ENTOURAGE: One. Damn. Fine. Flic.

A new movie opened last weekend. 

Here are some key moments.

A young man woos a woman who is a professional boxer/trainer. She deems him worthy of attention only when she can knock him out in the ring. 

(She does.) 

One of the movie’s most significant story lines concerns a man who has decided to help his ex-girlfriend through her pregnancy (she is pregnant with their child) even though they are no longer a couple. Just before his ex-girlfriend has her baby, the man has promiscuous sex with two strange women in a day. The women he has sex with ridicule him. He decides to reject promiscuity and — in the romantic climax of the film — re-unites with his ex-girlfriend to raise their newborn baby girl. 

The film finishes off with a gay marriage between an Asian man and his white boyfriend, presided over by a rabbi in a traditional Jewish ceremony. The Asian man is ‘given away’ by his ex-employer, a man who was once homophobic but now has come to see the error of his ways.

Hm. 

What might this be? An avant-garde feminist experimental film? A gala opening at Toronto’s Inside Out Festival?

Nope. These are some of the major plot points in the movie version of HBO TV show Entourage.

So what the heck is going on? 

I was a big fan of the HBO series, eagerly awaiting the release of the film. I tried to find a review in the Toronto newspapers last Friday. No luck. Then I went to Rotten Tomatoes. The film received got a rating of 40%. I  went to Now magazine, and  Radheyan Simonpilllai wrote: “Writer/director/creator Doug Ellin has filled the feature-length film’s vacuous space with misogyny, dated satire and as many cameos as a Muppets movie.” 

Okay.

First: the cameos. Doug Ellin can certainly be forgiven for the Mark Wahlberg cameo, since Wahlberg is the producer of Entourage, and the series is based on his life story. As for the other — yes, numerous — cameos, well I guess I’m a bit too old to be really up on my pop culture, because frankly, I didn’t even know who most of these youngsters were. In some so-called cameos — like the Billy Bob Thornton appearance — the stars were invisible and very well-integrated into the film as fictional characters. In other instances, sure, the stars played themselves — because the boys of Entourage are in Hollywood, after all. 

What about misogyny? Excuse me, but what misogyny? Where? Oh yes, in one brief  scene a model is performing cunnilingus on another for the amusement of a scumbag movie producer. In another scene — during ‘E’’s brief flirtation with promiscuity — ‘E’ enjoys an explicit sex scene with a young naked woman. And finally, yes, there are several moments where ‘the boys’ comment about how much they would like to ‘do’ certain women.

Call me crazy. But don’t we get a bit more misogyny than this in the nightly rapes on Game of Thrones? 

Honestly, are straight men not allowed to enjoy looking at straight women anymore? Are they not allowed to voice their appreciation amongst themselves? Are they not allowed to want to have sex with women they consider beautiful? Since when did lust become a crime? And anyway, who can look inside their own heart, and say they have been without lust? Men lust. So do women (and plenty of women lust in this movie too!). These are the facts. Is there any reason we should ignore these truths?

But I think it’s Simonpillai’s second (and most ridiculous) criticism that really gets to the heart of why the entertainment establishment has it in for this movie. Entourage is not what movies are supposed to be anymore. Movies are not supposed to be smart, contemporary, challenging, moving, and filled with detailed, relatable characters. Most importantly, they are not supposed to have a point. The major satirical point made in this film is not dated at all, but in fact fiercely relevant — Entourage is about a star who wants to make a movie that he is passionate about, instead of Hollywood superhero trash. Entourage is critical of the Hollywood establishment, and that is the problem.

Is it a co-incidence that Entourage is competing against a bunch of extraordinarily tedious, mind-numbing masterpieces of movie crapola, i.e.: San Andreas, Tomorrowland, Mad Max, and The Avengers (and don’t forget!!!! ANTMAN opens soon!!!!)

Unfortunately audiences only seem to want unchallenging pap these days — stupid, boring, violent, non-intellectually-threatening garbage. And apparently people don’t go to see X-rated films anymore — because you can’t bring the kids. The only movies people seem to care about are the bland techno-orgies that make big bucks.

Keep in mind you won’t hear this anywhere else. Because there is nothing but idiocy being spewed about this movie.

So let me say it here, once and for all.

Entourage is: One. Damn. Fine. Flic.

Period.

Yes, Caitlyn — But What About Me?

Dear Caitlyn,

I feel a little bit shy about sending you this letter as you are a big Hollywood celebrity and I am just a Canadian writer (no bestseller yet!) and Associate Professor at a small Canadian university (I haven’t even made  it to full ‘Professor’ status).  But it just seems — if you’ll pardon me for saying — pardon me, in fact, for speaking at all — that the media these days is all about you, and everyone is talking about you and thinking about you (and arguing about you) and I just wanted people to talk, think, and argue about me for a minute.

