It’s time to dust off your rainbow flags, feather boas and multicolored Mardi Gras beads: June is gay month in NYC. Gay Pride starts June 22, kicking off with a rally in Bryant Park, followed by a street fair and dancing on Pier 54, and ending with the march the following Sunday. By way of foreplay, New Fest, the annual celebration of gay movie making continues through June 15.
 
To mark the 20th anniversary of LGBT film festivals in the city, New Fest promises to showcase a bunch of burgeoning talent in gay cinema. Bright wannabe Rose Troche and Kimberly Peirce-type directors will be offering up their latest celluloid and digital masterpieces—in fact, Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) is one of the advisers to the festival).

Movies will be showing at BAM Rose Cinemas, Brooklyn, and the IFC Center in the Village. Of particular note is Italian director Guido Santi’s (Concertino) documentary Chris & Don, an exploration of the relationship between British writer Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, the American artist. Chris & Don includes footage of the couple unearthed by Santi, along with an interview with the queen of camp, Liza Minnelli.

For the girls, there’s Kyle Schickner’s (Strange Fruit) feature film, Steam (June 14), about female bonding in a Turkish bath. Despite the setting, it looks like the bonding is entirely platonic, but look out for some steamy romance between college freshman Elizabeth (Kate Siegel) and a girl at school who turns her on to the ways of Sapphic love. 

Other movies worthy of notice include Johnny Symons’ cleverly titled Ask Not, a documentary about the crappy “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of the U.S. military, and Clapham Junction, Adrian Shergold’s feature based on the true story of a hate crime perpetrated against a gay man in London in 2005.

To cheer yourself up after these two, try Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild! as antidote. The man who gave the world Another Gay Movie, director Todd Stevens, takes the piss once again, with a spring break saga that includes evil frat boys and nasty venereal diseases (pictured above). Bring sun block—and condoms.


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Trevor Moore and his colleagues in the raunchy sketch comedy group Whitest Kids U’Know were early viral sensations, posting videos of their offbeat bits online during the baby days of YouTube. They got a lot of media coverage last year when a Budweiser ad featured a slapping joke that seemed heavily derived from their own work, but that was hardly a hindrance. The group has developed a steady group of fans that allowed their upstart stature to solidify into a career. Now they’re minor television stars, with a movie project that just wrapped and the televised version of their performance beginning its second season on IFC tonight at 11 p.m. Trevor spoke with New York Press about the experiences of then and now.

You started out doing weekly sketch comedy at Pianos in Soho. That’s still a part of your schedule, but now you’ve got the television show and a movie project. How much shameless self-promotion did it take to get to this point?

We weren’t very good at the self-promotion thing. At one point, we spent like fifty bucks to have some cards made that said where our show was. We never handed them out. Everyone still has a pack of cards. We did the Pianos show for three or four years. We wrote a new show every week so we got a lot of repeat people coming back. After we built a crowd that way, TimeOut New York came out and liked the show. They did a really nice piece on us. From there, we started getting really packed crowds.

How did you manage the transition to television?

The first season is a lot of our live sketches from our shows. We had 300-odd sketches on backlog. The one weird thing was working with a crew, instead of just the five of us. We had this really stupid idea for a submarine sketch—it was like a ten second sketch. But we showed up at the set and it was built like a submarine. Somebody spent a long time on this really stupid idea.

Your writing sessions must be pretty wack.

We write in different ways. We’ll sit around, people come in with ideas and we see if they make everybody laugh. IFC has been really awesome about basically making no content notes whatsoever. It’s a big First Amendment channel. They were just like, “Go crazy.” We can do whatever we want. I don’t think they’ve even read all the scripts this season.

The show started out on Fuze, which censored you a little more.

We didn’t have the same freedom. More people watch IFC, so it’s a double bonus. It wasn’t like we were complete idiots. We knew when we would get bleeped [on Fuze]. We’re not going to curb how these characters talk. In some situations, it actually made stuff funnier.

You’ve been away from Pianos for the last four months.

[Fellow Whitest Kids member] Zack [Cregger] and I have been in California doing a movie [called Playboys] for Fox Atomic. We’re almost done with it. We’ll start doing live shows again in March or April.

What’s the deal with your movie?

