RuPaul Andre Charles, one of the world’s most famous and beloved drag divas, will be signing his new book Workin’ It! RuPaul’s Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style Sat., March 13, 2:00pm at the Samuel French Bookshop, 7623 Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood (323 876-0570).
“Ugly Betty” TV star Vanessa Willaims says: “Ru embodies the true idea that you can create your own success on your own terms and remain completely authentic to who you really are. You better work!”
“More than just a style guide, this is a navigation system through the bumpy road of life. Let RuPaul teach you the tried, tested and found true techniques that will propel you from background player to shining star!
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No one knows more about life, self-expression and style than RuPaul! With photos by Mathu Andersen from the new season of RuPaul’s Drag Race and a fresh look at style and inner beauty, “Workin’ It!” will pick up where the show leaves off.”
My friend Ann Bradley drew my attention to this conversation last October between CBS News anchor Katie Couric and Sapphire, the author of PUSH – the novel that served as the basis for the amazing film “Precious.” Sapphire talks about how she was a teacher in Harlem in the 1980s when young African Americans were getting sick with HIV and how battling against homophobia and illiteracy and child abuse inspired her to write the book.
Sapphire also talks about how at first she refused the advances of openly gay director Lee Daniels – until she saw the artistry of “Monsters Ball. She also talks about the casting of Gabourey Sidibe, the brilliance of Mo’Nique – who just won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as the monster mother, as well as the process of bringing the book to film.
Please grab a cup of tea and settle back to enjoy this wonderful, illuminating conversation.
In advance of his March 27 debut on Broadway in “Promises, Promises,” actor Sean Hayes finally granted The Advocate an interview. Apparently he was quite annoyed when they did a fake interview when Hayes was starring as Jack McFarland as part of the TV phenomenon known as “Will and Grace.”
“Suddenly everyone wanted to know if Hayes himself was gay and how he felt about playing a gay character. Faced with the very real prospect of jeopardizing his chance at landing straight roles down the road, he started reciting stock answers, variations on what he told the Detroit Free Press early on: “When I play a gay character I want to be as believable as possible. And when I’m playing a straight character I also want to be as believable as possible. So the less that people know about my personal life, the more believable I can be as a character.” And Hayes never pretended to be something he wasn’t; he never walked some pretty woman down the red carpet or faked a straight relationship.
Please click inside to read more of my reaction to the interview.
For me, the biggest moment of Sunday night’s Academy Awards show at the Kodak Theater was when Barbra Streisand handed the Best Director Oscar to “Hurt Locker” director Kathryn Bigelow. Not only was it history-making – there have only been three female Best Director nominees in the award show’s 82 years – but it was the passing of that naked gold man “torch” that some once thought might have gone to Streisand.
Please click inside to read my assessment of the Academy Awards show. Here’s an interesting conversation from the “Today Show” with some “male bonding” comments toward the end:
Sunday night’s Academy Awards show is shaping up to be a battle between Best Picture nominees “Avatar,” the wildly expensive technically innovative and now most popular (ticket sales) film in history directed by James Cameron versus the incredibly powerful and haunting and controversial indy war film “Hurt Locker” directed by Cameron’s ex-wife, Katherine Bigalow, who, like Cameron is also up for Best Director. If she wins that one, she would become the first female director to win in Oscar’s history.
The other fixation – at least in Hollywood, where entertainment is big business – is how the Academy Awards will do in the ratings. Will energetic gay showman Adam Shankman, the brilliant director of “Hairspray,” gay-up the show to make it tasteful, irresistible fun and yet still relevant?
And then there’s the Oscar dark horse – “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” about child abuse and self esteem and believing in hope when circumstances suggest that’s insane. The film and its openly gay director Lee Daniels and extraordinary cast have been winning awards outside the mainstream.
Two openly gay directors – Adam Shankman and Lee Daniels – front and center for their work. Now that’s political. Please click inside to read what else makes this show so political.
Here’s an interview with Daniels by the Los Angeles Times – which has blanket coverage of this big event.
For two weeks in a row, openly gay director, Lee Daniels and the cast of “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” have won bit at awards shows. Last Friday, Feb. 26 (pictured here), the gut-wrenching story of an abused illiterate teen who finds hope won tops honors at the 41st NAACP Image Awards.
Last night, “Precious” – produced by TV moguls Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey – won top honors at Independent Spirit Awards: it won Best Feature; Lee Daniels won Best Director; Gabourey Sidibe and Mo’Nique won lead and supporting performances, respectively; and Geoffrey Fletcher won for the screenplay.
“The Hurt Locker” – the independent film favored at Sunday’s Academy Awards – was ineligible because the film showed at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival and was up for acting honors that year.
The popular Indie awards show was hosted by Eddie Izzard and moved from its 15-year tented home on Santa Monica beach to downtown LA.
After fleeing New York last December, it was important to me to find a spiritual home here in Los Angeles. Metropolitan Community Church was the perfect place for me. Not since I was a good, straight Mormon Boy have I felt so much spirit and community. Rev. Neil is the loving and inspiring bishop I never had. I look forward to his provocative and uplifting sermons each week.
