"A Real Pain": Cousins have wacky adventures or a Dark Night of the Soul in Poland. With Kieran Culkin's backside.

     Link to the n*de dudes

A Real Pain (2024), on Hulu, is advertised as a wacky buddy comedy with Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg, touring Poland, with a lot of exteriors.   No doubt they are both absurdly heterosexual and will meet The Girl of Their Dreams, but it will be fun to see how quickly their heterosexual identity is established. 

 Besides, I'd like to see some of the sights, like the Jewish Museum in Warsaw and the University of Krakow. .

Not to mention Kieran's backside.

Scene 1: Benji (Kieran Culkin, left) is sitting in the airport waiting for David (Jesse Eisenberg), who is just walking out the door of his Manhattan brownstone.  He keeps calling: heavy traffic...no, it lightened up...Ok, so David is the Stick-in-the-Mud, Benji the Free Spirit.

At the airport, Benji grabs him and makes him twirl so he can see his cousin's butt.  Um...an interested in a guy's butt is a sign of gay identity.

He brought yogurt, and some weed for when they reach Poland: "They're not going to arrest two Jews for a little weed."

He chats up the TSA lady: "Her Dad does security for the Knicks."  This annoys David. Doesn't count as heterosexualizing him.

Priya made some trail mix for them.  Doesn't count: she could be an aunt or a sister.

Scene 2: On the plane, David has to take the middle seat. Bummer.

They discuss their back story: David works in digital ad sales, and Benji is a deadbeat. They haven't seen each other for a while.  They're going on a Heritage Tour of Poland.. wait, they're Jewish...is this a tour of the sites of pograms and concentration camps? 

Naw, who would want to see those?  Poland has 1000 years of Jewish history.

Later, David takes his prescription meds and gazes at a video of his daughter. Heterosexualized at minute 6.30. 

It's actually Jesse Eisenberg's real-life son, Banner.  I was confused by his long blond hair.

Scene 3: At the Warsaw airport -- "Welcome to Warsaw" sign in English.  They meet their driver. Some nice location shots as they drive through the city, but David is still gazing at that video of his son.   Why the heck aren't you looking out the window at this major European capital that you've never been to before?

They check in, retrive a package of weed from the desk clerk, and head up to their room. When David kicks off his shoes, Benji complements him: "You have really nice feet.  Graceful as fuck. Reminds me of Grandma's feet."  Foot fetish? Benji is giving off some gay vibes.

Scene 4: Tour Guide James (Will Sharpe, top photo) introduces himself: Not actually Jewish, but a degree in Eastern European Studies from Oxford.

The others in the tour are:

1. Marcia Kramer, recently divorced, from New York.  Her mother survived the camps. One of the cousins is obviously going to fall in love with her, but I'm not sure which.  Maybe David is divorced, and Benji's interest in men's butts and feet is supposed to be wacky, not homoerotic.

2.-3. Diane and Mark (Daniel Oreskes), an elderly couple. 

Daniel Oreskes has 40 acting credits on the IMDB, including The Sopranos, Law & Order, Ray Donovan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Only Murderers in this Building.  He is heterosexual.

4. Eloge, from Rwanda, converted to Judaism.  He's a survivor of the Rwandan genocide.

The Cameroon-born Kurt Egyiawan is a British theatrical actor who has appeared in The Exorcist, House of the Dragon, Bodies, and Kaos.  No intel on whether he's heterosexual or not.

More after the break

"A Million Little Things": A Million Little Tearjerkers, One Gay Kid

 

A Million Little Things appeared on my Hulu recommendations, so I started researching, and discovered that I reviewed it two years ago:

"They say that friendship isn't a big thing -- it's a million little things."  I never heard that saying until it was used as the title of a tv series on Hulu about a group of elite, entitled, self-absorbed young adults "dealing with life's curveballs."  

So, is A Million Little Things a Friends clone?  Remember: Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's DOA.   

Nope. The episode synopses reveal angst, pain, and trauma ad nauseam.  This is a major tearjerker!

Let's see how many terrible things happen to the friends.

1. Jon (Ron Livingston) starts the chain of angst by killing himself in the first scene.  Trying to determine his motive fuels some of the plot. Well, there's some shady business deals, and a woman he had an affair with, who shows up with a teenage son in tow.

And his daughter, Sophie, is sexually abused by her music teacher.

 His widow, #2. Delilah, was having an affair, and got pregnant by: 

3. Eddie (David Giutoni, top), an aspiring musician and recovering alcoholic, is cheating on #4: his wife Katherine, a lawyer.

