Big Gay Picture Show

Taking a look at the world of film through gay eyes - news, reviews, trailers, gay film, queer cinema and more

Taking a look at the world of film through gay eyes - news, reviews, trailers, gay film, queer cinema & more

Glee’s Harry Shum Jr. Going Gay In White Frog

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While Glee has more than its fair share of gay characters, Mike Chang, played by Harry Shum Jr., is one of the straight ones. However he’s getting his gay on in the indie flick White Frog, which is due to play at Outfest in LA on July 21st.

He’s been talking to Frontiers Magazine about the movie and says, ‘This is actually my first independent film. It was a great experience. They are two different beasts. You have Glee and the pace is constantly moving and on to the next thing as quick as you can—it’s so hectic. Independent films you don’t have a big budget. But what’s fun is you can play around more and develop the character. That was an interesting experience for me. I loved playing a different character.’

Shum plays Mike, a young gay man who isn’t out, but is extremely popular. When he dies, his brother Nick (Booboo Stewart) struggles to carry on. While Chaz’s parents (B.D. Wong and Joan Chen) have their own problems coping with the loss, they all have to come to terms with his secret life.

When talking about equality, Shum says, ‘You start to realize we have more similarities than differences. In my eyes, life is simple; people make it complicated. I never looked at the differences too much. I grew up in Costa Rica where I was the only Chinese kid in a Latin country, then I moved to San Francisco where I only knew Spanish and lived with Chinese kids. I was in a different world.’

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Magic Mike’s Matt Bomer Talks About Coming Out

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With Magic Mike out on the US this Friday (don’t worry, us Brits only have to wait until July 11th, and you can read our review of Magic Mike here), actor Matt Bomer is busy promoting his sexy role in the movie.

While chatting to EOnline! he touched on his coming out earlier this year, or rather the public acknowledgment of his sexuality – as he was essentially out anyway. “I never really endeavored to hide anything. But there were times I chose not to relegate my history to the back page of a magazine, which to me is sort of akin to putting your biography on a bathroom wall.”

Since he mentioned his partner and kids publicly at an awards ceremony, there have been plenty of positives though.”I had somebody from the military approach me a few weeks ago,” he says, “Just saying how this helps people, affects people. It brought me to tears.”

He adds, “What we really have to do is stop the adjective before the job title – whether it’s ‘black actor,’ a ‘gay actor’ or ‘anything actor. Everybody thinks that equality comes from identifying people, and that’s not where equality comes from. Equality comes from treating everybody the same regardless of who they are. I hope the media and the press catches on to that because it’s time to move out of 1992.”

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Jim Parsons Says Happy Smekday

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Coming out isn’t going to slow down The Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons’ careers, as DreamWorks Animation has announced that Parsons and Rihanna have landed the leading roles in Happy Smekday!, a feature film based on the critically acclaimed book, The True Meaning of Smekday, by Adam Rex. Tim Johnson (Over The Hedge, Antz) direct.

“When I read Adam Rex’s remarkable book, I knew it would make an amazing film. I can’t wait to introduce audiences to the unique world and characters of Happy Smekday!” said Johnson.

In Happy Smekday! an alien race invades Earth and uses it as a hideout from their mortal enemy. When one lowly alien accidentally notifies the enemies of his whereabouts, he is forced to go on the run with a teenage girl. The two become unlikely buddies and embark on a comical globe-trotting adventure to right his wrongs, in which our alien hero learns what it really means to be human. Dreamworks plans to release Happy Smekday! towards the end of 2014. (Source: THR)

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New The Dark Knight Rises Trailer – Bane is Gotham’s reckoning

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It’s just a month until people will be queuing up around the block for The Dark Knight Rises, and now a new trailer has arrived to further whet our appetites. Despite his tarnished reputation after the events of The Dark Knight, in which he took the rap for Dent’s crimes, Batman feels compelled to intervene to assist the city and its police force which is struggling to cope with the villainous Bane’s plans to destroy the city. And then there’s also the mysterious Selina Kyle. The film hits cinemas July 20th.

