News Roundup
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glee_fansFirst, an op-ed about gay actors playing straight characters.
The reviews for the Broadway revival of Promises, Promises were negative enough, even though most of the critics ignored the real problem—the big pink elephant in the room. The leading man of this musical-romantic comedy is supposed to be a single advertising peon named Chuck who is madly in love with a co-worker (Kristin Chenoweth). When the play opened on Broadway in 1968, Jerry Orbach, an actor with enough macho swagger to later fuel years and years of Law and Order, was the star. The revival hands the lead over to Sean Hayes, best known as the queeny Jack on Will & Grace. Hayes is among Hollywood's best verbal slapstickers, but his sexual orientation is part of who he is, and also part of his charm. (The fact that he only came out of the closet just before Promises was another one of those Ricky Martin-duh moments.) But frankly, it's weird seeing Hayes play straight. He comes off as wooden and insincere, like he's trying to hide something, which of course he is. Even the play's most hilarious scene, when Chuck tries to pick up a drunk woman at a bar, devolves into unintentional camp. Is it funny because of all the '60s-era one-liners, or because the woman is so drunk (and clueless) that she agrees to go home with a guy we all know is gay?
This is no laughing matter, however. For decades, Hollywood has kept gay actors—Tab Hunter, Van Johnson, Anthony Perkins, Rock Hudson, etc.—in the closet, to their own personal detriment. The fear was, if people knew your sexual orientation, you could never work again. Thankfully, this seems ridiculous in the era of Portia de Rossi and Neil Patrick Harris. But the truth is, openly gay actors still have reason to be scared. While it's OK for straight actors to play gay (as Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger did in Brokeback Mountain), it's rare for someone to pull off the trick in reverse. De Rossi and Harris do that on TV, but they also inhabit broad caricatures, not realistic characters likes the ones in Up in the Air or even The Proposal. Last year, Rupert Everett caused a ruckus when he told the Guardian that gay actors should stay in the closet. "The fact is," he said, "that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the ... film business." Is he just bitter or honest? Maybe both.
Most actors would tell you that the biographical details of their lives are beside the point. Except when they're not. As viewers, we are molded by a society obsessed with dissecting sexuality, starting with the locker-room torture in junior high school. Which is why it's a little hard to know what to make of the latest fabulous player to join Glee: Jonathan Groff, the openly gay Broadway star. In Spring Awakening, he showed us that he was a knockout singer and a heartthrob. But on TV, as the shifty glee captain from another school who steals Rachel's heart, there's something about his performance that feels off. In half his scenes, he scowls—is that a substitute for being straight? When he smiles or giggles, he seems more like your average theater queen, a better romantic match for Kurt than Rachel. It doesn't help that he tried to bed his girlfriend while singing (and writhing to) Madonna's Like a Virgin. He is so distracting, I'm starting to wonder if Groff's character on the show is supposed to be secretly gay.
This is admittedly a complicated issue for the gay community, though it is not, in fact, a uniquely gay problem. In the 1950s, the idea of "color-blind casting" became a reality, and the result is that today there's nothing to stop Denzel Washington from playing the Walter Matthau role in the remake of The Taking of the Pelham 1-2-3. Jack Nicholson, by the force of his charm, makes you forget how he's entirely too old to win Helen Hunt's heart in As Good As It Gets. For gay actors, why should sexual orientation limit a gay actor's choice of roles? The fact is, an actor's background does affect how we see his or her performance—which is why the Tom Hankses and Denzels of the world guard their privacy carefully.
It's not just a problem for someone like Hayes, who even tips off your grandmother's gaydar. For all the beefy bravado that Rock Hudson projects on-screen, Pillow Talk dissolves into a farce when you know the likes of his true bedmates. (Just rewatch the scene where he's wading around in a bubble bath by himself.) Lesbian actresses might have it easier—since straight men think it's OK for them to kiss a girl and like it—but how many of them can you name? Cynthia Nixon was married to a man when she originated Miranda on Sex and the City. Kelly McGillis was straight when she steamed up Top Gun's sheets, and Anne Heche went back to dating men (including her Men in Trees costar). If an actor of the stature of George Clooney came out of the closet tomorrow, would we still accept him as a heterosexual leading man? It's hard to say. Or maybe not. Doesn't it mean something that no openly gay actor like that exists?
Source, thankskarenknismesis for the link
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Some spoilers.
