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Silver bells, silver screen

Several gay-themed flicks among holiday fare

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Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables, gay news, Washington Blade
Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables, gay news, Washington Blade

Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean in the film adaptation of ‘Les Miserables.’

LGBT filmgoers have some interesting mainstream and independent movie choices coming up this holiday season.

Already in theaters (D.C.’s Landmark E Street Cinema among them) is “Any Day Now” starring Alan Cumming and Garret Dillahunt. Set in Los Angeles in 1979, it tells the story of an unconventional family battling internalized and institutional homophobia as an unlikely gay couple tries to adopt a special needs child.

Cumming plays Rudy Donatello, a flamboyant drag queen who yearns to stop lip-synching and perform his own cabaret act. Dillahunt plays Paul Flieger, a shy fan who finally gathers up the nerve to approach the performer after a show. Paul’s a straight-laced closeted assistant district attorney, so the two clearly have some challenges in making their relationship work.

Rudy lives down the hall from a prostitute who has a 14-year-old son, Marco, with Down syndrome. When she’s arrested on drug possession charges, Rudy impulsively and reluctantly decides to care for Marco. Soon, Paul, Rudy and Marco are living together in Rudy’s cramped apartment, although the two men initially pretend to be cousins to avoid public scrutiny. Trouble ensues when the couple decides to adopt Marco and take on a hostile bureaucracy that doesn’t consider gay men appropriate guardians and that routinely places special needs children in institutions.

Rebels of a different sort are on-screen in Walter Salles’ adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s classic Beat novel, “On the Road.” Like the novel, the movie is a thinly veiled recreation of the famous cross-country road trip taken by Kerouac with his friend Neal Cassady and Cassady’s girlfriend LuAnne Henderson. Sam Riley plays Kerouac’s alter ego Sal Paradise and Garrett Hedlund plays the charismatic Dean Moriarty (based on Cassady). Kristen Stewart appears as Moriarty’s girlfriend Marylou and Viggo Mortenson and Tom Sturridge are featured as characters based on William S. Burroughs (author of “Naked Lunch”) and Allen Ginsburg (the openly gay poet who wrote “Howl”).

Reunited with screenwriter Jose Rivera (the two worked together on “The Motorcycle Diaries,” a road movie inspired by the life of Che Guevara), Salles unflinchingly recreates the artistic, philosophical and sexual awakening of Paradise. The film combines a celebration of the Beat writers and the women and gay men who were part of their world along with an understanding of the misogyny and homophobia that ultimately underscored much of their work. The movie includes explicit sex scenes but the focus remains on the sexual liberties taken by the straight white writers.

“On the Road” opens in limited release Dec. 21 and is expected in D.C. theaters in January.

A very different road trip is the subject of “The Guilt Trip,” a holiday release starring the unlikely comic team of gay icon Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen. Currently in wide release, the movie is based on a real-life from suburban New Jersey-to-Las Vegas trip taken by screenwriter Dan Fogelman (“Tangled” and “Cars”) and his mother.

In the movie, Rogen plays Andy Brewster, an inventor travelling across the country to sell his newest product. Streisand, in her first lead movie role since “The Mirror Has Two Faces” (1996), plays his pushy mother Joyce, who decides to join her reluctant son on his travels. Along the way, mother and son rebuild their strained relationship and Joyce is reunited with a lost love.

It opened this week in wide release.

The blockbuster release of the 2012 holiday season is the much-anticipated “Les Misérables,” the musical adaptation of the classic Victor Hugo novel about a popular uprising against an oppressive regime (the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris) and the transcendent power of love. Directed by Tom Hooper, the musical extravaganza stars Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean, who serves a brutal 19-year prison sentence for stealing bread to feed his sister’s starving children. Breaking parole and living under an assumed name, Valjean is relentlessly pursued by the ruthless Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe).

The all-star ensemble cast features Anne Hathaway as Fantine, the doomed factory worker; Amanda Seyfried as Cosette, Fantine’s beautiful illegitimate daughter who is raised by Jean Valjean; Eddie Redmayne as Marius, the student who falls instantly in love with Cosette; and Samantha Banks as Éponine, the wily gamine who pines with unrequited love for Marius. The principal cast is rounded out by Aaron Tveit as the leader of the student revolutionaries; Colm Wilkinson (who originated the role of Jean Valjean in London and New York) as the kindly Bishop of Digne; and, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen as the Thénardiers, comic denizens of the Parisian underworld.

“Les Miz” makes movie musical history by being the first film musical to be recorded live on the set (performers usually lip-synch to tracks previously laid down in a recording studio). The movie adaptation will also include a new song written specifically for leading man Hugh Jackman. The authors of the English stage musical (Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil and Herbert Kretzmer), working with screenwriter William Nicholson, wrote the song “Suddenly” for Jean Valjean to sing after he rescues Cosette from the Thénardiers. The new song clarifies the character’s emotional journey and will be eligible for Oscar consideration.

