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Free trade
Gay TV / Queer as Canuck Limey Yanks
story by Brent Ledger / Xtra Jan 11 2001
Источник

BROAD CASTING. US Queer As Folk’s writer/producers Daniel Lipman and Ron Cowen (inset) say that they had a really tough time finding an actor to play an amoral gay man; Gale Harold (middle) turned up in the nick of time.(Image by Xtra files)

BROAD CASTING. US Queer As Folk’s writer/producers Daniel Lipman and Ron Cowen (inset) say that they had a really tough time finding an actor to play an amoral gay man; Gale Harold (middle) turned up in the nick of time.(Image by Xtra files)

Sex, guys & videotape
Free trade
Gay TV / Queer as Canuck Limey Yanks

story by Brent Ledger / Xtra Jan 11 2001

The US version of Queer As Folk comes trailing clouds of sexual hype — most of it justified.

Within the first few episodes of the new show, its hero, the sexually voracious Brian, does a 17-year-old in bed, a male nurse in a hospital ward, a married client in a corporate washroom and a hunky stranger in the steam room of his gym.

There’s a lot of casual nudity and most of the actors have riders attached to their contracts detailing just much they’ll be asked to reveal. But it’s not a porn movie, says executive producer Daniel Lipman, who created the show with his partner in life and work, Ron Cowen. "We do not have a crotch cam always on the ready."
Besides, the sex is actually less interesting than the context in which it occurs.

"What’s amazing about this show," says Lipman, "is that all the characters are gay." Lots of shows have gay characters and that helps "people get used to the fact that this is part of the tapestry of the world. But when you see a show like this in which all the characters are gay — there are very few straight characters, and they all live in a gay world… that’s very important."

For Canadians raised on a steady diet of British shows like This Life, Inside The Line and of course the original Queer As Folk, the idea of a show with sexualized gay leads is old hat. This Life’s Warren was cruising the parks for strangers long before Ellen even came out.

But there’s no doubt that the US Queer As Folk is breaking new ground in the States, where cutting edge is the cute but chaste Will And Grace.

Ten years ago, a show with even one gay leading character would have been unheard of — an ensemble show like Queer As Folk with its multiple gay characters absolutely unthinkable.

When Lipman and Cowen created their hit family drama, Sisters, in the early 1990s, they tried to make the youngest sister gay. The network said, nice idea, find yourself another network.
Cowen and Lipman, who also wrote the award-winning AIDS drama An Early Frost, eventually introduced other queer characters, including a recurring lesbian played by Nora Dunn, but they were all secondary characters.

For the Queer As Folk commissioned by US cable network, Showtime, they’ve gone much further, creating six queer characters: the aforementioned Brian (Gale Harold), his easy going best friend Michael (Hal Sparks), a 17-year-old ingenue (Randy Harrison), an insecure, porn-loving accountant (Scott Lowell), a sensible queen (Peter Paige) and a child-rearing lesbian couple (Thea Gill and Michelle Clunie).

The characters bear more than a trace of their British origins, as do the first few episodes worth of plot, which follow Brian’s sexcapades, Michael’s new romance and young Justin’s attempts to deal with gay life. But the tone is quite different — funnier, more joyful and less gritty, says Lipman. Plus a touch more psychologically explicit, in deference to the US taste for therapeutic intervention.

He and Cowen watched each episode of the original 10 or 12 times, tried to absorb the essentials, then went their own way.

"The thing you have to do when you adapt something," says Lipman, "you have to totally digest it and then absolutely throw it away." Maybe 10 lines of the original survive.

Generally, he’s wary of adapting edgy British shows like AbFab and Fawlty Towers. They don’t translate well. But he and Cowen thought Queer As Folk was very much in their voice and they could do it.

For Canadian fans, the big question is probably: Why bother? Why not just run the British original?

But as Lipman points out, "There really is a different sensibility in the States than there is in Canada." Gay audiences might be able to penetrate the British accents and other cultural barriers, but a larger US audience probably wouldn’t.

Showtime bought the new Queer As Folk in the hope of attracting the sort of large, crossover audience that has flocked to shows like the Sopranos and Sex And The City on the rival HBO network. "I don’t think the original would have gotten that [audience]," says Lipman. "I think people would have been frustrated by it."

So few people in the US have seen the original that for them it’s almost a fresh show. Originally, there was even talk of changing the name. (The old Yorkshire proverb, "There’s nowt so queer as folk," doesn’t have much currency in the US.) But Showtime decided the name had marquee value and featured it prominently in its promotions.

