Hollywood's closet still closed tight
PUSSS...@aol.com
HOLLYWOOD - Grant Show, who played a hunky, motorcycle-riding bar
owner on the '90s prime-time soap Melrose Place, looks uncomfortable
in his booth at a diner next to the 101 Freeway.
He has come to talk about his role as a gay action star on FX's Dirt
(tonight, 10 ET/PT). And he is choosing his words carefully.
Stopping himself in mid-thought, Show leans over his oatmeal and says:
"This is really difficult for me to talk about because I don't know
what's offensive to people and what's not. So bear with me. I have a
tendency to get myself into trouble, and this is a sensitive subject."
On tonight's Dirt, an episode titled "You Don't Know Jack," Show's
character, Jack Dawson, is outed by Courteney Cox's tabloid editor. A
similar story line will play in February and March on ABC's Brothers &
Sisters.
Both echo recent real-life scenarios and underscore that being tagged
as homosexual remains a threat for many actors. Although more
characters are openly gay on TV, being a gay actor still carries a
stigma. And with gossip blogs joining tabloids in the trafficking of
salacious material, the chance of being outed or inaccurately labeled
has been ratcheted up.
Brothers & Sisters recently introduced a closeted gay celebrity, soap
star Chad Barry (played by former Sex and the City heartthrob Jason
Lewis), who is secretly dating Kevin (Matthew Rhys), one of the show's
titular "brothers." In upcoming episodes, Chad will be outed in the
press.
Lewis, who is signed for seven episodes, and Rhys declined to be
interviewed for this story.
But the show's openly gay executive producers, Jon Robin Baitz and
Greg Berlanti, say they're proud to be telling a story that mirrors
real life.
Baitz says that "because we live in this world and know people who
live with that crisis daily - how will their livelihoods be affected?
- it definitely spurred our desire to talk about how sexually free
people are."
Baitz says the character of Chad was inspired in part by singer Lance
Bass and TV stars T.R. Knight (Grey's Anatomy) and Neil Patrick Harris
(How I Met Your Mother), who publicly acknowledged their homosexuality
last year. Knight and Harris have said questions raised in the media
contributed to their decisions.
But Brothers and Dirt borrow more literally from other events.
In Brothers, a photo of Kevin and Chad will be posted on a website.
That echoes a real-life incident in October involving former cast
member Luke MacFarlane, who played Kevin's previous lover.
MacFarlane was photographed out on the town with Grey's Knight a week
after Knight acknowledged his homosexuality. The photos were posted on
the Web, causing bloggers to speculate about a possible romance.
In the show, Berlanti says, the story line "begins sort of an outing
witch hunt."
Tonight on Dirt, photos of Show's character kissing another man are
printed on the front page of the fictional Dirt Now tabloid. It's
reminiscent of what happened in September when tabloids touted photos
of a married John Travolta casually kissing another man on the lips
while on the steps of Travolta's plane.
Those kinds of images are "open to interpretation," Show says.
"Everything is just rumor. And I think this character is a composite
of all the rumors that run around.
"Some may be true, some may not. But the point is that the rumor takes
on a life of its own."
Dirt's writer/director/producer, Matthew Carnahan, acknowledges that
Show's character, a married father, is a composite of real-life
celebrities who have had to fight off gay rumors.
"There is no one actor that (Jack) is based on. Rather than research
fact, we pick up the tabloids to research the gossip about certain
actors. It might be miles from the truth, but we'll take that and spin
it," Carnahan says.
"Do I get a percentage?" actor Chad Allen jokes about such story
lines. "I know this story because it's mine."
Allen, 32, saw his life and career turned upside down in 1996. He was
appearing as a regular on the series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, when
photos of him and a man he had been secretly dating appeared in The
Globe tabloid. "It was a big nightmare. My family didn't even know. It
was terrifying."
A meeting was called among managers, agents and network executives, he
says. "They basically stared at me and said, 'What, are you going to
be gay now? Do you want us to get you a girlfriend? What do you want?'
"
Allen, being "a scared kid," opted to "shut up and hope it would go
away."
After Dr. Quinn was canceled, CBS would not see him for any more
pilots, he says. "It had a definite effect."
He still gets work but often in gay roles. His Save Me gay-themed film
screened at Sundance, and he stars as a gay detective in a series of
television movies for the gay Here network. He also has played
straight characters on such series as Cold Case, Criminal Minds and
Charmed.
Allen advises his gay closeted actor friends to come out only "when
it's 'the good news' for you. But if you're not ready, then it's your
journey."
Show, who auditioned unsuccessfully for a gay role on Brothers &
Sisters, believes he "absolutely" would not have been hired to play
Melrose Place's Jake Hanson had he been a gay actor who was out. He
has gay actor friends who choose to remain in the closet, fearing for
their careers.
Yet there are those who believe that being straight with the public is
morally right.
Brothers & Sisters' Berlanti believes celebrities "can't have it both
ways. I personally feel like it is the responsibility of every gay man
and woman to come out at some point in their life."
"When you stay in the closet, you perpetuate a culture of shame,"
Baitz says. "It's about personal courage and integrity."
Damon Romine of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)
calls the closeted gay characters on Dirt and Brothers & Sisters "good
examples of the damage that can come from living in the closet. These
are both characters that are living duplicitous lives by not being out
and honest about who they are, and in the process they are hurting
themselves and those that they are lying to."
