Movies
‘Entourage’ was game changer for out actor
Big-screen adaptation of hit show in theaters now


Rex Lee as Lloyd in ‘Entourage.’ (Photo by Claudette Barius)
Openly gay actor Rex Lee credits the show “Entourage” with turning his life around and he returned the favor by becoming a highly visible role model for the LGBT and Asian communities.
From the start of the second season in 2005 through the series finale in 2011, Rex appeared in 79 episodes of the HBO series about struggling actor Vince Chase and the childhood friends who accompany him to L.A. and become his posse. Rex played Lloyd, the flamboyant but self-assured assistant to highly abrasive super-agent Ari Gold (played by Jeremy Piven) who ruthlessly turns Vince into a star. Like all the other characters in the series, Lloyd endured personal and professional cruelty from Ari, but managed to hold his own and eventually became an agent in his own right.
Getting cast in “Entourage” made Lee a star.
“I was a struggling actor and I didn’t have any presence in this entity we call Hollywood,” he says. “I was lucky enough to get on the show. All of the sudden I was on the map. That job will always have a special place in my heart because it’s the job that changed my life.”
Playing “Gaysian Lloyd” (as Ari calls him) turned Lee into an accidental activist. He’s been recognized as Outstanding Supporting Actor (Television) at the AZN Asian Excellence Awards and he’s been an energetic spokesperson for GLAAD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) and other LGBT groups. But Lee seems himself as an actor first and an activist second.
“I’m fascinated by the craft of acting. I want to be an actor who works. I am just trying to make my way in the world and you better respect me,” he says. “I am trying to be a person with integrity. I am trying not to let people discriminate against me because I’m gay. I’m trying not to let people discriminate me because I’m Asian. And being a person who demands respect is ultimately a political act. Saying you will not discriminate against me because I am not a straight white male is a political statement.”
Lee was pleasantly surprised when he read the script for the movie version of “Entourage,” in local movie theaters now, which takes the character of Lloyd in a different direction. He notes that, “the TV series really dealt with Lloyd’s professional life and his relationship with Ari. The move was more about his personal life. It’s the same characters, but from different sort of angle. I hope there’s an emotional resonance to the storyline and how Lloyd relates to Ari.”
In the movie, Lloyd is engaged to Olympic athlete Greg Louganis and wants his former boss to walk him down the aisle. Ari resists, but in the end Lloyd gets his way and gives Ari some much-needed advice in the process.
Lee didn’t have any say in the casting of his onscreen fiancé, but he did enjoy working with Louganis.
“I didn’t really know he was hired to do that role until the last second. We had been at some of the same social events but we really met for the first time on the set. We were just thrown into it, but it was cool. He’s a real sweet guy.”
After filming the movie “Entourage,” Lee returned to the television studio to shoot the second season of the ABC sitcom “Young and Hungry.” Lee plays Elliot Park, the publicist and right-hand man to tech millionaire Josh Kaminski (Jonathan Sadowski). He’s also the chief antagonist to Gabi Diamond (Emily Osment), the food blogger who’s landed a job as Kaminski’s personal chef. While he enjoys playing the “lovable villain,” he’s glad the character has developed some depth over the course of two seasons.
“The show and the character have heart. It’s a fun job and the writing is really smart, funny and clever.”
‘Entourage’ clunky but entertaining
By BRIAN T. CARNEY
If you were a fan of the TV series “Entourage,” you’re probably going to be a fan of the movie. If you weren’t a fan, you may want to wait until the movie is released on Blu-ray and play a drinking game that involves spotting the dozens of celebrity cameo appearances.
The feature-length version of “Entourage” picks up where the small screen version left off. Hollywood star Vince Chase (played by the lackluster Adrian Grenier) is marking the end of his short-lived marriage by partying with dozens of bikini clad (and occasionally topless) women on a yacht off the coast of Ibiza.
The plot is set in motion when Vince’s former agent Ari Gold (the magnetic Jeremy Piven) offers Vince the lead role in a movie he’s producing. Vince accepts, but only if he can direct. From there, the story lurches forward in a variety of directions. Unfortunately, the transition from small screen sitcom to big screen feature is a little bumpy.
