suspension of belief
Thursday, May 10, 2001

ITEM: Prior to the first airing of Showtime's "Queer as Folk", Chris Potter (Dr David) says in a Newsweek interview, "Soon as they say, 'Cut,' you spit. You want to go to a strip bar or touch the makeup girls. You feel dirty. It’s a tough job." He later apologized, stating that his words were taken out of context.

ITEM: Hal Sparks said to TV Guide, on kissing a man: “It couldn’t be weirder. I get a lot of crap for saying this, but it’s a little bit like kissing a dog, because you don’t have any emotional, internal stuff that you [typically] would have when you actually want to be with someone. So as an actor, it’s a unique challenge, because you’ve got to bring it from someplace, make it convincing.” . He also says that Chris Potter "needs to floss."

ITEM: Kerr Smith, mere days after being cited by GLAAD for playing "out and proud" teenager Jack in the WB show "Dawson's Creek", says in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, that he won't do anything more than the once-a-year kiss: "That's as far as I'm going to take it. I don't think teenagers need to see two guys kissing on a weekly basis."

ITEM: In 1994, hounded by rumors as to the state and authenticity of their marriage, Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford place a full page ad in the Times of London, declaring that they "are heterosexual and monogamous" and "There are no plans, nor have there ever been any plans for divorce." They then divorce in 1995. Both marry members of the opposite sex and are reproducing frantically.

ITEM: Tom Cruise is suing gay pornster Kyle Bradford over remarks published by a French newspaper in which Bradford allegedly states that an affair with him broke up the Cruise/Kidman marriage.

ITEM: Alyson Hannigan and Clare Hanson, like Kerr Smith, were recently cited by GLAAD for portraying a lesbian relationship on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And they've said ... nothing at all, as it turns out.

One of these things is not like the others, is it?

To all the macho men in Hollywood, I would like to say something. I'm speaking only for myself, to be sure, but I have talked to others, and I do believe that this is a widely shared sentiment. But, again, I speak only for myself. And what I would like to say is the following.

Shut. The Fuck. UP!

We get it, OK? We understand that playing gay is truly an incredible trial for you. We understand that every day, you go to work, close your eyes, and think of England. We understand that your careers will be forever ruined by this. We understand that you think that the public is so stupid that they will forever and always conflate the actor with the role, and assume that if you play gay, you are gay. Now stow it already!

To be sure, the things listed above vary widely by degree. Let's take a few of them each in their own turn, shall we? Let's shall.

ITEM THE FIRST: Chris Potter. First, Mr Potter, your remarks clearly were not taken out of context. I mean, let's be real, shall we? Exactly what context would "Soon as they say, 'Cut,' you spit" be taken out of, precisely? Your words were not taken out of context; they were simply misinterpreted.

Mr Potter, you actually get a "get out of jail free" card. Of course, you also get a "grow a brain cell" card along with it, as well as a "take an acting class" card, but still, you have, in fact, been somewhat wronged. It's quite clear that what you said referred only to yourself; you don't particularly enjoy kissing or playing love scenes with men. And frankly, that's perfectly understandable. You are, as we have heard ad nauseum, a straight man. There is no reason on this planet you should enjoy or even feel ambivalent about kissing another man. You were not speaking globally; you were speaking of specific cases and specifically of what you had done. There was no reason for GLAAD to take aim at you; there is no standard by which what you said could be called "defamation". It is not defamation to dislike your job.

That said, you are a public person, and at the time you were trying to do fluff interviews so that you could get people to watch your show. So ... what the hell were you thinking? All you had to say was, "I don't really like kissing men." Simple, direct, to the point, unarguable. If they try to draw you out, all you needed to say was, "I've pretty much said all I need to on that."

ITEM THE SECOND: Hal Sparks. Mr Sparks, I'm inclined, again, to give you both the "get out of jail free" and "grow a brain cell" cards. Again, yes, we do all realize that you're terminally straight, your cojones are big as a mountain, your pene only has eyes for women, and so on and so on and so on. Again, there's no reason why you need to like kissing another man, another straight man.

Especially if he needs to floss.

Since you're also a comedian by training and inclination, you also have this tendency to fire off a line that you think will sound funny, and to think about it only afterward. You should, perhaps, restrain this tendency.

