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‘Drag Race’ star disqualified for ‘catfishing’ scam

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Sherry Vine, aka Joey Gugliemelli (Image via Facebook)

A contestant on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” has been disqualified for “cat-fishing” a number of young actors online.

Sherry Pie (whose non-drag name is Joey Gugliemelli) was exposed earlier this week on Facebook by an aspiring performer, Ben Shimkus, who posted what he called “a weird story” about the competitor on the popular reality show’s current season. Several other young male actors came forward soon afterward with similar tales, with Gugliemelli issuing an apology on Thursday.

Today, according to BuzzFeed, a spokesperson for VH1 and production company World of Wonder said in a statement:

“In light of recent developments and Sherry Pie’s statement, Sherry Pie has been disqualified from RuPaul’s Drag Race. Out of respect for the hard work of the other queens, VH1 will air the season as planned. Sherry will not appear in the grand finale scheduled to be filmed later this spring.”

Shimkus had shared that he had been contacted by someone named Allison Mossey, who claimed to be interested in working with him and asked him to submit videos.

“I had to film scenes that felt particularly sexual and awkward, but the opportunity seemed too good to let the overt sexual nature or my inhibitions get in the way,” the young actor shared. “I simply told myself that my parents wouldn’t be allowed to see the show, but I wanted the professional experience and the bright and shiny object on my resume.”

After an email exchange lasting three weeks, Shimkus revealed, he “grew wearisome of the back and forth that seemed to be going nowhere” and, after checking with an organization with which “Mossey” had claimed to be associated, discovered that he had actually been corresponding with Gugliemelli.

Following Shimkus’ post, several other young male actors came forward to BuzzFeed News with similar stories about the “Drag Race” star. Each of them claimed they had been approached online by Gugliemelli, who had posed as a casting director in order to get them to send audition tapes of themselves saying and doing embarrassing, sometimes overtly sexual things – with one 23-year-old actor, Josh Lillyman, even claiming he had been pressured to masturbate on camera.

The young performer said, “I did everything he asked me to because at that point he had built up so much detail for the show that I was truly convinced it was real and associated with HBO. It took a lot for me to break that delusion. I was willingly doing all the things he was asking me to.”

On Thursday, Gugliemelli came forward on Facebook himself, issuing an apology for his behavior:

“This is Joey, I want to start by saying how sorry I am that I caused such trauma and pain and how horribly embarrassed and disgusted I am with myself. I know that the pain and hurt that I have caused will never go away and I know that what I did was wrong and truly cruel. Until being on RuPaul’s Drag Race, I never really understood how much my mental health and taking care of things meant. I learned on that show how important “loving yourself” is and I don’t think I have ever loved myself. I have been seeking help and receiving treatment since coming back to NYC. I truly apologize to everyone I have hurt with my actions. I also want to say how sorry I am to my sisters of season 12 and honestly the whole network and production company. All I can do is change the behavior and that starts with me and doing that work.”

Response to the apology was harshly critical, with one commenter calling out Gugliemelli by saying, “only sorry because you got caught. this is sexual harrassment, you disgusting pig.”

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Photos

PHOTOS: Pride on the Pier

Blade’s WorldPride celebration ends with fireworks show

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The Washington Blade's Pride on the Pier. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The Washington Blade’s second day of Pride on the Pier at The Wharf DC ended with a fireworks show on Saturday, June 7. The fireworks show was presented by the Leonard-Litz LGBTQ Foundation.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

The Washington Blade’s Pride on the Pier (Photo by Cedric Craig for Wild Side Media)
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Out & About

‘Lou’s Legacy’ to make TV debut next week

New documentary features Blade news reporter

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Lou Chibbaro, Jr. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The new documentary “Lou’s Legacy: A Reporter’s Life at the ‘Washington Blade’” will make its broadcast TV premiere next week. 

WETA will broadcast Lou’s Legacy on Saturday, June 21 at 8 p.m. and Monday, June 23 at 9:30 p.m. Maryland Public Television will feature it on June 28 at 10 p.m. People anywhere in the U.S. can livestream the film at WETA.org, PBS.org, the PBS App, and on YouTube TV, Hulu + Live, and Amazon Prime. After the June 21 broadcast, viewers can stream the documentary on-demand on the PBS App, PBS.org, or WETA.org.

The documentary from Emmy-nominated D.C. filmmaker Patrick Sammon tells the story of the legendary Blade news reporter, Lou Chibbaro Jr., as he works on an article about the return of drag icon Donnell Robinson – also known as Ella Fitzgerald — to the Capital Pride stage. Donnell and Chibbaro reflect on their careers and discuss the ongoing backlash against the LGBTQ community, including laws targeting drag performers. 

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Movies

20 years later, we still can’t quit ‘Brokeback Mountain’

Iconic love story returns to theaters and it’s better than you remember

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Jake Gyllenhall and Heath Ledger in ‘Brokeback Mountain.’ (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)

When “Brokeback Mountain” was released in 2005, the world was a very different place.

Now, as it returns to the big screen (beginning June 20) in celebration of its 20th anniversary, it’s impossible not to look at it with a different pair of eyes. Since its release, marriage equality has become the law of the land; queer visibility has gained enough ground in our popular culture to allow for diverse queer stories to be told; openly queer actors are cast in blockbuster movies and ‘must-see’ TV, sometimes even playing queer characters. Yet, at the same time, the world in which the movie’s two “star-crossed” lovers live – a rural, unflinchingly conservative America that has neither place nor tolerance for any kind of love outside the conventional norm – once felt like a place that most of us wanted to believe was long gone; now, in a cultural atmosphere of resurgent, Trump-amplified stigma around all things diverse, it feels uncomfortably like a vision of things to come.

