Fame! Adulation! A mention in another blog!

... very random but very cool. My piece on that god-awful Shirley Jones show got
quoted on The Stage website

Stepping out of the Glass Closet

I always feel a little conflicted when a major celebrity finally comes out after years of speculation, especially when their career is on the slide or they have a memoir to advertise. I mean, on the one hand, more visibility is always great. Their story will help to inspire others and they usually become excellent ambassadors (at least in the short term).

Yet there is also the sense that it might have meant a hell of a lot more when the celebrity was at their height of their success. That's what makes Ellen DeGeneres and Neil Patrick Harris so important. Both celebrities came out when they were already well known performers but have parlayed that into even greater subsequent success. They are important symbols against the idea that being gay inherently limits your career options.

I am genuinely happy for Ricky Martin, who has finally announced that he is “proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am”. His letter is sweet, if at times reads like a 90s era Diane Warren ballad (example; “Today is my day, this is my time, and this is my moment.” – just imagine the swelling strings as Celine belts that one out). But he makes clear in the letter that this was as the result of him writing his autobiography. The 'revelation' will generate headlines and publicity in a way which will no doubt guarantee a large amount of media interest when the book is released as well as a raft of media appearances. I can also imagine the long line of gay rights groups who will only be too eager to bask in this reflected light by giving Martin some kind of award (Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD and Stonewall leap immediately to mind).

One of the things I hear in switchboard all the time is then pain, fear and horror that closeted people have about coming out. Their view of it is as a traumatic, public declaration which leaves them exposed and vulnerable to attacks from all corners. In some respects, high profile coming out announcements merely reinforce this by underlying a similar ‘all or nothing’ approach. It's one of the reasons I continue to admire the ‘coming out’ scene in one of the early episodes of Glee. Its simply understatement was exactly the type of message which should be sent out to people who are struggling with similar issues.

Is it hypocritical of me to admire the coming out of Donal Og and Gareth Thomas but to feel conflicted about Martin simply because of the respective industries that they work for? Because Martin was a performer, I should expect him to be more open? Looking back on some of his videos, it’s hard not to get the impression that the lady doth protest too much, and yet this is what is expected in pop music.

Gah... I don’t have an answer to this. I’m sure Martin will do well commercially out of this, and I truly hope it does give him personal peace and happiness. I just wish it would lead to some truly high profile and relevant stars also taking the plunge.

So as a thank you to Mr Martin for finally putting to bed all those rumours, here is the Grammy performance which re-launched him as a pop star in the English speaking world. Though I prefer La Vida Loca, this is one of those moments where you can see a pop star being born.


Ricky Martin - The Cup Of Life (Live Grammy Music Awards)
Uploaded by zocomoro. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

And as an added gay extra, here is Martin and Queen Kylie singing La Vida Loca

I kinda Love You Phillip Morris

Its taken me a while to get my head around I Love You Phillip Morris (ILYPM). The film tries to be so many different things during its fairly brief running time that I imagine reactions are going to be all over the place. This is obviously intentional on the part of the filmmakers and I think its a mark of their skill that they largely keep control of the tone and pace throughout.

ILYPM is a love story. And a prison movie. And a con movie, And an outrageous John Waters-esque comedy, And defiantly, sleazily, gloriously gay. It's also, quite implausibly, based on true events. Getting any one of those elements drastically wrong would have destroyed the picture. And yet the directors maintain a level of sustained anarchy which never becomes wearying. And though some elements work better than others, it feels stylistically coherent which is something of a minor miracle.

In a lot of respects, tonally, it reminds me of Precious. One of the issues that some people had with Precious was its lurches from genre to genre. I admit this is a problem, I also had with the film. I think ILYPM navigates its tonal changes with more confidence but never hits the formidable dramatic heights of Precious. This isn't necessarily a criticism. Mo'Nique's final monologue is a masterclass and one of the finest scenes in the last decade. In ILYPM, I wonder how viewers will react to the change in tone which happens in the third act. I loved the first hour. It was hilarious, casually disreputable and filled with clever moments. It also has moments of surprising tenderness woven through. There is a fantastic moment not long after Carry and McGregor first meet when they dance together in their cell while their neighbour is violently restrained by guards. It balances romanticism and slapstick with real skill. The third act takes a hard, brutal turn and I wonder how many viewers will be able to take that final stretch. I respect the hell out of the filmmakers for pushing it as far as they did.

