Our love of this particular Film Festival starts with its name. The Organisers probably chose it for their own reasons, but in our dictionary 'pout' means 'to purse your lips to look petulant or sexy' and these are both very suitable reactions to whenever you watch edgy queer cinema. Hopefully with the selection that they have curated this year, it will be more of the latter, and maybe bursting into a big grin too.
The second reason why we keep this Festival on our radar is that it just doesn’t stay in London but tours the UK and takes brand new LGBT films all over the country from Edinburgh in the north to Brighton in the south and Cardiff in the west.
The progamme, supplied by film distributors Peccadillo Pictures and part funded by BFI & the National Lottery includes such goodies as '52 Tuesdays', 'Soft Lad', 'A Girl at My Door,' 'Dressed As A Girl' and 'Futuro Beach' as well as one of the best anthology of shorts we have seen for some time called 'Trick & Treat' (most of them are reviewed on www.queertiques.com.)
The whole Festival rolls out all most immediately and full details of it's schedule and where you can buy tickets can be found at http://poutfest.co.uk/the-tour/.
If you can only get to see just one of these movies then our number one tip has to be 'Dressed As A Girl': it's a joyous and fascinating documentary on how the extraordinary performance artist Jonny Woo and his outrageous crew of performers have created a stunning alternative drag culture that has made London's East End THE place to go for the best queer entertainment today.
Brazilian LGBT movies rank amongst the very best of the genre, winning international Awards and finding enthusiastic audiences all over the world. Here then are our TOP 6 FAVORITE BRAZILIAN GAY MOVIES.
1) Tied in first place is Daniel Ribiero's debut feature film 'THE WAY HE LOOKS' : a heart-warming coming-of-age tale about Leo a blind teenager who is shocked to discover that his new classmate has eyes for him and not Giovanna his best friend. There is nothing at all extraordinary in the plot-lines of this wee movie, but somehow it has the most endearing quality that makes it so immensely enjoyable time and time again.
Sharing the Number One spot is 'FUTURO BEACH'a mesmerizing melancholic drama from Karim Aïnouz that starts with a drama in the wind-swept beach in Northern Brazil with its unforgiving and untamed ocean which spins into a tale of three man coming to terms with how that day will shape their future. It ends almost like it begins many years later with the three of them racing down fog-drenched Autobahn Berlin to a stark desolate beach. It's the 'journey' in between when all three realise that life never turns out quite as the predicted. It is unquestionably a real visual treat but more that Aïnouz has a way of imbuing such sensuality into his movies that make them so compelling viewing.
3) In this, his first directing role, writer Hilton Lacerda's wildly exotic tale TATTOO aka Tatuagem is based on a real famous Theater Troupe in the 1970's, and was shot on location in his hometown of Recife. Despite all the bizarre and bawdy scenes of the totally uninhibited performers giving (and showing) their all, this is essentially a rather wonderful and very tender love story.
4) William Hurt created a great deal of controversy for his camp mincing performance as gay window-dresser Luis Molina jailed for having under-age sex in 'THE KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN'. He also picked up a Best Actor Academy Award too. Molina is paid by the Brazilian Military Authorities to obtain information from Valentin Arregui a political prisoner who he is sharing his cell with. He treats his cellmate (played by a very young Raúl Juliá) to his dramatic re-enactments of his favorite movies, before he eventually falls in love with him. This classic melodrama from 1985 has since been described as 'the gay Casablanca'.
5). Karim Aïnouz gets another spot in our list with Madame Satãhis first feature made in 2002.It's a dramatized portrait of João Francisco dos Santos, an outrageous drag queen who was known as Madame Satã and who was a sometime chef, transvestite, lover, father, hero and convict from Rio de Janeiro. A fiery character from a very poor background, Santos didn't grovel for the respect that he saw as his birthright, he demanded it, and he fought for it loudly and violently. It is an totally electrifying performance from Lazaro Ramos that will remain with you for a long time afterwards.
6) Last, but by no means least, we have REACHING FOR THE MOON based on the real life story of the celebrated American novelist Elizabeth Bishop and her affair with her very fiery lover Lota de Macedo Soares a highly successful and wealthy architect in Rio de Janiero. This highly unusual but very passionate relationship involving two iconic artists makes for very compelling viewing with stunning performances from Brazilian award-winning Soap Opera star Gloria Pires as Lota and Australian actress Miranda Otto as Elizabeth.
Is there such a thing as a "gay voice"? Why
do some people "sound gay" but not others? Why are gay voices a
mainstay of pop culture—but also a trigger for anti-gay harassment? You have
probably asked yourself some of these questions in the past but journalist David Thorpe finding himself single again in his mid-forties went
one step further when he thought that his ‘gay voice’ was maybe the root of all
his problems. He set out seeking some
answers and along the way made this rather tender and touching incisive film
about his journey which is also wonderfully hilarious and something that all
gay men can relate too. Recently queerguru sat
down with him and talked (in our very gay voices) about what he discovered.
QG: I thought your movie was a funny exercise in
answering an eternal question that all gay men of a certain age ask
at some time. but it seems like you had a more serious motive tackling
this after you became single again.