Jon and Delilah's son Danny (Chance Hurstfield) is gay, and a drama club kid (of course).  For a change of pace, his biggest angst is worrying that his first kiss will be with a girl on stage (he's been cast as Danny in Grease) instead of with a boy.

#5. Rome (Romany Malco, left), an aspiring filmmaker, is suffering from drug addiction.  He is dating Gina, who is suffering from financial woes. 

Rome's wife, #6 Regina, is traumatized by being sexually assaulted by her uncle Neill at age 12, so she tracks him down, but he dies before she can confront him. Her mother is also a victim.  

#7 Gary (James Roday), a breast cancer survivor, is dating fellow cancer survivor #8 Maggie, whose cancer returns and gives her six months to live.  She dumps him because she doesn't want a boyfriend at her deathbed

Later, Gary starts dating Floriana, a soldier suffering from PTSD.

Maggie, by the way, has brother, Chad, who died in a car crash due to DUI.  Eric (Jason Ritter) shows up, claiming to have Chad's transplanted heart, but he actually has his sister's.  She died in the car crash, too.

Keeping track?  I counted 18 tearjerkers.  And I skipped over some of the boring "stalled music career" and "can't get a bank loan to open my ritzy restaurant" woes

Love, Sidney: Tony Randall Plays...Um...You Know

In a 1972 interview in the gay-vague After Dark magazine, Tony Randall said that he'd recently seen some gay porn.  "Just terrible!  Just disgusting!  There's nothing to watch in that. It confirms something I've always suspected -- they don't like it."  Later he said "There is no such thing as homosexuality -- it's just something invented by a bunch of fags."

Rather an odd statement from someone who had played the gay-vague friend to gay actor Rock Hudson in several movies, including Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter (1957), Pillow Talk (1959), and Send Me No Flowers (1964).  But at the time he didn't believe the rumors -- "6'5, built like Tarzan, very virile. A man's man. I didn't believe it for a moment."

Apparently he spent his life believing that all gay men swished.

Still, he kept trying to incorporate gay plotlines into The Odd Couple (1970-75), about two divorced men sharing an apartment, the prissy, gay-coded Felix (Tony) and the boorish slob Oscar (Jack Klugman).  Every other hip urban sitcom had a gay episode -- why not his?  Maybe Felix could find an article Oscar was writing on gays in sports, and assume that he was gay.  Or they could accidentally get booked onto a gay cruise.  The network censors nixed every idea, so Tony and Jack started baiting the censors by hugging and kissing.  

In 1981, Tony Randall starred in the tv movie Sidney Shorr: A Girl's Best Friend, about a depressed gay artist living in Manhattan who takes in a single mom and her daughter. The gayness was gingerly tiptoed around, conveyed through hints and innuendos.  Oddly, he didn't swish.

The tv version, Love Sidney (1981-83) faced howls of outrage long before it aired.  Right-wing nutjobs hated the fact that a gay man would be openly portrayed on tv (also a woman who had sex without being married).  So Sidney was de-gayed as much as possible, and Laurie (Swoozie Kurtz) became merely divorced, not "loose."

How de-gayed was Sidney?  He never says anything, but there is a photo of his long-dead lover placed tactfully in the background in the apartment. He doesn't know any other gay people, although he rescues a suicidal one in the penultimate episode.  Actually, he doesn't have any friends of his own, although he is quite obsessed with his mother.

He doesn't date any women, except in the 1983 two-parter "Allison."  It doesn't work out, because he's still pining "for someone he lost."  "I really hate her!" Allison exclaims.  Sidney cautions: "Don't hate...er, that person."

That's as gay as tv got in 1983.

That's as gay-friendly as Tony Randall got.

"Yo, Adolescente": Do All Gay Stories End with Coffins?

 

Yo, Adolescente  (Memories of a Teenager) is advertised on Netflix as a LGBTQ movie.  So why  is the trailer a nonstop description of the boy's girlfriend's eyes?

"She has the most wonderful, amazing, fascinating eyes that I've ever seen.  I can't describe them.  When she looks at you, it's like nothing else in the universe matters.  All you want is tor her to smile at you forever."

Does that sound like a gay kid? Bisexual, maybe.  

Scene 1: A rock concert in Argentina: "Life is hard, I won't lie."   Cut to Nico, coming home to discover that four of his friends died in a fire at that concert.  Or just one.  It's not clear.

He goes up to his room and looks through his memorabilia.  Lots of depressing statements: "I feel empty inside."