So I wanted to give back! I thought, “Why don’t I do my cabaret act MORMON AMERICAN PRINCESS as a benefit for MCC LA!” Then Leslie Jordan wanted to join in the fun. And now we not only have the Southern Baptist Sissy joining the Mormon Boy, but we have a whole line-up of comics and singers: Carlease Burke, Gabriella Francis, Tony Sweet, Jane Syftestad, Diana Vanderbilt, Scott Ryan Johnson. Where else will you find transgendered members singing? Juilliard-trained, gay Buddhists playing harpsichord? You’ll find us at MCC!….
Please click inside for more of Steven’s post and info on the event.
Gay icon Kathy Griffin plays a lesbian activist named Babs who gives SVU Det. Olivia Benson a lip-lock, mistaking Mariska Hargitay’s character for a lesbian, too.Olivia handles the kiss with aplomb but gives her protective replacement a subtle warning. This clip is from the upcoming “Law & Order: SVU.”
While the Pentagon plans to spend a year studying the potential complications that might result from overturning the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, Kathryn Bigelow’s film The Hurt Locker, with its pulsating depiction of homoeroticism, is one of the this year’s Oscar frontrunners this Sunday…..
Please click inside to read the rest of Michael’s insightful essay.
Young gay men today have the ability to search the Internet to find representations of themselves or images to reflect upon. But in the repressive 1940s and 1950s, it took artistic cunning to resist and circumvent cultural mores. Photographer John Palatinus was one of those pioneers who helped create a new genre of male photography.
Antebellum Gallery is featuring an exhibit of Palatinus’ work, along with the artwork of several other photographers, from Sunday night through March 20.
Palatinus and a number of “live models on display” will be at a reception Sunday night at 7:00-9:00pm at the gallery, located at 1643 N. Las Palmas Ave, Hollywood, 90028 (323) 856-0667.
Please click inside to read about Palatinus, the history of the era and see some of the 1950s photos.
UPDATE: Among the award winners at the 2010 PAN AFRICAN FILM & FESTIVAL discussed below was the documentary on the L.A. Black Panthers 41ST & CENTRAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE L.A. BLACK PANTHERS, which won the Audience Favorite Documentary Award. Openly lesbian Jasmine Cannick is among the documentary’s producers. This year’s PAFF featured 135 films representing 36 countries, including 40 in competition, 64 feature length films, and 12 world premiere.
The Pan African Film and Arts Festival opens its 18th season Wednesday night with a powerful film entitled “Blood Done Sign My Name” based on the true 1970 story of a 23 year old black Vietnam veteran murdered in cold blood. The festival closes with the documentary “Freedom Riders” about the 8 months from May to December in 1961 when more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives to end the Jim Crow laws of the Deep South.
In the middle of the festival on Monday, Feb. 15 at 3:30 p.m. PAFF will show their feature presentation:“41st & Central: The Untold Story of the L.A. Black Panthers.”
If you are new to the LGBT movement and wonder why some African Americans get so angry when white gays compare the LGBT struggle for full equality to the Black civil rights movement for freedom from slavery, lynching, Jim Crow and institutionalized racism that contributes to the high 16.5% unemployment in the Black community – these films might help provide some perspective.
But oppression is oppression – something that Black Panthers Party founder Huey Newton understood deeply. Please click inside to read more about the festival and Huey Newton’s speech about the Black Panthers working with the Gay Liberation movement.
Every time I jumped up, pumped the air with my fist and yelled, “Who Dat? Who Dat?” my dogs jumped up too, started barking and thought someone was outside or at the door.
As the world probably knows after Sunday night’s incredible Super Bowl game in Miami between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts – “Who Dat” is short for “Who Dat?! Who Dat?! Who Dat say dey gonna beat dem saints?!”
The blaring headline on the New Orleans Times-Picayune website Sunday night was: “WHO DAT? NOBODY!”
“Who Dat?” was the background chant to Rachel Maddow’s Friday night show from New Orleans, which she dubbed “The Rachel Maddeaux Sheaux.”
At one point she said: “I am here to tell you that America wants New Orleans to be back – and in the run-up to this big, dumb game, it totally feels like it is.”
The Times-Picayune – whose reporters virtually lived in their offices to cover Hurricane Katrina for which they received Pulitizer Prizes – wrote an editorial thanking the Saints for the role they played in the recovery of the beloved city. Please click inside to read an excerpt (and please check out their photos from which this shot was taken).
I’ve known prodigious producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron since 1995 when I covered their important gays-in-the-military film, “Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story.”
Now I know the team is devoted to the musical (“Chicago,” “Annie”) so I’m sure their latest venture “Promises, Promises” with Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth set to preview on Broadway on March 27 – is straight-up fun. Think “Mad Men” set to Burt Bacharach tunes.
But the plot of “Promises, Promises” – based on the award-winning Billy Wilder film “The Apartment” starring Jack Lemon and Shirley MacLaine – has at its core the societal acceptability of extra-marital affairs. Now coming off of covering the historic federal challenge to the constitutionality of Prop 8 where the ProtectMarriage side went on and on about the sanctity of marriage and how historically the purpose of marriage is the procreation of children – this show promises to be an laugh-out loud ode to heterosexual hypocrisy. Please click inside to see how.