DT: It doesn't matter what age you are in
life when you get dumped you tend to do an inventory of your life and maybe of yourself
as you wonder why! You either assume that there is something wrong with
you, or that you have done some dreadful deed. For me this time around it triggered
off a lot of insecurities which of course first get established when
we are young and sisses and get made fun off, which for many of us was
because of our voices. I’ve always been self conscious of
sounding gay and as I say in the film I found myself suddenly really ashamed of
my voice. I couldn't believe that at my age, and after all the work I had done
too be out, and fight for gay rights, that I had still had this shame
about my voice and I wasn't sure if I could get rid of it. I wasn't sure that
I should. I wasn't sure I could change, I want sure if I should.
So it set me on this journey to make this film.
QG: You seem to take the ‘quest’ a lot more seriously than
your friends, did that discourage you?
DT: My friends are lovely and part of the
journey for me was finding out how much they, and my family, loved me as I am.
I think I needed to connect more deeply with them in some way
because I was feeling vulnerable and so that's why I went to them, but despite
their good advice I didn't think they were quite right. I could see
why they were trying to make me feel better about myself, but you cannot snap
your fingers and it just happens.You have to act and you have to do something. I
felt very strongly that this was a journey that
I needed to go on before I could be happy
with who I was. Whoever that turned out to be.
QG: One of your best friends described this topic as being
like ‘the elephant in the room’ with gay men. Is it because we all share
your fear, or is it more that we just know about how we sound but simply just
don't care?
DT: I think it is an elephant because we are all aware of
the role that effeminacy plays in gay culture and culture at large,
and the voice is one of those markers of gender. We have anxiety
about the way we look at each other. Some men are super evolved and really
comfortable with who they are, but as a community at large I think it’s pretty
easy to spot a fair amount of discomfort with both effeminacy and
misogyny. I love gay people and I've always fought for
gay rights and who we are, but I think there are
conversations left to be had about how we have established our lives and
accepted who we are, wherever we are on the gender spectrum.
QG: Do you think this is a generational
thing because we 40 + gay men didn't have the role models
that younger generations do now?
DT: When I started this I thought maybe it was men like
myself who grew up in the early eighties or even earlier who were
subjected to a kind of stigma and mockery that people coming out today don’t
have to deal with. However I have had young people in their teens write to
me now all the time and say thank you for making this stuff matter as
this is a subject that has really bothered me, or used to bother me and I'm
over it. So even though things are better in a lot of ways, we still have
a long way to go and even in the more liberally places these concepts of gender
and masculinity are still very much in play.
QG: The kid in the film who had been picked on at school
struck me that he had a more relaxed attitude about
it than we would have had. Is that a fair assumption?
DT: I would say yes and no.
Hopefully what you see in that scene is that he does seem to have this
incredible strength but then his mother tells us 'well you know
what he shows you is strength, but I see the pain.'
QG: But our generation didn't show the strength
.....
DT: I think that one of the things I learned
from making the film that men of our generation can do is actually learn how fearless
young people are and if they are so at ease about it, then maybe
I should be too. It’s significant to note that George Takei said he came
out of the closet simply because he saw young people fighting for gay
marriage. There is a lot for us to learn from younger gay guys and vice versa.
QG: You interviewed a whole list of celebrities such as George
Takei, Dan Savage, Margaret Cho, David Sedaris & Tim Gunn etc. How
did you manage to snap them up?
DT: I just asked them, but I also asked a lot
of people who said no too. I cold-called these people as I
also think that is how we should act as being in the gay community. I felt
like I’m gay and they’re gay. They’re potentially interested in this topic,
so why wouldn't I be reaching out to them. There is to some degree a
bond between gay people, and all of them were interested and wanted
to participate. It seems like I got
all these amazing people but in fact there were
a lots of people who said no.
QG: ‘No’ because they were busy or ‘No’ because they
actually had hangs ups about the topic?
DT: I wish I could tell you why some people rejected my
request. Your guess is as good as mine. My sense is that for some it was
just something they were interested in but I think for others it felt maybe too
close. There are some people for whom this topic is just too touchy.
QG:David Sedaris was particularly open about his personal
take on the whole topic.
DT: Yes he was. I think one of the great things
about the film is that you get to see him being really vulnerable. I
thought he was a smarter more famous version of me and to the extent that he
expressed a lot of the things that I feel but he's David Sedaris (and a great
deal wittier). It's important that I
give my spin on things but when people see him talk about his
self consciousness it means more because he is seen as a really
beloved authority on life. He's the butch one even with that voice,
and that alone is a good example of how gay men are. You can always stick
a little knife in there about someone being effeminate.
QG: I can't think of anyone in the UK where I grew up who went to speech therapy as a kid like you did just to lose their
gay overtones.
DT: I can guarantee that they are out there. Every
speech therapist and linguist I spoke to knew of people who had come to them to
deal with this issue.
Initially I just wanted to not sound gay because
I couldn't hide my gayness but by the end of it I did not feel
that need anymore. First I dispelled all these myths and
stigma that gay people have but also I got a connection to that
physical part of me where I previously tried to push away.
QG: Do think it a fair comment of
your cousins and close friends that when you first
came out of the closet that your 'gay voice' appeared?