Question: I’ve heard rumors of a Cheerio-on-Cheerio (a.k.a. Brittany and Santana) kiss on Glee. Care to elaborate? —Briana
Ausiello: There’s definitely some C&C action on the horizon that involves mouths, lips, and tongues: In next week’s episode Santana and Mercedes have a duet!
Question: Any good Will and Emma scoop for Glee? —Jess
Ausiello: No news on the Will/Emma front — good or bad. I hear their relationship doesn’t get a lot of play in this season’s final episodes. Which I find odd.
Source
--
Whether making hilarious passive-aggressive digs at diva Rachel or asking love interest Tina if she wants to “get up on this,” Kevin McHale’s Artie — a skinny nerd with the heart of LL Cool J — gains more fans each week on Glee. It’s well known at this point that, in real life, McHale isn’t in a wheelchair, spent some time in boy band NLT, and is quite the stylish dude. But fresh off of filming the season-one finale, the 21-year old actor gave Vulture some further insight into his life on and off Glee, and gamely answered some commenter questions, too. Yes, everyone — he’ll be rapping soon.
Everyone seems to have a unique coming-to-Glee story — what’s yours?
I had been acting for a while, but I was also involved in a boy band. I would do parts when I could — I did a True Blood while I was in the boy band — but you know, that fizzled out. It was the struggling artist kind of thing, where if I hadn’t gotten Glee, I think I would literally have run out of money that month. The timing was insane, because it was just weeks after the [band] split up — we were going through all this drama over stupid stuff — and then I go and audition for something, and I hadn’t been auditioning for awhile, and lo and behold here I am.
You must tell us about your time in NLT.
We sang pop kind of stuff; it was a very different image than being in a sweater vest and wheelchair. I was 14, and when you’re that young, no one really wants to sign you, so not until I was 17 did we have an actual album. But, no, we weren’t that popular. We had crazy fans, but a very small amount.
It seems like some character concepts for the show changed when the creators saw you guys audition. What did you know of Artie when you auditioned?
I knew he was in a wheelchair and that he had a good heart, and that was basically it — a nice guy who’s paralyzed. I just kind of made him more nerdy. Before Glee, I always just wore my contacts, but I happened to have my glasses on right before the audition, so I was like, “Huh. Maybe I should just wear these.” And they kind of changed everything; the nerdy, nervous, talking-fast Artie came out.
Commenter RopeRunner actually is a big fan of your glasses, and wanted to know if you had them before the show or if they came with the Artie persona.
They’re definitely mine. Until January, I was still wearing Artie’s glasses as my own, but at that point I was like, “Okay, these have become Artie’s glasses. I have to get my own.” So I finally got new glasses.
Artie seems to fancy himself a bit of a funk soul brother. Was that your input?
Definitely him being a little more ghetto at times is from me. I do it joking around, but yeah. It’s pretty funny, because I feel like Artie has no “medium” — he’s either super nerdy or ghetto as hell. I tried to play the medium between them, but I don’t know, I guess it’s some repressed gene for me to be that ghetto sometimes.
Artie has had some classic little blink-and-you-miss-'em moments in the big numbers, like holding up the "Jump" sign during "Jump," and the little hand wave during "Beautiful." Where do those come from?
The “Jump” sign wasn’t originally in the script. Right before we started the first take, I went up to Elodie, the director — 'cause I wasn’t doing anything the entire number, and I was like, “Can I just hold a sign that says ‘Jump’ on it?” And she was like, “Huh, try it and see.” So one of the ADs drew it up real quick with permanent marker, and it stuck, 'cause it was just so ridiculous. And in “Beautiful,” I’ve been doing that since “Golddigger.” Ryan [Murphy] saw me doing it in the studio when Amber was recording, and he was like, “Put that in.” There’s a number coming up where I do it and it’s so uncalled for — we’re doing like, a rock ballad, and I’m doing this soul into-it wave. We always do stuff to make each other laugh in the scene, and Ryan wanted me to do it, but it was also kind of for Naya [Rivera] — she was making me laugh, and I was like, watch this thing. This week’s episode, I think all of our inside jokes are caught on camera — every embarrassing dorky thing I do made it in.
We heard this is a big week for Artie …
I definitely get into the more ghetto part of Artie — I do a rap song. And it’s a really fun episode — we just did two kind of crazy episodes, Madonna and then “Home,” which was really serious, and this one’s kind of in between; it’s more satirical. It’s a huge difference in feel from what we’ve done before.
There’s been a lot of grumbling lately that the secondary characters — specifically Artie and Tina — aren't getting enough screen time. Will we see more of you soon?
