Kevin Spacey
JohnM
Incidentally, does anyone here believe Kevin Spacey's explanations
regarding the non-theft of his mobile while he was walking his dog?
--
JohnM
Author of Brazil: Life, Blood, Soul
http://www.scroll.demon.co.uk/spaver.htm
Mike Barry
<jo...@scroll.demon.co.uk> writes
>
>Incidentally, does anyone here believe Kevin Spacey's explanations
>regarding the non-theft of his mobile while he was walking his dog?
>
I am unfamiliar with the story. I assume though that you are suggesting
he may have been having a Ron Brown moment?
--
Mike_B
JohnM
<mi...@localhosts.net> writes
Well, he is a member of the family, is he not?
Mike Barry
<jo...@scroll.demon.co.uk> writes
>
>Well, he is a member of the family, is he not?
>
I believe he has previously described such rumours as lies.
--
Mike_B
Dale
Pity :(
--
Dale - Liverpool, England
A menace to society - apparently!
Spam block: Please don't mail me with "abuse" - use my name instead!
Briefs Bandit
news:PXvngAAtYqiAFwL$@scroll.demon.co.uk...
I seem to remember an account in an American gay publication that he was at
a hotel or something of the sort and requested a masseuse who turned out to
be insufficiently "cute."
James
David Horne
I thought he had just declined to comment, no?
Incidentally, I don't believe his story (but can't really say I know
what the real story _is_), but I feel bad for his situation- can't be
too comfortable for him at the moment. I suspect he'll ride it out,
though.
David
--
David Horne- www.davidhorne.net
usenet (at) davidhorne (dot) co (dot) uk
Lee J. Moore
//
> I thought he had just declined to comment, no?
>
> Incidentally, I don't believe his story (but can't really say I know
> what the real story _is_), but I feel bad for his situation- can't be
> too comfortable for him at the moment. I suspect he'll ride it out,
> though.
The tabloids seem able to forgive him for everything, were it not for
him walking his dog at 4am which *nobody* does apparently.
Well I do and have done quite recently. I've taken mine out at 4:30am
before now and seen other dog walkers out besides. None of them cruised
me though...thankfully.
--
Lee J. Moore
A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes
Tom Hens
Mike Barry <mi...@localhosts.net> wrote...
> In message <d7AjbbAT...@scroll.demon.co.uk>, JohnM
> <jo...@scroll.demon.co.uk> writes
> >
> >Incidentally, does anyone here believe Kevin Spacey's explanations
> >regarding the non-theft of his mobile while he was walking his dog?
> >
>
> I am unfamiliar with the story.
For what it's worth, I'm appending the Daily Mail's first version of the
story, doing their best to print "Kevin Spacey is a disgusting queer"
without falling foul of libel law, and even dragging Peter Mandelson into
it (I'm shamelessly ripping this off from someone posting it in another
newsgroup, who in turn ripped it off from the DM website). And oh yes, they
also have the "he was close to his mom but hated his dad" bit. Even Daily
Mail readers nowadays are apparently considered au courant with Freudian
mythology.
> I assume though that you are suggesting
> he may have been having a Ron Brown moment?
The incidents, the locations and the changing versions told afterwards by
the protagonist seem very similar.
As it happens, Kevin Spacey is the only Hollywood star about which I've
ever heard some specific gossip from what I consider reliable sources, two
independent ones. Without betraying any confidences, I think I can say both
of them reported behaviour on Spacey's part not dissimilar to what could
have led to this incident (not in London, but in two different cities in
the US). If someone like me, with no showbiz connections and no particular
interest in Spacey (I doubt I'd recognize the man if I came across him in
the street) accidentally stumbled upon two stories like this, my assumption
would be that there are a lot more of them about.
Based on less-specific gossip, I've gathered the impression that when he
was working as a stage actor in New York he was fairly open about being
gay, at least it was a widely known thing among the theatre people there,
it was when he made it big in Hollywood that he inned himself again.
Well, here's the Mail story:
Why is Spacey so secretive?
by PAUL BRACCHI, Daily Mail
Early on Saturday morning - some time after 4.30am - a middle-aged man
turned up at Kennington police station in South London; blood was dripping
from a wound in his head and he was, by all accounts, in a state of some
distress.
"I've been mugged," he told the officer manning the front desk, during what
is commonly known as the "graveyard shift".