DT: I certainly think it is fair in the sense
that I was very much suppressing the fact of who I was because most people seem
to agree that there was the sudden campiness or flamboyance in a kind of
aristocratic manner. It's a fairly common story. In the TV program 'Girls' the lead character Hannah encounters her ex boyfriend who
has now come out and she accuses him of adopting a fruity voice. A
lot of gay men have told me that when they first came out they really
exaggerate their gayness, as it is something of a relief/release that they are
finally embracing it.
I didn't grow up knowing any gay people or
even when I first came out in South Carolina so I had to try on all
these different identities and the film recounts those all of them.
I basically had to invent a gay personality after I came out so I
tried on a kind of aristocratic personality and then I tried on a campy gay
voice. When I got to middle age and I found myself alone, I thought 'wait a minute, what kind of gay man am I, what kind of gay do I want to be, and why is
it not working?’ I think it’s the frustration of not knowing who you
are and searching for that authentic self.
QG: Were you upset when your best friends said at the end
of the movie that they didn't spot any difference at all
in your voice after all your attempts to train it?
DT: I was a bit upset at the time. However as I really believe in honesty and authenticity, so I never shied away from those conversations with friends and family with what is happening with my voice and I hope that is something that makes me a relatable character. I felt I was still trying at that point as I was still doing these exercises and they were not working for me. Both linguists told me that only you will really hear a difference. I mean it’s very subjective: some people heard a difference whilst others didn't.
QG: Are you now completely comfortable with your
new voice?
DT: It's not really a new voice, so I call it my new old
real voice!. I will never be 100% confidant but I am
getting very comfortable with it. What is really different for
me now is that I can encourage and coach myself. Ultimately what the film
is about is me not being afraid to speak out loud and not worrying about how
gay I actually sound.
QG: Does the film have a happy end?
Are you still single?
DT: I am single at the moment (laughing) but am not
unhappy about it. I'm jetting the globe doing Screenings right now so
maybe I won't be single for much longer. (laugh)
QG: What do you want and hope people to take away from the
movie?
DT: I would really love it if the movie prompted them to ask questions about themselves and dig into the parts of themselves that they are afraid of. The point of the film is these are the questions that you as a gay man have to ask: and the only path to really understanding yourself is yourself the right questions. I would also love for people who are self-conscious about their voices or being effeminate or being different in some way to maybe have a little more confidence about their differences.
QG: What’s next for the movie?
DT: It’s currently in select movie theaters all over the US and then it will become available on some
global streaming platform. Its exciting as I always wanted to
get this topic into mainstream culture and so I am
really thrilled that it will lay in typical movie theaters. It opened DOC NYC,
which is the biggest documentary festival in the US which was a real honor for
me as a first time filmmaker, and I was thrilled that they put a
gay film at the top of their program.
QG: What’s next for you?
DT: I have some new projects lined up .... too new to talk
about yet ... but meanwhile I will be traveling with this film
for some time .
QG: If there was film about your life
who would play you?
This Fall sees not one, but three new major independent movies with Lesbian plots being released, and social media is all abuzz that an actress may finally get an illusive ‘Best Actress Oscar’ for going gay. Two of the movies star two actresses who have already collected their gold Statutes for playing straight, and another two actresses who have already been nominated too, so we are talking Hollywood ‘A’ List, which should guarantee some excellent qualifying performances.
Lionsgate Films caused quite a stir this week when they released the first trailer for ‘FREEHELD’. It is based on the true story of a lesbian couple, Laurel Hester and Stacie Andree who fought for domestic partner rights for same-sex couples a decade ago, helping to pave the way today. After Hester, a police officer in Ocean County New Jersey, was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 2005, she repeatedly appealed to the County Board to ensure her pension benefits could be passed on to Andree.
The movie stars last year's Oscar Winner Julianne Moore who has previous played part of a lesbian couple with Annette Benning in 'The Kids Are Alright.’ Benning was nominated for an Oscar and also for a Golden Globe along with Moore, whom she pipped at the post to win.
In ‘Freeheld’, Moore’s co-star is Oscar Nominated (and out proud lesbian) Ellen Page. The movie, adapted from Cynthia Wade's 2007 Oscar Winning Short Documentary, is being directed by Peter Sollett from a script written by Roy Nyswaner (Oscar nominated writer for ’Philadelphia’).
In May the talk at the Cannes Film Festival was all about Todd Haynes’s wonderful new movie ‘CAROL’ starring two-time Oscar Winner Cate Blanchett and Oscar Nominee Rooney Mara as a 1950’s controversial lesbian couple. In a story based on Patricia Highsmith’s ahead-of-its-time novel ‘The Price of Salt’, the women defy all of society’s conventions in this very deep and profound love story. Its premiere was met with a great deal of excitement and rave reviews with both actresses tipped to win the Cannes Best Actress Award, with Rooney finally snatching the trophy in the end. In Press interviews to promote the movie, Blanchett admitted that she had affairs with both women and men in the past which added a whole new frisson to our expectations.