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Matt Bomer Talks Magic Mike Extreme Manscaping

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As a gay man, we’re sure Matt Bomer knows a little about primping (and looking at him, it’s tough to believe that incredible face and physique doesn’t take a strict beauty and gym regimen), but it appears for his role as a male stripper in Magic Mike, things went to the extreme.

He’s been talking to People, and telling them that if you’re going to wander round in a g-string and be true to the male stripper experience, body hair has got to be pretty much banished – including from the nether regions – and the same was true for Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, Joe Manganiello and the film’s other stars! “We all had to go there,” Bomer says. “I’m not going to say it was fun, and personally I will never do it again, but for that project it was necessary. We were all in the boat together.”

“What was important to me was to tell the story authentically,” he adds, “and I wanted to reflect what the dancers in real life do. And that’s part of their job.”

They also knew that playing a male stripper was a bit of a risk. Bomer says of this, “It was us against the world. But in a lot of ways, that was the mentality of a lot of exotic dancers I talked to. It’s a profession that’s not widely accepted by the general populace, so even though they raz each other and it is a sort of locker room environment, they help each other out and look out for each other, and I feel like that’s something we picked up on.”

BGPS has already seen the movie and we’ll be bringing you our review soon (as soon as the embargo is lifted), so we can let you know it it lives up to the fun and saucy promise of the recent NSFW Magic Mike promo. The film hits UK cinemas on July 11th.

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Is A Gay Tell-All Book About John Travolta In The Works?

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Just as John Travolta must have thought all the furore over whether he’s gay or not had died down, comes news that someone may be  trying to sell a tell-all book about a six-year relationship it’s said Travolta had with his former pilot, Doug Gotterba.

Admittedly the news does come from the National Enquirer, but they have gotten quite good with these sorts of things. They say Gotterba is shopping a book around, where he and a couple of ghost writers will tell his story.

Gotterba’s ex-boyfriend Robert Britz, says the relationship did happen, saying, “Doug told me right at the beginning of our relationship that he’d had a homosexual relationship with John Travolta in the 1980s. Doug said John was constantly grabbing at his genital area, but he put up with John’s sexual advances because working for him was ‘lucrative.’” The relationship continued until Gotterba started to dislike Travolta’s weight gain between films and his sexual advances began to “repulse him.”

There’s speculation the book could end the film star’s marriage to Kelly Preston, which is already said to be under strain due to allegations Travolta made sexual advances to two masseurs and a cruise ship steward. Preston’s been keeping a low profile so it’s tough to tell what she may think.

There doesn’t appear to be any deal for the book yet – which may depend on Gotterba having some proof the relationship happened, in order to ward off potential lawsuits – but it certainly puts the pressure on Travolta once more.

Gotterba’s ex-boyfriend, Robert Britz, have largely confirmed the affair with Gotterba: “Doug told me right at the beginning of our relationship that he’d had a homosexual relationship with John Travolta in the 1980s.” Britz tells the Enquirer, “Doug said John was constantly grabbing at his genital area, but he put up with John’s sexual advances because working for him was ‘lucrative.’”

Full story here: http://www.queerty.com/will-a-gay-tell-all-book-destroy-john-travoltas-career-and-marriage-20120614/#ixzz1xrG4Bs00

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Out Actor Cheyenne Jackson Joins Liberace Biopic

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HBO is certainly staking a claim to be able to compete with Hollywood, getting some of the best names in the business for their TV output, both in terms of series and films. That said, they’re really taking things up a notch with their Liberace biopic, Behind The Candelabra, which Oscar-winner Steven Soderbergh is directing.

The film already has Michael Douglas as Liberace, and Matt Damon as his long-time live-in lover, Scott Thorson (although Liberace denied publicly to his dying day that he was gay). Dan Aykroys is also onboard as the flamboyant pianist’s manager, with Debbie Reynolds as Liberace’s mother.

