Soap operas have had gay characters before, but none have been as fully-realized as Oliver Fish and Kyle Lewis, the One Live to Live couple (collectively known as "Kish") expertly brought to life by Scott Evans and Brett Claywell.
Since their storyline began in early 2009, Llanview Police Officer Fish has come out on national TV, been ostracized by his conservative parents and, oh yeah, unknowingly fathered a secret love child (this is a soap after all). Meanwhile, his former college boyfriend Kyle has dodged blackmail charges, returned to med school and almost got married in a mass gay wedding. In the end, they found true love in each other's arms, culminating in a groundbreaking New Year's Eve love scene the likes of which daytime — or even primetime —television has ever seen.
Prior to their breakthrough roles on OLTL, Evans was primarily known as the gay brother of Fantastic Four's Chris Evans (god bless that gene pool), while Claywell had a recurring role on the teen sudser One Tree Hill. Now, with passionately loyal fans that follow the super couple's every move via live blogs, YouTube clips and tribute sites, the dynamic duo are certified soap studs ... and our New Stars of the Year!
Honorable Mentions:
Boldly going where William Shatner went before, Chris Pine brashly recreated the iconic character of James Tiberius Kirk in the new Star Trek, while Javier Beltrán brought poet Federico García Lorca to life in Little Ashes.
See more pictures of Scott Evans in The Back Room (NSFW).
The title of Glee is most fitting, for that is exactly what we are filled with each time we watch it. Creator Ryan Murphy's musical dramedy — think Election meets High School Musical by way of American Idol — defied all the odds to become a pop culture sensation in 2009. And, if the continuing string of hit iTunes singles, four Golden Globe nominations (more than any other TV program this year) and a growing fan base of dearly devoted "Gleeks" everywhere are any indication, it is only just beginning.
Glee's deft mixture of relentless optimism and biting cynicism helped it overcome any false notes along the way (most infamously: that credibility-straining fake pregnancy storyline). It has also made instant stars of its multi-talented, Screen Actors Guild nominated cast, including Broadway faves Matthew Morrison and Lea Michele, break out hunks Cory Monteith and Mark Salling, newbie Chris Colfer, and ace scene stealer Jane Lynch. To borrow the title of its most famous song: don't stop believing in Glee!
Honorable Mentions:
Forget all those wimpy Twilight vamps with their sparkly skins; for a real blood suckin' good time, true vampire fans tuned in to True Blood, Alan Ball's sexy and smart American gothic. And the year's best made for television movie was the Emmy Award winning, dramatized remake of the cult classic documentary Grey Gardens, starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore as our beloved Beales.
Filmmaker-agitator Kirby Dick has turned his probing camera on increasingly sizable targets. He took on predatory Catholic priests in 2005's Oscar-nominated Twist of Faith and the Motion Picture Association of America's secretive ratings board in his follow-up, This Film Is Not Yet Rated. With Outrage, Dick names members of Congress and other US politicians who have been living closeted gay lives while supporting and/or passing legislation against the GLBT community.
A bit more balance would have been helpful in the final film (which makes its DVD debut
Honorable Mentions:
My personal favorite documentary of 2009, After the Storm, played several film festivals but hasn't yet gotten a theatrical release. This shouldn't stop readers from checking out this inspiring saga of a group of New Orleans youth staging a production of Once on This Island in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's destruction. Learn more, including where the film might be available for viewing in 2010, at the film's official website. Also theatre-based and inspiring was Every Little Step, about the evolution of the enduring musical A Chorus Line. Both docs are potent reminders of how theatre, film and the arts can be truly transformative for local communities and our culture at large.
By Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.
Yes, it's that time of year again, time for some awards that are even gayer than the Tonys: The 3rd Annual Movie Dearest Awards!
The "Dearies" honor the best and brightest of film, television and theater as covered here on Movie Dearest, and this year myself and my fellow Men on Film — Chris Carpenter, Neil Cohen and our newest contributor James Jaeger — are excited to announce some changes for the 2009 festivities.
First, instead of giving you all the goods in one day, we're prolonging the suspense by announcing the winners one a day for the next week. And, since there was so much to love in the past year, we're also naming, for the first time, the honorable mentions in each of our categories — Stage Show, Television Show, New Star, Woman, Man and Movie of the Year. Plus, we are adding a brand new category, Documentary of the Year, which will be announced later today.
So stay tuned ...
These are the first Neelys Awards of the new decade, named after Patty Duke's boozy, doped-up character in Valley of the Dolls. They’re bestowed with love, even for the Worst 10, because I love seeing bad movies as much as good movies; in both cases, they move me ... even if it is just a run for the exit.
