Random Film Thoughts: You've Been Blackballed
09-06-2018, 01:03 PM
Post: #909
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RE: Random Film Thoughts: You've Been Blackballed
(09-06-2018 11:54 AM)eurocheese Wrote: That sounds tidy, but by demanding a comment in response to defend his film, I feel like Hedges was pressured to out. That's either OK or it isn't. I'm going to take issue with your use of the word "tidy" because I think it diminishes the reality (if you didn't mean it that way, that's fine, but it read that way to me). I can only share my personal experience with this, and it's very close to my heart. I'm an actor in LA, and I attended a number of casting director workshops when I moved out here after college. We struggling actors would basically pay anywhere from $35-$75 (this was back in 2001-2003) for the privilege of meeting these casting directors (and sometimes agents and managers) and doing a random cold read for them. There was no guarantee of anything, and it was just a way for these people to make extra money 99.9% of the time (unless you looked like, say, Tom Welling). To a certain degree, it's very exploitative, but it still was a way to get your face in front of people. In any event, I attended a workshop in April of 2002 that was to meet the two casting directors for Will & Grace. I was not out yet (although I obviously knew I was/am gay) but knew enough about myself to know that this might be a potentially good workshop for me and what I had to offer. These two men both seemed pretty obviously gay, although I don't know for sure. Anyway, I can't say my read was any good, but I did make a point of thanking them after the workshop. After I thanked them, one of them, the more flamboyant one, said to me, "Let me give you a piece of advice: butch. up. You'll never get anywhere in this town unless you butch up." It was horrible enough to hear those words, but the way he said it was the thing that has always stuck with me: he delighted in telling me this. He wasn't actually trying to give me advice; he was being deliberately and gleefully cruel. I have never forgotten it, and I never will. In some ways, I'll never get completely over it, but it took me over ten years to get mostly over it (actually coming out sure helped). You can chalk it up to one guy choosing to be a total dick, and I just had the bad luck to be the recipient of his venom; however, this was a (presumably) gay man, someone who should probably want to help a younger gay actor, shitting on that actor for sport. This is not an isolated incident either. Gay actors (and especially, I'd venture, gay male actors) receive this message both implicitly and explicitly all. the. time. Lately, the message has been that LGBT actors play straight roles all the time, so why can't straight actors play LGBT roles? Isn't that fascist? Isn't that limiting? Of course, that's all bullshit because it's based on a fallacy. LGBT actors most certainly do NOT play straight roles all the time, and if they do, they're closeted 99.9999999999% of the time, which doesn't count. It just doesn't. Moreover, as we all know, LGBT actors are almost never considered for the precious few LGBT roles that actually do exist because money/visibility/hetero-male discomfort at seeing two gay guys make out/whatever. I will say that this has become much more of an issue in film because TV has made exponential strides forward in representation in the last 5-10 years. I'm not saying only LGBT actors should be cast in those roles either; I just want them/us to be considered because we are not considered right now because of all the internalized homophobia/fear/whatever you want to call it that very much exists in Hollywood. When a straight actor is good in an LGBT role, I don't care that that actor is straight. For instance, I would not have wanted anyone but Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sean Penn, or Timothée Chalamet to play those roles because they were brilliant and I believed them. However, I guarantee not a single out LGBT actor was considered for any of those roles (even Elio, the most recent and youngest role, and even with a gay director helming it), and that needs to change. And it's not a tidy change. One thing that might expedite that change would be for people to stop calling straight actors brave for taking on these roles. An LGBT actor in a straight role is not believable, but a straight actor playing gay is brave. That shit has to stop. On the subject of Lucas Hedges, he doesn't owe anyone a public declaration of his sexuality; however, he knew he was going to get those questions by taking on this role because every goddamn actor gets those questions. And the criticisms, too. He would've been well within his rights to address absolutely nothing about them. However, he is in a unique position of privilege because his father has some clout in the industry; as such, and I'm just spitballing, he may feel he has a bit of leeway in potentially coming out as whatever he chooses to label himself (if he chooses to at all) because he's already in the inner circle, so to speak. He may not feel his career will suffer too terribly much. If that's the case and if he is queer/bi/non-straight and chooses to make it more concrete publicly, I hope he continues to work and continues to do interesting work because it will make it that much easier for other, non-connected LGBT actors to do it and for the people in charge of casting to be willing to give them the opportunity to do it. |
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