It’s about two guys in high school. One of them is obsessed with Playboy and girls, and the other one is an abstinence kid. He has a long-term girlfriend who keeps pressuring him to have sex, but he’s not ready. He agrees to have sex with her on prom night, but he’s nervous, so his friend gets him really drunk. He opens the wrong door and falls down a flight of steps and goes into a coma for four years. When he wakes up, all of his friends are gone from his hometown and his girlfriend is now a Playboy playmate. So he takes a roadtrip across the country with his friend to reconnect with the girl. It’s a hard R movie, but it’s innocent at the same time. Since Zack and I wrote and directed it, we had complete control. We’re going through the first round of editing now, so we’ll see how much control we end up having through it. They’re thinking it’ll be a fall release.

Sounds similar to the upcoming Anna Faris movie, I Know What Boys Like.

I don’t that’ll matter. The tones of the two movies will be night and day.

IMDb users are surely dying to know the identity of Horsedick.MPEG.

That’s the name of the gangster rapper in the movie.

Do you want to stay in the movie business?

We want to get a Whitest Kids movie off the ground. We’ve written a script for that. Once the WGA strike is over, we’ll probably see who’s interested in doing it. We’d like to follow the Monty Python formula, where you do a TV show and a movie every couple of years.

Interesting. I had you pegged as Jackass guys.

I think the Jackass movies are really funny, but that’s not sketch comedy.

What’s your take on the state of sketch comedy? Most people think Saturday Night Live is a lost cause.

Personally, I try not to watch other sketch comedy because I don’t want to be influenced by it. As for SNL, people have been saying it’s not good anymore for as long as I can remember, but I don’t know if that’s true. I think it’s aimed for a young group. I loved it when I was fourteen, fifteen—basically before you can drive, because that’s when you’re home on weekends. When you get older, you’re not as attached to it. I think the Adam Sandler/Chris Farley years were way better, but there are kids now who love this cast. In five or six years, they’ll say the same thing. It’s all about what you grow up with.




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Directed by Yen Tan
Now playing at Landmark Sunshine

The acting is wooden, the camera remains stubbornly static, and nothing much happens in Ciao, but the overall effect remains with you for days afterward. Any American gay movie that eschews perfect bodies and steamy sex for a character-driven talkfest is worth a look.

The opening sequence certainly doesn't inspire much faith in what's to come. Two men named Andrea (Alessandro Calza) and Jeff (Adam Neal Smith) are exchanging emails, silently shown being typed in real time on a black screen. It seems that Andrea has been emailing gay Texan Mark for months from his home in Italy, and has planned a trip to visit. And although Mark has died and Jeff gets the e-mail, he invites Andrea to use his already booked plane ticket to come anyway. Of course, Jeff later summarizes all of this to his stepsister Lauren (Ethel Lung), rendering the whole tedious montage moot. By this time, your eyes will be rolling.

But what follows is a frequently touching, frustrating, and lovely story. Jeff and Andrea bond over Mark and his quirks while wandering around Dallas and sharing stories and secrets. That's it. There's no sex, and only one lingering kiss in the dark, but Ciao manages to hold our attention without resorting to naked, sweating bodies. With American gay films increasingly turning to fluff and self-conscious straight romances transplanted to the gay world, Ciao comes as something of a relief: A dreamlike, melancholy movie about two lonely gay men sharing a connection. That's almost enough to forgive writer-director Tan's amateur flourishes.

Photo courtesy of Regent Releasing

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Bruce LaBruce has made everything from sex with skinheads (No Skin Off My Ass) to sex with someone's leg stump (Hustler White) seem sexy. (Or not sexy, considering how far you are willing to allow yourself to witness such dark, taboo terrain.) With his latest, Otto; or, Up With Dead People (currently screening at the IFC Center), he has decided to tackle the most difficult subject ever for a man-on-man political porno: existential angst, melacholia, death (cannibalism and necrophilia seem tame in comparison).

LaBruce seems to have arrived at the zombiefest a little late. After recent campy zombie comedies Shaun of the Dead and Fido, the gay zombie film seems to be riffing on themes that would have been better suited to some time in the 1990s when it could have shocked or horrified (or maybe with all the blood-gay-AIDS references on Alan Ball's True Blood, the plot is better off being freed of such associations).