We can see from the trailer that like so much of Haynes's other work (‘Far From Heaven’, Velvet Goldmine’ and the remake of 'Mildred Pierce') that ‘Carol’ is highly visually stunning too, but we will have to wait until this Christmas 2015 to see it for ourselves. This is however not the first time that openly-gay Haynes has worked with Blanchett, as in his movie on Bob Dylan’s life ‘I’m Not There’ she played a non-specific gender version of the singer, which gained her yet another Oscar Nomination.
In 2007 Blanchett collected her third Oscar nomination for ‘Notes On A Scandal’ in which she played a straight schoolteacher who was being stalked by a closeted lesbian who had designs on her, in another Oscar nominated performance by Judi Dench. Neither women won.
The final new movie of this trio, and the first one to be released is 'JENNY’S WEDDING', and is by far the weakest. It stars Golden Globe Nominee Katherine Heigl playing a closeted lesbian who has to come out to her conservative family. The movie has been playing the Film Festival circuit this summer and has been garnering indifferent reviews for both the movie, and Heigl in particular. Some even went as far to note that they thought she was playing ‘gay’ to try and revive her flagging career which is in the doldrums since her last few movies have bombed. From all accounts we shouldn’t expect to see her at any Award Ceremonies this year, let alone at the Oscars.
The Academy Awards has a very lame history for honoring both out-gay actors and heterosexual ones who play ‘gay for pay’. Their record to date can be best described as ‘spotty’, but after some flagrant refusals to give some the Awards that were truly deserved, (think Ian MacKellan in ‘Gods & Monsters’ or Felicity Huffman in ‘Transamerica’ or denying 'Brokeback Mountain'the Best Picture Award, which was so rightly theirs) one has to think it reeks of blatant homophobia. There are at least a handful of notable exceptions for straight men like Sean Penn for playing Harvey Milk, Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Capote, and William Hurt for his role as Luis Molina in 'Kiss Of The Spider Woman',but even so there is no openly gay actor in Oscar’s history who has ever won. (Technically there is actually now one, as Joel Grey ‘came out’ decades after he had won for 'Cabaret'.)
When it comes to gay women, or those playing gay, then the Academy's score is pathetic. Right back to 1961 when William Wyler’s classic cult movie version of Lillian Hellman’s play 'THE LITTLE CHILDREN' about two lesbian schoolteachers picked up an unprecedented 5 Oscar Nominations for categories such as Best Costume Design and Best Sound, and even one for young Fay Bainter who played a precious child, but nothing at all for its amazing Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. So far we’ve had Hilary Swank collecting her first Oscar for playing transgendered Brando Teena in 'BOYS DON’T CRY', and Jodie Foster who collected both of her Best Actress Oscars before she came out of the closet. We have had more out-lesbians M.C.'ing the Oscars than actually winning Awards and it's way past time that the Academy changed all that. We will probably still have to wait some time for that to happen, but so far it at least it looks very much like when it comes to playing a lesbian on the silver screen, then this could finally be the lucky year for at least one actress. Maybe even two.
How would you answer if a total stranger walked up to you in a street and just blurted out 'Can I have our number?' Ed, a rather handsome young man in his late 20's and something of a prankster did just that and asked 100 random men on the streets of London if they would give him their phone number.
The results are quite astonishing and hilarious, and he did way better when he carried out the same 'social experiment' the other week when he asked 100 women for their phone numbers. Ed's technique is not to waste time on any chat up lines beforehand and he goes straight for the jugular each time, and the reactions of some of the men are really priceless.
P.S. Before you scramble around trying to track down Ed's number, I should tell you he's straight! To subscribe to Ed's You Tube Channel Click HERE
Seattle based artist (and rampant) homophobe Anthony Rebello invited 2400 of his friends to an Event he was holding this Saturday but not a single one bothered turning up. Through his 'Heterosexual Pride' Facebook page Rebello announced a Parade for straight people only saying 'We all have the right to celebrate the way of life we have chosen for ourselves. In the name of equality & equal rights, I have created this event to celebrate our right to be heterosexual, and to encourage younger heterosexuals that they should be proud of their heterosexuality'
However come 11 am on July 24th on Seattle's Capitol Hill, Rebello was all on his lonesome holding his solitary crude placard. We are not sure what kind of 'artist' he is, but we hope that the sign was not a fair example of his 'art'. Rebello naturally denied the event had been a failure claiming to Dazed Magazine's photographer that people actually showed up to participate but were frightened of repercussions from Seattle's LGBT community.
Rebello even failed to beat the dismal showing at the now infamous First Annual Ex-Gay Pride event held in Washington, D.C. two years ago that managed to draw ten participants. However he's either not the brightest bulb in the box, or he is completely delusional as he has already set the date on his Facebook page for next year's Event. We really cannot wait.
It is a questionable enough thing to be 'proud' of being straight, we just wonder why he seems so ashamed to admit that is so 'anti-gay'!
Actor Wilson Cruz (whose breakthrough role was as Rickie the gay teenager in the cult classic TV show 'My So-Called Life') is stepping behind the camera for once and is the Executive Producer of a new documentary currently being planned called 'Playing Gay: How America Came Out on Television'. Written and directed by activist and talk show host David Bender, the movie will argue that LGBT rights milestones like the passage of marriage equality“didn’t happen in a vacuum – it happened on television.” Bender says he will show how TV series that were both critical and commercial successes like Ellen, Will & Grace, The L Word, and Modern Family helped move the cultural needle toward broader acceptance of the LGBT community.
