Television
LGBTQ representation did not sit quiet at Emmy Awards
Gay actor Murray Bartlett among winners
The pandemic is over (in award show world anyway,) and glitz and glamour have returned. That is the prevailing impression from this yearās 74th annual Emmy Awards. The show was stunning and exciting from the outset, but even with the pomp and loud noise of celebration, a queer presence was not to be drowned out.
The tone of representation was launched immediately as announcer, queer comic, Sam Jay, looking sharp in her black tuxedo, took the mic. On camera even more than host Kenan Thompson, Jay was a presence and a personality and decidedly queer. If her gay power was not enough, the point was made when Thompson and out actor Boen Yang joked on stage. Thompson accused Yang of a comment being āa hate crime,ā Yang retorted āNot if I do it. Then itās representation.ā
Representation was going to be made this evening. The visibility was significant considering, according to the GLAAD “Where We Are on TV Report,” out of 775 series regular characters only 92 are LGBTQ (less than 12 percent.) That 11+ percent is a record high of LGBTQ characters in all of TV history. The record was set by an increase in lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters, but a decrease in gay male characters from the previous year.
For the Emmy nominations, 50 percent of the best drama series nominees, 25 percent of the best comedy and 60 percent of the best limited series featured LGBTQ characters or plot lines. As far as queer talent, that was more sporadic, heavily slanted towards āsupporting categoriesā and often with queer talent all in the same category against each other.
Regardless, we showed up, as did other individuals who scored recognition for their identities. Some of the key LGBTQ representative moments included:
- Early in the show, Hannah Einbinder did a hard flirt from the stage for Zendaya, saying that she was not on the stage to present, but rather to stare at the beautiful actress.
- Gay actor Murray Bartlett won Best Supporting Actor for a Limited or Anthology Series for “The White Lotus.” He thanked his partner Matt, but strangely did not mention the famous āsalad sceneā (Google itā¦)
- “The White Lotus” also won the Best Limited or Anthology series category, and bisexual Mike White won Best Director for Limited Series as well. White is the son of gay clergyman, author, and activist Mel White. They appeared on “The Amazing Race” as a father and son team.
- Jerrod Carmichael won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing of a Variety Special for his heartfelt “Rothaniel” in which he comes out as gay as part of the show. Carmichael wowed in a brilliant white, flowing fur coat over his bare medallioned chest.
- Out actress Sarah Paulsen and Shonda Rhimes, who singlehandedly is responsible for 17 percent of all LGBTQ characters on TV, presented the Governors Award to Geena Davis for her organization Institute of Gender in Media. The mission of the organization is representation of women in media. Davis stood before a video featuring various women artists including transgender actress Laverne Cox. The organization is the only public data institute to consistently analyze representations of the six major marginalized identities on screen: Women; people of color; LGBTQ individuals; people with disabilities; older persons (50+); and large-bodied individuals in global film, television, advertising and gaming.
- Lizzo broke RuPaulās streak to win Best Competition program. RuPaul showed up later in the show do present a major award anyway. Lizzo has not felt the need to label herself in the LGBTQ spectrum but has said, āWhen it comes to sexuality or gender, I personally donāt ascribe to just one thing. I cannot sit here right now and tell you Iām just one thing. Thatās why the colors for LGBTQ+ are a rainbow! Because thereās a spectrum, and right now we try to keep it black and white. Thatās just not working for me.ā
Beyond the rainbow scope of queer representation, intersectional, iconic and historic representation was also on hand:
- LGBTQ icon Jennifer Coolidge won Best Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series for “The White Lotus.” It was her first award win ever. Squeals of delight could be heard in space from gay Emmy watch parties. OK. I donāt know that for a fact, but I would put money on it.
- LGBTQ icon Jean Smart won Best Actress in a Comedy Series for “Hacks,” a series of which its producer called about āwomen and queer people.ā
- Lee Jung-jae became the first South Korean actor and first Asian actor to win Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for “Squid Game.”
- Zendaya became the youngest person ever to win in the leading acting categories two times as she won for the second season of āEuphoriaā
- Hwang Dong-hyuk became the first South Korean to win Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for “Squid Game.”
