Above photos have Keanu Reeves on the left and Carl Marotte on the right. Brad Fraser is best known as a writer and director especially for his play Unidentfied Human Remains and the True Nature of Love but he wrote a controversial play in the early 80's starring Keanu Reeves and my friend Carl Marotte called Wolfboy. I thought the web site Club Keanu would enjoy these photos taken for the poster and promos for the play Wolfboy and find out more about the talented Brad Fraser. (Fraser has written for the tv program Queer As Folk. Carl and I have been friends for years and he has also been an encouraging force with his interest in my short films. Carl and I made a film together a few years ago on a script I wrote and he directed.
I love these photos and I am really proud of these guys for playing characters who are homoerotic in 1981. When the movie Brokeback Mountain came out a lot of people hailed the stars as mavericks and "brave" for playing gay characters while also eeking out careers as straight leading men. The thing is...there have been a few actors who are not only tolerant but willing to risk backlash as leading men to play gay guys. Not only were these two guys willing to do so in this play Wolfboy but Reeves also played a gay man in the movie My Own Private idaho during the climb of his career as a straight romantic lead...in a climate a lot less tolerant than the era of Brokeback Mountain. Three cheers for director Brad Fraser, Carl Marotte and Keanu Reeves!!!
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7 comments:
It makes you aplaud these men for that doesnt it.. I mean so many men cant play those rolls at all. I know I would have a hard time doing it if I was an actor and had to act gay as a female.. Yikes but I suppose if the right opportunity came along and I had to...
Yep, exactly Tweetey. And they made this play when AIDS was still relatively misunderstood and very much associated with fear and the gay community, so it was even more of an act of bravery.
"have been a few actors who are not only tolerant but willing to risk backlash as leading men to play gay guys".
See Dirk Bogarde in Victim (1961). Even though he was gay, he had such a huge female fanbase (who largely were unaware of his sexuality, of course) that it was still considered a huge risk to play a gay man. Kudos to him. But on the other hand, it's shocking to see how short a distance we've travelled when this sort of thing is still considered "dangerous"...
DWT, yep, you're right. I thought it was so weird that the feeling was intense around Ledger and Gyllenhal taking such a "risk" with their jobs. Bogarde is a good story. We watched the Maltese Falcoln the other day and the feeling of the guys Greenstreet and Lorre as a "gay mob" was weird too. In the novel the character Cairo is homosexual in some ways..and downplayed in the movie.but it is still in the movie to some degree. Of course there are Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in "Midnight Cowboy"...but in "Breakfast At Tiffany" Holly and her man are both basically prostitutes in the movie which I guess wproducers thought was better than being gay...and the idea of a love affair betweena woman and a gay man was not thought of as film-able at the time.
Here is a list...interesting stuff:
http://www.listology.com/content_show.cfm/content_id.27671/Movies
Remember there was a time if there was a gay character they were always stereotyped as addicts or some kind of murderer. Notice that vampire films were embracing homosexual characters...I think most of those in this list are "Hammer Films". And isn't it cool that horror/vampire culture was so open to homosexuality? I think this is part of the reason..."the other" etc...
Actually, now I see there was a fascinating qualifier for the list of movies I put above...about them not being homophobic...the comments at that link are interesting.
Meanwhile here are some other cools articles:
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC16folder/HomosexFilmNoir.html
http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/celluloid/misc/history.html
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/gays_and_lesbians/gay_film.cfm
Keanu is an artist, plan and simple. My Own Private Idaho was actually groundbreaking. I think that maybe Brokeback Mountain received all the kudos because more people were able to accept the idea that men could be in love with each other. I think movies such as Wolf Boy, Private Idaho, Brokeback and television shows like Queer as Folk represent the fact that gay people are just living their lives. They have that right.
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