This is a film in which the level the actors pitch their work is as important as the more technical elements. I have slightly mixed feelings about Ewan McGregor. He uses the same southern accent as he had in Big Fish and it just sounds phony. I don't buy it for a moment. He's very good in the last half hour but for me, his accent is a barrier to those early crucial scenes where he develops his relationship with Jim Carrey. Carrey, on the other hand, gives another one of those performances which periodically remind us what a fearless, gifted actor he can be, He invests everything into this role and carries off the different emotional states of his character with real skill. He risks a lot more with this role then he did with Eternal Sunshine or Truman Show,. ILYPM demands that he use his wackier, mainstream persona and then twist and complicate it in unexpected and quite brilliant ways. There is nothing genteel or tortured about Carrey's homosexuality in this film. It is out, loud, proud and I can't think of another actor at his level who would risk doing it.

The supporting cast is great including the peerless Leslie Mann. Mann should have been Oscar nominated for Knocked Up (along with Paul Rudd). Here, she is effortlessly funny and sympathetic as Carrey's fundamentalist ex-wife.

I am shocked in some respects that this film got made. Shocked yet delighted. O could imagine that some of my gay friends will have a problem with it. But there is something refreshingly mental about the whole project which gives a genuine sense of originality and artistic anarchy into the mainstream. ILYPM isn't perfect but it throws a medium sized cherry bomb into what is acceptable in a cineplex and more importantly, what a major Hollywood star will be prepared to do.

Kudos

Theater Hell

Its instructive every so often to see a show that is an epic fail. I’m not talking about one which is just boring or ill-conceived. I’m talking about one which fails so monumentally that it achieves a sort of perfection which can leave you awestruck. I had the privilege last night of witnessing a true musical theatre holocaust in Shirley Jones’ show at the Arts Theatre.

Jones is a bona fide pop cultural artifact. Broadway star, Oscar winner and the onscreen and real life mother of David Cassidy in the Partridge family. Patrick is her son who has parlayed a helmet of hair, name recognition and a passable voice into some kind of musicals career. Now 76, I presume Jones can plausibly claim to have passed into ‘living legend’ status but its really more of a horror show than a legend.

Firstly, there is no doubt that Jones, at some point had a gorgeous bell of a voice. The clip package which proceeded her entrance hit all the highlights of her formidable career (including the lowlights of singing at Regan’s inauguration). But from her opening mauling of Tonight it became clear that her voice is, charitably, not what it once was. She could just about belt out the big notes but there was not a jot of nuance or grace in any of her numbers. I was sort of reminded of a story from Meryl Seacrests biography on Sondheim. During the rehearsals on Gypsy, he learned that Jerome Robbins controlled the intensity of Ethel Merman’s singing by simply telling her to say “louder” or “quieter”. I get the impression that this is about the level of Jones’ own interpretation.

All of this is even before we get to the banter. Oh my... the banter. Painfully scripted and delivered with about as much conviction as a take-away food order, Jones never for once gave the impression that she had actually lived through any of her anecdotes. There was a sort of plastic fantastic veneer through which she communicated to the audience that had everything sounding canned or condescending. As my friend wisely said, Americans have difficulty with humble. Jones couldn’;t help coming off as deeply self-satisfied. When you add the lapses into nasty Republicanism and silly nostalgia, you have a uniquely awful performance.