Here are the best 2009 had to offer:
1. Up in the Air: Jason Reitman (Juno and Thank You for Smoking) keeps getting better and better as a director, and his new film is the perfect tale for our time of economic disaster. George Clooney hasn’t been this effortlessly charming in a long time, and his banter with Vera Farmiga elevated a bad movie year immensely. Anna Kendrick could have been clichéd but instead became someone you cared about as Clooney’s know-it-all colleague.
2. Inglourious Basterds: Quentin Tarantino’s fantastic, Nazi killin’, bloody fun exploitation flick has scenes of suspense that Hitchcock would envy. Brad Pitt is a hoot, Christoph Waltz is scary good, and both Diane Kruger and Mélanie Laurent are strong, powerful women in Tarantino’s deft bit of historical wish fulfillment. It’s like a feel-good Valkyrie, and I loved every grossly hilarious minute.
3. A Single Man: Is it style over substance that makes Tom Ford’s film feel less involving than other top picks? Perhaps, although Colin Firth is heartbreaking in the lead role of George Falconer, a closeted gay man in 1962 Los Angeles who is so bereft at the death of his partner, he spends one long day planning to kill himself. Ford’s vision is exquisite, and A Single Man is a timeless classic of love lost, and society’s callous indifference.
4. Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire: At one time, Precious was my top film of the year, but on second thought, others rose higher. The outspoken Lee Daniels’ brutally real depiction of a young girl’s struggle to escape poverty and abuse makes for a gripping, unforgettable film. Gabourey Sidibe is amazing in the title role, while Mo’Nique is shocking in her fiercely hateful performance as Precious’ mother from hell.
5. Julie & Julia: Meryl Streep is the incandescent embodiment of Julia Child, while Amy Adams is less lucky with her half of Nora Ephron’s comic drama. When a film makes you cheer a well-cooked meal, you know it’s something special, and Julie & Julia is never more special than when Streep is on screen.
6. A Serious Man: The Coen Brothers have a merciless way of treating their characters, and Michael Stuhlbarg’s hapless Larry Gopnik fares no better. Was his family cursed by the Dybbuk (Jewish evil spirit) that entered the otherwise unconnected opening scene? I’m not sure, but I am sure that the Coens captured their late 60s Jewish and collegiate worlds perfectly, in a story that rivals the Book of Job.
7. District 9: After seeing the gritty realism that infuses Neill Blomkamp’s hard-hitting sci-fi take on Apartheid, Avatar looks like a video game. I hate seafood, but I was cheering on the alien prawns to victory, hoping against hope that the ET’s would do more than just phone home.
8. Sherlock Holmes: Sure, the film is popcorn entertainment, but Guy Ritchie makes a thrilling leap into period action, while Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law take honors as the couple of the year, even if their love dare not speak its name.
9. The Messenger: This story of two men charged with notifying the next of kin when servicemen are killed really resonates. Every person killed in action leaves a huge hole in their family’s lives, as The Messenger reminds us. Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson give milestone performances.
10. The Year in Animation: It’s kind of a cheat, but the tenth best films were the fine animated films Up, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Coraline. Up was Pixar’s most mature film yet, with profound messages about love and loss. Fantastic Mr. Fox finally made me like Wes Anderson, with visually gorgeous stop-animation and a wicked Roald Dahl story. Coraline was also a visual treat, with a creepy tale about getting what you wish for ... and regretting it.
Now the time has come to reward the horrid and reveal the vile. The Neelys 2010 are a little different this year, because I’ve decided to give each movie its own award of shame:
— The Sudoku Award for Most Aggravating Number-Obsessed Movie: Nicolas Cage’s Knowing, which somehow never knew how annoying and illogical it was.
— The Can We Revoke His Visa Award for Bad Citizenship Award: Gerard Butler’s ridiculous revenge flick, Law Abiding Citizen, wherein he rights the unfair murder of his wife by killing countless other folks.
— The Not-So-Gleeful Award for Incompetent Choir Movies: The excruciating Mark Pease Experience. You know it’s really bad when Jason Schwartzman isn’t the worst part of the film. That would be Ben Stiller in floppy hair.
— The That’ll Kill Your Résumé Award for Worst Buzz Kill to its Stars’ Careers: Sandra Bullock had an amazing year (The Proposal and The Blind Side), until you realize that she produced the steaming pile of rom-com crap known as All About Steve. Ditto Bradley Cooper, whose hangover will commence once he spots this incompetent trash on cable. Stalker comedy is bad enough, but did they have to steal and ruin a perfectly good gay film title?