I mean, I always want focus on us! No, you know what, you’ll definitely see more of us coming up, even more than this week’s episode, in the coming weeks there’s a lot more. But we all kind of get our turn, and I think that’s the beauty of it. It’s cyclical, and everybody gets an opportunity to do stuff.
You just finished filming the finale. What should we most look forward to?
Well, the Vocal Adrenaline performance is going to be brilliant, absolutely insane, and I can’t wait to see it — I only got to see a few seconds of it, so that’s what I’m most looking forward to. Well, that and, um … the baby [laughs]. I’m excited to see the baby. It seems like [Quinn] got pregnant so long ago. In realistic terms, the pregnancy was about twelve months. Give it time, the baby grows. The baby grows quickly right before it’s born! [Laughs.]
LopezLopez seems to think you must have major biceps from all your wheeling. Do you have great wheel skills at this point?
Oh, right. Two very different things. My wheeling skills are pretty good, my biceps are not. The thing is, I’m pushing myself around on a flat, flat surface on the stages, and I’m very light, and the chair’s very light, so I’m not really pushing around anything. If I had to actually do any work, going uphill, that might change things, but I’m still weak as ever.
Chadams notes that Wizard Magazine recently said that you should be the next Spider-Man, and would like to know if anyone is working on making that awesome idea happen for you.
Well, hell yeah. I’d love to be Spider-Man, but one, it doesn’t fit into the Glee schedule [laughs]. I’m sure, and I’m not sure how far along in the process they are, but no one’s asked me about it. So, we’ll see! I did hear about this on the Internet, but I think they just took all the nerds from TV who looked like they could be Spider-Man. I’m like, nobody knows who I am! I’m incredibly self-deprecating.
MrsChuckBass echoes the thoughts of many of us: Is there any chance of an Artie/Other Asian duet? She, and we, feel this would be magical.
Well, there’s not a duet coming up — there’s something he’s involved in with me … I can’t say anything about it yet, it’s not something we’ve ever done before. But there is something coming up. But I would do anything with him; he’s a genius. You know, it would be fun to do a Michael Jackson thing. I’m obsessed with Michael Jackson, and he does an amazing Michael Jackson impression, dancing. That would be fun. I’ll go with that. I think we should do it!
Source
The reviews for the Broadway revival of Promises, Promises were negative enough, even though most of the critics ignored the real problem—the big pink elephant in the room. The leading man of this musical-romantic comedy is supposed to be a single advertising peon named Chuck who is madly in love with a co-worker (Kristin Chenoweth). When the play opened on Broadway in 1968, Jerry Orbach, an actor with enough macho swagger to later fuel years and years of Law and Order, was the star. The revival hands the lead over to Sean Hayes, best known as the queeny Jack on Will & Grace. Hayes is among Hollywood's best verbal slapstickers, but his sexual orientation is part of who he is, and also part of his charm. (The fact that he only came out of the closet just before Promises was another one of those Ricky Martin-duh moments.) But frankly, it's weird seeing Hayes play straight. He comes off as wooden and insincere, like he's trying to hide something, which of course he is. Even the play's most hilarious scene, when Chuck tries to pick up a drunk woman at a bar, devolves into unintentional camp. Is it funny because of all the '60s-era one-liners, or because the woman is so drunk (and clueless) that she agrees to go home with a guy we all know is gay?
This is no laughing matter, however. For decades, Hollywood has kept gay actors—Tab Hunter, Van Johnson, Anthony Perkins, Rock Hudson, etc.—in the closet, to their own personal detriment. The fear was, if people knew your sexual orientation, you could never work again. Thankfully, this seems ridiculous in the era of Portia de Rossi and Neil Patrick Harris. But the truth is, openly gay actors still have reason to be scared. While it's OK for straight actors to play gay (as Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger did in Brokeback Mountain), it's rare for someone to pull off the trick in reverse. De Rossi and Harris do that on TV, but they also inhabit broad caricatures, not realistic characters likes the ones in Up in the Air or even The Proposal. Last year, Rupert Everett caused a ruckus when he told the Guardian that gay actors should stay in the closet. "The fact is," he said, "that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the ... film business." Is he just bitter or honest? Maybe both.