Cut to a party. Nico tells a boy "Nice t-shirt," and the boy responds: "The word teenager has nothing to do with suffering."

Is this magic realism?  I have no idea whether this is real life, or in Nico's mind.

Now Nico is named Zabo. He tells us: "I met Pol two years ago.  He was the same age then as I am now." 

Geeze, kid, just say "He was two years older than me."

They hang out, go to concerts, do outdoor things, hug.  Then Pol killed himself.

One friend kills himself, another dies in a fire.  This kid can't cut a break.

Cut to graffiti coming out of Nico//Zabo's head as he writes a blog; "What is a teenager?"

A swirling mass of darkness and despair?

"We're raw urgency in the flesh.  We don't think  about the future.  At least not the future of a house, a car, a dog, a wife.  I'd rather kill myself than have such a future."

I felt the same way growing up with the heterosexist trajectory of house, job, wife, kids being pushed at me day after day.

"Alone, alone, alone!  Somewhere, someone must be going through the same as me."

Scene 2:  Ok, his parents call him Nico, but he prefers Zabo.  He lives in a gray, lifeless suburb of Buenos Aires called Parque Chambuco, and he's in his fourth year of high school (junior year in America), studying construction, which is dreadful.  He doesn't make friends easily because he's "rustic," but he has a group of homies: Luco, Camila, Checho, and Tomas (who is two years older).

Everyone is concilaitory about the sucide of Zabo's friend Pol, but he shrugs it off.  

Ok, they all assume that Zabo is gay, but he doesn't think so.

Maria arrives.  We get the five-minute description of her eyes.

The boy is obviously in love with he -- deeply passionately, Girl of His Dreams, Spend Your Life Kissing the Ground She Walks On in love.  He's obviously straight.  Straight people can have best friends, you know.

Scene 3: Nico is playing video games with his friend Fran (wait -- how many friends does this "loner" have?)..  He wants to have sex with Maria, but he is unfortunately stuck in the friend zone.  Fran dosn't believe that she really exists -- no girl could be so perfect.  So Nico offers to throw a party, and invite them both.

I'm sick of this.  I fast forward.

I come to this.

And this.

And this.

And Pol's suicide note.  "Am I in love with you?  I was afraid to tell you."

And the last scene.  

Did Nico feel guilty because Pol killed himself due to unrequited love?  Or did he feel guilty because he never told Pol that he was in love with him?  Or because his girlfriend got pregnant?  Or...

Do all gay stories have to end with coffins?

The 13 Hunks of "13 Reasons Why"

I'm not actually planning to watch 13 Reasons Why, the teen drama now starting its third year on Netflix.  I never understood the point of depressing "entertainment," and 13 Reasons is overwhelmingly dark and brutal, a cloud of gloom hanging over the hours between dinner and bedtime.

But if you don't mind "gloom, despair, and agony on end," there is also abundant beefcake, dozens of hunkoids (13 to be exact) who work out constantly, hoping that physical activity will alleviate some of their pain.

The premise: Hannah (Katherine Langford) commits suicide, and leaves behind a box of tapes at her friend's house, each a shrieking "J'accuse!" at one of the students and faculty responsible for her decision.  Flashbacks reveal all the details.  Meanwhile, Hannah's parents are suing the school for negligence.

Spoiler alert: the 13 reasons why are listed below:

1. Justin ( Brandon Flynn ) gives Hannah her first kiss, then uploads a sexy photo of her to the internet, and claims that they had sex.  She gets a "slut" reputation.

2. Next Hannah befriends the couple  Jessica and Alex (Miles Heiser).  When the two break up, Jessica blames Hannah, and spreads the rumor that she is a boyfriend-stealer.

3. Alex distributes a list of the best/worst in the school, and says that Hannah has the best butt, thus humiliating her.  There's no new hunk in this reason, so I'll add Clay (Dylan Minnette), who gets the box of tapes and is investigating the various culprits.














4. School photographer Tyler (Devin Druid) stalks Hannah, hoping to catch her in the act.  When he sees her kissing a girl named Courtney, he publishes the photograph, thus ending their friendship and giving Hannah the reputation of being a lesbian.

A lesbian slut boyfriend stealer with a nice butt.

5. Afraid of being outed (even though she has two dads), Courtney spreads a rumor about Hannah and another girl, thus...um, I guess adding to the lesbian rumor.

No new hunk in this reason, so I'll add Christian Navarro as Tony Padilla, Clay's gay best friend and co-investigator.

