The Evils of Seduction

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

An interesting discussion erupted today on a Facebook post by the British artist Matthew Stradling.  He put up a recent picture of David Bowie with the comment “We can’t be beautiful forever.”  To which I replied, “Looking more like Paul McCartney every day. But let’s face it, Bowie was never beautiful.”

The eternal duel of attraction. (Ph: Helmut Newton)

Of course, this prompted something of an uproar from people our age, who remember Bowie as the epitome of male pulchritude.  “Oh, c’mon,” I responded in a subsequent comment.  “He was interesting looking at best, way too thin. He was seductive, as was his singing. We were all hypnotized into thinking he was sex on wheels. I feel like the little girl in The Emperor’s New Clothes. But the fact he was joli laid, as the French say, doesn’t take away from the genius of his early music.”

Queer as Comics

THE WEEK FROM MY VIEW

by James Killough

It’s understandable if you’re confused that Ryan Reynolds might have been outed by DC Comics this past week.  Or rather that the superhero character he played in the colossal 2011 flop, The Green Lantern (not to be confused with the similarly hued disaster Green Hornet), will be transformed into a Ghey when a new issue of the comic hits the stands next Wednesday.

If you’re gonna come out, this is how you do it. Yee-haw!

Don’t worry, girls, Reynolds isn’t being forced to pull a Brokeback retroactively.  The Green Lantern character he played, Hal Jordan, remains a resolute womanizer who could plausibly have landed Scarlett Johansson.  The character whose entire past history is being reinvented is Alan Scott, described by DC as “the leader of the team. He’s a Type-A personality and a successful businessman; he’s gallant, he’s brave, he’s all the things you’d want in a hero.”

The Elusive Eunuch—Part Two

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | THE INDIA FILES

by James Killough

Please read Part One first.

Let me backpedal even further down memory lane to the very first time I first became interested in eunuchism; even though, like most men who have no transgender aspirations, I had an instinctive aversion to it and wanted at the very least to cross my legs when I thought about losing my genitals, or even better don a pair of titanium underpants to protect myself.  That first time coincided with my decision to abandon acting and become a filmmaker at the age of eighteen.

Stefano Dionisi as the castrato singer Farinelli.

I had an older gay mentor at the time, as many young Gheys do, a sort of nonsexual guru who instructed me in the Ways of Ghey—by ‘older,’ I mean he was twenty-four.  He was a classic of his kind: bitchy, funny, great taste, somewhat aristocratic, edgy, Italian.  He worked for a while as an assistant to a famous gay journalist for the Village Voice, and one day he threw me a book he’d stolen from his boss’s library called Memoirs of a Castrato by Henry Lyon Young.  (He threw things at me a lot, which is probably why we’re no longer in touch.)

Camping Out

THE WEEK FROM MY VIEW

by James Killough

I rather like Nicole Kidman.  As an actress, I mean.  I’ve heard varying reports on what she’s like to work with.  I try to discount the Hollywood Personal Assistant Network, a.k.a. Nannywood, which naturally labels her a “bitch.”  But being hot gossip around Nannywood is rather like negative confirmation: if you’re not a bitch or “total weirdo/asshole” (for the guys) then they don’t talk about you, anyway.

Mcconaughey is the “Cannes revelation” because of his recent career-changing roles.

Indeed, there’s no point being nice to PAs because that won’t make them feel empowered when the network assembles to compare notes; they cannot feel they have the moral high ground over you, cannot one-up each other with who is more of an insider with the gods than whom.

The Elusive Eunuch—Part One

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | THE INDIA FILES

by James Killough

At some point during Shoot Your Heroes Week here at PFC, I had an exchange with Eric Baker in our incestuous comments section that led me to remember the time I crossed the Rann of Kutch in a rickety van in search of the secret temple sacred to the hijras, the notorious eunuchs of India.

A hijra performing for the boys.