For Canadians, there’s the dubious and deeply ironic thrill of watching identities mingle. This is a British drama recast as a US soap that’s shot entirely in Toronto with much help from local talent.

All the writers, including the well-known trio of Richard Kramer (Thirtysomething), Jason Schafer (Trick) and Jonathan Tolins (The Twilight Of The Golds) are based in LA. But Canadians Thea Gill and Chris Potter act (she plays a lesbian mother; he, Michael’s new love interest) and Canadians John Greyson, David Wellington and Jeremy Podeswa direct a number of the episodes.

Most of the dance club scenes have been shot at either Fly or Guvernment, with Woody’s supplying some exteriors and Church St doubling as Pittsburgh’s Liberty St. Look for a lot of familiar faces as secondary characters and extras.

Lipman says he’s learned a lot about Canadian attitudes during his stay, but hasn’t seen that much difference between Canadian and US gays.

"What’s really strange here is you walk by a travel agency and there’s a big sign for a vacation in Cuba, which is something you would never see in the US." Otherwise, Toronto isn’t so different from LA. Church St reminds him of West Hollywood and the Santa Monica strip.

As with all series dramas, the production schedule is gruelling. Shooting on the 22-episode series started last July and continues into March. But one of the biggest headaches, casting, is over. It was "extremely difficult," says Lipman.

Most actors are willing to do almost anything once, but a starring role in a long-running series carries its own dangers. It can make you a star or stamp you indelibly as the wrong kind of character. And apparently nobody wanted to be known as a selfish, amoral, gay man.

Sparks, Lowell and Paige appeared almost immediately. But finding a Brian was difficult. Agents varied in how they couched their rejections, says Lipman. "Some said it’s a very fine show but we don’t have anyone available and others said there’s no way in hell so-and-so is going to do this part." But the message was the same and it held up the start of shooting.

The week before they were supposed to test their lead on network execs, they still didn’t have a Brian. Finally, at 5pm on the Friday before their Monday meeting, they found Gale Harold.

Good thing, too, because the self-centred character of Brian is central to the show’s theme which, like the show’s psychology, is much more explicit than in the British original. It’s about the difficulty of becoming a man, says Lipman.

"It is harder for a gay boy to become a man because when you’re growing up you’re not able to express yourself emotionally, sexually and romantically, and your adolescence is delayed."

Some men get caught up in drugs or sex and die a kind of spiritual death. The question in Queer As Folk, says Lipman, is which of the characters will survive the transition.

Whether it’s Michael, Brian or someone else, they’re all going to have lots of chances to indulge their hedonistic impulses before they’re forced to "grow up." There’s a foam party in episode seven ("Studs And Suds") and a leather ball in episode 15.

But that’s all just window dressing, says Lipman. He feels what’s really liberating about this show is not the toys nor the sex, but being able to show characters who are something other than the usual network-approved heroes and villains. Michael, for instance, is a nice guy who happens to go to discos and take recreational drugs. Some people don’t like that kind of contradictory complexity, but Lipman does.

"The music, clothes, looks, clubs can change, but the important thing is making sure the characters are true to who they are."
Sex, guys & videotape
Brent Ledger

From the opening sentence you know they’ve got it all wrong, but in that cute American way that says they think they’re being daring.

"The thing you need to know," says the narrator of the new, 22-hour, US version of Queer As Folk, "is that it’s all about sex."

Well, yes and no. Sure sex dominates gay life but it’s only of interest, artistically speaking, because it says something about us. And not as a group, but as individuals — where we are in life, our needs, desires, fantasies and fixations.

Russell Davies, creator of the original UK series, understood this and used sex to advance the plot and delineate character. Stuart’s energetic self-interest, Vince’s ineffectual passivity and Nathan’s eager innocence were all laid bare by the way they did or did not have sex.

The celebrated rimming scene in episode one of the original wasn’t there to titillate little old ladies in Iowa. It said something about a cocky 15-year-old kid who thought he knew it all but had many pleasures yet to discover.

Mostly, too, the sex was there because it was the chief way in which Stuart kept Vince at bay; it was the one thing the two best friends did not do together.

For a show that was widely believed to be about sex, the original Queer As Folk was never more erotic than when addressing the largely sexless relationship of Stuart and Vince. The conflicted dynamic of their 15-year-old relationship drove the show and supplied its suspense. Their love was a given. The only question was where and how it would find expression.

That tension is gone from the US version, along with the original’s bracing ambivalence toward contemporary gay life. The plot is pretty much the same, at least for the first three episodes, broadcast in one lumpen sum (Mon, Jan 22). Two 29-year-old gay best friends, here renamed Brian and Michael, get mixed up with a 17-year-old ingenue, while their gay friends suffer bad dates and their lesbian friends deal with their first child.