I know that’s presumptuous. I mean, not only are you a Hollywood celebrity — but you are rich and you have the money to get a complete make-over. You had your face reshaped so that you don’t have to grow old. I’m 63 and I have to make do with the same old face which is sagging more every day. Yes, I have some appeal as a ‘Daddy’ but basically when ‘Daddy’ becomes ‘Grandaddy’ there goes my love life. Whereas you will remain glamorous and youthful forever. So I know it’s easy to ignore me, because I’m not only not rich, I’m just old.

Then there’s the fact that I’m gay.

Being gay isn’t the kind of fabulous, scandalous thing it used to be. One of the reasons I can’t seem to reach full ‘Professor’ status is that nobody wants to give me a SSHRC grant to write about gay men anymore. Gay is so yesterday.

The other thing is that you can ‘pass,’ whereas I can’t. When you breeze into the local store to buy some makeup they are all, like: “Oh look at that beautiful young and glamorous woman! I want to serve her!” When I go to the cosmetics counter they treat me like dirt. I remember once I went to buy some eyelashes at a store in Banff (don’t ask, I was at a boring arts conference and wanted to liven things up) and the clerk in the drugstore said “Why do you want to buy eyelashes? It’s not Halloween!” Believe it or not I did buy the eyelashes, but I slunk out of that store like the proverbial cat who’s accidentally crashed a dogs’ card game.

No, I’m not a glamorous female. I’m an effeminate male, and every time I open my mouth or move my hands it makes people think about anal sex. It’s not my fault. I don’t mean to get people thinking about anal sex. But something about the way I flutter about is just a big reminder that some men really enjoy rear entry.

And finally — I know my troubles are minuscule next to yours. I mean, I don’t have to worry about pronouns — and you do. People just take one look at me and go: “There’s an effeminate old fag and we have to call him ‘he’ even though he ’s not much of a man.” 

And I know it’s hell when people call you ‘he’ or ‘Bruce’ by mistake. I’m don’t mean to underestimate your pain.

Really, I’m don’t.

But you have to admit — I hope you don’t mind me saying this — that it's kind of nice for you that you have your own reality TV show. Whereas me, I stopped trying to be an actor years ago because every time I did an audition people said: “You’re very talented and funny! Would you like to play the effeminate hairdresser who has one line and can only be glimpsed in the background in the party scene?” 

But honestly, Caitlyn, I don’t mean to play victim politics, or suggest my suffering is anywhere near what yours so obviously is.

I just wanted to talk about myself for like — a minute — or so.

I know it’s selfish of me.

Sorry.

Beckett List

1) don’t talk to anyone

2) stay away from ‘the wife’

3) ponder the meaningless of existence

4) get sentimental (briefly)

5) die.

"I've Never Felt Different"

Recently I was chatting with someone about gay activism. He turned to me and said “But you know, I have to tell you something, the weird thing is, I’ve never really felt ‘different’ because I’m gay. I mean…I feel different as an immigrant, different because I’m tall and large-bodied, different because I’m a nerd, but never different because I’m gay. I just wanted to tell you.”

Oh. Okay. 

People say this to me a lot these days. Especially when I am talking to them about what I consider to be the waning of gay activism. And I know what they really mean. They just want me to shut up. They’re thinking: why is this guy going on about gay gay politics? In 2015? Now that we have gay marriage in Canada and in some American states, why is it necessary to be a gay activist anymore? Why in fact, be concerned about anything ‘gay?’ 

Come on, after all, isn’t ‘gay’ kinda over?

Well the first thing I did was say to the guy “You know, you pass — so, if you don’t come out to people, they don’t think you’re gay, so…of course you wouldn’t feel different because you’re gay.” I mean the guy was definitely nerdy looking. People would think, when they met him, for sure ‘nerd’ but not  necessarily ‘gay.’ 

In other words he was a ‘Jim Parsons from Big Bang Theory’ sort of person. 

But looking back on it, I might have said much more. 

“Okay, so the situation is that you don’t look gay or act gay. But so what if nobody knows you’re gay unless you tell them, and when you do tell them they say ‘Cool! ’ or ‘That doesn’t make any difference.’ So what? Unfortunately there are still very important contemporary gay issues these days including: drug use among gay men, unsafe sex practices, the criminalization of AIDS, porn and body fascism, the marginalization of older and effeminate gay men within the community etc etc. etc..  Never mind the fact that as a teacher I constantly come in contact with teenagers and twenty-somethings who talk about the difficulties of coming out (Should I…shouldn’t I? What will my parents say?)”