It was hardly an uncommon occurrence in that part of London, but when the
man spoke there was something about his distinctive voice - a deep drawl -
that made the policeman on duty look up for a second time from his
paperwork.
Only then did he realise, with a start of astonishment, that standing
before him, bedraggled and pale, was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.
Under different circumstances, of course, what befell Kevin Spacey in
Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, close to the Old Vic theatre, where he has
been artistic director for a year, would already be fading from the
headlines.
But today a number of intriguing questions about the incident remain.
For example, 44-year-old Spacey initially claimed that he had been walking
his dog when a robber hit him over the head and stole his mobile phone.
By yesterday, however, his story had changed.
Claimed a robber hit him over the head
In a radio interview, he claimed that a youth had asked him if he could
borrow his mobile to call his mother.
The actor, it seems, was only too happy to oblige - even dialling the
number for the stranger before handing over the phone.
At which point, he said, the youngster ran off clutching his prize.
The truth, he said, was that he had fallen for "the oldest trick in the
book".
"What actually happened is that I fell for a con. I was, I think,
incredibly embarrassed by it," the notoriously private Spacey told BBC
Radio 4's Today programme.
"Some sob story about somebody needing to call their mother and could they
use my phone. And this kid took off and I was so upset I ran after him.
"It was late in the morning and I was walking my dog, it was about 4am, and
I tripped up over my dog, and I ended up falling on to the street and
hitting myself in the head," he said.
Changed his story
Spacey said the incident left him bleeding profusely and extremely upset,
causing him to "march over to the police station and say I got mugged".
He added: "I'm thinking they are going to run out and find this kid a block
later. Of course, they take me to the hospital and they were very kind."
Spacey, who won Oscars for his roles in The Usual Suspects and American
Beauty, is believed to have been treated at nearby St Thomas' Hospital.
Curiously - but perhaps predictably in the circumstances - the star has now
withdrawn the allegations completely.
He has also apologised for wasting police time. His explanation was simply
that "there is a difference between assault and theft.
"It just wasn't on for me not to come clean about my own level of
embarrassment and being humble at the fact that I got taken by the oldest
con going."
But what on earth was he doing in the park at 4am? The answer, he said, was
that "My doggy had to go!"
Yesterday, observers wondered about the wisdom of dog-walking at such a
late hour in the park, which surrounds the Imperial War Museum and lies in
the troubled London borough of Lambeth, where there have been 149 murders
in the past ten years.
One local businessman said: "Mr Spacey is a braver man than I. There's no
way I would walk my dog in the park in the middle of the night."
But is there more to it?
For someone who is obsessive about his privacy - "we know more about the
surface of Mars than about Spacey's private life," says one showbusiness
source - the encounter at the weekend, and his subsequent explanation of
what happened, could not have done more to draw attention to his life away
from stage and screen.
It is a life that has been dogged by persistent rumours about his
sexuality - on both sides of the Atlantic.
Rumours about his sexuality
Back in the U.S., a magazine once published photographs of him in a park
holding hands with a handsome young man, of which more later. And in
Britain, the scurrilous whispers have also surfaced.
Of course, Spacey has become the must-have guest at high-profile London
functions since settling here last year.
He lives in a flat near the Old Vic, and is often to be seen stopping for
breakfast in an Italian cafe on the way to work.
In the evenings, he likes to mingle with the capital's fashionable
intelligentsia - and is a ubiquitous figure on the social scene.
He also attends political conferences - New Labour's, naturally, where he
once turned up as a friend of Bill Clinton when the former president made a
keynote address.
But it is his relationship with another political figure that has raised
eyebrows among the chattering classes.
Sources say Peter Mandelson and Spacey have been friends for five years.
Indeed, Mandelson - who was famously 'outed' by former MP Matthew Parris on
Newsnight in 1998 - enjoys regular dinners with the star whenever they are
both in London.
It is a friendship, however, that neither seems particularly keen to
promote - at least in public.
Hence, Mandelson's behaviour at a recent Ł1,000-a-ticket party to raise
funds for the Old Vic.
"Mandelson growled at photographers who came too close while he was
standing with Spacey," revealed an observer.
Perhaps we should not read too much into this. And yet, ever since Spacey
became a major star a decade ago, the absence of a wife - or any known
girlfriends to speak of - has left him open to speculation in the media
that he is gay; his date on both occasions when he was nominated for an
Oscar was
his mother.