- Sheryl Lee Ralph won Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for “Abbott Elementary” becoming only the second black woman in history to win in this category after 35 years. JackĆ©e Harry won for “227” in 1987. āI am an endangered species,ā she sang as her acceptance. āBut I sing no victimās song.ā
Yes, there was a day in the not long ago past where the mention of a single same sex spouse, or a renegade pro-LGBTQ comment, made our queer hearts spill over. Those days are passed. We are getting a place at the table. Representation is starting to stand up and be heard.
For those who rightfully seek it, and seek more of it, the best advice came from Sheryl Lee Ralph: āTo anyone who has ever, ever had a dream, and thought your dream wasnāt, wouldnāt, couldnāt come true, I am here to tell you that this is what believing looks like, this is what striving looks like, and donāt you ever, ever give up on you.ā
Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie: 74th Emmy Awards:
Television
Lesbian road movie returns with campy āDollsā
A retro-inspired, neon-lit road trip/neo-noir thriller
Letās admit it: by the time Hollywoodās awards season draws to a close, most of us are more than ready for a good mindless āB movieā to cleanse our palettes. After the glut of āseriousā and āimportantā films dominating the public conversation, itās just incredibly freeing to watch something that feels ā at some level, at least ā more like entertainment than it does like doing homework.
Thatās one of the biggest reasons why the timing of āDrive-Away Dolls,ā which hit screens on Feb. 23, feels like a really savvy move, especially since it comes from a major Hollywood studio and boasts a multi-Oscar-winning director ā Ethan Coen, who alongside brother Joel is half of one of Hollywoodās most prodigious filmmaking teams ā at its helm. A retro-inspired and neon-lit road trip/chick flick/neo-noir thriller featuring lesbian leading characters and leaning hard into the visual palette of the ā70s-era exploitation drive-in movie fodder it aims to both emulate and reinvent, it lays no claim to lofty purpose or intellectual conceit; instead, it takes its audience on an unabashedly raunchy 1999-set wild ride in which a pair of mismatched adventurers find themselves unwittingly entangled in a caper involving a mysterious briefcase and the eccentric trio of thugs tasked with tracking it down. It tells the kind of story we expect to be able to check our brains at the door for, and just sit back to enjoy the mindless thrills.
In this case, that story centers on two young queer Philadelphia women ā free-spirited sexual adventurer Jamie (Margaret Qualley), whose infidelity has tanked her relationship with girlfriend Suki (Beanie Feldstein), and square peg Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), whose discomfort with the hedonistic social scene of big city lesbian life has her longing for the simpler pleasures of her childhood home in Tallahassee ā who embark on a road trip together to Florida in search of new beginnings. Itās clear from the start that theyāre at cross purposes; Jamie sees the trip as an opportunity to āloosen upā her uptight friend, while Marian just wants to get back to where she once belonged. Unbeknownst to either, however, a shady cadre of operatives (Colman Domingo, Joey Slotnick, C.J. Wilson) is on their trail, thanks to something hidden in the trunk of their rental car, and their journey is about to take a detour into unexpectedly dangerous territory.
As a premise, itās not hard to see close parallels to many of the themes one often finds running throughout the Coen Brothersā films; the quirky trappings of its crime story plot, the granular focus on the behavioral oddities of its characters, the whimsical (if often pointed) irony it deploys for narrative effect ā all these and more give Ethanās first āsolo flightā without collaboration from his brother the kind of familiarity for audiences one can only get from four decades of previous exposure. Yet while āDrive-Away Dollsā might bear a lot of the trademark Coen touches, itās also distinctively its own creature, with a more radical stylistic approach that one might glimpse in more flamboyant outliers to their joint filmography like āThe Hudsucker Proxyā or cult-favorite āThe Big Lebowski,ā but which here brings its heightened sense of absurdity to the forefront in service of a story which is about, as much as it is anything, the role of causality in determining the circumstances and outcomes of our lives. In other words, itās a movie which drives home (no pun intended) the point that ā at least sometimes ā our paths are determined by fate, no matter how much control we think we exert.
If youāre thinking that all this analysis doesnāt quite fit for a movie that presents itself as a madcap escapist romp, youāre not wrong; in spite of its ostensible B movie appeal, Coenās movie ā co-written with his wife, Tricia Cook ā evokes some pretty weighty reflections, and while that might lend a more elevated layer to the filmās proceedings than we expect, itās not necessarily a bad thing. We can be entertained and enlightened at the same time, after all.