Fans of “Entourage” on TV will welcome its noisy debut on the big screen. Critics of the series will still note the sometimes clunky writing, the lack of racial diversity in the cast and an unhealthy dose of misogyny. But everyone (especially LGBT audiences) can enjoy the moments when the boys and Ari learn some valuable life lessons from wronged girlfriends (the pleasant Sabina Gadecki), fierce MMA fighters (MMA fighter Ronda Rousey playing herself) and Lloyd.
Movies
‘Pink Narcissus’ reasserts queer identity in the face of repression
Gorgeously restored film a surreal fantasia on gay obsessions

Back in 1963, there really wasn’t such a thing as “Queer Cinema.”
Of course there had been plenty of movies made by queer people, even inside Hollywood’s tightly regulated studio system; artists like George Cukor and Vincente Minnelli brought a queer eye and sensibility to their work, even if they couldn’t come right out and say so, and became fluent in a “coded” language of filmmaking that could be deciphered by audience members “in the know,” while everyone else – including the censors – remained mostly oblivious.
Yes, the movie industry was adapting to the demands of a generation that had grown increasingly countercultural in its priorities, and topics that had once been taboo on the big screen, including the more or less open depiction of queerness, were suddenly fair game. But even so, you’d be hard-pressed to find examples of movies where being queer was not tied to shame, stigma, and a certain social ostracization that remained, for the most part, a fact of life. Hollywood may have been ready to openly put queer people on the screen, but the existence it portrayed for them could hardly have been described as happy.
Yet this was the setting in which a Manhattan artist named James Bidgood began a filmmaking project that would dominate his life for the next several years and eventually become a seminal influence on queer cinema and queer iconography in general – all executed, with the exception of an ambitious climactic sequence, in a cramped New York apartment utilizing elaborate handmade sets and costumes, which would define an entire queer aesthetic for decades to come. Though disputes with the film’s financiers would eventually cause him to remove his name from the project, resulting in years of anonymity before finally being credited with his work, he has now taken his rightful place as one of the architects of modern queer sensibility.
The movie he made – “Pink Narcissus,” which has been newly restored in glistening 4K glory and is currently being screened in theaters across the U.S. after an April premiere at Manhattan’s Newfest – didn’t exactly take the world by storm. When it finally premiered on “arthouse” theater screens in 1971, it was slammed by mainstream critics (like Vincent Canby of the New York Times, who compared it to “a homemade Mardi Gras drag outfit” as if that were a bad thing) and largely ignored, even as a new spirit of creative freedom was bringing more and more visibility to openly queer content. A screening at 1984’s “Gay Film Festival” reintroduced it to an audience that was finally ready to embrace its feverishly stylized, near-surreal fantasia on gay obsessions, and since then it has loomed large in the queer cultural imagination, providing clear and directly attributable influence over the entire queer visual lexicon that has developed in its wake – even if it has remained widely unseen among all but the most dedicated queer cinema buffs.
With a running time of little more than an hour, it’s not the kind of movie that can be described in terms of a cohesive linear plot. “Official” synopsis efforts have typically framed it as the story of a young male hustler who, while waiting for a call from a favorite “trick,” fantasizes about various erotic scenarios in his spangled and bejeweled apartment. But since it is a film with no spoken dialogue that takes place largely in the imagination of its central character, it’s difficult to place a definitive construct upon it. What’s certainly true is that it presents a series of daydreamed episodes in which its protagonist – played by sultry lipped Bobby Kendall, a teen runaway who had become a model for Bidgood’s “physique” photography as well as his roommate and (probably) on-and-off lover – imagines himself in various scenarios, including as a matador facing a bull (who is really a leather-clad motorcyclist in a public restroom), a Roman slave thrown to the mercy and pleasure of his emperor, and both a Sheik and a harem boy obsessed with a well-endowed exotic male belly dancer. Eventually, the young man’s thoughts venture into the streets outside, where he is immersed in a seedy, sordid world of sexual mania and degradation, before facing a final fantasy in which, as an “innocent” nymph in the woods (perhaps the human embodiment of the film’s titular butterfly), he is engulfed and consumed by his own sexual impulses, only to be reborn in his apartment to face the inevitable transformation from “twink” to “trick” that presumably awaits all gay men who dedicate their lives to the transgressive desires that drive them.
