recently a fellow fag, some flunky script reader for some indie film company, held his nose over a film script of mine, in which a queer man takes revenge on a Jersey hood who bashed him and his lover, sniffing that “gay men … don’t stray into hate-crime violence.”
As I write this, a week has passed since Gianni Versace, world-renowned fashion designer and homosexual, was shot twice in the head by another homosexual, psycho spree killer Andrew Phillip Cunanan. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that this particular example of serial killing might qualify as a hate crime, if not in the usual political sense. Andrew Cunanan is pissed about something, and I don’t think it was haute couture that prompted him to shoot, bludgeon, stab and slash his way across the country.
My guess is that he’s tortured by the revelation of his HIV-positive status, and the bloody trail he’s been leaving since April is his way of mourning his lost fly-girl lifestyle by making other fags pay, as well as the occasional heterosexual who just happens to be in possession of the perfect getaway vehicle.
Thinking about the pass-the-smelling-salts delicacy of the above-mentioned script reader, I reflect on a glorious tradition of gay men treating other gay men to their own special brand of endearment: For example, the legacy of club queen Michael Alig — who shot his gay roommate due to a dispute over rent and then threw him into the river — will live on in homo hearts forever. I’m also reminded of something Spike Lee once said: Black people are incapable of racism. Seemingly, this kind of idiot’s logic has worked its way into the PC conscience of certain homosexuals who simply can’t believe that all us “gays” aren’t living in a fairy paradise of Shabby Chic sofas, post-workout iced mocha lattes, George Clooney look-alike lovers and a closet full of Gianni Versace.
Of course, there is far more anonymous, if less sensational, violence played out on a daily basis behind more gay and lesbian doors than we care to think about. I’ve witnessed a fair share of it myself; I’ve even doled it out. I’m aware that, to many gay folks, image equals credibility. After the Versace killing, a cultured homosexual gentleman of my acquaintance groaned, “Why does he (Cunanan) have to be gay?” The fact that most of the victims were gay didn’t seem to enter into it. After all, what is the sound of a queer tree falling in a hetero forest?
Why is this? Partly because we seem to have embraced that utopian myth that gay people don’t — can’t — actually hurt each other, unless of course it’s consensual. Sure, we argue, we get drunk, we get flirty with strangers at a bar, a little carried away with our fave drugs or debt. But such peccadilloes never make us violent. How could they? We are, as the word implies, gay.
We might be better off if we tossed out the batter-bowl of mushy, fluffernutter queer correctness that still dictates how we’re supposed to come across to the world. Rather than thinking about what a Cunanan does to our collective image, we would do well to face the fact that we’re as capable of the same destructive behavior as everybody else. I used to think during the glory days of ACT-UP and Queer Nation that we queers were all in it together. I realize now how ridiculously naive a notion that was. I have seen more instances of bad behavior perpetrated by one gay person against another than I have space to describe; usually, it’s in a “harmless” social context — rampant selfishness, egotism, dishonesty, power plays, head games. But sometimes it isn’t so “harmless.” And there’s no gay bashing, emotional or physical, like one from a “brother.”
At this point, I’d like to vent on the weasel Andrew Phillip Cunanan. Obviously you can’t apply Emily Post’s rules of etiquette to psychopaths, but Cunanan is the most obnoxious kind of spree killer to have driven down the Florida freeway: prissy, pouty and preppy. With all due respect to the families of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims, I had more sympathy for Dahmer’s sickness than for Cunanan’s. At least Dahmer, when he spoke of being relieved that he was finally behind bars and away from a world vulnerable to a psychosis he couldn’t control, showed that some embers of humanity still glowed within him. All evidence seems to indicate that Cunanan wants to be caught, too. But as I look at his smarmy, smirking smile flashed on TV and read the newspaper accounts, all I see is a squinty-eyed, ostrich-eating, champagne-swilling, social-climbing whore who barely worked a day in his life, who flirted and fucked his way to nowhere but the next gay pit stop, who just couldn’t get over the fact that he wasn’t born a Kennedy, that his father didn’t own a sugar plantation in the Philippines but was just a sad, allegedly crooked loser who deserted the family, and who’s furious at the world for being HIV-positive.
Then there was the other image splashed across my TV screen — the ambitious, excessive, hedonistic, sexy, celebrated Gianni Versace being rushed down a sun-drenched Miami street on a stretcher, his handsome white head thick and dripping with blood. And for a moment it was easy to forget (especially for the FBI) about Cunanan’s other victims, who were not necessarily friends of Madonna and Naomi and Courtney, the lesser-known ones like Jeffrey Trail, David Madson, Lee Miglin, William Reese. Or maybe it’s all just a bad dream. After all, we’re not violent. As the script reader insisted, we’re lovers, not killers.