6. Hannah accepts a Valentine's Day date with Marcus (Steven Silver). Believing that she is a lesbian slut with a nice butt, he assumes that she will be up for sex, and tries to sexually assault her.

Steven Silver is a little stingy with beefcake photos, so instead I'll add Timothy Granaderos as Montgomery de la Cruz, a school bully.












7.  Zach (Ross Butler, top photo), one of Marcus' friends, asks Hannah for a date, no doubt assuming that sex will be included.  When she refuses, he gets revenge by removing the "positive notes" from her in-box about a writing project, leaving only negative ones and squashing her self-image.

A lesbian slut boyfriend-stealer who is no good at writing, but has a nice butt.

8. When Hannah submits some extremely personal poetry to Poetry Club  (why submit it if it's so personal?), club president Ryan (Tommy Dorfman) publishes it without her consent in the school newspaper, humiliating her and doubling the attack on her writing ability.

9. Remember Hannah's on-off friend Jessica?  She is sexually assaulted by Bryce (Justin Prentice) at a party.  Hannah sees the whole thing, but doesn't intervene.  The culprit in this reason is Jessica's boyfriend Alex, for allowing it to happen.

Not Hannah herself?  She was watching, and didn't do anything?

10. On the way home from the party, Hannah  and her friend Sherri accidentally knock over a stop sign. Hannah wants to call the police, but Sherri won't let her.  Later Jeff (Brandon Larracuente), not seeing the downed sign, goes through the intersection and is hit and killed.

The culprit this time?  You guessed it -- Sherri.

11. Clay the investigator, who has an unrequited crush on Hannah, tried to help her at the party, but she rejected him, thus leading to the downed stop sign and Jeff's death. 

He's the culprit for not trying hard enough?  This girl is doing a lot of blaming.

No new hunks in this reason, so I'll add Henry Zaga as Brad, the boyfriend of Tony (Clay's best friend).









12.  Hannah goes to another party at Bryce's house, and he rapes her.  Whoa.

Bryce was already mentioned, so let's go on to Season 2, which is mostly about the trial.  R. J. Brown plays Caleb, whom Tony (the best friend) dates.

13. Hannah tells guidance counselor Mr. Porter (Derek Luke) about being raped, but he does nothing.  J'accuse!

Derek Luke is beefcake-shy, so let's include Bryce Cass as Cyrus, who, in Season 2, starts an anti-bullying campaign with Tyler (Reason #4)

There are several gay characters, and ample beefcake, but I'm still not watching.  It sounds awful.

Chico and the Man: Anglo-Hispanic Gay Couple

There were lots of African-American characters on tv in the 1970s, but Hispanic actors continued to find themselves cast as Anglo or Italian.  Freddie Prinze was one of the first to be cast as Hispanic.  The stand-up comedian (actually half Puerto Rican, half German) entertained audiences with dialect stories and catchphrase like "Ees not my job!"  Appearances on Jack Paar and The Tonight Show led the 21-year old to a star vehicle, Chico and the Man (1974-78).

Auto garage owner Ed (Jack Albertson, Grandpa in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) is elderly, crotchety, widowed, and depressed -- until Chico (Freddie Prinze) arrives, looking for a job and a place to live.  At first the bigoted Anglo  rebuffs Chico with ethnic slurs and general nastiness -- but Chico likes Ed -- a lot -- so he keeps coming back, keeps trying, until finally, his resistance lowered, Ed allows himself to love again.  Um...I mean, the two become friends.

Who were they kidding?  They were the most obvious gay couple in 1970s tv.  All they needed was a scene of the two holding hands.

Wait, there was one.

Freddie was handsome, and obviously gifted beneath the belt, but he gave fans few shirtless shots, not even when he was interviewed for Playgirl.  

The world was shocked when the superstar, who had just signed a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract with NBC, committed suicide on January 28, 1977.  Stories appeared about depression, drug abuse, marital estrangement.

NBC bizarrely tried to continue Chico and the Man without him.  They finished up the third season with Chico "visiting his father in Mexico," and then had Ed meeting and adopting the preteen Raul (Gabriel Melgar).  But their relationship was distinctly grandfather-grandson, not boyfriend-boyfriend.

When Raul finds Chico's old guitar, and Ed explains that it belonged to someone he loved who died.  He's been widowed twice.

A tv movie about Freddie's life appeared in 1979: Can You Hear the Laughter?  The Freddie Prinze Story, starring Ira Angustain.

