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Prayers for Bobby is a TV movie based on the book by Leroy F. Aarons. The true story of the life and legacy of Bobby Griffith, a young gay man who killed himself due to his mother's and community's religious intolerance. Mary Griffith (Sigourney Weaver), a devout religious housewife who refuses to accept her teenage son Bobby (Ryan Kelley) being gay, begins a campaign to "cure" him. Until Bobby, in an act of pain and desperation, flings himself off a freeway overpass at the age of 20. Mary questions her faith and the beliefs she has been taught by the Church, and becomes a national crusader for gay and lesbian youth. Watch a trailer...
"Prayers For Bobby is the book kids give their parents when they come out. This will be another way for them to sit down with your family and say, 'I have something to talk to you about. Let's watch a Sigourney Weaver movie,'" said Sigourney Weaver.
Prayers for Bobby starring Sigourney Weaver (picture), Henry Czerny, Ryan Kelley (picture), Dan Butler, Austin Nichols, Scott Bailey (picture), Carly Schroeder, Shannon Eagen, directed by Russell Mulcahy, is set to air on January 24, 2009 at 9 pm on the Lifetime network.
International rugby referee Nigel Owens believes it would have been much harder to continue his career after revealing he was gay had he been a football official. Not that coming out as gay in the rugby world was easy, BBC News reports. In his new autobiography, Hanner Amser (Half Time), he details the fear he felt before taking the decision and how being gay drove him to attempt suicide as a young man. "Actually saying those three little words "I am gay" was the most difficult thing I have ever had to do," he writes. "I have been lucky. Everybody from supporters to players to coaches to administrators have all been very supportive... I had an e-mail from a young guy off Facebook who had gone through the same thing I had gone through - he was gay and could not tell his parents. But they found out through television that I was gay and their attitude towards gay people had changed. He felt more comfortable that he could tell them so he did so and was accepted pretty well."
François Rousseau's new book, Ora, is to be published on April 9. "After numerous voyages to Tahiti and its isles, the idea came to me for a 'Polynesian' album," says the French photographer. "As with all my photographic series, texts are at the origin of my images. In January 2006, Temehameharii Coeroli showed me his poems inspired by and impregnated with Tahitian oral culture. These chants have come to form the structure of our joint book. Ora is life, the source of life. Long before leaving for Tahiti, when I was preparing this voyage, this Tahitian word already figured in my notes as a possible title. Of all the words taken from Temehameharii’s poems, this one, as much for its sense as for its musicality, evoked all that I had loved in Tahiti during my earlier voyages and which I hoped to capture and reunite in this album." A special website with unpublished photos, video, music & making-of of the shooting has been launched for the occasion. Visit Ora's website here...
Sir Ian McKellen looks set to reprise his role as Gandalf in the long-awaited adaptation of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit. When asked, in an email exchange with fans on his official website, if he will wear the wizard's robes again he said: "Yes I will, if Peter Jackson and I have anything to do with it, he being the producer and me being, on the whole a very lucky actor... Encouragingly, Peter and Fran Walsh have told me they couldn't imagine The Hobbit without their original Gandalf. Their confidence hasn't yet been confirmed by the director Guillermo del Toro but I am keeping my diary free for 2009!" A formal deal with McKellen has yet to be signed, but filming is set to begin next year. In the email exchange, a fan asks the 68-year-old actor about rumors of closeted homosexuality concerning his male co-stars, he answered: "This gossip is all news to me. Elijah, Dominic and Orlando introduced me to their girlfriends during shooting. I didn't ever meet Viggo's partner although his son visited a few times. It would seem that none of my friends can be accused of hypocrisy. Probably the fevered imagination of slashers is to blame. Hiding homosexuality is a long-tested shame in Hollywood and no doubt continues even in these days of gay marriage and gay civil partnerships. I agree that audiences are much less perturbed than producers allow, by a performer's sexuality. How else to explain the continuing popularity of George Michael, Elton John, Rupert Everett, Ellen de Generes and, excuse me, also the gay actor who played Gandalf?"
Finalists are announced for the upcoming 20th Annual Lambda Literary Awards to be held Thursday, May 29, in West Hollywood, CA. The Lambda Literary Awards seek to recognize excellence in the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender literature. Each year, over 80 judges - writers, booksellers, librarians, journalists - assess the entries in more than 20 categories. The two equally important criteria for judging a submission are the LGBT content and the quality of writing. See the full list of finalists. Winners will be announced at a gala ceremony in the Silver Screen Theatre at the Pacific Design Center, on May 29, at 7:30 pm. Tickets are now on sale.
