Angels in America: Tearjerker about AIDS, Mormon angels, and some 1950s guy. With dicks and butts o keep you going

 

Link to the dicks and butts

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, won numerous awards during its run at the Mark Taper Forum and then on Broadway.  I saw it in 1997.  Well, the first 300 hours, anyway -- it's divided into two parts, Millenial Approaches and Perestroika, each requiring superhuman endurance and thinking about butts and cocks to sit through.  

Very, very depressing: people dying have never been my idea of entertainment, and this dude is dying of AIDS, very slowly, with all of the symptoms displayed in graphic detail.  Meanwhile he thinks he's a Mormon prophet and turns straight, having sex with a female angel with multiple breasts and vaginas, and this guy named Roy Cohn is dying of AIDS, too, and an elderly lady in a 1950s outfit is comforting him although she hates him.

Are we supposed to recognize these people?

Plus the names are bizarre and off-putting, and you never know what's really happening and what's an AIDS fever dream, and people are dying.  Help!

Ok, very slowly, let's try to get this through mishmash of obscure history, with illustrations of actors from the tv miniseries that appeared in 2003:

Part 1: Millenial Approaches. Not the year 2000, the 1000 year reign of Christ on Earth.

1. New York, of course, in the 1980s. the Jewish Louis, played by Ben Shenkman, discovers that his Mormon boyfriend Prior -- prior to what? --  has AIDS, and dumps him.

Prior is played by Justin Kirk, top two photo.  He will have delusions of becoming a Mormon prophet.

2. Prior is comforted in the hospital by an ex-drag queen nurse named Belize.

3. Meanwhile, Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson, butt and dick left), conservative Republican Mormon politician in Boyfriend Louis's office, becomes interested in him, which causes friction with his crazy wife and conservative mother, and causes him to dream about meeting Prophet Prior. 

Republican Joe comes out to his mom, who travels to New York to coddle him, and to his wife, who flees from the house and believes that she is in Antartica.  Then he starts dating Boyfriend Louis.

4. Joe's boss is Roy Cohn.  Yes, that Roy Cohn, played by Al Pacino.  I had never heard of him at the time, but he was one of the instigators of the Red Scare in the 1950s.  He was gay in real life, but closeted and homophobic. 

In the play, Roy claims that he is dying of liver cancer, but actually it's AIDS.  

The elderly lady who is comforting him, although she hates him, is Ethel Rosenberg.  In 1953, Roy prosecuted Ethel and her husband Julius as Soviet spies, and got them the death penalty.  They were widely presumed innocent, being railroaded because they were Jewish. 

5. Prophet Prior has a lot of disturbing fever dreams: he meets his ancestors, also named Prior,  and a Mormon angel with several breasts and vaginas, who has sex with him and tells him to prepare for the Great Work.

Left: Simon Callow, one of the prior Priors

The first play ends there.  Sort of a cliff hanger, innit?

Perestroika after the break

Ryan Pinkston: Hottest of the Short Guy Brigade, martial artist, teen jerk, gigolo, gay cop. With costar dicks

Link to the dicks

I've never been interested in tall guys; I like them short, the shorter the better, and in the 2000s, the 5'4" Ryan Pinkston was one of the hottest of the Short Guy Brigade

Born in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington DC, Ryan got his start in martial arts: he received his black belt in Wushu Kung Fu at age nine and went on to championships in karate, kung fu, and tae kwan do.

An interview on the Jenny Jones talk show landed him an agent, and within a month he had roles in Spy Kids: 3D (2003) and Bad Santa (2003), and he was helping Austin Kutcher play celebrity pranks on Punked.

But there was a problem.  Although handsome, muscular -- and short -- Ryan was typecast as an aggressive wise guy, basically a jerk. So that's the sort of role he received

In 2004, the 16-year old got his own tv series, Quintuplets, about teenage quintuplets with conflicting personalities.  His Patton was pushy and aggressive; brother Parker (Jake McDorman, left) was the athlete, and Pearce (Johnny K. Lewis, below) was the nerd, who actually danced with another boy in a "prom" episode.