Blake McIver: A Gay Little Rascal Speaks Out Against Bullying

If you saw the 1993 retread of the classic Little Rascals, you probably remember Blake McIver as Waldo, who stole Darla from Alfalfa.

He also played Derek, Michelle's antagonist on three seasons of the TGIF sitcom Full House (1992-1995).

Like many child stars, especially those who are gay, Blake found the transition to adult roles difficult.  He did some voice work, such as Menlow on the Disney Channel's Recess (1997-2000), and Eugene on Nickelodeon's Hey, Arnold (2001-03).  And then the roles dried up altogether.

He was depressed, had body issues, contemplated suicide.

No reason for body issues now.  The 28-year old has been working as a semi-nude dancer at gay clubs in Los Angeles for the last year, and has made enough money to release an album.

And to spread an anti-bullying message on the internet.  He says: "I believe we must raise awareness to protect the LGBT teens who are still being physically and verbally assaulted and fear for their lives every day. We also have a responsibility to end this suicide epidemic."

Chris Gorham: Sometimes Gay, Sometimes Blind, Always an Ally

Back in 1999, the WB tried to get on the teencom bandwagon with Popular (1999-2001), about two high schoolers, the popular Brooke and the outcast Sam, who become unwilling siblings when their parents marry. It was actually more of a dramedy, with suicides and life-threatening illnesses, and some storylines of gay interest: a boy wants to become a cheerleader; their shop teacher has a "sex change"; a gay student gets harassed.  It ended on a cliffhanger, with Brooke apparently killed by her rival Nicole.

It was not very popular, but that may be because the target audience of adolescents was not home on Friday nights, but it did give us the hunky Christopher Gorham as the dying Harrison John.




Chris had already played a gay character, the "sexually confused" Elliott on Party of Five, went on to star in other gay-positive tv series: Felicity (2001-2002), Out of Practice (2005-2006), and Ugly Betty (2006-2010).

It was while playing Henry the nerdish accountant on Ugly Betty that Chris first took his shirt off on camera.  Many viewers were shocked by his buffed physique, and assumed that there was some special-effects trick going one.

This angered Chris's wife, Anel Lopez Gorham: "You've looked like this forever," she complained.  Why is it so hard to believe that he has a great physique?

Don't worry, his clothes have come off a lot since.

The Ledge (2011) is about the fundamentalist Christian Joe (Patrick Wilson), who doesn't like his wife's lover (Charlie Hunnam, left), especially the fact that he's an atheist, so he forces him onto the ledge of a high rise to see if he is still an atheist when facing death.  Chris (right) plays Gavin's roommate, whom Joe doesn't like because he's gay.

Chris is currently starring in Covert Affairs (2010-), as a blind CIA agent who takes off his shirt a lot.

He and his wife are strong supporters of marriage equality.  He explains: "We’re an inter-racial couple. It wasn’t that long ago that it was illegal for us to marry. So we’re huge supporters of the right to marry.

Alias Smith and Jones

The buddy movie is a venerable American institution, about two guys, cops, detectives, or outlaws, who may enjoy the company of the other sex but live only for each other.  But it hasn't transferred to television well.  So obsessed are tv producers with promoting heterosexual romance that only a few examples of buddy tv shows can be found.

Alias Smith and Jones (1971-73) was one.

Betting on the popularity of Butch Cassdy and the Sundance Kid the year before, Alias starred Robert Redford lookalike Ben Murphy, who had been making the rounds of tv dramas, usually in roles that required his shirt to come off.  He played Kid Curry, the muscular one.

Round-faced Pete Duel was cast as Hannibal Heyes.  He had starred as Rod Taylor's buddy-boyfriend in The Hell with Heroes (1968), and he was also been making the rounds of tv dramas, as well as doing a few comedies (such as Gidget).

Outlaws trying to go straight, they criss-cross the Old West, getting involved with people's problems along the way.  Thankfully, few of those problems involved old girlfriends or current flames, and many involved rescuing each other from cliffhanging danger.

But they only filmed 18 episodes together.  On December 31, 1971, Pete Duel, who had been depressed and drinking heavily, committed suicide.

Instead of cancelling the program or giving Kid Curry a new buddy to work with, the network immediately hired Roger Davis, previously Vickie's boyfriend on Dark Shadows,  as Hannibal #2.  Gay fans were outraged -- how could they replace a boyfriend so cavalierly?

But the program managed to keep going on through the end of the 1971-72 season and halfway through the 1972-73 before being cancelled.