All of that, to modern sensibilities, might seem like a series of stereotypical and vaguely demeaning tropes intended to warn us against the slippery slope of a hedonistic lifestyle, composed into a moralistic avant garde parable in which pleasure and punishment are intertwined with all the surety of fate; but what sets “Pink Narcissus” apart from so many early examples of queer cinema is that, despite its reliance on “rough trade” trappings and the performative “tragedy” of its overall arc from youth and beauty to age and corruption, it exudes an unmistakable attitude of joy.
We’re talking about the joy of sensuality, the joy of self-love, the joy of partaking in a life that calls to us despite the restrictions of societal “normality” which would have us deny ourselves such pleasures; in short, the joy of being alive – something to which every living being theoretically has the right, but for queer people is all-too-often quashed under the mountain of disapproval and shame imposed upon them by a heteronormative society and its judgments. Considering that it was made in a time when the queer presence in film was mostly limited to victimhood or ridicule, it feels as much an act of resistance as it does a celebration of homoeroticism; seen in a cultural climate like today’s, when joy itself seems as much under attack as sexuality, it becomes an almost radical act – a declaration of independence asserting our natural right to be who we are and like what we like.
That’s why “Pink Narcissus” looms so large in the landscape of queer filmmaking. It’s the irrefutable evidence of queer joy singing out to us from a time when it could only exist in our most private of moments; it’s unapologetically campy, over the top in its theatricality, and almost comically blatant in its prurient obsession with the anatomy of the anonymous male models who make up most of its cast (and Kendall, who seems to dress himself in various outfits only to undress for the next erotic daydream), but it feels like a thumb on the nose to anyone who might shame us for for celebrating our sexual nature, which Bidgood’s movie unequivocally does.
Restored to the vivid (and luridly colorful) splendor of its original 8mm format, “Pink Narcissus” is currently touring the country on a series of limited screenings; VOD streaming will be available soon, check the Strand Releasing website for more information.
Movies
Queer history, identity interweave in theatrical ‘Lavender Men’
Exploring one of Abe Lincoln’s most intense male relationships

For someone who’s been dead for 160 years, Abraham Lincoln is still hot.
No, we don’t mean it that way, though if we were talking about the Lincoln of “Lavender Men” – a new movie starring and co-written by queer playwright Roger Q. Mason, who also wrote the acclaimed play from which it is adapted – we certainly could be. We’re really just making the observation that the 16th POTUS continues to occupy a central place in America’s national imagination. And in an age when our America is torn by nearly as much division (over many of the same core values) as the one he presided over, it’s impossible not to compare the ideals he has come to stand for with the ones currently holding sway over the country’s political identity, and wonder at how short we have fallen from the mark.
Yet there has always been a gap between the historical reality of Lincoln’s “Great Emancipator” reputation and the romanticized pedestal upon which he has been placed; and if he looms large as an influence over American identity, it’s as much for his enigmatic nature as for the values he represents. Was he a true believer in the principals of “liberty and justice for all” or a political pragmatist who recognized that preserving the nation – and its growing power in the larger arena of world affairs – required the abolition of an increasingly unsustainable system that had divided it? Your answer to that rhetorical question will likely depend on which version of “American Identity” aligns most closely with your own.
It’s also a question that’s further complicated in the context of Lincoln’s private life, something that has itself been the subject of debate as modern historians and scholars consider the questions about his sexuality unavoidably implied in his well-documented biographical record, which reveals not only a pattern of closely bonded male “friendship” with various companions throughout his life but plentiful evidence that the romantic nature of these relationships was something of an “open secret” in his lifetime, as explored in last year’s brash but scrupulously documented “Lover of Men.” If Lincoln was himself an “other,” a queer man who had risen to position and power in a world that despised and shunned people like him, what new light would that cast on his legacy?