Perhaps more detrimental to the movieās effect, unfortunately, is its intricately-conceived plotting. Weaving together seemingly coincidental or irrelevant details into a chain of events that propels the story at every juncture, Coen and Cookeās screenplay feels more devoted to cleverness than authenticity; outlandish plot twists pile up, under the guise of some esoteric cosmic significance, until they threaten to collapse in on themselves; in the end, for many viewers, it might all seem just a little too forced to be believable.
Fortunately, there are things to counterbalance that sense of overthinking that seems to permeate the script, most vital of which is the movieās unambivalent embrace of its queer narrative. While it may borrow the familiar lesbians-on-the-run road tropes queer audiences have known for decades, it presents them in a story refreshingly devoid of shame or stigma; the sexuality of its heroines is something to be explored with nuance rather than subjected to the fetishized bias of the so-called āmale gaze,ā and it succeeds in giving us ātastefullyā explicit scenes of same sex love that celebrate the joy of human connection rather than turning it into a voyeuristic spectacle. Even more important, perhaps, āDrive-Away Dollsā omits one particularly toxic clichĆ© of queer stories on film by refuising to make its queer heroines into victims; theyāre way too smart for that, and it makes us like them all the more, even if we donāt quite find ourselves absorbed in their story.
For this, full credit must go to Qualley and Viswanathan, who individually build fully relatable and multi-dimensional characters while also finding a sweet and believable chemistry within the awkwardness of finding a romantic love story between two friends ā a complex species of relationship that surely deserves a more extensive and nuanced treatment than it gets space for in Coenās film. As good as they are, though, itās Feldsteinās relatively small supporting turn that steals the movie, with an unflinching-yet-hilarious tough-as-nails performance as Qualleyās ex that both acknowledges and undercuts the stereotype of the āangry lesbianā while striking an immensely satisfying blow for queer female empowerment. The always-stellar Domingo underplays his way through an effectively civilized supporting performance as the chief āheavyā, and Matt Damon makes a sly cameo as a conservative politician, while daddy-of-the-decade Pedro Pascal shows up for a brief but key role that gives winking service to fans who remember him from his āGame of Thronesā days ā though to say more about any of those appearances would constitute a spoiler.
āDrive-Away Dollsā has been met with mixed reviews, and this one is no exception. Thereās an unmistakable good intention behind it, and much to be appreciated in its sex-positive outlook and commitment to an unapologetically queer story and characters, but while its stylistic embellishments provide for campy enjoyment, itās ultimately diffused by its own cleverness. Still, the queer joy that frequently peeks through it is more than enough reason to say that itās a good choice for a fun date night at the movies.
At the end of the day, what more can you ask?
Television
Watch āFeud,ā if you like glam and wit doused with betrayal and regret
New series focuses on Truman Capote and NYC socialites
Nothing is more of a pick-me-up in the doldrums of winter than a fabulously acted, incredibly stylish feud. Complete with Champagne flutes and a splendiferous mid-century ball at New York Cityās Plaza Hotel. Especially, when itās part of the ouevre of queer TV producer and creator Ryan Murphy, whose beloved shows include āAmerican Horror Story,ā āGleeā and the anthology series āFeud.ā
Season 2 of Feud, āFeud: Capote vs. The Swans,ā which premiered on Jan. 31, will air weekly on FX through March 13. Episodes stream the next day on Hulu.
āFeudāsā powerhouse cast, which delivers stellar performances, includes: Tom Hollander as Truman Capote along with Naomi Watts, Diane Lane, Chloe Sevigny and Calista Flockhart as Capoteās swans.
Demi Moore plays Ann Woodward, a socialite who Capote falsely said intended to murder her husband. Molly Ringwald portrays Joanne Carson who befriended Capote when nearly no one would take him in. The role of CBS chairman Bill Paley fits the late Treat Williams like a glove.
Hollander makes Capote seem like a brilliant, flawed, cruel, sometimes kind, human being, rather than a āfairyā caricature.
Jessica Lang does a star turn as the ghost of Capoteās mother. Gus Van Sant directs most of the episodes of āFeud.ā
āFeudā is based on Laurence Leamerās book āCapoteās Women.ā Playwright and screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz adapted Leamerās book into the miniseries āFeud.ā
āFeudā is the story of how acclaimed queer author Capote, after becoming their best friend betrayed his āswans.ā
āThe swans,ā were the rich, beautiful, New York society women who confided their secrets (from their insecurities about their looks to their husbandsā infidelities) to Capote.