The Leaky Cauldron reports that J.K. Rowling has given an interview with the Edinburgh Student newspaper. In a wide ranging conversation, the Harry Potter author gives her thoughts on such things as the repeated attempts of Christian missionary Laura Mallory to have the Harry Potter books banned in Georgia without having read them. Rowling says: "I'm not lying, I'm not even making fun, this is the truth of what she said-quite recently she was asked [why] and she said 'Well I prayed whether or not I should read them, and God told me no.'" Rowling added: "You see, that is where I absolutely part company with people on that side of the fence, because that is fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is, 'I will not open my mind to look on your side of the argument at all. I won't read it, I won't look at it, I'm too frightened.' That's what's dangerous about it, whether it be politically extreme, religiously extreme...In fact, fundamentalists across all the major religions, if you put them in a room, they'd have bags in common!" she laughs loudly before sobering. "They hate all the same things, it's such an ironic thing." On the matter of Dumbledore being gay, she candidly states: "I had always seen Dumbledore as gay, but in a sense that's not a big deal. The book wasn't about Dumbledore being gay... Is it the most important thing about him? No, it's Dumbledore for God's sake. There are 20 things that are relavant to the story before his sexuality."
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is a film adaptation of Michael Chabon's best-selling novel of the same name, which was published in 1988. The film tells the story of Art Bechstein (Jon Foster), a recent college graduate who falls into a love triangle when he encounters a beautiful debutante (Sienna Miller) and her lusty, no good hoodlum of a boyfriend Cleveland (Peter Sarsgaard). Together they reveal a side of Art and Pittsburgh that he has never known... Watch Rawson Marshall Thurber presenting the film...
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, starring Jon Foster (Art Bechstein), Sienna Miller (Jane Bellwether), Peter Sarsgaard (Cleveland Arning), Mena Suvari (Phlox Lombardi), Nick Nolte (Art's Father), directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber is to be screened today January 20, 5:30 pm at Sundance Film Festival.
Times online releases an article about Desmond Morris' book The Naked Man: A Study of the Male Body, to be published next month. In his book, the 79-year-old ethologist try to explain why a certain, small percentage of adult human males, with or without the approval of society at large, find members of their own gender attractive as sexual partners. Evolution has gone to a great deal of trouble to ensure that it is the opposite sex that is erotically appealing, so how can it be that so many men have somehow switched off these basic responses? Morris argues that homosexual men fail to make a crucial break with the ‘boys together’ stage of childhood. Read the full article here...
Author JK Rowling announced that Dumbledore was gay to a packed house in New York's Carnegie Hall as part of her Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows US book tour in October (see previous posts here and here). David Yates (right side on picture), who directed the fifth Harry Potter film, Order of the Phoenix, said he was told in September by JK Rowling during a read-through for the next film on the set of the Great Hall at Hogwarts. "Jo leaned over to me and said: 'You know Dumbledore's gay don't you, David?' And I thought 'Wow that's pretty cool'." Yates, who was speaking at the press launch of the Phoenix DVD, added: "He's a wonderful character, Dumbledore - graceful, wise, powerful, quirky, terrific sense of humour, loves knitting. There's a jumble of things in there and his sexuality is just another thing." Filming on the sixth film in the franchise, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, began in September, with Yates again at the helm. But he said not to expect any changes to the way Dumbledore is portrayed on film. "Michael Gambon (leftt side on picture) hasn't changed his approach. A person's sexuality is just one part of who they are, and so it hasn't really shifted where we're taking him." Harry Potter Years 1-5 Limited Edition Gift Set will be released on December 11, 2007, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Michael Gambon, Gary Oldman, Ralph Fiennes...
While promoting his latest film, My Boy Jack, on British Parkinson Show, Daniel Radcliffe has revealed that Michael Gambon is "camping it up" for the latest Harry Potter film after author JK Rowling revealed Albus Dumbledore is gay. The 18-year-old actor told Parkinson on ITV1: "Well, he's been camping it up around the set like nobody's business. Not in the film, though we did actually film a scene the other day, and I would like emphasise at this point that the script was written before this revelation and I don't think Steve Kloves (screenplay writer) had any prior knowledge, but there was a scene the other day when Michael had to come in and tell another character how much he loved knitting patterns! Which he just adored saying that." Watch a Parkinson video (left) and a My Boy Jack trailer (right)...