Yet that wasn’t even the worst part of the might. Because there was Patrick Cassidy. Imagine a televangelist, or an Amway salesman, a man who is a terrifying shade of orange and possesses the type of perfectly coiffed hair that looks like it could be snapped off like a Lego man. That is Patrick Cassidy. Patrick wishes you to take two very important lessons from his part of the show;
1) That he is in no way jealous of the success of his more famous family members. Not in the slightest. He repeats this so often and with such a strained smile that I can only explain it as some kind of mantra that was beaten into him as a child.
2) He is a full blooded heterosexual. He is as straight as they come. He is straight squared. No, make that straight cubed. He loves women so much that he is practically a lesbian. And all his brothers are too! They are just a gaggle of women-fuckers. Why do I get the impression there is a whole history of National Enquirer innuendo here that I am not getting.

Anyway, for somebody who is supposed to be a long running Broadway performer, Patrick has a deeply unlikeable stage presence, the comic timing of my dead nan and a voice which at times searches desperately for the right pitch. His version of Being Alive will haunt me forever. On the other hand, his duet with a paper cut-out of David Cassidy’s head will provide me with joyful memories for years to come.

Yet despite all this, I am super-glad that I saw the show. I now have a benchmark to measure how shit a night at the theatre can actually be. But I was never bored. In fact the whole thing was vastly entertaining, and I have to award their persistence in mining ever lower levels of the barrel throughout the night. Shirley and Patrick, thank you. I will never forget it.

QAFUK versus QAFUS

I’ve been oddly compelled to watch the entire first season of the American Queer as Folk. I say oddly compelled because the show demonstrates just how badly the original Queer as Folk could have gone.

The US version starts off as an almost perfect carbon copy of the UK version. The same characters, relationships, even the same plotlines. But that's really where the similarities end. Russell T Davies’ show is a great drama which uses the trappings of soap opera to examine some very real relationships and emotions. It has a specific narrative and dramatic focus and an in-depth appreciation and knowledge of all its characters which gives the series its power.

The US Queer as Folk, meanwhile is all soap opera. A gay soap opera that feels like it was written by straight people. In just a few episodes it managed to take everything that was subtle and complex about the original characters and flatten them into silly stereotypes. During the commentary for the second season of Queer as Folk UK (hereafter referred to as QAFUK), Russel; T Davies talks about being commissioned to write 10 extra episodes of QAFUK . He sat down to write them and realised that he couldn’t come up with anything that didn't feel like a soap opera. The story he wanted to tell was about the triangle between Stuart, Vince and Nathan. In two episodes he wrapped it up. Queer as Folk US (hereafter QAFUS) gives a terrifying glimpse into what the show could have become.

Lets take the character of Justin, which is the US version of Nathan. First of all, his age has been increased from 15 to 17. This has several knock on effects. For one, it allows the writers to edge into making him more mature, thus making his relationship with Stuart/Brian much more palatable. It also allows the writers to turn them into a semi-believable couple (after all, there is only about 10 years between them in this new version) and the purposeful maturing of Justin actually turns him into the stronger one of the two. Not only is Justin pretty, but he is SUPER intelligent, and SUPER political and just plain SUPER! He saves Brian from sexual harassment. He sets of a Gay-Straight Alliance in School. He gets into an Ivy League school. Contrast that with Nathan in QAFUK. 15, a walking hormone, not too bright, but not too stupid, just figuring out how to use his body to manipulate and completely in lust with Stuart. The character is so much richer and more interesting, his blunt inarticulateness a major part of his charm. This is even reflected in the differing styles of actors – Randy Harrison is poised, polished and far too knowing. Charlie Hunnam is rougher, less skilled but his teenage directness is perfect for the character and he actually handles some of the subtler stuff with a m,uch more natural grace.

Or lets look at the character of Debbie/Hazel, the fag-hag mother of Michael/Vince. In QAFUK, Hazel is a vibrant, three-dimensional character, brilliantly played by Denise Black. She is broad, stereotypical, and hovers dangerously close to parody at times. But she is also the bright, beating soul of the show. She’s too far down to earth to offer platitudes, and her performance during the after-party scene with Aiden Gillen is a beauty. Contrast that with Debbie, as played by Cagney and Lacey legend Sharon Gless. Not only is she rotten in the role, over-playing it in every way that Black knew to underplay, but the character has been re-concieved as the Font of Wisdom and its a role that routinely kills both the drama and comedy.