A new Kickstarter Fund has been launched https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playinggay/playing-gayand the Team have set themselves a target of $137,500 to raise by August 18th 2015 to get the movie underway. In an emotional plea for donations for them to be able to make what he calls is 'passionate project' Cruz says in their pitch video “We’ve never had an opportunity to really tell the history of LGBT people on television, and it’s important to remember where we’ve come from if we expect to be able to continue to tell our stories in a real way."
They have already interviewed Michael Douglas, Norman Lear, Martin Sheen, Hal Holbrook, Sheila Kuehl, Wilson Cruz and Dannielle Owens-Reid, and are about to interview Rachel Maddow very soon. They need the funds to be able to film many more exciting artists who ready to participate and be able to access all the archives of LGBT television to date.
David A. Cox's latest wonderful video shot on his drone camera (and the rest on his Iphone 6) of P Town's busiest and furriest time of the year BEAR WEEK
To subscribe to David's YouTube Channel click HERE
To many people the Japanese-American actor George Takei, will always be fondly known for his role as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu the helmsman of the USS Enterprise in the celebrated television series and subsequent movies of ‘Star Trek’. When he wasn’t acting he was passionately working away to promote the work of The Japanese American National Museum. Then just 10 years ago at the age of 68 years Takei was so enraged when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a Bill to allow Same Sex Marriage in California and almost overnight he turned from a fiercely private person into one of the most highly visible and powerful gay activists the community has ever seen.
Since then Takei has added to his Awards and honors from the Japanese Government ‘ Order Of The Rising Son', and the Japanese American Museum’s Distinguished Medal of Honor for Lifetime Achievement and Public Service with American Humanist Association’s LGBT Humanist Award, and GLAAD’s prestigious Vito Russo Award.
Credit: Adam Bouska
On a personal level in 2010 he got to marry Brad his partner of over 20 years, and in 2011 he joined Facebook and become a Social Media phenomena with over 8500000 hits, and then in 2014 his life story was profiled in an excellent new documentary ‘To Be Takei’.This year however George finally gets to fulfill a long cherished dream about bringing the story of his childhood in a Japanese American Internment Camp to the stage in the shape of a brand new musical called ‘Allegiance’.
This utterly charming and very voluble Star took time out of rehearsing in Broadway’s Longacre Theater to sit down with queerguru to share how exciting life has been since he became an out and proud gay man.
QG: What Brits may be surprised to know is that you are a dedicated Anglophile, or Britainophile as you call it.
GT:I learned to say that because I did a play in Edinburgh some years ago and after the performance we all went to the local pub. We were drinking what they insisted were just ‘wee drams’ but I kept sipping them to the point that they were no longer ‘wee’ and I very soon started to carry on about my passion for Edinburgh. I said’ I love the architecture, i love the history, I love the people, I love the accents etc and I am a confirmed Anglophile.’ Well I learned that night in Scotland that I am certainly not an Anglophile (laughs loudly). I thought by their reactions I was going to be tarred and feathered and banished South of the border. From that day on I have very carefully kept my focus on being a Britainophile
QG: Am I right in thinking that your father was an anglophile, and that he actually named you after King George VI?
GT: Absolutely correct. I was born in 1936 the year of his Coronation, and then when my younger brother was born he was round and fat and roly-poly and so he was named after Henry VIII (laughs). So we are Japanese Americans named after English Royalty.
QG:You've appeared on British TV several times, including 'I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here' with Martina Navratilovaand also you and Brad did ‘All-Star Mr. and Mrs.’ but I read somewhere that long before all that you actually studied Shakespeare in Stratford Upon Avon.
GT: It was actually my graduation present. I wanted to go to the Actors Studio in NY and my father said although that's a respected acting school they won't give you a diploma there that says you are legitimately educated. However here in Los Angeles’s UCLA we have a great theater department and if you go there and graduate, they will give you that vital piece of parchment, and as a sweetener he said he would subsidise me. However he added if I insisted on going to NY he wanted to remind me that NY is a crowded competitive and very expensive place, and I would need to be prepared to do it all on my own. I was a very practical kid so I followed my father’s choice and plumped for UCLA. When I finished he blew me away with his generous gift to me of a summer session at The Shakespeare Institute. So for the first time I was going to Europe and to study Shakespeare at his Birthplace. It was the best graduation present that anyone could ever dream off.
QG: In very early days of your professional career you worked with some major British stars such as Richard Burton and Sir Alex Guinness.
GT: Richard Burton was the star of the very first film that I did and I got the part because I had heeded my father's advice and gone to UCLA. Whilst I was there a Warner Brothers Studio Casting Director called Hoyt Bowers who essentially became my guru saw me in a student production. He opened the door for me for a lot of other productions I did later on.