Most actors would tell you that the biographical details of their lives are beside the point. Except when they're not. As viewers, we are molded by a society obsessed with dissecting sexuality, starting with the locker-room torture in junior high school. Which is why it's a little hard to know what to make of the latest fabulous player to join Glee: Jonathan Groff, the openly gay Broadway star. In Spring Awakening, he showed us that he was a knockout singer and a heartthrob. But on TV, as the shifty glee captain from another school who steals Rachel's heart, there's something about his performance that feels off. In half his scenes, he scowls—is that a substitute for being straight? When he smiles or giggles, he seems more like your average theater queen, a better romantic match for Kurt than Rachel. It doesn't help that he tried to bed his girlfriend while singing (and writhing to) Madonna's Like a Virgin. He is so distracting, I'm starting to wonder if Groff's character on the show is supposed to be secretly gay.
This is admittedly a complicated issue for the gay community, though it is not, in fact, a uniquely gay problem. In the 1950s, the idea of "color-blind casting" became a reality, and the result is that today there's nothing to stop Denzel Washington from playing the Walter Matthau role in the remake of The Taking of the Pelham 1-2-3. Jack Nicholson, by the force of his charm, makes you forget how he's entirely too old to win Helen Hunt's heart in As Good As It Gets. For gay actors, why should sexual orientation limit a gay actor's choice of roles? The fact is, an actor's background does affect how we see his or her performance—which is why the Tom Hankses and Denzels of the world guard their privacy carefully.
It's not just a problem for someone like Hayes, who even tips off your grandmother's gaydar. For all the beefy bravado that Rock Hudson projects on-screen, Pillow Talk dissolves into a farce when you know the likes of his true bedmates. (Just rewatch the scene where he's wading around in a bubble bath by himself.) Lesbian actresses might have it easier—since straight men think it's OK for them to kiss a girl and like it—but how many of them can you name? Cynthia Nixon was married to a man when she originated Miranda on Sex and the City. Kelly McGillis was straight when she steamed up Top Gun's sheets, and Anne Heche went back to dating men (including her Men in Trees costar). If an actor of the stature of George Clooney came out of the closet tomorrow, would we still accept him as a heterosexual leading man? It's hard to say. Or maybe not. Doesn't it mean something that no openly gay actor like that exists?
Source, thanks
karenknismesis for the link--
Some spoilers.
Question: I’ve heard rumors of a Cheerio-on-Cheerio (a.k.a. Brittany and Santana) kiss on Glee. Care to elaborate? —Briana
Ausiello: There’s definitely some C&C action on the horizon that involves mouths, lips, and tongues: In next week’s episode Santana and Mercedes have a duet!
Question: Any good Will and Emma scoop for Glee? —Jess
Ausiello: No news on the Will/Emma front — good or bad. I hear their relationship doesn’t get a lot of play in this season’s final episodes. Which I find odd.
Source
--
Whether making hilarious passive-aggressive digs at diva Rachel or asking love interest Tina if she wants to “get up on this,” Kevin McHale’s Artie — a skinny nerd with the heart of LL Cool J — gains more fans each week on Glee. It’s well known at this point that, in real life, McHale isn’t in a wheelchair, spent some time in boy band NLT, and is quite the stylish dude. But fresh off of filming the season-one finale, the 21-year old actor gave Vulture some further insight into his life on and off Glee, and gamely answered some commenter questions, too. Yes, everyone — he’ll be rapping soon.
Everyone seems to have a unique coming-to-Glee story — what’s yours?
I had been acting for a while, but I was also involved in a boy band. I would do parts when I could — I did a True Blood while I was in the boy band — but you know, that fizzled out. It was the struggling artist kind of thing, where if I hadn’t gotten Glee, I think I would literally have run out of money that month. The timing was insane, because it was just weeks after the [band] split up — we were going through all this drama over stupid stuff — and then I go and audition for something, and I hadn’t been auditioning for awhile, and lo and behold here I am.
You must tell us about your time in NLT.
We sang pop kind of stuff; it was a very different image than being in a sweater vest and wheelchair. I was 14, and when you’re that young, no one really wants to sign you, so not until I was 17 did we have an actual album. But, no, we weren’t that popular. We had crazy fans, but a very small amount.
It seems like some character concepts for the show changed when the creators saw you guys audition. What did you know of Artie when you auditioned?
I knew he was in a wheelchair and that he had a good heart, and that was basically it — a nice guy who’s paralyzed. I just kind of made him more nerdy. Before Glee, I always just wore my contacts, but I happened to have my glasses on right before the audition, so I was like, “Huh. Maybe I should just wear these.” And they kind of changed everything; the nerdy, nervous, talking-fast Artie came out.