That’s the crux of the premise behind “Lavender Men,” which builds a “fantasia” around one of Lincoln’s most intense male relationships – with Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, a young family friend who helped him carry out his 1860 campaign for president and would later become the first “notable” casualty of the Civil War when he was shot while removing a Confederate flag from the window of an inn facing the White House. The film, however, doesn’t take place in a period setting; instead, it happens in an empty modern-day theater – an apropos allusion to the location of Lincoln’s ultimate fate – where the overworked and underappreciated Taffeta (Mason) oversees the production of a play about the romance between Lincoln and Ellsworth (Pete Ploszek and Alex Esola). After a particularly demoralizing performance, the put-upon stage manager ponders alone about their own life – as a queer, plus-sized, Black Filipinx TGNC person trying to find connection and community in a world where they feel invisible – through an imagined retelling of Lincoln’s doomed love story in which the narrative is projected through the lens of their own struggle to be seen, loved, and accepted,
Expanded from the play and directed by co-screenwriter Lovell Holder, a lifelong friend of Mason who helped develop the project and oversaw the original 2022 stage production at Los Angeles’s Skylight Theater Company, the film was in his own words “shot over 10 days on a shoestring budget” – and it admittedly shows. However, it leans into its limitations, letting the spare, isolated atmosphere of the empty theater exert its own influence over the material. In this framing, Taffeta becomes something like a reverse ghost, a spirit from the present haunting a past in which their own unfulfilled longings – and resentments – are reflected through the rumored romance of a president and his “little” man, and their exploration of the narrative, with all its inherent observations about the dynamics of power, gender, status, and physical attraction, ultimately becomes a meditation on the importance of redefining personal identity free from the shaping influence of other people’s experience or expectations.
Needless to say, it’s not the kind of movie that will appeal to every taste; highly conceptual in nature, with a nonlinear storytelling pattern that frequently calls attention to its own artificiality, it might prove perplexing to audiences used to a more traditional approach. Even so, it’s refreshingly unpretentious, acknowledging its own campiness without undercutting the authenticity of the voice which drives it – which is, of course, Mason’s.
Delivering an entirely charismatic, commandingly fabulous, and palpably honest tour de force, the playwright/actor is at the center of “Lavender Men” at every level, evoking our delight, laughter, tears, discomfort, and myriad other shades of response as they take us on their historically themed tour of queer identity, which involves its own collection of repressive and/or demeaning social expectations about “fitting in” – and illuminate this hidden chapter of queer history along the way. Indeed, capturing their performance – which Mason reprises, along with fellow original co-stars Ploszek and Esola, from the stage production – is arguably the film’s most significant accomplishment. It’s a powerful example of the kind of fierce, spirited expression that is rarely seen outside the half-empty houses of underground theaters, well worthy of several repeated viewings.
For Mason, however, the thing that matters most is not their performance, nor even their brilliantly conceived script. Discussing the movie, he describes it as something much bigger than that: “I hope this film serves as a rally cry, a fountain of joy and a grounding of purpose for the LGBTQIA+ movement in the U.S. and abroad at a time when we need stories which affirm, empower and embolden us more than ever.”
“Lavender Men” is showing in limited theaters now. Watch for information on streaming/VOD availability.
Movies
Jacob Elordi rides high in ‘On Swift Horses’
Sony Pictures’ promotions avoid referencing queer sexuality of main characters

You might not know it from the publicity campaign, but the latest big-screen project for breakout “Euphoria” actor and sex symbol Jacob Elordi is 100% a gay love story.
Alright, perhaps that’s not entirely accurate. “On Swift Horses” – adapted from the novel by Shannon Pufahl and directed by Daniel Minahan from a screenplay by Bryce Kass – actually splits its focus between two characters, the other of which is played by “Normal People” star Daisy Edgar-Jones; but since that story arc is centered around her own journey toward lesbian self-acceptance, it’s unequivocally a “Queer Movie” anyway.
Set in 1950s America, at the end of the Korean War, it’s an unmistakably allegorical saga that stems from the marriage between Muriel (Edgar-Jones) and Lee (Will Poulter), a newly discharged serviceman with dreams of building a new life in California. His plans for the future include his brother Julius (Elordi), a fellow war vet whose restlessly adventurous spirit sparks a kindred connection and friendship with his sister-in-law despite a nebulously strained dynamic with Lee. Though the newlyweds follow through with the plan, Julius opts out in favor of the thrill of a hustler’s life in Las Vegas, where his skills as a card shark gain him employment in a casino. Nevertheless, he and Muriel maintain their friendship through correspondence, as he meets and falls in love with co-worker Henry (Diego Calva) and struggles to embrace the sexual identity he has long kept secret. Meanwhile, Muriel embarks on a secret life of her own, amassing a secret fortune by gambling on horse races and exploring a parallel path of self-acceptance with her boldly butch new neighbor, Sandra (Sasha Calle), as Lee clings obliviously to his dreams of building a suburban family life in the golden era of all-American post-war prosperity.