Daniel Reitz, a frequent contributor to Salon, is a writer living in New York. His film "Urbania," based on his play, "Urban Folk Tales," will be released in August.
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You wouldn’t think the people whose theme parks feature a binge-eating bear with a honey gut would put itself in the business of fat shaming, but that’s exactly what Disney did this month. In a boneheaded stab at promoting healthy lifestyle choices, the happiest place on earth became a considerably less hospitable environment when it debuted a new interactive “Habit Heroes” exhibit at Epcot. Guess who the villains were?
A collaboration between Disney and Blue Cross and Blue Shield to help teach kids to “fight bad habits,” the Epcot attraction and tie-in app and Web page featured buff, virtuous characters Will Power and Callie Stenics squaring off against nemeses like the lazy, grotesque “Lead Bottom” and the self-explanatorily named “Glutton.” Apparently, when a company famed for its meticulous crafting of exactly what children want and one of the largest health insurers in the nation pool their talents, they come up with “Fat people are bad.”
Earlier this month, Tony Jenkins, regional market president for Blue Cross and Blue Shield, told the Orlando Sentinel that “Our challenge was to tell that story in a fun, engaging way, which is what Disney does better than anyone.” So imagine Disney’s surprise when some patrons did not take kindly to their “fun, engaging” message. As Weighty Matters blogger and assistant professor of family medicine Dr. Yoni Freedhoff told the Calgary Herald, “It’s so dumbfounding it’s unreal. I just can’t believe somebody out there thought it was a good idea to pick up where the school bullies left off and shame kids on their vacation.” On her “Dances With Fat” blog, Ragen Chastain condemned the “Disney Fat Shame Ride” and admitted she “couldn’t stop the tears” when she’d heard about it. And nutritionist and author Marion Nestle tweeted, agog, “You can’t make this up.”
It didn’t take long for the Magic Kingdom to do some hasty damage control, taking HabitHeroes.com “down for maintenance” and closing the exhibit just three weeks after it launched. The mouse is currently remaining conspicuously silent on whether it will return.
With 12.5 million children and teens now obese, the health problem in this nation is a real and growing one, one that will play in serious long-term health problems like diabetes and heart disease and short-term ones like bullying. Kids – and parents – need direction and encouragement to make healthy eating choices and develop an active lifestyle. But like Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s similarly in your face campaign, the Habit Heroes approach compounded the problem by making it seem like emotional, cultural, genetic and economic factors can be overcome with simple “Will Power” and a few broccoli spears. Worse, it demonized the obese, equating size with poor habits. Kind of ironic for a place that entices visitors to “Satisfy your sweet tooth at Storybook Treats” or “Wake up with treats like freshly made funnel cakes and delicious waffle sandwiches.” You want to promote good heath? Start by looking at your own sugar and animal fat-laden menus. And go on by respecting children of all shapes and sizes. Because they’re the ones who trust in the mouse to see them not as Lead Bottoms and Gluttons but as princesses and pirates. As beautiful.
Can a Bear of Very Little Brain redeem the tarnished reputation of Walt Disney’s venerable animation studio and stake his place on the cultural landscape alongside Buzz Lightyear and Lightning McQueen? That’s a lot to ask of a tubby little cubbie whose principal concern is finding a pot of honey — sorry, hunny — but Disney’s whimsical and charming new “Winnie the Pooh” feels simultaneously like a return to the company’s more innocent past and a refreshing new direction. Specifically recalling the hand-drawn animation style of the widely beloved 1966 “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree” and its sequels (anthologized in the 1977 collection “The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh”), and delivering only the faintest contemporary tweak to the Milne material, Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall’s “Winnie the Pooh” will thoroughly delight both the under-10 set and their nostalgic parents. Look for this to be a surprisingly potent sleeper hit; I’m going a second time this weekend.
Sterling Holloway, who provided the classic Pooh voice in the ’60s, has been dead almost 20 years, but Jim Cummings (who also voices Tigger) has amiably filled the role in numerous lower-budget Disney productions and sounds uncannily similar. With John Cleese as narrator, Craig Ferguson as Owl and Jack Boulter as Christopher Robin, this production also has the right degree of authentic British-ness. (It’s somehow fine with me that Pooh, along with Bud Luckey’s Eeyore, sounds a bit more American.) But the real star of “Winnie the Pooh” is the imaginative animation, which features not one but two classic Disney surrealist sequences and a bit of playful postmodernism: Pooh frequently interacts with Cleese’s narrator, or wanders out of the Hundred Acre Wood into the paragraphs of the book, accidentally bringing letters and punctuation marks back with him.