Now the cast has grown once more, as The Playlist reports that gay (and exceedingly hot) actor Cheyenne Jackson has signed on, as have Rob Lowe and Boyd Holbrook. Lowe will play a plastic surgeon in the movie and Holbrook will be one of Liberace’s youthful lovers. Unfortunately Jackson’s role hasn’t been revealed. Variety adds that Scott Bakula will also be in the movie, playing Bob Black, the choreographer who introduced Liberace to Thorson.

Shooting is due to begin this summer. While it will first play on TV in the US, the plan is for it to get a cinema release in other countries (although it may also initially play on TV in the UK, depending on the details of HBO’s exclusive deal with Sky).

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Elliot Loves Trailer – Take a look at the award-winning LGBT themed flick

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Winner of the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 2012 Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, and due to play both Frameline and Outfest, Elliot Loves in a new LGBT themed movie by Terracino. Here’s the synopsis: ‘The film is the story of Dominican-American Elliot Ayende at two stages of his life: as a 9-year-old who is side-kick and confidant to his barely-keeping-it-together single mom; and as a 21-year-old young gay man looking for love in New York City. A comedy-drama that shows you can survive anything life throws at you — just “keep it cute, papi.”‘ Watch the lengthy and intriguing trailer above.

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Chris Colfer’s Struck By Lightning To Close Outfest

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Young gay actor Chris Colfer has gained a huge legion of fans playing Kurt in Glee, but he’s more recently been showing he’s a bit of a writer too, as he penned the screenplay for Struck By Lightning, which he also stars in. It’s now been announced that the film will close Outfest, LA’s major LGBT film festival.

The film sees Colfer as a young man who, after being struck and killed by lightning, recounts the way he blackmailed his fellow high school classmates into contributing to his literary magazine. Christina Hendricks, Dermot Mulroney and Allison Janney also star.

As we reported a couple of weeks ago, Jeffrey Schwarz’s documentary Vito will open Outfest on July 10th, which is about Vito Russo, one of the founding fathers of the gay liberation movement and a vociferous AIDS activist in the 1980s (and probably best known as the author of The Celluloid Closet). Struck By Lightning closes the festival on July 22nd.

Colfer’s film is one of 147 films from 24 countries that will play at the festival. Other movies that will screen include Brenda Fricker and Olympia Dukakis’ Cloudburst; Alan Cumming and Garret Dillahunt’s Any Day Now; Lance Bass’ Mississippi, I Am; Michael Urie’s Thank You for Judging; and Thora Birch, Christine Lahti and Brittany Snow in Petunia.

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Janet Jackson Producing Documentary On Transgender Lives

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Janet Jackson is hoping she can help get people to understand the lives of transgendered people and the issues they face, especially from a population that seems to almost willfully misunderstand and mock them. It’s been announced that Jackson will executive produce the documentary Truth, which will explore the lives and struggles of the transgendered community.

Jackson commented, “All people are very important to me. I’ve been fortunate to make friends and learn about very different lives. Truth is our small chance to ask that you try and understand someone who lives their life in a way that is a little bit different from yours, even though all of our hearts are the same. We want to stop the hate and find understanding.”

Director Robert Jason says, “Janet Jackson will take us on a visually innovative, cerebral journey through the turbulent lives of transgendered people of all ages around the world and their epic struggle for equality. This film will highlight landmark mainstream stories and provide a glimpse at others that will change the gender landscape of the world forever. Just as it is hard to believe that there ever was a time when different components of society were required to use separate drinking fountains, it is as incredible that one’s gender expression remains just such a target for discrimination.”

It’s certainly a topic the media needs to look at more, as part of the problem is that for many people transgendered people are invisible and therefore easier to be prejudiced against – many can’t imagine feeling their birth sex is incorrect and so it’s easy for them to feel anyone who does feel that way is ‘wrong’. Hopefully Jackson’s support will get this to a wider audience and promote some understanding.

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