These āswans,ā who took Capote into their inner circle, were: Babe Paley (wife of CBS chairman Bill Paley), Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedyās sister), socialite Slim Keith (ex-wife of Howard Hawks and Leland Hayward) and socialite C.Z. Guest.
āYou canāt blame a writer for what the characters say,ā Capote, once said.
His swans didnāt agree with Capoteās dictum.
Capoteās betrayal of the swans occurred in 1975. That year, āEsquireā published āLa Cote Basque, 1965,ā a chapter from Capoteās much anticipated novel āAnswered Prayers.ā
(Capote never completed the novel. An unfinished version was published after his death.)
The āEsquireā story, set in the restaurant where Capote often lunched with his āswans,ā hurt and infuriated āthe ladies who lunched.ā The details revealed in the āEsquireā story were so personal and thinly veiled that the āswansā felt readers would easily identify them.
āFeudā depicts the bonds of friendship that frequently exist between hetero women and queer men. Capote gave his āswansā the love and attention their spouses failed to provide. Babe Paley called Capote her āsecond husband.ā
For Capote, an outsider because he was gay, āthe swansā provided acceptance, association with high society (which he both loved and despised) and material for his writing.
Capote became estranged from the āswansā right after the āEsquireā story was published.
āFeudā goes back and forth in time. At first, this is a bit disconcerting. But, soon, it keeps things moving, and provides fascinating glimpses into Capote and the āswans.ā
Bill and Babe Paley think Capote is the āother Trumanā (Harry Truman) when they meet him in the 1950s.
In the 1970s, after the āswansā have shunned him, Capote is a washed-up, alcoholic, drug-addicted has-been. (Capote died in 1984 at age 59 of liver disease.)
The third episode is the stand-out of āFeud.ā In 1966, Capote was at the height of his power after āIn Cold Blood, his ānon-fictionā novel, had been published to much acclaim and commercial success. To celebrate, Capote threw a Black and White masquerade ball. The ball, to which Capote invited 540 guests, was the most famous party of the 20th century. Katherine Graham of The Washington Post was the guest of honor.
The episode is shot as a (fictional) documentary of the ball. Shot in black and white, itās visually stunning. We see interviews with some of the āswans,ā who are ticked off, but trying not to show it, because Capote had led them to believe they would be the guest of honor.
Watch āFeud,ā if you like glam, hats, white gloves, cocktails and wit doused with betrayal and regret.
Television
Rough and sexy āOpen To Itā explores lighter side of polyamory
Take a break from prestige cinema and enjoy this new TV series
With Hollywoodās big awards season launching into full swing, January tends to be a month all about the movies ā especially for people whose job it is to see them all and write about them. Itās a pleasure, of course, if you love cinema; but letās face it, most of the award-hopeful films getting the spotlight as the new year turns tend to be pretty serious stuff. Everybody needs a break from that, once in a while.
Thatās why weāre happy to take a brief pause from the whirlwind of āprestige cinemaā to take a look at something that doesnāt feel quite so heavy, and the fact that itās available in small doses on your screen-of-choice at home ā via queer streaming service OutTV ā makes it even more appealing. Oh, and itās also sexy, which doesnāt hurt.
Cut from a similar cloth as some of the edgier āwacky sitcomsā enjoyed by Gen X-ers and Millennials in their younger years ā but with a spicier, more diverse flavor to bridge the three-decade gap in our cultural evolution and infuse things with a more Gen-Z-friendly perspective ā and assembled as a long-form narrative told in short (about 10 minutes) installments, āOpen To Itā is the creation of writer/actor/director Frank Arthur Smith. He stars as Greg, a previously repressed gay man now living the dream in West Hollywood as half of a loving, committed relationship with his partner, Cam (Tim Wardell). Though Cam (a self-proclaimed āformer slutā) is happy to have settled into comfortable monogamy, Greg is curious to explore the more free-wheeling sexual lifestyle he denied himself in the past. The solution, of course, is for the couple to experiment with the possibility of opening up their relationship, which is where we meet them as the first episode starts: anxiously awaiting the arrival of Princeton (Jason Caceres), a sexy twink they met on Grindr and invited to join them for their first-ever threesome.