Being openly gay, however, does seem to change the viewer/actor
dynamic, says Leonard Maltin, film historian and critic for
Entertainment Tonight.
"An actor's job is to convince you that they are who they are
portraying," Maltin says. "If you are aware that an actor is gay and
you are watching them portray heterosexuals, I think that's
understandably confusing.
"Americans are very provincial about their attitudes toward sex," he
adds. "If you compare today to the '50s, there's obviously much
greater tolerance of gays in our society, but (openly gay leading men)
is maybe the final frontier of acceptance."
Even for straight actors, playing gay can seem like flirting with
danger. Show took a week to contemplate whether to accept the Dirt
role, which includes graphic scenes.
Though Show had previously played a gay baseball player who chose to
remain closeted on HBO's Arli$$, that role did not require him to
perform such intimate acts.
"I've never kissed a man like this before, and I had to decide if I
was completely comfortable with that," Show says.
Once he realized he could, Show says, he decided "to (expletive) do it
- fully! I hope this isn't offensive, but I've kissed a lot of
(actresses) whom I didn't want to kiss in scenes. It was pretty much
exactly like kissing a woman I didn't want to kiss. It was work."
But Show also feared that a stigma could stunt his career.
"There are a lot of prejudices still in this town, which is kind of
what this role is about," Show says. "The perception could be the
negative things, like 'he kissed a guy.' All that weird stupid
(stuff). Or it could be a good thing for your career to take a risk
like this."
Whether played by gay actors or straight, gay story lines don't always
play well with viewers. Fans debate the Brothers & Sisters story line
on the show's website, Baitz says.
"Some say how great it is to see two men have a relationship that is
exactly the same as a heterosexual relationship. Other people say:
'This is disgusting. I won't watch your show anymore. I loved it until
two guys kissed.' They get answered back by people saying, 'Homophobia
is alive and well.' "
Still, for some actors, such roles remain cherished opportunities.
Joseph Gannascoli played gay mobster Vito Spatafore on HBO's The
Sopranos, and the character was brutally killed in a scene involving a
pool cue.
At the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night, Gannascoli said his
co-stars on The Sopranos, including James Gandolfini, "were a little
freaked out" by the gay story line and would use gay slurs behind the
scenes, including the f-word "and worse."
But the bottom line, Gannascoli says, is that the part "was life-
changing for me, and I'm glad I did it."
* * *
Here's the dirt on using this 'F' word
By Maria Puente, USA TODAY
Is a common epithet for homosexuals becoming a new N word, verboten in
civil discourse?
Grey's Anatomy actor Isaiah Washington got into a world of trouble
last week for twice using a homophobic slur starting with the letter F
to describe castmate T.R. Knight, who was not pleased. Neither were
gay and lesbian groups and Washington's bosses at ABC. The actor
apologized and entered counseling. But the media hubbub about the f-
word - not that other f-word - has spotlighted a subtle shift in the
national culture, showing how language and attitudes are connected and
how the definitions of what is and isn't acceptable are changing.
"We are in a place where the words traditionally considered the most
obscene - sexual and scatological words - are viewed as less and less
offensive, while words that are ethnic and religious slurs have
increased in offensiveness," says Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of
the Oxford English Dictionary.
The more we care what blacks, Hispanics or gays think, he says, "the
more attuned we are to slurs against them."
Grey's co-star Katherine Heigl, Knight's pal, says the word should be
"obliterated."
"It breeds hate," she said backstage at Sunday's Screen Actors Guild
Awards.
It's not clear how the f-word came to have a homophobic meaning,
Sheidlower says. Five hundred years ago, "faggot" meant a bundle of
twigs or kindling, which gave rise to the British colloquialism "fag"
for cigarette.
But, as is common in the English language, words with the same
spelling and pronunciation can mean something entirely different. "No
one knows the origin, but there's some evidence that (the term) may
have referred to a bad-tempered woman in the 16th century," Sheidlower
says.
"What is clear is that it is a word now used to denigrate and
dehumanize people - and not just gay people," says Neil Giuliano,
president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).
"It's a tear-you-apart kind of a term."
But "queer" isn't, or at least not anymore. Not with Queer Eye for the
Straight Guy and Queer as Folk on television, "queer studies" in
universities, and groups such as the Queer Association of Scientists
and Researchers.
"It's very different from the f-word because it's tied to (the
meaning) 'strange' or 'odd,' " Giuliano says. Young gays "have
reclaimed it and used it to self-identify."
In any case, both the f-word and the n-word have been heard on TV
recently. In this week's episode of the tabloid drama Dirt, on cable's
FX, a character uses the f-word to refer to a macho action star about
to be outed. It has been used on episodes of The Sopranos, and gay
activist/writer Larry Kramer titled his 1978 satirical novel Faggots.
And the n-word, perhaps the most offensive of all slurs, was used - by
black characters to other black characters - in recent episodes of
Dirt and NBC's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
"Context is everything," Dirt producer Matthew Carnahan says. "We
certainly are not trying to spread anything even remotely resembling
hatred or bigotry of any kind. This show is all about everyone being
flawed, wild and crazy."
What if Washington had used "queer" instead of that f-word?
"It would have been just as bad because it was in the context of a put-
down," Giuliano says. "The fortunate aspect of this unfortunate
situation is that many more people will see that casual and mean-
spirited use of this word is unacceptable."