Yes. Even in 2015 the kids are still afraid to come out!

Never mind the fact that I recently met somebody who works with an organization called Pride at Work. The mandate of this organization is great. They believe — “Sharing knowledge accelerates the pace of change. By providing organizations with the information they need to bring about change (the “how”) and demonstrating the benefits of a diverse workplace (the “why”), we empower their leaders to make positive decisions.”  The organization was started in 2008, because apparently even though you can’t fire somebody for being gay, there are still lots of organizations where there is homophobia at work, and people are not entirely comfortable coming out. Pride at Work believes that with their help “LGBT employees will be more able to be themselves and, ultimately, to be more productive.”

It’s all very nice to think that everything is fine now that we have a few more civil rights and we can all watch Will and Grace  in reruns. But if queers still need to be ‘helped’ in order to come at at work— well maybe we haven’t come such a long way baby….

But what is MOST odious about this guy’s point of view? The attitude: “If it doesn’t effect me, why should I care?”

It’s kinda like someone saying ‘So the German’s gassed a lot of Jews. I don’t really care because I’m like…I’m not like …Jewish, so it doesn’t effect me.” Or — “So white cops are shooting black men for no reason in the States, well what do I care? I’m not black. I don’t live in The States.” Or — “So what if my pants were made by some underage kid in some third world country who got paid almost nothing, working for long hours until he’s sick and practically dead. That’s not my problem. I got the jeans for $5. — that’s all I care about!”

Do you get what I’m saying?

Welcome To Basement Theatre!

You’d better get used to it.

Last night I had the privilege of attending the workshop of an outstanding new play called Idle Lessons, devised by the Raw Matter Project. This is a fascinating, challenging — and yes — exceedingly raw — project created by a group of recent York University graduates confronting the controversy over the new sex education curriculum in Ontario. The play is an incredibly important one. If nothing else, the actors’ intensely personal, revealing confessions are stunning.

But silly me. I spent much of the performance gazing at a leaky pipe in the wall.

Yes, Idle Lessons is one of the many new plays you are likely to find in Toronto occupying a basement or squeezed into the back of a store. 

And here sadly, lies the future of Toronto theatre.

And sadder still — the newest generation of Toronto’s theatre practitioners seem to be eagerly embracing their fate.

As far as I can tell, it’s a case of Stockholm Syndrome. Perversely, the victims have come to love their torturers. Artists today have grown up being told that there is less and less money available for the arts (oh, we’re so sorry, they say). And they had also better understand that they will be held to a corporate model if they hope to get any funding at all (Is your board raising money? Do you have a ‘brand’ for your ‘product’?). 

Before going to see Idle Lessons I saw a play at one of the ‘storefront’ style theatres that are so much in vogue. It was in another basement. The kitchen of a restaurant was overhead, which meant the banging and clanging of pots and pans distracted the audience during the show. But that didn’t stop the artistic director (an older chap, close to my age — he should have known better!) from bounding onto the stage, flashing an endearing grin, and bragging: “We do all this without government grants.”

Wow. There was a time when the fact that you couldn’t get government grants wasn’t something to be proud of! When I began doing theatre in the early 1980s, my colleagues taught me an important lesson: “Because you’re work is so challenging, you must pursue government grants for your work. It’s what you deserve.”

It took me a long time not to feel guilty for taking what many saw as ‘government handouts.’  But I became part of a generation of Canadian theatre artists who built many of the theatres that are considered part of the alternative theatre scene in Toronto today.

Never before has our culture so needed the arts. The global mega-entertainment industry is beyond depraved; preying on the vices and weaknesses of the young, churning out endless violent superhero movies for boys and princess flicks for girls. Children don’t read Dr. Seuss and move on to Shakespeare and Lord of the Flies, instead they play video games and move on to Harry Potter. When they grow up, modern culture offers them the choice between two bewildering and decadent lifestyles: mind-numbing consumerism or mind-devouring fundamentalism. We live in a world where nothing seems to have value anymore except getting rich enough to buy a condo, a car, and fancy clothes fashioned by slaves working for a penny an hour in a third world country. And who besides Linda McQuaig is ready, willing and able to challenge our western capitalist excess? Certainly terrorists of the extreme religious right.

Well I think art might get us out of this mess. Art teaches, inspires, challenges, and insures we remain spiritually alive. 

But, alas, there is no space for it in Toronto because it rarely makes any money.

I feel really sorry for the Raw Matter Project who are must workshop their fine play in a basement the size of a postage stamp, lying on cold bumpy floors under leaky pipes that look as if they might burst and drown us all at any moment — and on top of that they have no choice but to be happy about it!