This first film was ‘Ice Palace’ based on a novel by Edna Ferber about Alaska and I played a Chinese immigrant working in a fish cannery alongside Richard Burton. I was in 7th heaven even though we were filming in a really smelly fish factory. I was a stage struck theater student and here was this great Shakespearean actor from England and I peppered him with questions, as Richard just loved talking about himself. So we were the perfect pair
QG: Before we get on to the 'serious' stuff about you, would your husband mind if I asked you what you thought about English men?
GT: (laughs) Oh well I think they are very informed, and very literate and cultured, but I don’ t think that they are as athletic as American men, especially those from Southern California where I come from. English men are very slim and lean and very very white. (laughs)
QG: So let's then now start with your beginning. In 1942 in WW2 you and your family were forced to live in an Internment Camp. This is something that we are not familiar with in the UK, so can you please explain what that was all about to us?
GT: It is a rather shameful chapter of American history. When Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese and plunged the US into the Second World War, overnight all American citizens of Japanese heritage were looked on with suspicion and fear and outright hatred simply because we happened to look like the people who did the bombing. The United States was swept up in war hysteria, which even reached the President Franklin D Roosevelt who signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered all Japanese-Americans on the West Coast to be summarily rounded up without any charges being levied at us. It was the most unconstitutional thing that ‘due process’ the central pillar of our justice system simply disappeared, and we were forced into barbed wire Prison Camps for the duration of the war.
We were Americans, my mother was born in Sacramento and my father was a San Franciscan and they had met and married in Los Angeles where I was born. Yet we became the enemy simply because of the way we looked. There was no trial because there were no charges.
First we were taken from our home to the horse stables of the nearby racetrack, where each family was assigned a smelly horse stall. So for about three months while the Camps were being built, this cramped small stall was home for our family of five. When the construction was completed we were all crammed onto trains with armed guards at both ends, and transported two-thirds cross-country to a camp in the swamps of Arkansas.
The swamps were lush and green and full pools of water and it was a fun place for a 5-year-old child to explore. I began school there in the barracks and the irony is that every morning we would begin with the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ to the Flag. I could see the barbed wire and the sentry towers with the machine guns pointed at us right outside my schoolhouse window as I recited the words 'With Liberty and Justice For All’. I was just an innocent child just mouthing the words at the teacher had taught.
We were there for about eighteen months before we were transferred to another camp in Northern California that was almost the polar opposite of Arkansas. There was a dry lakebed that was completely devoid of vegetation in this desert-like landscape, which was very windy with all these tumbleweeds flying through the air. My siblings and I soon adapted to how we lived those years behind barbed wire fences and it became our regular routine lining up three times a day to eat lousy food in a noisy Mess Hall, and going with my father to bathe in a mass shower. Then the war ended and they simply opened up the gates and we left the Camp to try to pick up with our old lives.
The Government had taken my father's business, our home, our freedom but we were free to go wherever in the US we wanted, so my parents decided to go back to Los Angeles, but it was far from easy. We had done nothing wrong but we were still the focus of everyone’s hatred over Pearl Harbor and so we couldn't get housing or a decent job, and so my father's first job was as a dishwasher in the Chinatown Restaurant as only other Asians would hire us. Our first home was on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles and was that was completely terrorizing to us. There was this stench of human urine everywhere: in the hallways in the streets, it is sometime that I will never ever forget.
Even with their sheer determination, my parents really struggled to get back on their feet. My father first got a dry-cleaning shop in an all Mexican-American neighborhood and then he bought a grocery store in an all African-American neighborhood. Then some years later when Japanese-American families were finally getting back on their feet, he switched to Real Estate and he became very successful at that and then we eventually had a nice 3-bedroom home again in the Wilshire district of Los Angeles.
However this shameful history chapter of American history that my people were innocent victims off has in fact become something of life mission for me. Ever since then I've gone on speaking tours throughout the country about this internment of Japanese Americans, as I want to keep that story alive. My parent’s generations are the ones that really experienced it because I was only a young child at the time and adjusted to the situation back then as all kids do. However here I am now in my senior hood and I do not want the story to die away, so I helped start the Japanese American National Museum, of which I served as the chairman of the board for two terms. The Museum will help preserve the story of our past and as well as continue to work for the diversity of our future.
QG: You have talked about getting your big break playing Sulu in Star Trek many times, but what is one of your proudest moments about being a part of this iconic series, and secondly do you think there is a specific reason why it spawned a whole regime of gay trekkies?
GT: (laughs) I am proud of my association with Star Trek in its entirety because it was one of the most innovative cutting edge shows when we first premiered back in 1966. Just think, in one more year it is going to celebrating its Golden Anniversary.
I’m proud of it because of what Gene Roddenberry the creator and producer of Star Trek envisioned for the human future. So much of science fiction is about a dystopian society that fails to build a relationship with the human beings scrambling around in the ruins of a once great civilization, or one that has been taken over by apes or robots. Gene Roddenberry however believed that if we are confident of our problem-solving capabilities and our inventive nature, and both our innovative and entrepreneurial spirit, then we could work in concert with the diversity of our climate. He said the Starship Enterprise was a metaphor for Earth, and if the strength of the starship was playing in its diversity and coming together and working in concert with everyone, then we will be able to meet all the challenges of our times.