— The That Joke is Jurassic Award: Land of the Lost, Will Ferrell’s painfully awful reboot of the cheesy Saturday morning kids’ show. When the height of comedy is Ferrell’s love of A Chorus Line, you know the humor well’s run dry.
— The Roe vs. Wade Award for a Movie That Should Have Been Aborted: In The Unborn, Odette Yustman is tormented by the evil spirit of her dead fetal twin. The audience is tormented by bad dialogue and cheap scares, and Judaism is set back two thousand years by its lame-brained mysticism.
— The “I Know Anne Archer, and You, Beyoncé, Are No Anne Archer” Award: The ludicrous Fatal Attraction rip-off Obsessed contains a weird bit of reverse racism wherein the devil lady Ali Larter stops at nothing to ruin Beyoncé’s happy home, with none of that pesky psychological suspense to get in the way. Lame catfights ensue.
— The Angelina’s Nightmare Award for Worst Adoption Movie: Following Orphan, Vera Farmiga would be forgiven if she never wants to play a mother again. First, in Joshua, she has a little devil boy. Even worse, in Orphan she has … Peter Sarsgaard as a husband! The horror! And that’s before they adopt a nasty little Eastern European tot with a daddy fixation. There’s good schlock, and then there’s trash like Orphan. No wonder adoption advocates were up in arms over the film!
— The “Does 3-D Stand for Dim-Witted, Depressing and Dull?” Award: With The Final Destination, the most tired entry in the Final Destination series, even 3-D couldn’t bring it back to life. Filled with the worst actors, the laziest plotting and the least imaginative death scenarios, it’s almost as if the series cheated death, only to be killed off by this lame sequel.
— The Prop 8 Award for Worst Wedding Testimonial: The wretched chick flick Bride Wars pits Anne Hathaway against best friend Kate Hudson as battling bridezillas bound and determined to be married at the Plaza Hotel. If this is marriage, who wants it?
— The Isaiah Washington Award for Worst Use of the F-Word: The Hangover, an otherwise entertaining film, is ruined by homophobic “guy banter” like Bradley Cooper yelling “Paging Dr. F****t!” at Ed Helms and gross groomsman Zach Galifianakis freaking out when a tailor measures his inseam.
— Finally, the Neely for Worst Film of the Year is the Chemical Castration Award for Worst Cinematic Man-Whore: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past was Matthew McConaughey squandering his remaining sex appeal on a sour holiday fable about a jerk who uses women, then supposedly grows a heart and soul. Now that Taylor Lautner’s grown killer abs, we don’t even need to see Matthew shirtless, so he had better choose his next projects more wisely.
Lastly (and certainly least), it’s time for the coveted Elizabeth Berkley Awards for acting below and against the call of duty.
This year’s Worst Actor pains me to announce, because he’s just so damn hot ... until he opens his mouth. Channing Tatum’s deadly dull performance in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra actually acts as an anti-aphrodisiac, negating his obvious assets while it kills your brain cells watching it.
This year’s Worst Actress just keeps getting work (including what I hope will be her first good performance as Joan Jett in Runaways) despite a complete lack of apparent ability. Kristin Stewart in The Twilight Saga: New Moon gave new meaning to the word “underplaying”, as she barely seems awake throughout the film. No emotion is within her grasp and no line is dramatic enough to rouse her from her stupor. Stewart makes Chloë Sevigny look like Vanessa Redgrave in comparison.
It’s a new decade, so here’s hoping that 2010 brings a better class of films!
By Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.
Don’t kid Laurence Lau about the mustache he wears in the current national tour of the Tony Award-winning August: Osage County. Although he’s in his fifties, Lau is eternally young looking, and it was agreed that the mustache would both add to his character’s persona and age him at the same time. “It sort of fits Steve Heidebrecht to have a mustache,” Lau explained recently. “Kind of looks like a guy stuck in the 70’s.” Unfortunately, Lau laughed, he had to keep it when he recently filmed his scenes for All My Children’s fortieth anniversary show. The “’stache”, as he calls it, is not exactly what upstanding Greg Nelson, the character he played in the soap opera’s golden era of the mid-80s, would ever wear.
In Tracy Letts’ epic dysfunctional family play, August: Osage County, the Weston family converges on the deteriorating family home when the patriarch disappears, leaving behind his cancer-stricken, pill-popping wife Violet. Esteemed actress Estelle Parsons (an Oscar winner for Bonnie and Clyde) plays the obscenely caustic Violet, but it can be argued that Lau’s louse Steve drives the most disturbing subplot. Steve is younger daughter Karen’s fiancé, and he strikes up a wildly inappropriate relationship with Karen’s fourteen year-old niece. If you have only seen Letts’ more surreal or cartoonish plays like Bug or Killer Joe, you’ll marvel at how effortlessly Letts plunges into the withering heart of a fairly typical upper middle class family, and in the process depicts the disintegration of America’s society as well.
