Were the World Mine, my favorite original musical movie in years, opens today in New York City and San Francisco. If somehow my other enthusiastic entreaties to go see it at a festival near you somehow wasn't enough, may I now present Tanner Cohen, the film's stunning young star?
You would think Cohen is simply too big to play a fairy. At 6 foot 4, the 21-year-old actor towers above his would-be tormentors in the breathtaking musical film that is both a retelling and a gloriously queer reinvention of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
As Timothy, the resident gay outcast in his all-boys academy, Cohen tunes out humdrum high school in favor of sweetly sexy fantasies -- staged song-and-dance numbers in which his classmates don glitter and silver lamé shorts while head jock Jonathon (Nathaniel David Becker) croons Timothy’s name. "They shall hear that I am not afraid," Timothy sings back, almost smugly. (The lyrics are largely adapted from the original Shakespeare.)
Cohen's bold performance proves it's the boy in the lace wings who's calling the shots. "Tanner is so confident and eccentric at the same time," says cowriter and director Tom Gustafson.
"He knows there are ramifications to his open sexuality," Cohen says of his character. "It's a pretty simple choice. You can either cry about it or just do your thing. He doesn't make any apologies for himself."
Cohen, who will graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles, next spring with a degree in cultural studies, is equally issue-free. "I'll have plenty of time to put labels on myself as I get older, so why start now? For the time being, I can tell you that I love someone, and he happens to be a man."
Read more from Tanner and about the movie at Out.com.
Previously > Fairies away!
he so hot oh my godddddddddddddd......... the film is great but i can't stop telling myself that is ansom
Posted by: franceska saint-juste | June 12, 2009 at 10:24 PM
Bravo, Puck! Shakespeare never sounded so sweet.
Posted by: Robin Goodfellow | September 08, 2009 at 04:47 AM