Of course the Mouse has been relentlessly cashing in on A.A. Milne’s dimwit ursine hero ever since acquiring the rights from Milne’s widow in 1961, and much of that output doesn’t bear (ha!) thinking about: Piglet and Tigger got their own spinoff movies; there were Christmas and Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day specials and a seemingly endless series of tot-oriented “Winnie the Pooh Learning” and “Winnie the Pooh Playtime” titles. Let’s not even bring up “Franken Pooh.” Well, you can forget about all that stuff; Anderson and Hall have banished the insipid primary colors, not to mention the third-rate outsourced animation, and this film has the lovingly crafted, storybook feeling that was once Disney’s specialty.
“Winnie the Pooh” feels like a turning point in the brief tenure of Walt Disney Animation Studios head John Lasseter — whose other company, Pixar, effectively destroyed Disney’s old in-house animation unit. Lasseter has said frequently that Disney Animation should have its own identity, one that draws on the company’s glorious past and doesn’t simply ape Pixar’s success, and maybe now we can see what that means. “Winnie the Pooh” doesn’t look or feel anything like a Pixar movie, and it is specifically not trying to be a “kidult” crossover success, after the fashion of almost every Pixar production. But it also feels mercifully free of the combined calculation and sloppiness that have plagued so many Disney features in recent years, and one could argue that the painstaking attention to animation and storytelling reflect Lasseter’s stewardship.
Let’s take to the way-back machine for a minute. Ever since the Walt Disney Co. began its partnership with Pixar, then an upstart digital-animation studio run out of an industrial park in Emeryville, Calif., the Mouse’s own in-house animation unit has struggled to keep up. Actually, that’s being euphemistic; what really happened was that Pixar kicked Walt Disney Feature Animation’s butt so badly that the division was ultimately dissolved and renamed. In 1995, “Toy Story,” the first Disney-Pixar release, grossed $354 million worldwide, which represented at least a tenfold return on its production costs. Walt Disney Feature Animation also had a big hit that year with “Pocahontas,” which premiered outdoors in New York’s Central Park and went on to its own $300 million-plus worldwide take. (Mind you, it also cost several times more to make than “Toy Story” did.)
Not even Lasseter, who co-founded Pixar and directed “Toy Story,” would have predicted 16 years ago that Pixar would go from one massive success to the next, becoming one of the most beloved brands in entertainment history, or that “Pocahontas” was the last big hurrah, or next-to-last, for Walt Disney Feature Animation, which had created such massive hits as “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King.” When Pixar released “Toy Story 2″ in 1999, another huge worldwide hit, WDFA’s big release was “Tarzan,” a wildly expensive production (not to mention an entirely forgettable film) that probably ended up in the red. Disney’s in-house studio had one more sizable hit, with “Lilo & Stitch” in 2002. But that movie earned $100 million less than Pixar’s “Monsters Inc.” had a year earlier and took in less than one-third the worldwide gross of Pixar’s huge 2003 hit, “Finding Nemo.”
At that point the writing was on the wall: Pixar engaged an enormous public with cutting-edge animation technology and appealing characters and stories, and reaped untold billions in box-office receipts, tie-in merchandise and ancillaries. Disney’s in-house animation studio, on the other hand, was an embarrassing albatross. There were straight-to-video quickies, cashing in on existing properties in the most unfortunate Disney tradition: “Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas” and “Mulan II” and “Tarzan II” (with “new songs by Phil Collins,” apparently meant as an inducement). The last release under the aegis of Walt Disney Feature Animation was “Chicken Little” in 2005, a work of supremely crappy-looking fake-Pixar animation that features 11 credited writers and Zach Braff in the title role. I would have been happy to completely forget that movie’s existence. (In fact I had, until now).
Lasseter has been at the helm of the reconstituted Walt Disney Animation Studios for almost five years, while continuing to run Pixar, and the results of this seemingly contradictory role are still a bit unclear. The first two Disney features made on his watch, “Meet the Robinsons” and “Bolt,” felt way too much like Pixar movies, with substandard animation and the rough edges sanded off. I’m aware there’s a critical constituency for both films, but that didn’t extend far into the public, and both were box-office flops. With the hand-drawn “Princess and the Frog” and the digital “Tangled,” Disney tried to breathe new life into its classic tradition of adapting fairy tales. Neither performed as well as expected, but they displayed more craft, integrity and audience appeal than any other Disney animated feature in years. (“Tangled” was reportedly so expensive to make that even its worldwide gross of almost $400 million might not have returned a profit; “The Princess and the Frog” failed to click with American audiences but did well overseas.)