Messrs Potter and Sparks: Herewith, the reason why you get the "grow a brain cell" card. (Aside from the whole "Even the veriest IDIOT knows better than to say stuff like that in public" thing as you both clearly have fewer brain cells than the veriest idiot.) What you have created, by running around asserting your rampant heterosexuality, is the total inability for anyone to believe in the relationship between your characters. Frankly, within the context of the show, I have no real difficulties in believing that Sparks' Michael is a somewhat closeted and repressed gay man. I have no real difficulties believing that Potter's Dr Dave is a VERY closeted and repressed gay man. But whenever the two of you play a scene together, the only thing that can be clearly seen is the strident subtext: WE HATE THIS! WE HATE PLAYING THIS SCENE! We're not gay! We're really REALLY not gay! Look how not-gay we are! It is not possible for people to view your scenes without the filter of your not-gayness hanging over them like a cloud.

Perhaps you can see that this type of blatant subtext does not further the show's goals.

Then again, you probably don't care, do you?

ITEM THE THIRD: Kerr Smith. And I say unto GLAAD: Cry havoc! And let slip the hounds! Unleash politically correct whup-ass on this boy!

Who the hell does Kerr Smith think he is? "I don't think teenagers need to see two guys kissing on a weekly basis." Well, Mr Smith, think on this: perhaps if teenagers saw two guys kissing on television on a regular basis, then perhaps they might think of it as just a normal aspect of life. And if they thought of it as a normal aspect of life, then perhaps students wouldn't be suing their school districts because they feel so unsafe. Perhaps if teenagers saw two guys kissing regularly, when they were called "gay", they'd just say, "That's an insult?" instead of hauling out the trusty guns. Perhaps if teenagers saw two guys (or, for that matter, two girls) kissing regularly, fewer of them would be dead.

It is, regrettably, highly unlikely that GLAAD will say one single solitary word about all this. Hypersensitive to an extreme about their (and to be sure, our) reputation, it would be acutely humiliating to give someone an award one week, then turn around and censure them the next.

But they surely should.

ITEM THE FOURTH: Tom Cruise. Mr Cruise is, quite clearly, this year's winner of the Grand Bull Moose "If I Only Had A Brain" award.

You have to know that his publicists and agents and lawyers were all telling him to let this one go. It's not bad enough that he's clearly emerging as the "bad guy" in his divorce with Nicole Kidman; now he has to go and sue some nobody pornster over comments in an obscure French publication. First, the publication is entirely unheard of in the United States, and likely nobody had much heard of the story outside Europe at all. Second, his lawyers must have told him that a simple "cease and desist" order would have been more effective. Third, they could have served Bradford with preliminary papers that would have made him yield his passport and found out whether or not he'd been in France to give the interview, since he states that he was never there; that would have been verifiable. As it stands, the case has a reasonable chance of simply being thrown out of court. (All that said, the pornster's former boyfriend says that he's obsessed with Cruise and lies habitually; take all of it for what it's worth at the moment.)

Legal merit aside, what possible benefit could it have for Cruise to launch this suit? The only thing that makes the least sense is the chilling effect; that anyone else who would dare to come forward with such a story would know that if they try, they'll be sued into oblivion. As it stands, all that it has really done is to make various news and gossip organizations go back and drag all their old, old "Is Tom Cruise Really Gay?" stories out into the light of day.

Cruise says that this rumor will harm his ability to make money from action films, that nobody will believe him in those roles. Let's put aside for the moment the high insult to audiences, men and gays contained in that statement. In a Village Voice article that covers the lawsuit, the author cites Russell Crowe as an example of someone cultivating an "action film actor" persona, someone who might not have been as believable in his Gladiator role if rumors of gayness had been floating about the town. However, it's worth noting that Russell Crowe has, in fact, played a gay man -- and that Tom Cruise has not.

And we know which one of them actually has one of those coveted Oscar® statues, don't we?

To be sure, that award doesn't necessarily mean anything. Those statues are frequently given in recognition of something other than that film for which they say they were given; it's widely assumed that Crowe's award for Gladiator came because he should have won for The Insider the previous year.

However, comparing the two men, Crowe's career overall seems to speak of a greater security within himself than Cruise has ever had. His range of characters is certainly broader. It may simply be that until recently, he didn't have the Big Hollywood Career to worry about; it may be that other countries put something more of a premium on actual acting than on major star vehicles. I honestly don't know.

What I do know is that Cruise's lawsuit makes him look insecure and not terribly bright. Frankly, in this situation, even if he wins, he loses; he looks like the big bad bully going after a nobody.

If he only had a brain ...

@ 04:00 PM CST [Link]