> No Doubt has filed a lawsuit against Activision -- makers of the same Guitar Hero video game that famously riled Courtney Love a few months back -- because a new Band Hero game allows players to take too many liberties with the band members' avatars. Specific complaints include that the "the Character Manipulation Feature results in an unauthorized
performance by the Gwen Stefani avatar in a male voice boasting about
having sex with prostitutes," and that "bassist [Tony] Kanal’s likeness can be manipulated to
sing, in a female voice, one of No Doubt’s signature hits, 'Just a
Girl.' "
Today's featured honoree from the 2009 "School Days"–themed Out 100 -- this year's celebration of the 100 gay, lesbian, and trans people who've impacted both queer and mainstream culture in the last 12 months -- is Lee Daniels.
If Daniels wins best director at this year’s Oscars for the devastatingly beautiful Precious -- as he almost certainly will -- he will be the first gay African-American to take the honor. The producer of not-so-lightweight films like Monster’s Ball and The Woodsman, Daniels is on his way to collecting a trophy case full of awards (the film has already won top prizes at the Sundance and Toronto film festivals) and securing himself a spot alongside directors like Alexander Payne and Ang Lee as a distinctive voice of his generation. The father of 13-year-old twins recognizes that he’s shone light on some of the darkest reaches of contemporary society, but he won’t rule out anything for the future. He just signed on to helm the big-screen adaptation of Miss Saigon.
We'll continue to roll out honorees from the 2009 Out 100 in the coming days with the full portfolio, shot by renowned photographer Jason Bell, to debut in stores and online in mid-November.
Tonight at 1:51 AM, while the boys of the West Side are swinging to the pre-Halloween hum of electro beats and down in the village greased cowboys are pouring shots of sambuca to the lustful throngs of yuppies exploring their fruitful wild side, it will have been sixteen years since River Phoenix died outside of The Viper Room in Los Angeles.
Alas poor River, I didn't know you at all, but if crushes could span time and space and death and some poorly chosen methamphetamine, I feel we could have basked in the infinite stoned silence, understanding that truly, no one knew you at all.
What so many fail to recognize is that River was a legend long before he became best known a cautionary tale of the potential tragedies awaiting young Hollywood stars. A dark beginning for anyone, he was born to two traveling hippies lured into the cult colony of The Children of God and spent his early years as the golden son of the mystical and child-molesting zealot group. His parents eventually packed him up along with and his siblings and fled back to California and as River entered school he was considered an oddity. With no friends of his own he spent his free time playing guitar with his family on the street. While other children had maps of Central Africa memorized, River wasn't sure who the president was. Instead, he found a home in the world of acting. On his first hit, Stand By Me, director Rob Reiner recalled choosing River because he thought he identified so much with his character Chris Chambers, a lonely and lively symbol of youth whose life is also cut short by a terrible tragedy.
"I joined the Church of Scientology thirty-five years ago. During my
twenties and early thirties I studied and received a great deal of
counseling. While I have not been an active member for many years, I
found much of what I learned to be very helpful, and I still apply it
in my daily life. I have never pretended to be the best Scientologist,
but I openly and vigorously defended the church whenever it was
criticized, as I railed against the kind of intolerance that I believed
was directed against it. I had my disagreements, but I dealt with them
internally. I saw the organization -- with all its warts, growing pains
and problems -- as an underdog. And I have always had a thing for
underdogs.
But I reached a point several weeks ago where I no longer knew what
to think. You had allowed our name to be allied with the worst elements
of the Christian Right. In order to contain a potential "PR flap" you
allowed our sponsorship of Proposition 8 to stand. Despite all the
church's words about promoting freedom and human rights, its name is
now in the public record alongside those who promote bigotry and
intolerance, homophobia and fear.
The church's refusal to denounce the actions of these bigots,
hypocrites and homophobes is cowardly. I can think of no other word.
Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent."
"We didn't know it was going to be a big hit. We thought Tom [Cruise] was the biggest bore on the face of the Earth. He had spent some formative time with Sean Penn -- we were all very young at the time, Tom was 20, I was 23. Tom had picked up this knack of calling everyone by their character names, because that would probably make your performance better, and I don't agree with that. I think that acting is acting, and the rest of the time, you should be you, but he called us all by our character names. He was tense and made constant, constant unrelated homophobic comments, like, 'You want some ice cream, in case there are no gay people there?' I mean, his lingo was larded with the most … There was no basis for it. It was like, 'It's a nice day, I'm glad there are no gay people standing here.' Very, very strange.
Years and years later when people started to torment him with that, I used to think God, that's really fitting, because he tormented a lot of people as a 20-year-old. He made such a big deal about it. Same thing with Eddie Murphy -- I remember somebody calling and saying, "You'll never guess who was just caught with a transvestite!" [Laughs.] And I remember thinking that seemed fitting, because there are certain people in showbiz who make it an agenda, every third sentence has to have something knocking that life choice, and you think, What are you doing? … I just thought it was very funny that years later, that became his bugaboo. Which is a nice 1930s term I thought you'd enjoy."
It’s
hard for us to imagine -- especially when reflecting on a year that saw the
legalization of gay marriage in Iowa and the release of both Brüno and Milk -- that the word “homosexual” was
banned from Hollywood as recently as 50 years ago. So it was with incredulity
and the stonewashed thrill of watching something that had once been illegal in
the U.S., that I rented Victim, a lesser-known British film from 1961, directed by Basil
Dearden. Victim
is notable in the timeline of gay cinema because it’s the first English
language motion picture to -- gasp! -- include the word “homosexual.”
But
what was gay film like before “homosexuality”? To find out, I watched another
1961 classic, The Children’s Hour, starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. The film
focuses on two schoolteachers whose careers, and livelihoods, are threatened
when a particularly vindictive schoolgirl spreads a rumor that the two women
are involved, or “different,” as the film poster’s tagline reads. While
lesbianism, or accused lesbianism, is essentially the main source of stress for
the two heroines, the words “lesbian” and “homosexual” never actually make an
appearance in the film’s script. It would’ve been illegal at the time, as the
Hays Code hadn’t yet begun to shed its embargos on sexual portrayal. (That
code, which regulated films with a laundry list of moral restrictions, would
become obsolete by 1968 when the MPAA adopted the film rating system that is
used today.)
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