What Makes a Gay?

Lulu's back, from outer space, now you just click in, to find Lu here, some sad look on Lu's face, hope you didn't change that stupid bookmark, delete that stupid link... Ok, ok. StinkyLulu did it again. Wasn't it StinkyLulu that said, "It's been two weeks & that's just wrong!" (Thorry, tho tho thorry...)

It's MrStinky's birdie (as in "hippo, birdie, 2 ewe") this week & part of the Stinkys' observance of birdie season involved a nighttime screening of the current flick featuring MrStinky's non-Lulu boyfriend -- the one, the only, Jake Gyllenhaal. Going in, StinkyLu was hardly giddy at the prospect. Nothing against the puppy-eyed boy, either. It's just that war in Iraq -- then or now -- tends to get Lulu all depressy-pissy. But MrStinky likey Jakey. So the Stinkys got to go to Jarhead -- a film with the astonishing tagline "Welcome to the Suck."


The screencap above provides a vivid encapsulation of the film: really pretty, really cynical (ie. santa hat in the dark smoky sky), really spectacular, really focused on Jake at the center. And -- ultimately -- really underwhelming. It's wierd. Most nearly everything is really good, yet something's just missing from the movie. It's powerful; it grabs your attention; it's visually awesome; it's got an f'n amazing soundtrack; it's got gobs and gobs of testosterotics; but...oh yeah, it's even got several exposures of Jake's butt ...but...but it's not even that Lu haaaaaaaated it -- like the Lu did with director Sam Mendes' other big movie -- but it's just that something didn't quite click. Wierd. But it doesn't suck.

Which brings the Lu to the topic of today's rant. Jake's next big movie in which he's ostensibly welcomed to a whole other kind of suck: Brokeback Mountain -- the so-called "gay cowboy" movie (or as the proverbial gay wag might gag, "Bareback Mountain"). Ever since hunka-hunka burning-lugs Heath Ledger and JakeG were signed to the Ang Lee directed adaptation of the Annie Proulx novella, the simple fact of this film has inspired hankys of all color-codes to flutter all the 'mo world over. When oh when have 2 A-List Hollywood Hunks signed on for a majorly & undeniably homo story? Let alone one in which anal sex provides a pivotal plot point? It's all very exciting, really.

So StinkyLulu's unsurprised that all that excitement started to get annoying even before the movie's out. It started last week. Apparently, Jakey's featured in the next Details saying:

"I approached the story believing that these are actually straight guys who fall in love," he says. "That's how I related to the material. These are two straight guys who develop this love, this bond. Love binds you, and you see these guys pulling and pulling and tugging and trying to figure out what they want, and what they will allow themselves to have."

Smarter than the Lu might have expected. A tale as old as them thar hills. But -- presumably Jake's butt -- here's where "gay identity" starts to involve more than the Kinsey scale & where that old adage (oft-uttered by convicts/truckers/fratboys) "a hole's a hole" proves instructive. A predisposition toward homosex doesn't ipso facto make one gay. Even it's upso assho. Not necessarily gay. A man having sex with a man: yes, definitely, no contest. But gay? Not quite.

Well.
This -- ahem -- nuance has caused the hankys to flutter all over again. Even Andy Towle over at the indispensable Towleroad has gotten his knickers into something of a kerfluffle over the whole thing, characterizing Jake's comments as "surprising" and "disappointing." It'th all jutht tho thilly.

Just see the frickin' movie.
StinkyLulu hears it's sad.
And hot.