The difference is that the minor characters steal the show. Peter Paige and Scott Lowell do a great deal with a couple of seemingly limited roles — a comic-relief queen and a very average-looking accountant.

But the major characters are completely unmemorable. Hal Sparks’s happy-go-lucky Michael is charming but depth-free, while Gale Harold’s self-interested Brian is a one-note parody of what the tabloids are pleased to call a "sexual predator." In place of Aidan Gillen’s mesmerizing portrait of an angry young man, we get a crude, clanking portrait of promiscuity.

When Brian tells their friends about the first and only time he and Michael almost had sex, it’s with the sort of joyless pornographic detail that would be out of place in most bar conversations.
When Brian picks up some guy on the Internet, he not only questions his trick’s dimensions, he pulls out a tape measure and measures the guy’s 10 inches on screen.

Instead of a character, Brian has a credo: "I don’t believe in love; I believe in fucking. It’s honest, it’s efficient. You get in and out with a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of bullshit." As an emotional defence this may be believable but as a prelude to the kind of growth that drives good character drama, it’s a dead end. How is this one-note wonder supposed to change?

Much of the power of the original came from what was not said. Whether it was Vince’s baffled hurt, Stuart’s simmering anger or Nathan’s cocky determination, the characters feelings were reflected in their faces. Here, feelings are telegraphed and sex jokes are screamed — at high volume. It’s like being at the cinema with a bozo who not only talks through the entire movie but uses "fuck" as adjective, noun and verb. The lack of originality is numbing.

Like most US dramas, Queer As Folk operates on the assumption that more is better — more sex, more shocks, more plot twists. As long as they keep it moving, you won’t notice the lack of substance.

By episode four (on Mon, Jan 29), this begins to seem like an effective strategy. Once the producers drop all pretence of breaking new ground and get down to the serious business of creating a riveting primetime soap, the series starts to click.
In terms of tone and intent, it reminds me of Beggars And Choosers as redone by Aaron Spelling; an efficient, middle-brow entertainment with a serious helping of schlock.

No shame in that. Just don’t call it Queer As Folk.

QUEER AS FOLK.
10pm. Mondays, starting Jan 22.
Showcase.

Telling straight people how to live
EDITORIAL / Kids are the most subversive act
story by Brenda Cossman / Xtra May 01 2003

Источник
In a recent episode of Queer As Folk, Lindsay and Melanie ask Brian for his sperm because they want a second child. Brian had earlier co-operated with Lindsay on baby-making, but this time Melanie was going to get pregnant. There being no love lost between Brian and Melanie, Brian initially refuses.

But all is not lost. Later that evening, he asks his best buddy Michael why any self-respecting queer would have kids. Michael’s pot-induced response, “to piss off straight people,” makes it all crystal clear. Having babies is not about assimilating into the family ways of heterosexuals. It is subversive. With this epiphany, Brian is now only too willing to offer up his sperm, even to the insufferable Melanie.

What’s unthinkable in the show’s fictional location, Pittsburgh, is allowable here in its real location, Ontario. Same-sex couples can adopt each other’s children, have child support rights, child custody rights and child access rights. Having babies here isn’t quite so subversive.

Or is it? There are limits, numerical ones. Lesbians and gay men can’t have families with more than two legal parents. In a court case out of London, Ontario last month, a court denied
a request by two lesbian parents and the biological father for an adoption that would affirm the parental status of all three parents.

Under Ontario law, the non-biological mom could adopt the baby. But the adoption would end the biological father’s parental status. The couple and the bio father asked for a three-way shared custody, but the court said no.

“If this application is granted, it seems to me the door is wide open to step-parents, extended family and others to claim parental status in less harmonious circumstances. If a child can have three parents, why not four or six or a dozen?” observed Justice David Aston in his decision.

Why not indeed? Why not four or five or six parents? Under current law,
a child might have more than two parents for the purposes of child support. Biological parents have to pay child support, but so do step-parents. A child could be living with one biological parent, and receiving child support from both a biological parent and a step-parent. Do the math: three parents in law.

In the London case, both the biological dad and the non-biological mom could be considered parents for the purposes of child support. But the trio aren’t entitled to simultaneously call themselves parents.

The idea that children can only have two parents simply defies the ways in which many Canadians live. There are single families, remarried families and blended families. There are step-
parents on both sides. There are ex-
step-parents and new step-
parents. But when it comes to asking for legal recognition, the law freezes in its 19th-century tracks.