We used science fiction as a metaphor for the issues back in the 1960s. E.G. we had the civil rights movement going on where blacks and whites couldn't get along, and then later on the Vietnam War, and we dealt with that issue too. Gene Rodenberry looked at our society and told stories in the science fiction context, making commentaries about our society boldly going over where no one had gone before.
As to the second part of your questions about gay trekkies, well I said because we dealt with diversity I talked to Gene Roddenberry about the sexual orientation diversity but he said that we could not address that issue on the show. Mainly because we had one episode in which Capt. Kirk kissed Uhura an African-American woman, and that show was blacked out in the American South. All the Stations in the Region refused to carry it and so our ratings plummeted. So although back then we didn't deal with the diversity of the sexual orientation, I think LGBT people were able to see themselves as part of our overall diversity coming together and working as a team, and that society was stronger and better for that.
QG: Have politics always been a passion for you?
GT: Because of my childhood incarceration, as a teenager I could never relate to what I read in our Civic Books about the high shining ideals of American democracy. There was nothing about what my family had experienced in my history books here so I engaged my father in after dinner conversations, and I learned about American democracy from a man who suffered the most during the Second World War from the imprisonment. He said our democracy is a people’s democracy, and it can be as great as the people can be but it is also as fallible as people are too. He said that our democracy is vitally dependent on people who cherish its ideals to becoming actively engaged in the process, so he took me to the downtown campaign headquarters of the Governor of California Adlai Stevenson who was running to be President of the United States. There I learned about how it takes the kind of passionate and dedicated people that were there at that headquarters, and I was very impressed with Stevenson himself as he was an eminently successful governor and an eloquent person and inspiring orator.
I gradually became active in the political arena for supporting many candidates: U.S. Senate candidate, California Governor candidate and finally a candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles Tom Bradley. When he won he appointed me to the Southern California Rapid Transit Board of Directors with a mandate to get started on building the subway system in Los Angeles. So I have been involved in the political arena as well as being a strong advocate for justice from my young adulthood and all my life since.
QG: You 'came out' publicly as gay 10 years ago after being in a relationship with Brad for 18 years. What propelled you to decide then was the right time?
GT: I’ve been active in social justice issues all my life but at same time I was silent on the one issue that was organic to me and the one thing that was an integral part of me that I am gay, because I desperately wanted my career. I passionately loved acting and if it were known that I was gay at that time then my career would have been taken away from me. So I kept that part of my life hidden, and I led a double life.
Then in 1969 two major things happened which would eventually re-shape my life forever. Firstly the Star Trek TV series got canceled and I was again unemployed which happens to actors. Then later the same year the Stonewall revolt happened in New York City. The drag queens and the gay men in the Bar had finally enough of the police bullying and they resisted and for the very first time they fought back and started throwing beer bottles, or glasses or whatever they could lay their hands on. The Stonewall Riot marked the birth of the gay liberation movement in the United States and it grew and grew to the point where society was starting to really finally change for our community.
In 2003 the Supreme Court of the State of Massachusetts ruled that marriage equality was constitutional and then in 2005, again another landmark event, but this time from the legislative route, the people's Representatives of the State Legislature of California and the Senate passed the marriage equality Bill. That Bill needed just one more signature for it to become the Law of the State and it was that of our Governor, who at that time happened to be the movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was a right wing conservative, however when he ran for election to be governor he said to the LGBT community ‘I'm from Hollywood where I work with gays and lesbians, some of my best friends are gays and lesbians’ and persuaded by that kind of rhetoric, some of my gay friends did vote for him.
However once he got to the Governors Office and the Bill reached his desk, he vetoed it, thus killing it stone dead. My blood was boiling and I was simply raging. I was so very angry as this was such an important issue for me and I knew then that I needed to speak out even if it meant taking some risks, and that I would need to be prepared for what could happen to my career. So I spoke to the Press for the first time as a gay man and I blasted Arnold Schwarzenegger's veto, and I've been an active advocate for equality from that time on.
QG: What people admire about you is that you didn’t just ‘come out’ quietly, you came out, for the want of a better ‘screaming’. You went from a private gay person to a powerful and very public advocate for gay rights. Why?
GT: One of most important issues for Brad and me is marriage equality but there are also some very nasty problems caused by reactionary politicians in this country, particularly in the South which really concerned me. For example, there was one politician in Tennessee, called Stacy Campfield who wanted to criminalize the use of the word ‘gay’ by teachers. His insidious Bill was targeting the very people who are working with our youth who are making discoveries about themselves and who need to be able to be given the passionate guidance, and leadership from their teachers. To criminalize the use of the word gay was outrageous, and apparently under this law they could be jailed for one week and fined $250.
I thought the best way to fight back that kind of thing is show that how stupid it really is, and I decided we would make a mockery of it. I did a Youtube video where I said that as my surname ‘Takei’ rhymes with ‘gay’, you could just substitute Takei for gay when you want to say the word, and you can march in a Takei Pride Parade. Thankfully that Bill died. It was mocked to death. However Campfield came up with another Bill where he wanted to require teachers who suspected any student to be gay or lesbian to have to report back to their parents or otherwise they would be jailed for a week and fined $200. This man is crazy and single minded. I thought he would be kicked out of office in the last election I understand he squeaked through again, so he is still in office. There are people like that perpetuate the political universe here in the United States, and they are petty people that need to be mocked.