We're introduced to Otto (Jey Crisfar), a young German youth who is stumbling around, his pale zombie eyes scoping out something to feed his hunger. He is afraid of man flesh, so he first devours bunny roadkill (one of the most hilariously gruesome scenes in the film) on his way to Berlin. Only later do we discover that we're also watching an experimental art film by by Medea Yarn (Katharina Klewinghaus) that takes the gazy zombie as an extended metaphor.

Yarn's character is both the most droll and amazing; LaBruce is able to encapsulate every Goth fantasy possible: she wears all black and even walks around with a parasol to keep her pale skin unblemished; she talks in a passionless voice and lacks any emotion; she reads Marcuse; she even dates a 1920s silent film star named Hella Bent (Susanne Sachsse), whose scenes are actually shot in scratchy black-and-white with title cards. Yarn's monologues are structured to be both horribly didactic and surprisingly revealing: as if she is a stand-in for LaBruce, explaning how difficult and dreary it can be to be a cult filmmaker and yet how personally satisfying.

Of course there are problems with continuity. Of course there are moments that are boring, stupid and insufferable. What do you expect? In his youthful days, LaBruce openly flaunted the conventions of narrative and good taste, and like other bratty provocateur's (John Waters, for instance), he seems to have grown weary of what's expected (full-penetration porno, complete with cumshots) and learned how to both entertain and bore. With Otto, LaBruce continues to subvert the indie filmmaking narrative: Instead of the unidentified ambiguous angst of some middle-class cutie which will be eventually resolved in a quirky, comical fashion by the end. He gives us a dirty, smelly, bloodthirsty walking dead who never really figures himself out and ends up, like Frankenstein's monster, trudging around searching for love.

The metaphor may seem strained, but LaBruce seems to be attacking the bourgeois gay lifestyle, a life of zombie-like hookups that usually occur online and may not have any semblance of passion. In one of the most exciting scenes, Otto is picked up by a guy outside a club where the theme of the evening is to dress like a zombie. The guy thinks Otto's costume is great, they go back to his place, Otto ransacks the trick's drugs and ends up eviscerating him. The naked man, whose guts are splayed around him, then wakes up and say, "Can I see you again?" It seems like the punchline to a short film (several of the vignettes actually feel that way and the entire film could have been wrapped up in 45 minutes instead of the 94 it is currently).

When I first watched the film at a MoMA screening packed full of hipster gays and art fags, a palpable feeling of wanting more signature Bruce LaBruce sex on film (there's one B&W scene where a zombie fucks a gash in his boyfriend's ripped open stomach, romantic interlude that's cropped like a Hollywood love scene and the zombie orgy at the end) hung in the air. It's always been LaBruce's trick: you suffer through the silliness, the boring bits, because you're titillated by the sexy stuff. Now that no one orgasms, there's less exposed flesh and it all ends with a whimper, it's that much more difficult to convince someone they should tackle a tedious film about gay zombies. But they should anyway.

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The acting is still as cardboard as the flimsy-looking model home used as a set, but the premise of Cinemax's new After Dark series, Forbidden Science, is several notches above the usual contrived idea behind the softcore porn. Instead of people calling in to a talk radio host with their best-sex-ever stories or a hotel that prompts rediscovering the passion in a relationship, Forbidden Science is downright complicated.

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Amid over at Cartoon Brew, has done a great job aggregating the mounting anger surrounding Paramount's casting process for M. Night Shyamalan's latest film, The Last Airbender, an adaptation of the Nickelodeon animation series, Avatar (not to be confused with the James Cameron opus). As he writes, this image is of "Charlee, a fan of the Avatar series, who protested the live-action film’s racially questionable casting choices at an Avatar casting call in Philadelphia today. He writes about his experience in this blog comment."

In an effort to alienate every Asian-American before the film's release, the film’s casting director Deedee Rickets recently explained to a Pennsylvania newspaper how they wanted to cast ethnic extras: “We want you to dress in traditional cultural ethnic attire. If you’re Korean, wear a kimono. If you’re from Belgium, wear lederhosen.” Of course, Koreans don't wear kimonos (that's Japan), the traditional Korean dress is a hanbok.

The Angry Asian Man blog writes:

“Right. Koreans, kimonos, funny Asian outfits… they’re all the same. It’s apparent that the people making this movie really don’t care about the kind of movie they’re making, as long as they get to use Asians (and their basket-weaving skills) as props.”