The London family is considering an appeal, and the issues are ones that all queers should be able to get behind. It’s not like the marriage cases, which divide those who seek assimilation from those who seek sexual liberation and a destabilization of all things straight.

The case is about fundamentally changing the definition of family in a way that would allow children to be raised in a range of settings and in a way that would recognize the multiplicity of parental relationships.

The irony is that it’s actually straight people who live in the most diverse relationships with their marrying, reproducing, divorcing, remarrying and so on. Straight people are at least as likely as gay ones to produce children with multiple parents. They should be the ones keen for this kind of legal recognition, but here we are, with gay and lesbian people leading the way to recognizing reality.

Now I hate to suggest that Queer As Folk’s Michael and Brian are insightful social critics. But they are on to something. Queer parenting can be subversive, even for those who are totally disinterested in parenting. Maybe it is all about pissing off straight people.

Spunk rock
MUSIC / Greek Buck gets harder
story by Krishna Rau / Xtra Apr 18 2002

QUEER AS ART. With the release of No Time, Don Pyle and Andrew Zealley return to their Queen St roots.(Image by David Rasmus)

Spunk rock
MUSIC / Greek Buck gets harder

story by Krishna Rau / Xtra Apr 18 2002

For the members of Greek Buck, having millions of people listen to their theme for Queer As Folk seems a little unreal.

“I watch it in my bedroom with my boyfriend,” says Don Pyle, half of the Toronto musical duo. “It’s just us. It’s hard to think of anyone else watching it. It’s one of those things I mostly feel detached from.

“Watching it with those images was kind of weird. I kept thinking, ‘That’s not right.’ But I said, ‘Well, they’re going to pay us.’”

His musical partner Andrew Zealley says getting the theme was more or less accidental. Greek Buck had done the music for Canadian director John Greyson’s 2000 film Law Of Enclosures (for which they were nominated for a Genie). “When we did Law Of Enclosures, different people took note of us. The Queer As Folk people came to us.”

A new version of the theme “Spunk” — redone in a self-described “Ramones meet Giorgio Moroder” style — is included on Greek Buck’s new release, No Time. The five-song album includes appearances from local rock luminaries Dallas Good from the Sadies and Ian Blurton from Change Of Heart and Blurtonia. The album is topped off by two versions of “No Time To Be Seven,” with vocals by Pyle’s seven-year-old nephew, who apparently likes to be known as Tyler B.

No Time is more rock-oriented than Greek Buck’s previous more computerized and sequenced material. But the band’s origins go back to their rock ’n’ roll days of the ’80s, when both were living a block apart on Queen St in Parkdale.

“Andrew was working in record stores and playing in bands, and so was I,” says Pyle. “I was playing in a pop-rock band that was kind of dorky and he was playing in a new-wave band that was kind of dorky.”

“We kept running into each other,” says Zealley. “We realized that we had a tremendous amount in common. We decided we wanted to do a cover of a Sigue Sigue Sputnik song. We found we both enjoyed the software sounds, and started playing sounds that wouldn’t have been appropriate for that song.”

Both had a background in working in visual media — Pyle’s Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet was best known for scoring The Kids In The Hall, and Zealley had scored children’s television shows. Their common interest in synthesized sound fed into their desire to work in different media.

“We were interested in doing things with artists from other disciplines,” says Zealley. This has included filmmakers such as Greyson and Sarah Polley, and artists from around the world.

But this music hasn’t lent itself to live performances. A Fri, May 3 four-song set as part of a Yoko Ono tribute at Lee’s Palace, will be only Greek Buck’s second performance and first in Toronto. But Pyle says they would like to play more live shows.

“Andrew and I did a show last summer with Cherie Currie from the Runaways. Andrew and I had been Runaways fans; it was something else we bonded over. It was the first time we had played guitar and drums together.”

* The album release party is also a chance to see and hear many of Greek Buck’s cross-media projects with people like John Greyson, Luis Jacob, Wrik Mead and others; the event runs from 6pm to 10pm on Tue, Apr 26 at Art Metropole (788 King St W); call [phone]. No Time is in stores on Apr 30; go to www.greekbuck.com.

Fallen Angel
Marc Hall / How do you go from lonely high school student to cause célèbre without cracking up?
story by Paul Gallant / Xtra Jun 27 2002

TROUBLEMAKER? Marc Hall says he used to be shy and lonely.
(Image by David Hawe)

Fallen Angel
Marc Hall / How do you go from lonely high school student to cause célèbre without cracking up?

story by Paul Gallant / Xtra Jun 27 2002

This year Marc Hall had scored 91 in his grade 12 religion class — his strongest subject at Monsignor John Pereyman Catholic High School in Oshawa — when he paid his principal the visit that turned Hall into the Ontario Catholic school system’s worst nightmare. He asked to go to the prom with his boyfriend — and in the media, the hearts of Canadians and a court of law, he won.

