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FILM REVIEW | Southern Baptist Sissies
★★★★ | Southern Baptist Sissies
Fourteen years ago writer Del Shores followed his gay cult classic play ‘Sordid Lives’ with another dramedy that takes a hefty swipe at the conservative Baptists stance on homosexuality.
Since its premiere, it has been very successfully performed extensively in regional theatres throughout the USA, but unlike its predecessor it has never found its way on to the silver screen, either big or small. Until now that is. Last year rectified Shores this omission when he directed a theatrical production in LA which he filmed in front of a live audience to make Southern Baptist Sissies the movie.
The action is set in Shores’s beloved Texas and it follows four ‘good Baptist’ boys from childhood to their early twenties as they all struggle with their sexuality in varying ways. Mark is the most outspoken (and acts as the narrator) and questions how their Church can preach love and forgiveness whilst passionately decrying homosexuality; Andrew was the first to embrace Jesus as his saviour and men as his potential partners and is the one who wrestles most with the conflicting pressures that they bring. Benny is the most open of the group and has not only fully embraced his gayness but has welcomed it with open arms as he develops his career as a drag queen entertainer. On the other hand T.J. a real jock is in complete denial of his deep attraction to Mark and would rather marry a woman than accept who he really is.
There is a great deal of melodrama with each of the young men all getting more than a couple of moments in the spotlight to say their heartfelt pieces, some of which come off as preachy as one of their Pastor’s sermons. Shores certainly knows how to get his cast to use the Bible like Google where there is an answer for everything.
Then asides from this there are a couple of hardened and embittered bar flies, an older gay man and his new best lady friend, both hardened drinkers and chain smokers, who humorously dissect their lives with a constant flow of funny stories and comments on the proceedings as they sit in a gay bar.
It’s an odd mix of highly emotional soul-bearing and chest beating on the one hand which is blended in with some really gloriously funny passages. It’s not always 100% successful but its very talented young cast that play alongside several veteran actors who are regulars in Shores productions deserve credit for their impressive performances which make the piece gel as well as it does. They include actor/producer Emerson Collins (‘Sordid Lives: The Prequel’), William Belli (‘Rupaul’s Drag Race’) doing all his own singing as Benny, Luke Stratte-McClure (‘All Together Now’) as T.J. and Matthew Scott Montgomery (‘So Random’) as Andrew. However, even the combination of cute appeal and talent still couldn’t stop them all being upstaged by Leslie Jordan and Dale Dickey with their scene-stealing outrageous bar gossip routines.
It was definitely a bold decision to film it as a staged play, and for the most part, it works very well indeed. With simple interlocking sets the action flows quite naturally but whereas a running time of 140 minutes works well in a theatre, it drags on the screen and could have comfortably lost at least 30 minutes with ease.
It is essentially a wonderful play about coming-of-age that shows little sign of becoming dated with time as the situations these young men face are universal and just as relevant today as when they were first written. This especially includes Andrew’s final resolution which sadly is the same decision many troubled souls still reach today.
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November 2014
Inside Issue 6
Courtney Act on being an international queer vegan, Jodie Marsh, Coco Peru, Judy Shepard and much more… PLUS: Gaying it up in Malmo, Five foods to wipe years off your face, My gay friends left me for blind, Janoskians, news, reviews, lifestyle and advice. Come out with this issue and see where you stand within our national survey. Happily it seems most of us were happy we came out receiving positive reactions from friends and family. Did you?
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Want To See Zac Efron Sex Face?
Now we know this is a little old (like three days already) but we thought we’d revisit the Zac Efron climax without hands skit with James Franco and have a closer look.
Now with the miracle of the pause button and screen grabs we are able to bring you a closer look at Zac Efron’s sex face.
Impressive. Well not really, but we had 10 minutes and we were wondering what to fill our times with.
In the video, Zac Efron is being interviewed by James Franco, who is playing the character Skylark, a get in their and ask the big questions kind of presenter in the US.
Zac then talks about how he can climax with no hands – and that he masturbates 17 times a day. All we can say is #RedRaw.
Of course, it’s all a spoof to promote James’s next movie The Interview out in December.
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23-Year-Old Man Commits Suicide After Coming Out To His Family
A young man killed himself by jumping off the Severn Bridge an inquest in Gloucestershire heard.