The two were extremely close until her death last April. He even took his
mother's maiden name as his own, rather than his father's.
Spacey, in fact, is said to have enjoyed a problematic relationship with
his father - Thomas Fowler, a technical writer from South Orange, New
Jersey - who died in 1994.
Home life was strict and oldfashioned. His father would not allow a TV in
the house and his teenage son - the youngest of three children - was
shipped off to a military academy where he would discover a talent for
drama.
It was the beginning of a meteoric career. Yet we have never been privy to
the sort of information about Spacey that most movie stars consider it
their virtual civic duty to divulge.
We know he has two dogs, a Labrador and a Jack Russell. But other than
that, his private life has remained a mystery.
Indeed, in 1996 Vanity Fair, the prestigious American magazine, published
an article (headlined 'Kevin Spacey has a Secret') all but stating that he
was gay.
The interviewer had asked him three questions about his sexuality, but
Spacey refused to answer 'yes' or 'no'.
Suggestions he is gay
The following year, another magazine, Esquire, also hinted he was gay.
Again, Spacey's answers were deeply ambivalent. "I live in a world in which
I work with many different people all day long," he said.
"They are my friends and I love them. And many of those people are gay and
homosexual. And I can't imagine the need to jump up and say: 'I'm not one
of them.'
"If anyone wants to think that, they are absolutely free to think that. I
have no interest in confirming or denying that at all. It's just of no
interest to me. So what?"
Nevertheless, the article - and Spacey's response - caused a storm. So what
did he do?
He abruptly broke his own policy to tell Playboy - that oracle of
red-blooded heterosexuality - that he wasn't gay after all.
"I decided that if people were going to talk about this subject ad nauseum
then I should at least tell them what I am not. I haven't told anyone what
I am."
He said that one day he did indeed want a family and had, in fact, been
dating his personal assistant for nine years - and even joked that the "gay
rumours" had added to his sex appeal.
"For a few women, it's a challenge for them,' he said. 'They want to be the
one who turns me around. I let them."
Two events seem to undermine his claims in Playboy. First, in 2001 pictures
emerged of Spacey holding hands with a male companion in a park on the
outskirts of Los Angeles.
The pair - the young man's face was obscured - were shown sitting on a
hill.
They had met, apparently, at a restaurant before driving to the park in
Spacey's Porsche Boxster.
A witness takes up the story: "At one point the young guy put his arms
around Kevin and cuddled him.
"Then Kevin gave the guy a massage, starting at his thighs. The kid had all
his clothes on. Kevin had taken off his jacket and his sunglasses. The
whole scene just screamed intimacy and togetherness.
"Let me put it this way .. . if my wife saw me with another man like that,
she would be divorcing me."
The photographs were published in an American magazine shortly after Spacey
picked up a best actor Oscar for his role in American Beauty.
The headline left little to the imagination: "Oscar-winner Kevin's
mountain-top tryst with young male model."
It was accompanied by 12 pictures. And that was not the only revelation.
For details also came to light of a boozy weekend in St Tropez.
A TV technician claimed he and three female friends had spent time in the
French resort with Spacey and another male companion.
The technician claimed that in a club in the early hours Spacey had asked a
waiter to kiss his male friend.
The waiter is said to have done as requested - in front of Spacey.
Later, it is alleged, the TV technician and "his girlfriends" ended up in
Spacey's three-bedroom hotel suite.
However, Spacey is said to have become angry when his male friend began
flirting with one of the girls.
Back in the less glamorous surroundings of Scotland Yard yesterday, a
spokesman said: "A man reported robbery of his mobile phone and later
withdrew the allegation. That's the end of it from our point of view."
A spokesman for the actor said he had returned to work as normal at the Old
Vic yesterday.
"Kevin is completely consumed with final preparations for the Old Vic's new
season," he said.
Spacey is due to appear at a press conference at the theatre on Thursday to
announce the new season's programme.
Additional reporting: ANDY DOLAN
Mike Barry
<1gcrx40.7ardbq1qsye9gN%this_address...@yahoo.co.uk>, David
Horne <this_address...@yahoo.co.uk> writes
>
>I thought he had just declined to comment, no?
>
I did read one report that quoted him as saying that he didn't mind the
rumours about his being gay because he got to sleep with far more women
who imagined it to be more of a challenge to try to get a gay guy.