It’s almost not worth mentioning that “The Princess and the Frog” was artistically and financially eclipsed by Pixar’s “Up,” and that “Tangled” was obliterated by the astonishing billion-dollar worldwide gross of “Toy Story 3,” the biggest animated feature in history. The same thing is likely happen again this summer; even though many Pixar-friendly critics have turned against Lasseter’s “Cars 2,” audiences don’t seem to mind. But coming as it does after those two films, “Winnie the Pooh” feels like more than a small summer surprise that will utterly charm 3-year-olds and 93-year-olds. It feels like a Walt Disney animated film, in the best possible sense of that term, and another significant step toward restoring that company’s dignity and sense of purpose.
The big box office news this past weekend was the success of Pixar’s latest release, “Cars 2,” in the face of less-than-friendly critics. In the wake of this triumph, the studio has released the trailer for its next film, “Brave,” which is due to hit theaters next June.
The movie — which takes place far from “Cars’s” Radiator Springs, in the Scottish Highlands — brings us Pixar’s first-ever female protagonist: a flame-haired princess called Merida. Entertainment Weekly has more:
It’s Pixar Animation Studio’s first fairy tale fantasy, and it marks yet another change of pace for the venerable dream factory. “What we want to get across [with the teaser] is that this story has some darker elements,” director Mark Andrews tells EW. “Not to frighten off our Pixar fans — we’ll still have all the comedy and the great characters. But we get a little bit more intense here.”
The film will use the voices of Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly, Julie Walters, Kevin McKidd, Craig Ferguson and Robbie Coltrane, and stars Kelly Macdonald as Merida.
Landau Eugene Murphy Jr. wows audiences on "America's Got Talent."
1. The U.S. gets its own Susan Boyle
“America’s Got Talent” contestant Landau Eugene Murphy Jr., a car washer from West Virginia, was chided by Piers Morgan for chewing gum onstage. Then he opened his mouth so the ghost of Frank Sinatra could come out singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Goosebumps!
2. A tribute to Ryan Dunn that will last a lifetime
“Jackass’” Wee-Man, (aka Jason Acuna) cuts through all the anger and flame wars surrounding his friend’s death and gives him a uniquely touching memorial.
3. Southwest Airlines pilot loses it on the mic
I don’t know if it makes it better or worse that this guy’s homophobic tirade was supposed to be a private cockpit conversation instead of being broadcast across the entire Texas airspace. Maybe he should get a job doing standup in Nashville?
4. Culture clash
Amazing footage, just uploadedto YouTube yesterday, of a tribe in Papua New Guinea meeting a white man for the first time in 1976.
5. Trippy Disney mashup
Pogo, the foremost expert and creator of Disney remixes, has come out with his latest creation. “Bloom” focuses not on one specific film, but several different animated classics.
Miley Cyrus … can I ever look at you without feeling like a lecherous old man? From the time you were 15 and appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair wearing only a sheet, it’s been a battle not to see you partially clothed everywhere I go.
Other times, you’re shoving your post-Hannah Montana B-cups in my face so hard that I can almost hear you screaming, “I’m an adult now! Take me and my breasts seriously!” For example: your music videos for “Can’t Be Tamed.” Or “Who Owns My Heart.“ Or when you pretended to kiss one of your female dancers on “Britain’s Got Talent.” And that’s not even mentioning those party shots of you involving lap dances, salvia and more half-naked, girl-on-girl kissing. Which has less to do with your sexuality, Miley, and more with the fact that you were 17 and acting like Paris Hilton on a bender.
So please forgive me for feeling weird about these new, semi-innocuous stills for your latest film “So Undercover.” If it weren’t for your dramatic history with underwear, these photos wouldn’t seem so bad. But with you Miley, the pictures carry three years of associated guilt and anxiety that the government is going to come arrest me for having child pornography on my computer.
You’re 18 now, which is the age when the sexy vs. too sexy debate usually begins to get interesting for Op-Ed writers and TV pundits. But you’ve been scandalized and scandalizing for awhile now; you’ve made your stance clear about rebelling from your Disney image, and at this point it’s barely news when you walk out of your house in only lingerie. If anything, these photos for “So Undercover” are way more conservative than the bra and short-shorts you’ve been wearing to the supermarket for the past 24 months. (The Supermarket is a hot new club in London, FYI.)
But it still feels weird. Legal, but weird.
Then again, maybe I should just be glad you’re so fond of underwear that you literally spend $3K at a time shopping for panties and bras. It will really cut down on the number of paparazzi upskirt photos we’ll have to see in the future.
The heroine of Pixar's forthcoming film, "Brave." 
Landau Eugene Murphy Jr. wows audiences on "America's Got Talent." 
Miley in her everyday outfit for "So Undercover." 