His distraught mother told the corner’s court in Gloucestershire that she thought he might have been embarrassed after coming out – despite the family ‘fully accepting’ he was gay.
The body of the 23-year-old man, named as Darren Crotty, was found near the Sharpness Dock on the River Severn on the 29th April. He had been reported missing on the 5th March 2014.
Police had put out an appeal for Darren, who lived in Bishopston.
He has been reported missing by his flatmates after they found a suicide note under his pillow.
Ms. Crotty said, ‘He was a quiet, intelligent boy with a good sense of humour.‘He told us he was gay and we had no issues with that but I think he was embarrassed and perhaps unsure of his sexuality.’
His housemate, Martin Leefield said, ‘I found the suicide note and he had written that he intended to jump off the Severn Bridge so I immediately contacted the police.’
A calendar at Darren’s house had been marked with the letter “S” on the 31st January.
The Mirror reports that the Senior coroner for Gloucestershire Katy Skerrett, said, ‘He left a detailed suicide note and apologised for the stress this would cause but he always planned to do this.
‘The trigger for him taking his own life we will never know but it was probably related to his coming out as being gay.’
If you are facing difficulties with your sexuality, the London Lesbian And Gay Switchboard is available to take your calls from 10AM- 11PM seven days a week. Their number is: 0300 330 0630 or you can use the Instant message system at http://www.llgs.org.uk/instant-messaging.html
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You Were Known To Us: Transgender Day Of Remembrance
”Tiffany. 18 years old. Cause of death – dismemberment”
”Camille Verona. 24 years old. Cause of death – suffocation”
”Luna. 27 years old. Cause of death – gunshot to the chest”
And that is just to pick a few examples at random.
In the past year, there have been 268 reported murders of trans women and trans men around the world. And that is just the number we know about. The true figure is undoubtedly far higher. While the statistic in itself is depressing, it’s the individual stories of violence and brutality that lie behind it that is truly shocking.
Since 1999, 20th November has been the annual date for Transgender Day of Remembrance. Its purpose is simple; to remember the members of the transgender community that have been victims, but also to acknowledge those who have committed suicide, as statistically the trans community are the social group most likely to be driven to take their own lives.
In the UK, the largest commemorative event for TDoR is held in Manchester, also the site of the world’s first permanent trans memorial, a 12 foot tall wooden tree sculpture in Sackville Gardens, the green space in the heart of the city’s famous Canal Street area.
From small beginnings, Transgender Day of Remembrance has steadily increased in profile and media coverage. Tony Cooper, organiser of the Manchester event and a trustee of trans charity Sparkle told me. ‘This is our eighth year in the park and it’s grown hugely every single year’.
This year over 200 people crammed into a marquee in Sackville Gardens to hear the names of those who have died as a result of violence in the past year read out, listen to a rousing performance from the Manchester LGB Chorus and then at the end of the evening to light candles and assemble at the memorial. Some had also brought flowers and handwritten cards to leave in memory. From the trees close to the memorial hung photographs of some of those we had gathered to remembered; their faces watching us, a moving reminder of the unnecessary waste of human life and why so many felt compelled to gather in the park on a chilly Sunday evening in late November.
The assembled crowd was truly diverse in terms of age and background and many had traveled long distances to be there and pay their respects. Many also had there own stories to tell of personal experiences of hate crime.
As we set our candles in the sand boxes at the foot of the huge wooden sculpture, I chatted to a lady called Carol who had travelled overnight from near Bristol to be in Manchester.
‘I had trouble myself. I was in hospital earlier this year. It all got too much for me. I had this friend and she got killed. They smashed her face up. I saw her in the hospital. They made her look so horrible. I still see her all the time looking like that but it’s better now I’ve had help’.
The overwhelming message of TDoR is a simple but powerful one ”You Were Known To Us”. Each speaker reinforced this. This does not just apply solely to victims of hate crimes on other continents however. A few speakers also noted that there were many instances of trans men & women who had died of natural causes but whose families had opted to bury them as their birth gender, denying them their identity. As one lady who had recently lost a close friend who was then buried as a man by her family told me, ‘I want to lay flowers on the grave of the woman I knew, not a man called David who was a stranger to me.’