“Les Misérables” opens nationwide in wide release Tuesday.

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PHOTOS: Hagestown Pride

13th annual LGBTQ celebration held in Maryland city

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Chasity Vain performs at Hagerstown Pride 2025. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The 13th annual Hagerstown Pride Festival was held at Doubs Woods Park in Hagerstown, Md. on Saturday, June 21.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

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Theater

‘Hunter S. Thompson’ an unlikely but rewarding choice for musical theater

‘Speaks volumes about how sad things land on our country’

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George Salazar in ‘The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical.’

‘The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical’
Through July 13
Signature Theatre
4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington, Va.
$47 to $98
Sigtheatre.org

The raucous world of the counterculture journalist may not seem the obvious choice for musical theater, but the positive buzz surrounding Signature Theatre’s production of Joe Iconis’s “The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical” suggests otherwise. 

As the titular, drug addled and gun-toting writer, Eric William Morris memorably moves toward his character’s suicide in 2005 at 67. He’s accompanied by an ensemble cast playing multiple roles including out actor George Salazar as Thompson’s sidekick Oscar “Zeta” Acosta, a bigger than life Mexican American attorney, author, and activist in the Chicano Movement who follows closely behind. 

Salazar performs a show-stopping number — “The Song of the Brown Buffalo,” a rowdy and unforgettable musical dive into a man’s psyche. 

“Playing the part of Oscar, I’m living my Dom daddy activist dreams. For years, I was cast as the best friend with a heart of gold. Quite differently, here, I’m tasked with embodying all the toxic masculinity of the late ‘60s, and a rampant homophobia, almost folded into the culture.”

He continues, “My sexuality aside, I like to think that Oscar would be thrilled by my interpretation of him in that song. 

“Our upbringings are similar. I’m mixed race – Filipino and Ecuadorian and we grew up similarly,” says Salazar, 39. “He didn’t fit in as white or Mexican American, and fell somewhere in the middle. Playing Oscar [who also at 39 in 1974 forever disappeared in Mexico], I pulled out a lot of experience about having to code switch before finally finding myself and being confident just doing my own thing.

“As we meet Oscar in the show we find exactly where’s he’s at. Take me or leave me, I couldn’t care less.”

In 2011, just three years after earning his BFA in musical theater from the University of Florida in Gainesville, Salazar fortuitously met Iconis at a bar in New York. The pair became fast friends and collaborators: “This is our third production,” says George. “So, when Joe comes to me with an idea, there hasn’t been a moment that I don’t trust him.”

In “Be More Chill,” one of Iconis’s earlier works, Salazar originated the role of Michael Mell, a part that he counts as one of the greatest joys of artistic life.

With the character, a loyal and caring friend who isn’t explicitly queer but appeals to queer audiences, Salazar developed a fervent following. And for an actor who didn’t come out to his father until he was 30, being in a place to support the community, especially younger queer people, has proved incredibly special. 

“When you hear Hunter and Oscar, you might think ‘dude musical,’ but I encourage all people to come see it.” Salazar continues, “Queer audiences should give the show a shot. As a musical, it’s entertaining, funny, serious, affecting, and beautiful. As a gay man stepping into this show, it’s so hetero and I wasn’t sure what to do. So, I took it upon myself that any of the multiple characters I play outside of Oscar, were going to be queer.

Queer friends have seen it and love it, says Salazar. His friend, Tony Award-winning director Sam Pinkleton (“Oh, Mary!”) saw Hunter S. Thompson at the La Jolla Playhouse during its run in California, and said it was the best musical he’d seen in a very long time. 

“Since the work’s inception almost 10 years ago, I was the first Oscar to read the script. In the interim, the characters’ relationships have grown but otherwise there have been no major changes. Still, it feels more impactful in different ways: It’s exciting to come here to do the show especially since Hunter S. Thompson was very political.”

Salazar, who lives in Los Angeles with his partner, a criminal justice reporter for The Guardian, is enjoying his time here in D.C. “In a time when there are so many bans – books, drag queens, and travel — all I see is division. This is an escape from that.”  

He describes the Hunter Thompson musical as Iconis’s masterpiece, adding that it’s the performance that he’s most proud of to date and that feels there a lot of maturity in the work. 

“In the play, Thompson talks to Nixon about being a crook and a liar,” says Salazar. “The work speaks volumes about how sad things land on our country: We seem to take them one step forward and two steps back; the performance is almost art as protest.”

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Photos

PHOTOS: Goodwin Living Pride Parade

Senior living and healthcare organization holds fifth annual march at Falls Church campus

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Goodwin Living Pride March 2025. (Photo courtesy of Goodwin Living)

The senior living and healthcare organization Goodwin Living held its fifth annual Pride Parade around its Bailey’s Crossroads campus in Falls Church, Va. with residents, friends and supporters on Thursday, June 12.

(Photos courtesy of Goodwin Living)

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