--
Mike_B
Niles
|I suspect he'll ride it out,
Fnarr.
n
--
| Niles, Nottingham
"Excuse me! | ICQ UIN 12724766
-- I'm a virtuous person now." | outpages.com/nilex
| www.niles.org.uk
Gregoire Kretz
> Incidentally, does anyone here believe Kevin Spacey's explanations
> regarding the non-theft of his mobile while he was walking his dog?
More to the point, should anyone care? :)
Greg
--
gktz {a} heian . org . uk
Break it down again
Tom Hens
Gregoire Kretz <gr...@spamtrap.fr> wrote...
> JohnM <jo...@scroll.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > Incidentally, does anyone here believe Kevin Spacey's explanations
> > regarding the non-theft of his mobile while he was walking his dog?
>
> More to the point, should anyone care? :)
People who believe media-created celebrity figures like Kevin Spacey could
qualify as "role models" vital to achieving identity and self-awareness
should care, I think.
JohnM
me.com.DELETE.THIS.BIT> writes
I think your English is letting you down there, Tom. Not every celebrity
serves as a role model to look up to and vice versa. They are two
different things. A role model can be your own father or elder brother
or teacher or whatever. Maybe that's what you are confusing and think
that 'role model is a poncy synonym for 'celebrity'. It isn't.
The point about Kevin Spacey's story (to answer Greg also), which you
would have missed if you don't live in the UK, is that it is uncannily
similar to what happened to Ron Davies, a Welsh MP. The story with him
continued with many twists and about-turns which made him a laughing
stock.
Tom Hens
JohnM <jo...@scroll.demon.co.uk> wrote...
<snip>
> >People who believe media-created celebrity figures like Kevin Spacey
> >could qualify as "role models" vital to achieving identity and
> >self-awareness should care, I think.
>
> I think your English is letting you down there, Tom. Not every celebrity
> serves as a role model to look up to and vice versa. They are two
> different things. A role model can be your own father or elder brother
> or teacher or whatever.
Then you are using a different definition of "role model" than Paul is, who
started this thread, and the Sunday Times article he used to do so.
The ST article, although I assume intended as humourous, mentions 9 names
as potential "role models": four or five sportsmen (I don't know who
Claudio Ranieri is, but I'm guessing a footballer), one member of the royal
family, one pop singer, and two TV comedy characters, one of them animated.
Paul furthermore stated that role models for young people are "someone
outside of their immediate family", and chosen from "those in the constant
public eye, especially in the highly visible pop-culture and sporting
worlds". That last bit sounds suspiciously like a definition of
"celebrity", doesn't it? Role models, according to Paul, also have to be
"widely accepted and admired by society", and will thus magically engender
"welcome, acceptance and demand" among "society at large". That pretty much
rules out someone's dad or brother, doesn't it? (Unless you happen to have
a dad or a brother who is known to society at large, in which case I
apologize.)
It's this very common use of "role model" to mean media-created
celebrities, preferably vacuous sports, pop or movie stars that I don't get
and find irritating (it really isn't just Paul or this one ST article that
use it in this way). In a post in a different thread, you yourself are even
extending its meaning to include fictional characters in Hollywood movies
as "positive role models for gay men to look up to". They don't even have
to be real people anymore, apparently.
And if you don't have these role models, you'll of course grow up with a
lack of that essential quality, "self-esteem", and suffer untold hardships.
Unlike people who do have role models, who will be "empowered" to be...
well, something or other, it's never quite clear what this "power" they're
getting is supposed to be, or how they're getting it, but I'm sure it's a
Good Thing.
Of course people adopt things from those around them when they grow up. We
are social animals. If you want to use "role models" as a term for those
people, fine. The David Beckhams, Tim Henmans, Prince and Robbie Williams's
of this world are something entirely different. If such people (or, one
could argue, rather largely fictional characters created by tabloid
celebrity culture) are so vital to young people's identity when growing up,
how come humanity got by just fine without them until the invention of
modern mass media?
Words such as "empower", or "self-esteem", or even "role model", are all
perfectly serviceable English words with perfectly good meanings. It's the
way they're thrown about these days that turns them into annoying
psychobabble.
> Maybe that's what you are confusing and think
> that 'role model is a poncy synonym for 'celebrity'. It isn't.
I'm not confusing anything. The Sunday Times article that started this
thread used the two interchangeably. So does Paul. (At least, I think --
it's always heard to read through the fog of his prose when he goes into
full-on pompous preaching mode.)