Since we already mentioned the word āwacky,ā itās probably not too hard to guess that things donāt go quite as smoothly as planned. Instead of a hot, steamy evening of pushing their sexual boundaries, the two experience a farcical disaster that, for most of us, might be considered a worst-case scenario. That, of course, establishes a formula that more or less repeats in each successive episode, as the showās plucky lead couple determinedly keeps trying to expand into the brave new world of polyamory despite one hilariously awkward sexual debacle after another, complicated even further by the persistent Princeton, who wants more in spite of the less-than-ideal circumstances of their first encounter, and the well-meaning but intrusive couple next door (Elsa Aranda and Reggie Thomas as, respectively, a bisexual wild-child and her prudish lesbian partner), whose efforts to be supportive somehow all seem to have the opposite result. Add to this mix Camās overprotective Drag Mother (Laganja Estranja), and you have a recipe for queer comedy of the most chaotic kind.
Beginning its life on the film festival circuit, where the first few episodes made the rounds and became an audience favorite, āOpen To Itā racked up millions of online views, prompting OutTV to pick it up as a series ā and affording Smith and his crew the budget to complete the rest of the season. With that in mind, itās not a surprise that the opening handful of episodes are a little rough around the edges, though it doesnāt take long before you see the actors gaining confidence and relaxing into a natural rhythm. Even in their clunkiest moments, though, these early chapters manage to convey the blend of over-the-top (and definitely NSFW) absurd humor and cheerfully unfettered sex-positivity the show is going for with its comedy-of-errors storyline, which is enough to make us want more, and watching both the players and the characters they portray develop helps the second half of the season blossom further into itself.
In the showās press material, Smith says his idea for the series came from his weariness over shows about queer life with āself-sabotaging protagonistsā and āa downtrodden tone,ā which often tended to take something of a judgmental tone about āpolyamorous or otherwise non-monogamous relationships.ā
āI wanted to make a sex- and relationship-positive show that normalized gay JOY,ā he says. āSexy swingers, monogamous married couples, people having a ā50 Shades of Greyā tie-up night ā all are welcome and celebrated in the world of āOpen To It.āā
Whether or not the series succeeds in ānormalizingā anything, it certainly makes a determined effort to depict it. Itās a show about sex, centering on characters exploring their sex lives, and itās not afraid to take us as far as broadcast standards will allow. That boils down to LOTS of sex scenes, some of them looking almost as if they could be judiciously-cropped excerpts from somebodyās OnlyFans content, which might seem more gratuitous than they are if everything else in the show felt like an excuse to show lots of sex ā but, perhaps surprisingly, it doesnāt.
While the show (and its main characters, for the most part) may seem fixated on sex, its progression leads inevitably to an exploration not just of the mores and manners of a polyamorous world, but of navigating a relationship through it. And while things may seem drawn in broad, cartoonish strokes in the first episodes which have dropped since the showās OutTV premiere on January 2, developments as the season progresses turn characters that might seem at first like stereotyped caricatures into more complex, unexpected, and refreshingly open-minded individuals, all learning – or maybe, making up – the rules as they go along.
Itās that willingness to go deeper ā all while keeping things light and as near to ridiculous as possible without becoming pure anarchy ā that ultimately helps āOpen To Itā pay off. To be sure, the writing, especially early on, sometimes borders on the clumsy and contrived, more nervous exposition than tone-setting introduction, and the tropes it embraces (more in fun than as reinforcement) about queer ātypesā and relationships might occasionally be off-putting to viewers looking for a more nuanced approach. Yet in the end, and in surprising ways, the show finds a way forward that promises to expand each of its queer āstockā characters ā the repressed gay child acting out sexually as an adult, the too-good-to-be-true sexy-but-smart boyfriend, the tough-loving and āteaā-spilling drag queen, the opposites-attract clichĆ© of the lesbian couple next door ā into more fully fleshed-out, complex individuals.
With three more episodes in post-production, and āmuch more to come,ā according to Smith, it appears weāll have a chance to watch that process continue. And while it may not be the kind of slick-and-polished fare that bigger-budget streaming services use to attract queer viewers, thereās something about its raw-and-unvarnished quality that makes it feel a lot more sincere than most of them ā even if it doesnāt make the cut when the next āawards seasonā rolls around.