With all the hoopla, Hall’s religion mark dropped to 79. But that’s okay. He’s not thinking of becoming a priest anyway.

“With my religion class, I love my religion teacher. But I just see it as a class,” says Hall, 17.

There were other changes, too, post-prom. Hall used to describe himself as a shy person.

“Now I’ll talk to anyone. I used to just sit there in class and now when the teacher asks a question, my hand is up. I feel more confident,” says Hall.

He’s also more together: “With all the media attention, I had to schedule everything. I’m so organized now.”

How exactly does one transform from a shy closeted teen to a gay celebrity waiting for a court date to argue that Catholic schools shouldn’t be able to discriminate against homos? (Hall’s successful May case was merely an injunction to allow him to attend his own prom and was not binding on the school board. The larger issue will likely come before a judge this winter. )

One day you’re coming out to your mom and dad. The next day the National Post is writing mean things about your new boyfriend.

“I find it kind of dumb,” says Hall about the interest in his personal life. After his prom victory, it came out that there were tensions with his prom date boyfriend JP Dumond, which led to their May 20 break-up. Dumond started dating somebody else six days later; Hall hooked up with his current boyfriend eight days later.

The Post suggested Hall dumped Dumond because of the selection of men offered by Church St. Hall says his relationship was having problems. And besides — his current beau goes to his school, so they’ve known each other for ages.

“They kind of twisted it. Yes, JP and I fought to go to the prom together. We were in a relationship and there was conflict in it,” he says. “I don’ t like him anymore. Long story. If you knew the whole story, you’d understand.”

Hall says he knew he was gay early on and came out to his brother in grade 10. In grade 11, he was being teased in accounting class when he got up and announced to the class, “Yes, I’m gay. It’s no big deal.” He told his mother that spring (“She was watching Wheel Of Fortune”) and she told his dad. There were rocky points, but Hall says, “My dad’s been 100 percent behind me.”

Though he goes to a Catholic school in a working-class city, Hall says he’ s never felt bullied, even when someone shoved a photo into a friend’s locker with “Die Marc Hall Die” written on it.

“There was people saying, ‘fag,’ and ‘queer,’ that kind of thing. Before it made me uncomfortable, but now I think it’s funny that people can be so stupid,” he says.

In grade 11, Hall says he felt lost and lonely. There weren’t many other openly gay people at his school (though he says there are more and more out lesbians if you go down the grade ranks) and he went on the Internet to find friends. It was from there he learned about gay culture and met Dumond; they chatted on-line for a month before they met in person.

“I never knew about Church St,” says Hall. “I didn’t know about gay magazines, newspapers. In grade 11, I knew a couple of lesbians in my school, that’s it.”

It was when his friends set up a website complaining that Hall couldn’t take Dumond to the prom that Hall’s relatively isolated gay existence was shattered. First it was the media, who tracked him down via the website.

“I’ve had so many interviews I’ve lost count,” he says. “One day I was going to the locker for my jacket and a friend warned me there was a bunch of TV crews outside. I got nervous so I just didn’t go outside until they were almost all gone.”

Then it was Liberal MPP George Smitherman who wanted to shield Hall from the media. Smitherman set up a whole campaign to support Hall in his prom court battle. From Smitherman, Hall got to meet a whole heck of a lot of queers.

“If I had never had George, I’d be messed up,” says Hall. “George is like an other friend.”

Now Hall is someone who attends Fashion Cares with his lawyer, David Corbett. Someone who brunches on Church St with leaders of Parents, Family And Friends Of Lesbians And Gays. Someone who is not getting a summer job because he’s too busy going to Pride parades (he’ll be with the Equal Marriage entry in Toronto’s parade and will grand marshal the parade in Halifax). Someone who hasn’t decided on his career yet, but who appears in the finale of the second season of Queer As Folk wearing a pink feather boa. Peter Paige, who plays Emmett on the show, gave Hall a T-shirt he wears a lot.

Though he’s only 17, Hall has already got a grip PR talk. About his upcoming court case, in which he’ll have to take the witness stand, he says, “I’ve won the battle, now I have to win the war.” Asked if he’s an activist, he replies, “Not really. I’m a gay student fighting for his rights to be treated equally.”

Is it hard having come into the spotlight at such a young age?

“Beforehand, I gave away my trust too easily. Now I know trust has to be earned. The school board let me down and now I know not to trust what they said.”