Amid gives us a slew of links to raise fans ire and get involved:

A blog that explains how to protest Paramount and documents the growing chorus of discontent.

Avant Garde Retard reimagines Avatar director M. Night Shyamalan turned white.

Passionate outrage from Maykazine

A blog post by angered Chinese-American who laments “a great opportunity for aspiring young Asian actors that has been taken away.”

Well, Fuck You Too, Hollywood: Not eloquent but an honest sentiment from a fan.

And it’s not just Asians, even the Angry Black Woman is angry: “I’m holding out one hope — that this is some kind of messed-up viral marketing effort, maybe using reverse psychology to get people all riled up about the film so they’ll blog about it, etc. But if this is really the cast they’re planning to go with, I will definitely be boycotting this movie, and urging everyone I know to do the same.”

No word yet from anyone who is angry for the simple fact that M. Night is actually being ALLOWED to make another movie. Hasn't he wasted enough time and money over the years with such horrendous failures as The Happening and Lady in the Water. The Last Airbender will, most likely, justly be forgotten.

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In Olivier Assayas’ latest film, Boarding Gate, Asia Argento fingers herself. But don’t be alarmed, we’re in the middle of a Renaissance of female masturbation scenes in independent films. There’s plenty of boy wanking as well, but it’s the recent resurgence in realistically portraying female pleasure that seems to get most of the notice. In case you’ve forgotten, here’s a roundup of some of the most memorable of the past few years.

Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive
Perhaps one of the most riveting masturbation scenes ever filmed. Naomi Watts begins to create friction and the camera begins to vibrate so that it appears as if we’re seeing the world through her blurred and pre-orgasmic point of view.

Nicole Kidman in Margot at the Wedding
After we watched her sit on the toilet in Eyes Wide Shut, it seemed the blond ice queen had decided to leave her intimate moments in some private chalet in an obscure East European village. But then in Noah Baumbach’s nearly unwatchable art film, Ms. Kidman lays on her stomach and pokes at herself in the dark. It’s one of the most desperate and sad moments in an already dreary dud of a flick.

Amira Casar in Anatomy of Hell
A very difficult film to watch, Catherine Breillat’s feminist exploration of sexuality takes place in a woman’s bed after she invites a gay man to come over to watch her. Casar is beautiful but to have such fixed attention on her vagina can get real creepy real fast. It’s an anatomy lesson for sure.

Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary
Gyllenhaal is so charming, her kooky fetishes and fascination with James Spader don’t come across as pervy as all. It’s not explicit in depicting female masturbation (Spader does his deed on her exposed backside), but it gets hinted at plenty of times.

Margo Stilley in 9 Songs
It almost seems silly to include Michael Winterbottom’s quasi-porn. Sure, there’s good lighting, but all we get in this film is an American girl and horse hung Kieran O’Brien getting it on with full (real) penetration and plenty of other kinky bits. Oh, and it's interspliced with scenes from the two going to rock concerts. Don’t remember the self-pleasure? That’s cuz you were too busy freeze-framing her riding his stuff.

Here’s a site that has rated more recent films on their female fingering.

Photo from Boarding Gate courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.



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Yesterday we received a DVD screener of the first few episodes of United States of Tara, the new Showtime drama that stars Toni Collete as a woman living, unmedicated, with multiple personalities. It's a bizarre premise on the surface, and the biggest question seems to be: Is this gonna be depressing or funny? I mean, if you've seen Sally Field's portrayal of a woman suffering from the disorder in the 1976 TV movie Sybil, you know this reality can be freakin horrific. Instead, Diablo Cody (yes, the over-hyped Juno scribe) has managed to take the modern dysfunctional family with unusual sidelines that have been the latest bread-and-butter of HBO and Showtime and make Dissociative Identity Disorder (the new classification of multiple personality disorder) seem like crazy hi-jinks for the whole family.

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Okay, maybe I was naive to expect more from a former underwear model. But I had no idea that Antonio Sabato, Jr. would be as hand-to-the-forehead, jaw-dropping dumb as he was in this week’s My Antonio.

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There is a silver lining in the astounding jobless reports today, D.L. Hughley is part of the 8.1% of unemployed Americans. Cityfile is reporting that CNN has canceled Breaking the News with D.L. Hughley due to budget and, probably, talent restraints. The short-lived show aired on Saturday nights, and besides landing some big interviews, was never funny nor informative.

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