Thoughts on Gay Actors

Saw this trailer coupled with an audio review for an Art House film from a website I found over the summer and have been visiting every weekend to hear their honest reviews of movies.

But that's not what I'm going to talk about.

There has been, for a long time, a history of closeted gay actors in Hollywood who refuse to come out of the closet. Now, since Brokeback Mountain made such a success at opening the eyes of a lot of people, you would think that would not be the case. Unfortunately, the sad fact of the matter is that if you are straight and "play gay," you get a more positive review. If you are gay and you "play straight," you don't get anything short of a note-worthy performance. This is a broad brush stroke, I'm aware of that.

The point is that while the cast, lead by Sean Penn, is brillent in their roles, I can't help but wonder how many people in the cast are actually gay.

Those with a quick eye will have spotted High School Musical's Lucas Gabreel. Disney is notorious for keeping their child stars under lock and key, but when Shia Labeouf was able to act his way away from the Disney company, one has to wonder how he did that. Gabreel could very well be trying to do just that, if not for his career but because of personal interests. It does make me wonder since his breakout role in High School Musical was as the theatre brother of the diva who, at no fault to how he acts in all those behind-the-scenes features, does let the occational gay quirk slip out.

Then you have James Franco and Emille Hersh (Hobgoblin from Spiderman and Speed Racer, respectfully) who look surprisingly very comfortable in their roles. Both are very attractive outside of their Hollywood films, but who knows if I'm reading too much into these things.

I feel kind of bad that this movie came out the week of my thesis defense and public presentation. By the time I'll be able to see it, the movie will have left the theatre. That's how they do independent films: unless it generates a boat load of money during its opening week, it will only stay for that week.

I'll have to look for this on DVD, as well as "Were the World Mine" and "Another Gay Sequel."