> The point about Kevin Spacey's story (to answer Greg also), which you
> would have missed if you don't live in the UK, is that it is uncannily
> similar to what happened to Ron Davies, a Welsh MP. The story with him
> continued with many twists and about-turns which made him a laughing
> stock.
I made the exact same point in a post to alt.showbiz.gossip on April 22nd
(in the thread from which I borrowed the Daily Mail article I reposted
here), a week before this post in which you're helpfully trying to explain
things to Johnny Foreigner. I quote myself from a week ago:
"This [Matthews Paris's supposed outing, which really wasn't one, of
Mandelson] happened after an incident eerily similar to Spacey's one,
involving a member of the British cabinet, the then Secretary of State for
Wales, who had been taking an innocent stroll in a London park in the
middle of the night. In his case it wasn't his phone but his car that was
stolen -- or not stolen, depending on which of the unclear and conflicting
versions of the incident he subsequently gave to the police, the media and
the Prime Minister you wanted to believe."
(I thought it would be useful to explain this in that group, taking into
account the fact that the readership of alt.showbiz.gossip is largely
located in the US.)
To end on a lighter note:
I just had news that the Human Rights Campaign, in the US the
self-described "largest national gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender
political organization with members throughout the country" sent out a
press release this Monday about a fund-raising dinner they're having. That
press release includes a bio of a minor celebrity (and all-round wonderful
person), because he will be the guest speaker at that event. I wrote that
bio. I've also seen him described as a "role model" in at least two
American gay magazines. Does that mean I'm now a role model once-removed?
Niles
|I think your English is letting you down there
I think that's desperately unlikely. There have been several wrong
accusations about this recently.
Gregoire Kretz
> JohnM <jo...@scroll.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> |I think your English is letting you down there
>
> I think that's desperately unlikely. There have been several wrong
> accusations about this recently.
Isn't it a very English way of disagreeing with people?
I'd understand it rather as "I disagree with you and possibly consider
you are stupid for thinking that but I will find a polite/cowardly way
of putting it because other people are listening/reading" than "your
English isn't good enough". Oh well. :)
JohnM
<gr...@spamtrap.fr> writes
Me English? Frankly, I can send people to hell, if I want to; I don't
have to be polite :-)
As you can see from Tom's reply, he _was_ confusing 'role model' with
'celebrity' and I was spot on.
Gregoire Kretz
> The point about Kevin Spacey's story (to answer Greg also), which you
> would have missed if you don't live in the UK, is that it is uncannily
> similar to what happened to Ron Davies, a Welsh MP.
It's still gossip, though?
Tom Hens
JohnM <jo...@scroll.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
<6e16CCAf...@scroll.demon.co.uk>...
> As you can see from Tom's reply, he _was_ confusing 'role model' with
> 'celebrity' and I was spot on.
I think your English is letting you down there, John. You clearly do not
read what the other person has written.
Lyn David Thomas
JohnM <jo...@scroll.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> The point about Kevin Spacey's story (to answer Greg also), which you
> would have missed if you don't live in the UK, is that it is uncannily
> similar to what happened to Ron Davies, a Welsh MP.
Former MP and AM - Retired from Parliament and the National Assembly at
different times.
Now left Labour and is currently a candidate for Forward Wales, a
socialist break away from Labour.
--
Lyn David Thomas
Niles
|As you can see from Tom's reply, he _was_ confusing 'role model' with
|'celebrity' and I was spot on.
No, you pillock, he was satirising other people's confusion, not confusing
them himself.
JohnM
Thomas <l...@trebute.fsnet.co.uk> writes
What is he nowadays? straight, gay or bi?
Lyn David Thomas
JohnM <jo...@scroll.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >Now left Labour and is currently a candidate for Forward Wales, a
> >socialist break away from Labour.
> >
>
> What is he nowadays? straight, gay or bi?
Bi in a new heterosexual relationship (think married) with a new baby...
--
Lyn David Thomas
St Mym
gr...@spamtrap.fr (Gregoire Kretz) wrote:
>JohnM <jo...@scroll.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> The point about Kevin Spacey's story (to answer Greg also), which you
>> would have missed if you don't live in the UK, is that it is uncannily
>> similar to what happened to Ron Davies, a Welsh MP.
>
>It's still gossip, though?
So the M stands for Mail now it seems.
--
st mym.
saeva indignatio.