QUAFUS obviously wants to be a gay Sex and the City. It has a very similar glossy aesthetic, which feels plastic and fake after the much grittier gloss of the original. But we already had a gay Sex and the City – it was called Sex and the City and despite the four females in the lead, it was about as brilliant a gay sitcom (with far more developed dramatic beats) as you could have asked for. QUAFUK worked because it told a pretty universal emotional story through the prism of its gay characters. QUAFUS is much more interested in the trappings of modern gay life and less interested in how these trappings are seen by gay people. Thats why I thought it felt like a gay drama written by straight people. Its obsessed with what makes gay people different but examines them in the least subtle way.

The perfect example of this is how the issue of HIV and sexual health is handled. In QUAFUK it's in the background, just a general part of the character’s lives without it having to be made a big deal. QUAFUS has to make a big deal of it from the first episode, and repeatedly afterwards. It has a pretty shitty view of HIV issues, which is dealt with in an episode which borders on the offensive.

So does anything work? Well, the men are much hotter, in that very plastic American way. It doesn’t shy away from being explicit which I am glad to see (you definitely see more and more varied flesh in this show). The attempt to develop Lyndsey and Melanie as a couple are welcome (if as ham fisted as everything in the show). Despite the show having a much more arch and sitcommy dialogue, it can be very funny. And Peter Paige is a delight throughout as the ‘camper’ of the friends.

But despite this, the show just isn’t very good. Brian and Michael are pale, flat imitations of Stuart and Vince. The writers lack all of the individuality, warmth and skill that Davies brought to QAFUK. And yet here I am, 17 episodes in and still watching.

Update OK, I forgive QAFUS a little because it just had a scene with Emmet that was a beautiful piss-take on the first meeting in the school dance between Tony and Maria in West Side Story. Hilarious. In fact, the more surreal moments with Emmet work really well (such as the episode where he was stalked by his online profile) and the show might be stronger if it followed those instincts more oftenm

Alice in Blunderland

I am a defender of Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. With the exception of the Oompah Loompahs, I think the film is superior in almost every way to the Gene Wilder version. The design work is marvellous, the script is darkler, funnier and more inventive, yet still emboduies the spirit of Dahl’s story better then the original film. And the acting, from the entire cast is just note perfect, including a fantastic, very specific performance from Depp that I think is one of his strongest.

This is a slight preamble to say that I was pre-disposed to liking Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. It seemed like a good fit for all involved and my interest went up several fold when I heard that this wasn’t a straight re-tread of the book but was something of a sequel/reimagining of the original material. I have had Frank Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars sitting on my shelf unread for about three years and this seemed like an equally interesting take on Carroll’s brilliant story. Although I wasn’t all that enthused by some of the design which had been released, I still held out hope.

Well, I was spectacularly wrong.

This is an example of a film in which almost every single artistic decision was a mistake. This script is an appalling piece of wanky fantasy hog-wash. It completely misses the charm and intelligence of the original Alice material, and instead turns it into another ‘Prophesised Hero’ storyline that is almost completely at odds with the spirit of the original books. I could, perhaps, have forgiven this blundering plunder of such a wonderful source material if Linda Wioolverton had managed to craft something witty or exciting. But her writing is spectacularly incompetent, layering ridiculous plot contrivances on top of pathetic dialogue and completely inept attempts at characterisation. The film is nothing but a re-hash of Hook, and as despised as that film is, it at least shows a glimmer of understanding about what makes the original Pan stories work. Compare Alice to PJ Hogan's magnificent Peter Pan from 2003 for an example of just how to get this type of complex material to work.

I’m not going to rabbit on about this too much. Of the actors, only Helena Bonham Carter really registers (and Johnny Depp in particular is terrible – a career nadir for him in which he doesn’t seem to have a single interesting moment in the entire film). The design is ugly and squalid and the finale pathetically undercooked. It’s the worst film I have seen in a long time and I would politely suggest thast Burton take a break from directing for a while because it seems clear that he needs to refresh his obsessions.