Commenter RopeRunner actually is a big fan of your glasses, and wanted to know if you had them before the show or if they came with the Artie persona.
They’re definitely mine. Until January, I was still wearing Artie’s glasses as my own, but at that point I was like, “Okay, these have become Artie’s glasses. I have to get my own.” So I finally got new glasses.
Artie seems to fancy himself a bit of a funk soul brother. Was that your input?
Definitely him being a little more ghetto at times is from me. I do it joking around, but yeah. It’s pretty funny, because I feel like Artie has no “medium” — he’s either super nerdy or ghetto as hell. I tried to play the medium between them, but I don’t know, I guess it’s some repressed gene for me to be that ghetto sometimes.
Artie has had some classic little blink-and-you-miss-'em moments in the big numbers, like holding up the "Jump" sign during "Jump," and the little hand wave during "Beautiful." Where do those come from?
The “Jump” sign wasn’t originally in the script. Right before we started the first take, I went up to Elodie, the director — 'cause I wasn’t doing anything the entire number, and I was like, “Can I just hold a sign that says ‘Jump’ on it?” And she was like, “Huh, try it and see.” So one of the ADs drew it up real quick with permanent marker, and it stuck, 'cause it was just so ridiculous. And in “Beautiful,” I’ve been doing that since “Golddigger.” Ryan [Murphy] saw me doing it in the studio when Amber was recording, and he was like, “Put that in.” There’s a number coming up where I do it and it’s so uncalled for — we’re doing like, a rock ballad, and I’m doing this soul into-it wave. We always do stuff to make each other laugh in the scene, and Ryan wanted me to do it, but it was also kind of for Naya [Rivera] — she was making me laugh, and I was like, watch this thing. This week’s episode, I think all of our inside jokes are caught on camera — every embarrassing dorky thing I do made it in.
We heard this is a big week for Artie …
I definitely get into the more ghetto part of Artie — I do a rap song. And it’s a really fun episode — we just did two kind of crazy episodes, Madonna and then “Home,” which was really serious, and this one’s kind of in between; it’s more satirical. It’s a huge difference in feel from what we’ve done before.
There’s been a lot of grumbling lately that the secondary characters — specifically Artie and Tina — aren't getting enough screen time. Will we see more of you soon?
I mean, I always want focus on us! No, you know what, you’ll definitely see more of us coming up, even more than this week’s episode, in the coming weeks there’s a lot more. But we all kind of get our turn, and I think that’s the beauty of it. It’s cyclical, and everybody gets an opportunity to do stuff.
You just finished filming the finale. What should we most look forward to?
Well, the Vocal Adrenaline performance is going to be brilliant, absolutely insane, and I can’t wait to see it — I only got to see a few seconds of it, so that’s what I’m most looking forward to. Well, that and, um … the baby [laughs]. I’m excited to see the baby. It seems like [Quinn] got pregnant so long ago. In realistic terms, the pregnancy was about twelve months. Give it time, the baby grows. The baby grows quickly right before it’s born! [Laughs.]
LopezLopez seems to think you must have major biceps from all your wheeling. Do you have great wheel skills at this point?
Oh, right. Two very different things. My wheeling skills are pretty good, my biceps are not. The thing is, I’m pushing myself around on a flat, flat surface on the stages, and I’m very light, and the chair’s very light, so I’m not really pushing around anything. If I had to actually do any work, going uphill, that might change things, but I’m still weak as ever.
Chadams notes that Wizard Magazine recently said that you should be the next Spider-Man, and would like to know if anyone is working on making that awesome idea happen for you.
Well, hell yeah. I’d love to be Spider-Man, but one, it doesn’t fit into the Glee schedule [laughs]. I’m sure, and I’m not sure how far along in the process they are, but no one’s asked me about it. So, we’ll see! I did hear about this on the Internet, but I think they just took all the nerds from TV who looked like they could be Spider-Man. I’m like, nobody knows who I am! I’m incredibly self-deprecating.
MrsChuckBass echoes the thoughts of many of us: Is there any chance of an Artie/Other Asian duet? She, and we, feel this would be magical.
Well, there’s not a duet coming up — there’s something he’s involved in with me … I can’t say anything about it yet, it’s not something we’ve ever done before. But there is something coming up. But I would do anything with him; he’s a genius. You know, it would be fun to do a Michael Jackson thing. I’m obsessed with Michael Jackson, and he does an amazing Michael Jackson impression, dancing. That would be fun. I’ll go with that. I think we should do it!
Source