It was a theme that Tony Cooper focused on in his speech too, along with the importance of community and reaching out to others, both half a world away and far closer to home, ‘Do we need a day to remember? No, we don’t need a day… But a day to say you were us. Because you are us.’
The Sparkle weekend, a celebration of the transgender community held in Manchester each July, has grown to a point where, after Pride, it is the Gay Village’s second biggest weekend of the year in terms of visitor numbers and revenue. In purely commercial terms, this year’s event generated a not inconsiderable sum of £2.8 million for the local economy. It is indicative of the growing visibility of the community in the UK.
The remit that the trustees of Sparkle have set themselves is of ”education, action and accessibility”.
Manchester is a city often celebrated for its tolerance and diversity and this year’s Transgender Day of Remembrance saw a large number of attendees from across the wider spectrum of the LGBT community. It’s certainly a start. But when in 2014, there remains 21 European countries where by law trans women and men must be compulsorily sterilised prior to gender reassignment surgery, there remains much to be done.
And to quote one of the speakers from the marquee ”268 people were murdered in the last year. Just for being themselves”
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FILM REVIEW | The Third One
★★ | The Third One
Argentinian director’s Rodrigo Guerrero’s second feature is a very slight and charming tale about a one night stand that may change a young man’s outlook on life and love.
We first see 22-year-old near-naked Fede at his laptop on a chatline talking to Franco. The conversation soon gets very intimate and graphic and in case we don’t get where this is leading too, Guerrero has inserted some very short clips of gay porn films. Franco is in his early 40s and partnered and when all three men agree they like the look of how this hook-up is progressing they invite the young man over for dinner and more.
There is no ambiguity to the invitation and over the course of the meal, the three men chat at length about their backgrounds, their families and their lives so far. It is all very innocent and so completely friendly in such a way that it actually seems like the couple are looking to adopt the younger man rather take him to their bed and sexually ravish him. But this is what happens once desert has been served but as the action is photographed mainly from the waist up it is sweeter and somewhat wholesome than salacious.
There is a lot of grunting and groaning and smiling and then some penetration.
Next morning with still no genitalia on view the men leave for work and the boy leaves for college after they all say their fond farewells and promise to repeat the night very soon. The closing credits roll as we see young grinning Fede day-dreaming in Class his mind still on the events on last night as if he had just lost his virginity. (Not true).
Sweet film, very good acting, but it really only had the makings of a short, and certainly not a full-length feature to promote this overly optimistic idea that sometimes (!) online hook-ups can be like a fairy tale after all.
Released by TLA on 8th December
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Google Play Criticised For Selling Gay Hunting Game
The Google Play store is receiving online criticism for allowing a game to be sold that lets players hunt gays and kill them.
The game Ass Hunter is a very basic shooting game where the player clothed in green safari outfit and holding a shotgun, moves around the screen shooting ‘gays’ – depicted here as naked men with waving tackle!
You could be mistaken into thinking that the game is just another war game with men shooting other men, however, the developer’s almost comical homophobic description explains that you are indeed hunting gays here.
‘Play and do not be gay!’
‘Legendary game, where you are a hunter and your mission is to kill gays as much as you can.’
‘Gays may be hidden in bushes and unexpectedly catch you.’
‘Remember! When they catch you they will do with you whatever they want ;)’The ‘whatever they want’ turns out to be a rape of the hunter of he loses a life. BarryDennen12 on YouTube has very kindly provided his walk through of the game.
Of course, not everyone thinks this game is legendary leaving one star reviews on Google Play Store.
‘Homophobic filth A disgusting piece of trash Google you should be ashamed to have even published this.’ – Fifi Anderson
‘Abhorrent app This abhorrent app is disgusting. I too downloadabled so I could rate and report it. Google should remove this game immediately.’ – Ron Gowans-Savage
The Google Play store has now removed the game, and Google have been approached for comment on the game.
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Homophobic Ass Hunter Game Removed From Google After Complaints
After numerous complaints online, the Ass Hunter game has been removed from Google Play.
It is unclear at this point whether Google itself removed the offensive game, which sees gay men hunted and killed, or if the game makers themselves: Jay, Phil and Graphics by Stef, have removed the game.The game Ass Hunter is a very basic shooting game where the player clothed in a green safari outfit and holding a shotgun, moves around the screen shooting ‘gays’ – depicted here as naked men with waving tackle!