For those who have not yet seen it (and yes, there are many, but we’re not judging), it’s the epic-but-intimate tale of two down-on-their-luck cowboys – Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhall) – who, in 1963 Wyoming, take a job herding sheep on the titular mountain. There’s an unmistakable spark between them, and during their months-long shared isolation in the beautiful-but-harsh wilderness, they become lovers. They part ways when the job ends and go on about their lives; Ennis resolutely settles into a hardscrabble life with a wife (Michelle Williams) and kids, while Jack struggles to make ends meet as a rodeo rider until eventually marrying the daughter (Anne Hathaway) of a wealthy Texas businessman. Yet even as they struggle to maintain their separate lives, they reconnect, escaping together for “fishing trips” to continue their forbidden affair across two decades, even as the inevitable pressures and consequences of living a double life begin to take their toll.

Adapted from a novella by Annie Proulx, (in an Oscar-winning screenplay by co-producer Diana Ossana and acclaimed novelist Larry McMurtry), and helmed by gifted Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee (also an Oscar winner), the acclaim it earned two decades ago seems as well-deserved as ever, if not more so. With Lee bringing an “outsider’s eye” to both its neo-western setting and its distinctly American story of stolen romance and cultural repression, “Brokeback” maintains an observational distance, uninfluenced by cultural assumptions, political narratives, or traditional biases. We experience Ennis and Jack’s relationship on their terms, with the purely visceral urgency of instinct; there are no labels, neither of them identifies as “queer” – in fact, they both deny it, though we know it’s likely a feint – nor do they ever mention words like “acceptance, “equality,” or “pride.” Indeed, they have no real vocabulary to describe what they are to each other, only a feeling they dare not name but cannot deny.

In the sweeping, pastoral, elegiac lens of Lee’s perceptive vision, that feeling becomes palpable. It informs everything that happens between them, and extends beyond them to impact the lives they are forced to maintain apart from each other. It’s a feeling that’s frequently tormented, sometimes violent, and always passionate; and while they never speak the word to each other, the movie’s famous advertising tagline defines it well enough: “Love is a force of nature.”

Yet to call “Brokeback” a love story is to ignore its shadow side, which is essential to its lasting power. Just as we see love flowing through the events and relationships we observe, we also witness the resistant force that opposes it, working in the shadows to twisting love against itself, compelling these men to hide themselves in fear and shame behind the safety of heterosexual marriage, wreaking emotional devastation on their wives, and eventually driving a wedge between them that will bring their story to a (spoiler alert, if one is required for a 20-year-old film) heartbreaking conclusion. That force, of course, is homophobia, and it’s the hidden – though far from invisible – villain of the story. Just as with Romeo and Juliet, it’s not love that creates the problem; it’s hate.

As for that ending, it’s undeniably a downer, and there are many gay men who have resisted watching the movie precisely because they fear its famously tragic outcome will hit a little too close to home. We can’t say we blame them. 

For those who can take it, however, it’s a film of incandescent beauty, rendered not just through the breathtaking visual splendor of Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography, but through the synthesis of all its elements – especially the deceptively terse screenplay, which reveals vast chasms of feeling in the gaps between its homespun words, and the effectiveness of its cast in delivering it to performance. Doubtless the closeness between most of its principal players was a factor in their chemistry – Ledger and Gyllenhall were already friends, and Ledger and Williams began a romantic relationship during filming which would lead to the birth of their daughter. Both Williams and Hathaway bring out the truth of their characters, each of them earning our empathy and driving home the point that they are victims of homophobia, too. 

As for the two stars, their chemistry is deservedly legendary. Ledger’s tightly strung, near-inarticulate Ennis is a masterclass in method acting on the screen, with Gyllenhall’s brighter, more open-hearted Jack serving in perfectly balanced contrast. They are yin and yang to each other, and when they finally consummate their desires in that infamous and visceral tent scene, what we remember is the intensity of their passion, not the prurient details of their coupling – which are, in truth, more suggested than shown. Later, when growing comfort allows them to be tender with each other, it feels just as authentic. Though neither Ledger nor Gyllenhall identified as gay or bisexual, their comfort and openness to the emotional truth of the love story they were cast to play is evident in every moment they spend on the screen, and it’s impossible to think of the movie being more perfect with anyone else but them.

What made “Brokeback” a milestone, apart from the integrity and commitment of its artistry, was that it emerged as a challenge to accepted Hollywood norms, simply by telling a sympathetic story about same-sex love without judgment, stereotype, identity politics, or any agenda beyond simple humanistic compassion. It was the most critically acclaimed film of the year, and one of the most financially successful; though it lost the Oscar for Best Picture (to “Crash,” widely regarded as one of the Academy’s most egregious errors), it hardly mattered. The precedent had been set, and the gates had been opened, and the history of queer cinema in mainstream Hollywood was forevermore divided into two eras – before and after “Brokeback Mountain.”

Still, its “importance” is not really the reason to revisit it all these years later. The reason is that, two decades later, it’s still a beautiful, deeply felt and emotionally authentic piece of cinema, and no matter how good you thought it was the first time, it’s even better than you remember it.

It’s just that kind of movie.

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