QG: Were you and Brad the first gay couple to get married in West Hollywood?
GT: We were the first to get our licenses in West Hollywood but Brad is a planner of things, and of our lives, and he felt that he needed more time to get the wedding planned properly. So we got our license in June but we had our rather grand sumptuous wedding in September at The Japanese American National Museum. It a three building complex and because we were staged symposia and lectures and debates we built a building called The Democracy Forum, and we loved the idea of getting married there because democracy was what had made our marriage possible. We had our wedding banquet in the Great Hall of the Museum and as Brad has a little Scottish blood in him, we hired a Piper to pipe us in across the plaza.
I am a Buddhist and Brad has embraced Buddhism as well so we got a Buddhist Minister, who just happened to be Mexican American, to be our Officiant and we had Walter Koenig a Jewish-American who played Chekov in Star Trek as my Best Man and Leah Michelle Nichols an African-American who played Uhura to be our Best Lady. We wanted to have as much diversity as possible in our wedding ceremony
QG: I wrote in the Queertiques review of your documentary ‘To Be Takei’that Brad was the ying to your yang. Quiet, shy, reserved with an obsession for detail, he is the one who insures that Takei, no longer on the Enterprise, is in fact a whole enterprise himself. You also once called him a Saint. Is that true?
GT: He really is a very special guy. My mother got Alzheimer’s late in her life and as she could no longer take care of herself, I asked Brad if we could move her in with us. He didn’t hesitate and was more than happy to agree and he helped me care for the horrible horrible four last years of her life. To watch your beloved mother fade in stages is painful and heartbreaking. There is that anger stage when they realise they cannot express themselves and they get so frustrated. They are angry at everything and lash out, and then when that is passed, it just goes all-blank for them and so she just sat out on the patio and gazed out. Taking care of a person like that requires enormous energy, time and most of all love. It took a lot from both of us, especially Brad, and he became another son to her, and that's why I call him my Saint.
QG: How did you become such a Social Media Phenomenon, with one of the world’s biggest Facebook followings ever?
GT: About eight years ago by sheer chance I met an amazing and gifted composer and lyricist Jay Kuo who had written three musicals that had been produced in San Francisco. We began working together on developing a musical based on the stories of the interned Japanese-Americans. We were soon investing a lot of our energy, time and talent and our own resources on a subject that was relatively unknown to the general pubic. We knew that we had to raise the awareness of that chapter of American history and to let the people know what we were developing, and I thought that social media would be the most efficient and cost effective way of doing that.
However my own base was made up of small group of fans primarily from my ‘Star Trek’ series and so obviously I had to grow that. By trial and error I discovered that humorous posts got the most likes and shares. Particularly those of ‘Grumpy Cats’ so I started doing a lot of that, and the audience just grew and grew. As it became larger and more substantial I started introducing the fact that we were developing this musical and we shared a little bit of the music too.
By the time the Show was finished and we opened in San Diego at what we called our World Premiere, the word had got out and we played to Sold Out houses every single night. People were being turned away performance after performance and although the old Globe Theatre where we played very rarely extends a run, they gave us another extension because so many people still wanted to see the show. We ended up breaking the seventy seven year old Box Office Record, and then to cap it all we wound up winning the Best Musical of the year Award from the San Diego Critics Circle.
Despite the fact we called this our ‘world premiere’, New Yorkers keep referring it too as our out-of-town tryout.So this Fall ‘Allegiance’ will be opening on Broadway and at aged 78, I will be finally making my Broadway Debut. Also I have played in theaters all over the UK too from Scotland all the way down to Brighton, and so after we have a good healthy run in New York, we will bring this Show to London’s West End too.
QG: You call ‘Allegiance’ your 'legacy project, is that correct?
GT: I have been able to bring my passion for the theater and combine it with my mission of bringing awareness of that hideous chapter of American history together in one beautiful glorious production. Yes, it is very much my legacy and I am so excited that it is finally happening. Lea Salonga is co-starring and re-creating the role she played in the San Diego production and we have already started rehearsals. We are going to be doing public previews from October 6th and then we have our Opening on November 8 at the Longacre Theater on 48h Street right here in the heart of Broadway.
QG: Looking at your Resume it seems like you never ever seem to stop working. Just this year alone I have reviewed two movies, which you are in: ‘Tab Hunter Confidential’and ‘Do I Sound Gay?’ What else can we expect to see you in soon?
GT: I did a cameo on the movie version of the hit TV series 'Entourage' that has just been released.
QG: George, I always finish interviews asking the same question. If there were a movie made about your life, whom would you like to play you?
GT: Oh Goodness me, there is a very small handful of Asian/American Actors to chose from.
QG: Who said they had to be Asian? (laugh)
GT: Well I am (laughs). Perhaps one of the younger actors coming onto the scene now when they mature. I did a TV series called Super Ninjas and I really liked Brian Potter who played my grandson who I had to teach to become a Ninja. He was a really good actor and a very good-looking young man, so give him a few more years and a few gray hairs, he’ll be perfect.