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton became the one and only hero I’d ever had around page one hundred of Edward Rice’s superlative best-selling biography of him, which I read when it first came out in the early 90s.  This is the kind of man I would have tried to become had I been a Victorian with the sort of linguistic and scholarly brilliance with which he was blessed.  Burton was a character far more extraordinary than his contemporary Rudyard Kipling in many respects; he didn’t just dream of the Indian subcontinent and the British Raj in poems and novels, he lived it, playing the Great Game to the very edge of brinksmanship with a level of chutzpah I aspire to.

Sacha: Comedy Fuck Up for Make Benefit Glorious Studio of Paramount

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | REVIEW

by James Killough

I said on Monday that I would never see The Dictator, not even if I secured my favorite seat, C-22 in the handicapped section at the Arclight Hollywood, which is exactly where I saw it from last night.  I am allowed to go back on my word because my evil twin Andrew Sullivan flip-flopped about Obama last week, so now it’s all the rage.

Let me clarify, however: flip-flopping actually means something completely different to Gheys than changing your mind.  I assure you that I will never go to that point.  No, really.  Sullivan may engage in the gay version of flip-flopping to his heart’s content, but this total top’s sphincter remains puckered shut, never more so since seeing The Dictator.

Trailer Trashing

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

If I had gone by the trailer alone, I would never have seen The Avengers, just as I never saw Thor or Captain America.  These films aren’t made with me in mind, so why should I shell out sixteen bucks even for my favorite seat, C-22 in the middle of the handicapped section at the Arclight Hollywood?  Much as I love movies, that would be the definition of dysfunctional behavior.

Michael Fassbender: Android perfection.

I was just going to let Eric Baker review The Avengers until it became clear almost two weeks ago that it was a juggernaut that was going to make film history, and that suddenly turned it from an ordinary early summer blockbuster into an event this blog had to cover.

The Cold Civil War

THE WEEK FROM MY VIEW

by James Killough

My dear friend Phil Hoskins is a lawyer who specializes in estate planning for Gheys, a somewhat more complex legal situation for those of us who are denied the same rights of inheritance and whatnot.  Over a protein shake in Weho the other day, Phil said, “DOMA is the most pernicious piece of legislation since slavery.”

Who else?

President Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage this week was monumental, of course, quite possibly more so than even the gay community at large seems to realize.  I went out for a celebratory drink at Gym Bar on Wednesday after a meeting, raised my glass and bellowed out a toast to the President.  I was met with absolute indifference.  It’s probably because they were engrossed in urgent gossip, and because most Gheys have a blinkered view about marriage; many are unlikely to take this most hetero-normative of steps with our relationships in our lifetimes.  We’re men: few of us daydream about ideal weddings, or make it any kind of priority, not with so many other possibilities out there.  We’re thrilled if a relationship lasts six weeks past the first encounter.

Joss the Box Office Slayer

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

This isn’t another review of The Avengers, but it is part of our impromptu Shoot Your Heroes Week here at PFC.  While I’m not sure exactly what that means, I think it sounds rather dramatic and subversive enough to be one of our themes.  Perhaps it will one of many, or perhaps this will be the first and last.

My new friend Adam Von Rothfelder isn’t my hero, but I’m certainly a fan. (Ph: P. Reizt)

‘Shoot Your Heroes’ comes from the fact I’ve only had two heroes in my life, one of whom—a producer I admired more than any other in the business—I ended up wanting to kill after she tried unsuccessfully to fuck me over by poaching my investors on a film.  The other, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, died in 1890, but I’m pretty sure I would have want to shoot him, too, at some point.

Darling, You Look Marvel-ous

THE WEEK FROM MY VIEW | REVIEW

by Eric J Baker

So I’m sitting there for the first hour of The Avengers thinking, “Where the fuck is Patrick Macnee?” Then the Incredible Hulk showed up and I was like, “Ah… it’s those Avengers.” I ought to pay closer attention to the marketing for these things.

Hemsworth and Evans: Let the slash fiction begin.

Director Joss Whedon’s all-star, $220-million superhero mash-up opened this weekend to surprisingly good reviews for a summer popcorn movie, and has shattered all records with a $200-million-plus opening weekend to bring its global cume to close to $650 million in only twelve days.  In other words, it’ll be profitable, but never officially—Disney’s previous bomb John Carter will see to that.