Lau has mostly been known for his work on daytime dramas like All My Children, Another World, One Life to Live, and most recently, As the World Turns. It’s sad news that CBS has canceled As the World Turns, which premiered fifty-three years ago. The show features two of the most high profile gay characters on daytime TV, Luke (Van Hansis) and Noah (Jake Silbermann).
Laurence Lau added some welcome drama when he joined the show as Brian Wheatley, a non-profit director who ended up marrying Luke’s grandmother, Lucinda Walsh (Elizabeth Hubbard). He upset Luke by urging him to hide his sexual orientation for the good of Luke’s non-profit, and later shocked Luke by kissing him. Wheatley was forced to face that he was gay, breaking Lucinda’s heart and driving him to leave town.
Lau’s performance turned a three month role into a more complex one that ran for over seven months. “I was so proud to be asked to take on this storyline,” Lau explained. He and Hubbard felt that Brian should genuinely fall in love with Lucinda, only to discover that he couldn’t resist his feelings for her grandson. “Thereby, what would ensue would be a real tragedy for her and for Brian, to discover that his whole life had been one long journey of denial, painful denial, and what it cost him and what it cost her. The writers kept it going and the audience was really responding.
At the end, they treated the story with lots of respect. They had a wonderful resolve where Brian broke down in tears, crying and shouting, 'I’m gay! I’m gay! Is that what you want to hear?' He was at the point where he wanted to end it all because he was so torn apart. It was touching and heartbreaking to have that moment.”
Later, they brought him back for a final resolution Lau enjoyed. “He came back and he was comfortable in his own skin for the first time in his life. The people that he’d hurt so badly were accepting of him. I thought that was great to play and I got these wonderful letters from across the country from men who had spent years of their lives in similar circumstances. Many of the letters were heartbreaking and beautiful in expressing how much they appreciated that story.” Lau added modestly, “I just spoke the words. I give a lot of credit to producer Chris Goutman and the writers. I was very honored to be a part of it.”
On the other hand, his performance as the amoral Steve Heidebrecht is sure to land him a whole new set of fans. “The jolly perv. That’s my affectionate name for him,” Lau joked. He really enjoyed playing against type, and delving into Steve’s motivations. “Steve doesn’t really think,” he explained. “He doesn’t even realize what he’s up to. He skips along the surface of life without really engaging the seriousness of the consequences of his actions. In that sense, it might be even scarier to confront somebody who’s unaware of their own actions. In a way, he kind of disarms the audience in the beginning. It’s more of a shocker when people really grasp, “My god, this guy’s a pedophile.” It’s fun to play him with an innocent charm and then underneath that is a very destructive person.”
Lau is thrilled to be part of Tracy Lett’s Pulitzer prize-winning play, and marveled that he has “the best seat in the house” at the big dinner table scene in Act II, where Parson’s really lets loose. “I’m looking right across the dining room table and she knocks me out every night. The authenticity of the family drama — all the secrets that come pouring out of the dysfunctional large family,” is what makes August: Osage County so special. “The anger and the rage and the pain and the betrayal and the lies; ultimately, the tragedy of this disintegrating family — I think a lot of people can relate to that,” he explained, adding that they always get standing ovations. “It touches people in really deep ways. The genius of Tracy Letts is that he found humor throughout the entire play that makes it possible to experience this tragedy. If there was no humor, you couldn’t endure it. There’s all this from-the-gut laughter that comes out of the characters and the situations. There’s no gimmick laughter.”
Lau had just returned from filming the 40th Anniversary episode of All My Children, which airs January 5, the same day he opens in August: Osage County in Tempe. He filmed three scenes that set up flashbacks, and it took him back to the days when he and Kim Delaney were the most popular couple on daytime TV. “It was like Romeo and Juliet. We were from opposite sides of the tracks. I had no idea it was going to take off like a rocket. I had a great time, until they blew Jenny up on a Jet-ski,” he joked.
As for future projects, Lau would love to work with Letts and director Annie Shapiro again, and hopes to play some more dramatic roles. “I’ve played a nice guy a lot.” He stopped short of predicting his future projects. “You know what they say, 'You hear God laughing when you start making plans.' We’ll see what happens.”
August: Osage County will play Tempe's Gammage Auditorium from Janury 5 to 10. For more information on the tour, including future dates and locations, visit the show's official website.
Interview by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.