Leisurely, pensive, and deeply infused with a sense of impossible yearning, it’s the kind of movie that might easily, on the surface, be viewed as a nostalgia-tinged romantic triangle – albeit one with a distinctively queer twist. While it certainly functions on that level, one can’t help but be aware of a larger scope, a metaphoric conceit in which its three central characters serve as representatives of three conflicting experiences of the mid-century “American Dream” that still looms large in our national identity. With steadfast, good-hearted Lee as an anchor, sold on a vision of creating a better life for himself and his family than the one he grew up with, and the divergent threads of unfulfilled longing that thwart his fantasy with their irresistible pull on the wife and brother with whom he hoped to share it, it becomes a clear commentary on the bitter reality behind a past that doesn’t quite gel with the rose-colored memories still fetishized in the imagination of so many Americans.
Fortunately, it counterbalances that candidly expressed disharmony with an empathetic perspective in which none of its characters is framed as an antagonist; rather, each of them are presented in a way with which we can readily identify, each following a still-unsatisfied longing that draws them all inexorably apart despite the bonds – tenuous but emotionally genuine – they have formed with each other. To put it in a more politically-centered way, the staunch-but-naive conformity of Lee, in all his patriarchal tunnel vision, does not make him a villainous oppressor any more than the repressed queerness of Muriel and Julius make them idealized champions of freedom; all of them are simply following an inner call, and each can be forgiven – if not entirely excused – for the missteps they take in response to it
That’s not to say that Minahan’s movie doesn’t play into a tried-and-true formula; there’s a kind of “stock character” familiarity around those in the orbit of the three main players, leading to an inevitably trope-ish feel to their involvement – despite the finely layered performances of Calva and Calle, which elevate their roles as lovers to the film’s two queer explorers and allow them both to contribute their own emotional textures – and occasionally pulls the movie into the territory of melodrama.
Yet that larger-than-life treatment, far from cheapening “On Swift Horses,” is a big part of its stylish appeal. Unapologetically lush in its gloriously photographed recreation of saturated 1950s cinema (courtesy of Director of Photography Luc Montpellier), it takes us willingly into its dream landscape of mid-century America – be it through the golden suburbs of still-uncrowded Southern California or the neon-lit flash of high-rolling Las Vegas, or even the macabre (but historically accurate) depiction of nuclear-age thrill-seekers convening for a party in the Nevada desert to watch an atom bomb detonate just a few short miles away. It’s a world remembered by most of us now only through the memories and artifacts of a former generation, rendered with an artful blend of romance and irony, and inhabited by people in whom we can see ourselves reflected while marveling at their beauty and charisma.
As lovely as the movie is to look at, and as effective as it is in evoking the mix of idealism and disillusionment that defines the America of our grandparents for many of us at the start of the second quarter of the 21st century, it’s that last factor that gives Minahan’s film the true “Hollywood” touch. His camera lovingly embraces the beauty of his stars. Edgar-Jones burns with an intelligence and self-determination that underscores the feminist struggle of the era, and the director makes sure to capture the journey she charts with full commitment; Poulter, who could have come off as something of a dumb brute, is allowed to emphasize the character’s nobility over his emotional cluelessness; Calle is a fiery presence, and Minahan lets her burn in a way that feels radical even today; Calva is both alluring and compelling, providing an unexpected depth of emotion that the film embraces as a chord of hope.
But it is Elordi who emerges to truly light up the screen. Handsome, charismatic, and palpably self-confident, he’s an actor who frankly needs to do little more than walk into the scene to grab our attention – but here he is given, perhaps for the first time, the chance to reveal an even greater depth of sensitivity and truth, making his Julius into the film’s beating heart and undisputed star. It’s an authenticity he brings into his much-touted love scenes with Calva, lighting up a chemistry that is ultimately as joyously queer-affirming as they are steamy.
Which is why Sony Pictures’ promotions for the film – which avoid directly referencing the sexuality of its two main characters, instead hinting at “secret desires” and implying a romantic connection between Elordi and Edgar-Jones – feels not just like a miscalculation, but a slap in the face. Though it’s an eloquent, quietly insightful look back at American cultural history, it incorporates those observations into a wistful, bittersweet, but somehow impossibly hopeful story that emphasizes the validity of queer love.
That’s something to be celebrated, not buried – which makes “On Swift Horses” a sure bet for your must-see movie list.