played Rocky as assiduously girl-crazy, rescuing and kissing not only his girlfriend but a  new, brainy female sidekick.   The other boys, played by Michael O'Laskey and James Paul Roeske.  remain uninterested.










What are we to make of these variations in heterosexual desire?

1. Not every kid in the movie had to pursue a hetero-romance, but at least one of them did.
2. There was no room for same-sex friendships.  Males were bullies, antagonists, enemy spies, never friends.
3. Heroic fantasy, such as the Neverending Story, had more room for buddy-bonding than movies set in our own world.
4. Beefcake was not necessary, nor even recommended, since every shirtless or swimsuit shot invites the gaze of gay boys and teenagers, and you want to pretend that there are none.

Which of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was Gay?

I'll bet you never thought you'd be reading about the ancient Greek drama Alcestis and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the same blog, on the same day.  But my search for beefcake and bonding takes me everywhere.

During the late 1980s, pundits often pointed to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when they needed a quick, easy example of tv being a "vast wasteland" responsible for turning kids into brain-dead zombies.  They probably never watched the cartoon series or read the comic books: the title was enough for them.

TMNT began as a comic book in 1984, and moved into cartoons and extensive marketing tie-ins by 1987.  By 1990, everyone, even pundits, had heard of the four slacker-talking, pizza-obsessed ninja turtles named after Renaissance artists (two of whom, by the way, were gay in real life).
1. Leonardo, the leader.
2. Michelangelo, the fun-loving trickster whose catchphrase is "Cowabunga!"
3. Donatello, the technological genius and computer whiz.
4. The brooding Raphael, who has a Brooklyn accident.

They live in the sewers of New York with their beset-upon sensei, the mutant rat Splinter, emerging only to pick up the pizzas they ordered and to fight crime.  They have two human allies, tv reporter April O'Neil and hockey-mask wearing vigilante Casey Jones.


The cartoon series lasted for 10 years, and new versions are in the works.  A series of films began in 1990, with sequels in 1991, 1993, and 2007.  I've seen the first two.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) gives us the turtles' origin story, and introduces them to April (Judith Hoag), Casey (Elias Koteas), and their arch-nemesis, Shredder, an evil Darth Vader clone who heads the evil Foot gang, comprised entirely of teenage boys.





April's boss happens to have a sullen teenage son, Danny (Michael Turney), who is secretly working for the Foot gang, and eventually gets big-brothered and rehabilitated by the turtles.

Surprisingly for a movie about turtles, there is significant beefcake, in the older members of the Foot gang, and in Casey Jones, who displays biceps and a prominent bulge.

Casey and April embark on a bickering "I hate you!" hetero-romance, like that of Sam and Diane on Cheers, David and Maddie on Moonlighting, and practically everybody else in the 1980s.  But otherwise hetero-romance is limited.  Of the turtles, only Michelangelo expresses heterosexual interest.  The others enjoy surprisingly open physicality, touching, hugging, grabbing each other at will, and Raphael obviously prefers the company of men: he spends most of the movie buddy-bonding with Casey.




Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze (1991) casts a new April, and eliminates Danny, Casey, and every hint of hetero-romance.  There is none.

Instead, the turtles face a restored Foot gang and discover the secret of their origin, with the help of a befuddled scientist (David Warner, who had a romance with Gregory Peck in The Omen).  This time Raphael buddy bonds with and rescues a new teenager, pizza delivery boy/martial arts expert Keno (Ernie Reyes Jr., who played another hardbodied martial artist in Surf Ninjas).

What are we to make of this pleasant lack of hetero-horniness?  The fact that the dudes are turtles in a human world is irrelevant; anthropomorphic animals from Bugs Bunny to Howard the Duck have often been portrayed as overwhelmed with desire for human women.
The intended audience of preteens is also irrelevant: movies during the 1990s often promoted gushing prepubescent hetero-romances.

For whatever reason, the Turtles were spared.  Cowabunga, dudes.

See also: The Omen; Surf Ninjas

Jonathan Brandis

Probably the most famous of the Neverending Story boys was Jonathan Brandis, who played Bastian in #2.  Born in 1976, Brandis began acting during the 1980s, with small parts in tv series like Webster and Good Morning, Miss Bliss (the original title of the blockbuster teencom, Saved by the Bell). 

Neverending Story II (1990) did not result in teen magazine adulation, and Brandis continued playing small parts in big movies or big parts in small movies, like the gay-subtext heavy Sidekicks (1992).  

Then he hit it big in the science fiction series Seaquest: DSV (1993-1996) about a submarine crew in the near future traveling through the ocean to help colonists, discover the lost Library of Alexandria, face deep-sea bogies, and take their shirts off.

Brandis played Lucas Wolenczak, a teenage computer genius, to draw in the "teenage girl" demographic, as the heterosexist Wikipedia article puts it -- but gay boys found him dreamy, too.  The program's heterosexism made it difficult to watch, but there was some comfort in the rumors that Brandis was gay in real life.    

After Seaquest, Brandis acted sporadically, but never found the fame he expected.  In 2003 he apparently committed suicide by hanging himself, although some tabloids claimed that it was an accidental death during autoerotic asphyxiation (most people don't get naked to commit suicide).

There's a Jonathan Brandis hookup story on Tales of West Hollywood

Sidekicks: Gay Kid Meets His Crush

One day in the early 1990s, Jim McIngvale, "Mattress Mack," flamboyant owner of the Gallery Furniture chain in Houston, was talking to his BFF, man-mountain Chuck Norris, who sometimes appeared on his late-night commercials and helped him deliver his catch phrase "save you money!"

"Chuckie," Mattress Mack said, "We need to do something about the problem of bullying of LGBT youth in Texas. How about a movie about a bullied gay kid who learns karate?"

"Karate Kid?  It already came out.  And there's a fad of ninja kids right now..."

"Yes, but this one will be different.  The kid will be more obviously gay.  In fact, he's gonna have a crush on you, with homoerotic fantasies and everything."

"Sounds great!  Whatever I can do to help the gay community!  Let's get my brother Aaron to direct, hire some gay and gay-friendly actors, and get to work!"

Actually, this probably wasn't the conversation that got the two ultra-conservative, flamboyantly homophobic Texas good old boys to work on Sidekicks (1992), but it was the end result.

It stars gay actor Jonathan Brandis as Barry, a flamboyantly feminine Houston teenager who can't play sports due to his asthma, and consequently is bullied by nearly everybody, including classmates (John Buchanan) and his gym teacher (gay ally Richard Moll of Night Court).

He has some allies, but no girlfriend -- the requisite hetero-romance comes between his dad (Beau Bridges) and favorite teacher.

Instead of pursuing hetero-romances, Barry fantasizes about martial arts star Chuck Norris.

He decides to study martial arts, like his crush, but the owner of the local karate school (Joe Piscopo) turns out to be a sissy-hating bully.

So the Asian stereotype Mr. Miyagi...um, I mean Mr. Lee (Mako) agrees to train him.

Soon Barry is so good that he trounces the bullies, incidentally cures his asthma, and beats out the rival team at a karate tournament by chopping a pile of flaming bricks in half.

 But that's not all -- Chuck Norris appears in person, a guest at the tournament, and they share a tender moment on a park bench.

Talk about a happy ending!

Of course, the gay subtext was purely unintentional.  For some reason homophobic nutjobs are really good at them.

See also: Jonathan Brandis; Ninja Kids of the 1990s; Breaker, Breaker