You could be mistaken into thinking that the game is just another war game with men shooting other men, however, the developer’s almost comical homophobic description explains that you are indeed hunting gays here.
‘Play and do not be gay!’
‘Legendary game, where you are a hunter and your mission is to kill gays as much as you can.’
‘Gays may be hidden in bushes and unexpectedly catch you.’
‘Remember! When they catch you they will do with you whatever they want ;)’The game is still widely available on other gaming sites such as GameBroad.com and Flashgames247.com
Google does not comment on indivdual apps, but the app has been taken down.
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FILM REVIEW | St. Vincent: Grinning From Ear To Ear
★★★ | | St. Vincent: Grinning From Ear To Ear
Vincent with no visible regular means of support and with a not a single friend in the world other than Felix his rather mangy Persian cat, is a cantankerous old drunk. When Maggie a newly single mother and Oliver her 12-year-old son move into the house next door, things get off to bad start between them and him, and it looks like they will be added to the long list of people who Vincent loathes. Then one day when Oliver gets inadvertently locked out of his house when his mother is trapped at work, and Vincent becomes a reluctant babysitter.
Always desperately short of cash, mainly due to his very unsuccessful gambling habit, when Vincent realises that looking after Oliver every night after school will actually earn him some money, he signs up for the job albeit begrudgingly. However unbeknown to Maggie, Vincent sees no reason to change his normal routines and drags the boy around all his regular seedy and totally inappropriate haunts. When he discovers that the boy is being picked on at school he teaches Oliver how to break the bully’s nose, which to everyone’s surprise he successfully puts into practice the very next day.
There are two people in Vincent’s life that he actually likes. One is a pregnant Russian stripper called Daka, and the second is Sandy an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer’s who lives in a seniors centre. As the story unfolds it slowly becomes obvious why these women warrants special attention. Eventually, Vincent also starts to bond with his geeky charge and their relationship is really cemented when Oliver manages to change Vincent’s losing streak at the race track.
Center strand to the story is that at the Catholic School Oliver attends each of the pupils is encouraged to nominate a person from their everyday lives to be a Saint. Despite his drinking, gambling and hanging out with hookers, Vincent is Oliver’s choice for canonization which seems an unrealistic fit with the Catholic Church, but this is the movies after all.
This debut feature written and directed by newbie filmmaker Ted Melfi is purely a vehicle for the great comic actor Bill Murray who now specialises in playing old curmudgeons. He is unquestionably funnier than the movie itself, which although has some good comic moments, is just a little too sweet and syrupy which is not a good fit with Vincent’s grumpy personna.
Melissa McCarthy has very little to do as Maggie, Naomi Watts as Daka seems as uncomfortable as we are listening to her silly Russian accent, and Chris O’Dowd is painfully unfunny as the school priest.
However young Jaeden Lieberher playing Oliver puts in a fine performance and there was excellent chemistry between him and Mr Murray.
It’s not the laugh-out loud comedy it sets out to be, but it will have you grinning from ear to ear some of the time.
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FILM REVIEW | Big Gay Love
★ | Big Gay Love
Ringo Le’s comic drama admirably tackles the concept that even in our physique obsessed culture, gay men who are socially inept and more than pleasantly plump can still get their chance at a big romance.
The lonely soul in this instance is Bob, who is a chubby successful party caterer in LA who has made enough money to buy his first house but desperately sad as he has no-one to share it with. For some reason (insecurity?) his only friends are a couple of vapid vain gym rats who are as self-centered as his mother who was once a famous Pin Up Girl.
When at one of his own parties, he meets Andy a handsome beefy accomplished chef & restaurant owner, and budding writer to boot, who actually fancies him, Bob’s low-self esteem kicks in big time. The trouble is for Bob… and for us too… that once Le sets up the scenario the initially promising story disintegrates through a series of convoluted and somewhat ridiculous plot twists and the whole mishmash becomes one annoying big pity party for Bob.
The cast includes the talented Jonathan Lisecki (the writer/director/actor of ‘Gayby’) and handsome Nicholas Brendon (from ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’) but with zero chemistry between them and a very stilted script, both of them looked as uncomfortable as we felt by the time the final credits rolled. They would be lucky to find a small gay love at best!
Big Gay Love = Big Gay Yawn.
