I’ve written plays, novels and movies, many of which have had gay characters and story lines. Does this make me a writer, or a gay writer? I’m gay, but I hate the phrase “openly gay,” because no one is required to be “openly straight.” Being gay is a fact, not something for anyone else to accept, tolerate or sensitively “understand” about me.
Spike Lee is often referred to as “the black Woody Allen,” and Ellen has been dubbed a “female Seinfeld,” but Woody and Jerry are never compared to black men or gay women, which would be considered a step down. Even out of the best intentions, so-called minority artists can be marginalized with a pat on the head, and they can also be cosseted because of their underprivileged status. I’ve sat through countless plays and independent films that coast on mere gayness. Just being gay is not enough, nor is just being straight-have you ever tried to endure an entire episode of “The Single Guy”?
Filming has just been completed on “In and Out,” a comedy I’ve written about a high-school English teacher in a small town in Indiana who gets outed on the Academy!i Awards-the same week he’s getting married. (The plot, while sparked by Tom Hanks’s honoring a gay teacher during his Oscar speech for “Philadelphia,” is complete fiction.) While working on the script, I wondered: should I worry about pleasing the most tearfully P.C. gay audience, or about placating the titteringly nervous straight crowd? Wouldn’t it be better just to hope the movie is funny? And how come when a movie like “The Birdcage” makes more than $100 million, it’s no longer considered a gay movie, but a hit?
Here are some other questions I’ve entertained regarding this intersection of gays and showbiz-if that’s not redundant.
If Ellen comes out, will she remain loyal to the lesbian pants creed? Certain Sapphic celebs are clearly encouraged to femme up by their agents and managers, but getting Ellen or Melissa Etheridge or k. d. lang into a dress is like coaxing Huck Finn into a camisole. I always picture the dressing-room warfare, with the performer finally throwing up her hands and exclaiming: “Fine! You can put trim on my blazer!”
Why do gay gossips attempt to out only the cutest and most heterosexual movie stars? How come no one ever insists that, say, Pauly Shore is gay and they’ve got the video to prove it? And what about the gay computer geeks who announce all over the Internet that the clearly straight Tom Cruise is gay–do they imagine that even if Tom were gay, they’d stand a chance?
How come when English actors like Ian McKellen and Rupert Everett come out, it doesn’t count? Is it because most Americans assume that all English people are gay?
Is it a sign of odd but undeniable progress that there are now gay episodes of MTV’s dating show, “Singled Out” (which some local stations refuse to air), and that Ricki Lake routinely features same-sex couples and triangles for shows with titles along the lines of “You Say You Love Me, But You’re Just a Big Gay Ho”?
Should I consider teaching a course in Gay English, or Shebonics, for straight actors attempting gay roles? I can always spot a straight actor by the incorrect emphasis he uses on such phrases as “Don’t go there,” “You go, girl” and “Get her.”
Have gay male sidekicks become sitcoms’ new Eve Ardens, with Paul Reubens’s character wisecracking for Murphy Brown, Scott Thompson’s toiling for Larry Sanders and Michael Boatman’s pithy mayoral aide on “Spin City”? Has “assistant” replaced “bachelor” as the new gay occupation?
And finally, what about Jane Hathaway, Mr. Drysdale’s shingle-haired beanpole of a secretary on “The Beverly Hillbillies”? Wasn’t she truly the first, if unspoken, network lesbian goddess-especially when she used boarding-school French? Of course she was. And Paul Lynde wasn’t a gay Stepin Fetchit, but an early and delirious gay icon. For me, a gay sensibility truly fused with prime-time TV on “Hollywood Squares,” on which Lynde was a regular. When he was asked “Why do Hells Angels wear leather?” Lynde took a historic pause and replied, “Because chiffon wrinkles so easily.”