Artist Dwora Fried’s solo show is up at The Advocate & Gochis Galleries at The Village at Ed Gould Plaza n Hollywood until Jan. 30. Art critic and historian Peter Frank has said of her work:
“Fried’s assemblaged boxes are engaging. Perhaps because their humor depends on clever and unexpected juxtapositions, the boxes have a rhythm – a sense of timing, really – that resembles good stand-up comedy.”
MBNBC’s Rachel Maddow on President Barack Obama on Thursday night’s David Letterman show:
“The most interesting thing about Obama’s first year is how crazy the opposition has gone in reaction to him. And that’s been so exciting – the Sarah Palin, Michael Steel, Tea Party thing on the right – that I think that nobody’s noticed that he’s quietly put together the most legislatively accomplished first year of any president in a generation.”
Equal parts traditional concert, musical theatre and community ballet, “Nutcracker: a choral fantasy” this weekend at the Alex Theater in Glendale was spectacularly gay in a very down-home family way. Click inside to see pictures from the event, what I thought of it and how this very gay version differs from the famous original.
The first time I realized how HUGE computer gaming was going to be was when I heard that ultimate cold warrior fiction writer Tom Clancy was giving up his “Jack Ryan” franchise for video games.
And while my moments of geek still do not include video games – I wonder if the latest new secret “find” in the computer warrior fantasy world might impact the LGBT movement. That “secret” is a romantic gay sex scene between two macho soldiers – one of whom, the elf, looks a little like Orlando Bloom in “Lord of the Rings.” Judge for yourself – and click inside to read more.
“We’re shocked that Buju Banton, a singer with a long record of performing a song that glorifies the murder of gay people, would be honored with a Grammy nomination, regardless of the artistic merit of any of his work.”
Similar complaints were made in 2001 about a young white rapper named Eminem whose lyrics were often violent towards women and gays. Artists such as Elton John defended Eminem’s poetry and his right to artistic expression. (Click inside to read more and see the video of Elton John and Eminem performing at the Grammys.) But in the case of Buju Banton, the more likely defense would be a cultural assumption that Banton’s Jamaican reggae dance hall “murder music” is a kissing-cousin to the catchy empowering tunes of the beloved late singer Bob Marley. The two could not be more different. Here’s the unique documentary Playing for Change version of Marley’s still moving “One Love.”
Meredith Baxter looks happy. Maybe that’s what coming out can do for a person tired of living with a secret. And while the heterosexual assumption is in full swing when you look at her, Baxter DID play a hippie mom contrasted with that conservative, money-minded teen played by Michael J. Fox – so for those of us who remember “Family Ties,” it may not be that big a stretch to think of Baxter as gay.
Here she is on the NBC Today show:
Click inside to hear Baxter on Sirius/XM’s “The Frank DeCarlo Show” – where she originally came out, giving people who discover they are LGBT late in life advice to “free yourself.”
RuPaul Andre Charles,
one of the world’s most famous and beloved drag divas, will be signing his new book Workin’ It! RuPaul’s Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style Sat., March 13, 2:00pm at the Samuel French Bookshop, 7623 Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood (323 876-0570).
My friend Ann Bradley drew my attention to this conversation last October between CBS News anchor Katie Couric and Sapphire, the author of PUSH – the novel that served as the basis for the amazing film “Precious.” Sapphire talks about how she was a teacher in Harlem in the 1980s when young African Americans were getting sick with HIV and how battling against homophobia and illiteracy and child abuse inspired her to write the book.
In advance of his March 27 debut on Broadway in “Promises, Promises,” actor Sean Hayes finally granted The Advocate an interview. Apparently he was quite annoyed when they did a fake interview when Hayes was starring as Jack McFarland as part of the TV phenomenon known as “Will and Grace.”
Sunday night’s Academy Awards show is shaping up to be a battle between Best Picture nominees “Avatar,” the wildly expensive technically innovative and now most popular (ticket sales) film in history directed by James Cameron versus the incredibly powerful and haunting and controversial indy war film “Hurt Locker” directed by Cameron’s ex-wife, Katherine Bigalow, who, like Cameron is also up for Best Director. If she wins that one, she would become the first female director to win in Oscar’s history.
For two weeks in a row, openly gay director, 
Guest post from Steven Fales: 
I AM A HURT LOCKER
Young gay men today have the ability to search the Internet to find representations of themselves or images to reflect upon. But in the repressive 1940s and 1950s, it took artistic cunning to resist and circumvent cultural mores. Photographer John Palatinus was one of those pioneers who helped create a new genre of male photography.
UPDATE: Among the award winners at the 2010 P
Every time I jumped up, pumped the air with my fist and yelled, “Who Dat? Who Dat?” my dogs jumped up too, started barking and thought someone was outside or at the door.
I’ve known prodigious producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron since 1995 when I covered their important gays-in-the-military film, “Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story.”
This special performance by the 
The first time I realized how HUGE computer gaming was going to be was when I heard that ultimate cold warrior fiction writer Tom Clancy was giving up his “Jack Ryan” franchise for 
The 
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