Johnny K. Lewis is nude on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Next came the boorish Felch in Revenge of the Nerds (2006), chronic liar Sam Leonard in Full of It (2007), and Fletcher in the homophobic College (2008), which paradoxically offered an extensive homoerotic subtext.

Ryan's guest spots on the teencoms Out of Jimmy's Head and Hannah Montana were a little better, jerks with a soft, sensitive side.

But then he hit the bottom of the barrel: teen sex comedies. Foreign Exchange (2008), Extreme Movie (2008) with Frankie Muniz, Adventures in Online Dating (2009).

At least he had no problem with shirtless, shower, swimsuit, and semi-nude shots, although he drew the line at nudity.  And he was fine with rolling around with other guys naked.  Teens could sigh over the homoerotic subtexts even if they didn't like his characters.
 
But then, in 2010, something remarkable happened: a complete turnaround.  Ryan's characters changed from jerks to nice guys, and coincidentally some buddy-bonding was added to the girl-crazy schtick.

Boy Band (2010): in 1982, his Greg buddy-bonds with Brad (Michael Copon) to form the first boy band in history.

Tower Prep (2010), about a school for kids with paranormal powers: his Gabe has a crush on Ian Archer (Drew Van Acker).

Cougars, Inc. (2011): his Jimmy and best friend Sam (Kyle Gallner) can't afford college tuition, so start an escort service pairing older women with teenage boys.  Hey, is that legal? Of course, they get in on the action, too.  We get a nice shot of Ryan's butt as the camera lingers on his supine body, but this only nudity in any movie.

Frontal nudity after the break

"Young Rock" Episode 2.12: Dwayne calls out a bully, works on his bluster, and offends his boyfr.... With bonus Crane cock

 

Link to the nude photos

 Young Rock (2021-23), about the early years of "The Rock," Dwayne Johnson,is one of my favorite comedies: an insider view of the 1990s pro wrestling subculture, a deliberate gay subtext between the modern-day Rock and his boyfr...best friend Randall Park, a near-absence of heterosexual romance, and endless vistas of locker room beefcake.  I reviewed "You Gotta Get Down to Get Up," Episode 2.12 of Young Rock, because it stars two of my favorite actors from the old days, Sean Astin and Ryan Pinkston.

Scene 1: Randall is upset because Dwayne didn't invite him to lunch with his best friend Forest Whitaker. They're boyfr....buddies.  Shouldn't he be invited by default?  Besides, it's only 24 hours until the presidential election; shouldn't Dwayne be out there, campaigning in battleground states?  

No, Dwayne says, he always goes his own way.  A story to illustrate:

Scene 2: In 1996, Dwayne is getting some wrestling experience in Memphis, living with his buddy Downtown Bruno, Ryan Pinkston, in a decrepit trailer with no ceiling.

Bruno is down on his luck.  He moved from playing a heel, Dr. Harvey Winkelman, to managing heels, but now he is just a referee for Jerry "The King" Lawler, Michael Strassner.

Strassner cock on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

They discuss his ring name.  Since his dad was Rocky, maybe Rocky Junior?  His family suggests Little Chief, his friends the Wild Half-Samoan.

Scene 3: In the locker room, Dwayne has been booked on a tag team, but they still need his name. He says "Flex Kavana."  

Back in 2034, Randall is surprised that it wasn't the Rock right away. No, Flex, because he's muscular, and Kavana, because it sounds Polynesian.

His tag team partner, Brian Lawler, played by Marcus Molyneaux, approaches. They knew each other as kids: Brian used to set up rings for Dwayne's Dad.  He's hot now,  so his ring name is Too Sexy Brian.    

They film one of those bragging promos, but Dwayne flub it by saying "We're naughty by nature but violent by decision."

More after the break. 

Kaos: Scheming royals...I mean modern-day Greek gods, some queer, some Daddies, some both

  

Greek gods and demigods are usually heterosexualized in modern texts, but in the original myths they were all queer, having sex with any being who caught their eye, and even pursuing an occasional same-sex romance.  Kaos, on Netflix, imagines a world where the gods are still active and involved in human affairs, like a royal family with the power to turn humans into artichokes.  Let's see how well their queer past holds up.