But hey, welcome to Toronto theatre in the 21st century!

Finally -- a Great Play about AIDS!

I don’t like what I call ‘AIDS plays.’ By that I mean The Normal Heart and Angels in America. Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart doesn’t even bear discussing; never has a writer gotten away with such bloody murder — that is — writing a play valourizing himself as a much beleaguered, humble, flawed but ultimately transcendent hero. Kushner’s Angels in America places the dying gay man in a largely heterosexual, Christian context. What these horrible American AIDS plays have in common is that they are tragic, dark, morality plays with only camp quips now and then to relieve the gloom. 

Is it possible that there could ever be an AIDS play that tells the truth? An AIDS play that is dirty, funny, real and not so insufferably moralistic and gloomy? An AIDS play that treats AIDS as a disease like any other, and gay men simply as people? Who could write a play like that? And who would come and see it?

In London I recently saw My Night with Reg, a play written by Kevin Elyot and originally produced at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1994. It was a revival at a hugely popular West End venue. 

The conceit behind the play is deft and witty. In the first scene we meet a bunch of gay men at a dinner gathering — everyone but Reg is there. In the second scene Reg is now dead from AIDS. It becomes immediately clear that that everyone has slept with Reg and/or is in love with him. He becomes a fascinatingly clear personality — especially for a character who never appears in the play! As the narrative progresses, some of the characters live, and some die from AIDS. Some are happy, some are sad. It’s a lot like life.

It might be hard for uptight North Americans (like us!) to imagine a play with such  subject matter that also happens to be downright hilarious. Well the fun is due mainly to sexual frankness. One man says of a recent sexual obsession: “I’d eat his shit on a plate.” Amazingly, the largely straight, middle class British audience that attended the play with me laughed at this line — uproariously.

But what really separates My Night with Reg from those endless, turgid American AIDS melodramas is that the characters are not uniformly middle class. They are a mix of ordinary blokes and posh twits. One of the characters in My Night with Reg is a straight-acting gay bus driver, another is a house painter. Working class people are notoriously more open and less judgemental around sexual matters; this adds a refreshing honesty to the piece. The only American play that compares with My Night with Reg is the odious Love! Valour! Compassion! (which also premiered in 1994). Terence McNally’s sanctimonious opus features middle and upper class gay friends who are nauseatingly unctuous, sentimental, and infuriatingly uptight — as middle class North American gay men unfortunately tend to be. 

What’s most amazing about My Night with Reg is this: finally a play about AIDS that does not demonize sex or promiscuity. The play is centred on gay culture (there are no straight characters) so there are no lessons to be learned by gay men — via their illness — about the profundity of straights (no pious characters like the self-eulogizing hero of The Normal Heart who marries his dying lover at the end of the play!).

Because AIDS is just a disease. Yes, it can be — and still is — sometimes horrifying. But so is life. AIDS is no better or worse than cancer. (And now with Truvada, AIDS is no less treatable than diabetes!) And haven’t we learned to laugh at life when it gets us down? So what’s all the moralizing and hand-wringing in these horrible American AIDS plays all about, except the hatred of sex?

I was thrilled to at last see a really good AIDS play! 

Shame I had to go to all the way to London, England.

 

I am in London. So...here are....

Some Typical West End Reviews:

“Charming”

“Irresistible”

“Fabulous.”

“I cried.”

“My mother had a baby in the front row, she was so excited.”

“My mother had a baby in the front row, she was so excited — and she’s 89 years old.”

“My mother had a baby in the front row, she was so excited — and she was already dead!”

‘At last, a musical to sing about.”

“A cast to die for”

“I would love to give the entire cast blow jobs.”

“I have given the entire cast blow jobs and I can attest to the fact that they are all, each of them, superlative in every way.”

“The show made me come.”

“The show made me come, twice, by accident, without touching myself.”

“Beyond belief.”

“Beyond expectation.”

“A show the whole family will love.”

“If everyone doesn’t love this show, they should be shot.”

“If absolutely everyone doesn’t adore this show, they should be tied up and boiling oil should be poured over their heads and then whey should be left in a public place so that people can throw vegetables at them.”

“I absolutely adored it.”

“I shat my pants.”

“I shat my pants, sneezed and came at the same time. The medical journals are now examining me, they can’t believe I’m actually alive.”

I shat my pants, sneezed, my mother had a baby, then I had a baby, then I came, and all of this happened on a Sunday matinee. I am now dead, and being examined by a coroner -- but I am happier than I have ever been! All I can say to the entire cast, producers and the writers of this show is: "Thank you.”