Scene 1: Prometheus (Stephen Dillane, above), the one who gets his liver eaten every day, narrates as we zoom in on Mount Olympus: "Power can give a man many things. Taste is rarely one of them." Zeus, Jeff Goldberg, struts Hugh Heffner-like through his gold-and-white mansion, sits on his throne, and invites mortals to worship him on Olympia Day.  But you shouldn't: "He's a transcendent, unmitigated bastard." 

Prometheus has a plan to bring him down, involving three mortals and a prophecy.

Scene 2: Modern-day Heraklion, Crete, except they're still worshipping the Greek gods, or at least keeping track of their scandals.  The first mortal is Eurydice, or Riddy, who isn't interested in politics. 

Cut to Riddy at the supermarket, looking at boxes of Spartan Crunch, Gaia's Granola, and Achilles' Heels, har har.  A woman tries to pick her up, but she deflects her by mentioning a husband.  

Check-out counter: on tv, an announcement of Olympia Day.  She buys a pomegranate, har har.  Look it up.

Outside, the woman who tried to pick her up is being manhandled by security for stealing cat food. Riddy intervenes.

"Nobody believes me," the woman says, "But it all comes true.  I told them about the horse..."  OMG, this is Cassandra!  Look it up.  She tells Riddy, "Today's the day you leave your husband.  Your love is dead."

Scene 3: Up on Olympus, Zeus is producing lightning and thunder.  His wife Hera arrives, and he shows her the Meander, a fountain where the water flows in circular pattern in mid-air.  He will reign as long as it runs.  He noticed a blip in it.  She thinks he's being ridiculous.  He asks "Where's our son, by the way."

Cut to the son, Dionysus, Nabhaan Rizwan, "god of pleasure, madness, and wild frenzy," dancing and carousing at a nightclub, smooching with men and women both, getting a blow job from a lady, then leaving, depressed.  He tells the falafel guy that he works for his dad, "but he doesn't take me seriously."  So sons have complained since...um...ancient Greek times.  He wants to do more for people than just dance and have sex.

Dillane's cock and Nabhaan's butt are on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends 

He zooms up to Mount Olympus for an uncomfortable breakfast.  Hera sneers "Would you like some honey?", har har.  Look it up.

Dionysus gives his Dad an Olympia Day present: a watch, because "time together is precious."  Zeus is not impressed: "nope, ugly."  He summons his ball boy to dispose of it.  A ball boy to fetch tennis balls, not a sex partner.

It's the wrong time to ask for a promotion, but Dionysus tries anyway: "Make me the god of love, or war, or anything with influence."

Nope.  He gets all bratty, so Zeus uses his god powers to pound his head into the table.  "Where did I go wrong?" he asks Hera.  None of his kids come to visit him.

Down on Earth, they're about to unveil the Olympia Monument.  Uh-oh, it's been stolen, replaced by the graffiti: "F*k the gods"!  

Zeus goes all Spirit of Vengeance.  "Who has desecrated the gods?  Who has blasphemed against me?   I am going to wipe them off the face of the Earth."

No, he isn't, Hera suggests.  Kings delegate power.  Call  Poseidon (Cliff Curtis, left).

Scene 4: Riddy drives home, to where her husband, Killian Scott, is playing his guitar and thinking about how much he dislikes her.  Wait -- he's Orpheus.  They're the stars in like the greatest heterosexual love story of all time!  And their love is dead, har har.   They certainly joke, frolic, and kiss like they're still in love. 

Back story: Orpheus is a famous singer.  But you knew that already, right?

The problem: he's too needy.  He forced her to model for the cover of his new album, and his latest song is entitled "Eurydice." 

Prometheus: "There's nothing quite like the loneliness of someone you're falling out of love with."

They do some sloppy smooching and hit the bed, Orpheus with his shirt off, Eurydice with her bottom showing, but they're interrupted by Calliope, the Muse of Music, evidently his agent, picking him up for rehearsal.

I'm out of space, but I read ahead to see about the fates of the LGBTQ characters. After the break