Good Morning, World

I try not to fall down the endless well of posting male models here on MNPP because from whence I'd never return! But I'm making an exception this morning, because 1) this photoshoot (via) is too difficult, excuse me too hard, to ignore. And 2) the model Miles McMillan does have an entertainment connection, having dated actor Zachary Quinto for several years.

The funny thing is Miles didn't do much for me back then when he was being papped with Zach (here's a photo of the cute couple), but as he's aged up and out of twink-dom it's become a whole 'nother story. So here's the living your best post-Spock life! Hit the jump for this whole damned hot batch of photos...

Zachary Quinto Eight Times, One Speedo

I actually started typing the words, "I don't know what's taken me so long to post this photo of Zachary Quinto wearing a speedo via his Instagram over the weekend" (click to embiggen) but then I thought about it and, uhh, I have had other things on my mind. Sorry, Zach! You must understand though, right? I understand that an actor's narcissism normally runs high, especially one who'd post a speedo snap on their Instagram, but even you must see our minds have been somewhere else the past couple of days. Anyway there that is now, do with it what you will. And as an apologia for my most immoral delay in posting I will also share this new shoot of the ZQ for GQ magazine, after the jump... 

Quinto of Solace

I went into Netflix's Boys in the Band re-do expecting Zachary Quinto to be my least favorite thing about it, because what I saw in the trailer seemed to be simply an impression of what Leonard Frey was doing in the original movie. But a couple weeks out it's pretty clear to me now that his funny, strange performance is the only thing that's really going to stick with me (the only thing that's not naked Matt Bomer anyway) -- it's a fucking bizarre piece of theater, what he's doing, but it at least holds the screen. (Here's my review of the whole ordeal, if you missed it.) 

Anyway not to stir the shit-pot of my snide sentiment towards Boys a tenth time in as many breaths -- there's just a new shoot of Quinto in Interview Magazine, a couple of which you see here and the rest which I just posted on the Tumblr. His chat in the magazine is with fellow Ryan Murphy stalwart slash gay person Sarah Paulson, so it's probably fun! (I have not read it yet.) They are fun people, Harge.

And It Played On, And On, And On

Falling somewhere on the vanilla center of the spectrum opinion-wise on a gay property doesn't really make for a great headline -- we're a fickle and fiery people, prone to large pronouncements, and lately it feels like we've got to hail something as everything or nothing, no in betweensies. I've noticed some anger and tension bubbling up in my reviews as of late -- see the generational nastiness that my Welles / Hopper review dipped into just yesterday -- and I guess that can be excused amid these fiery brimstone days, but mostly I'm just tired. Tired of so many conversations, but especially the ones that surround queer entertainment, where all life and joy and randomness and mystery and gestures towards uneasy ideas are stampeded over and flattened down to digestible meme content, Buzzfeed quizzes, tweets. 

You can of course grab me by the shoulders here and spin me around into the face of my own accusations, I'm as guilty as any. It just feels so extraordinary and life-affirming for me today, right now as I type this anyway, to stand here before you and decide to not choose a side, a Team Anybody, on the Boys in the Band culture wars. It's not worth it? The play's only really truly remembered because it got there first, a landmark status that superseded the need for terribly interesting characters or big ideas of any sort -- there are some fun quotable lines but we're not talking high art or even (I wish!) tremendous camp. The shiny new Ryan-Murphy-produced and Joe-Mantello-directed version hitting Netflix today is more of the same -- nobody's squeezing the life from or shooting to the moon anything that was previously resembling a stone-cold classic. 

These new actors all stand there and do their best to make these people seem like people and not the cardboard cut-outs they are on the page, and some of their best is really not good, some is perfectly fine, some is just fucking bizarre. I certainly laughed at Zachary Quinto's beamed-in-from-Uranus schtick more than once, and slammed up against Matt Bomer's pretty person wanness and Jim Parson's shrill lip-purses I can certainly say a lot was happening at once to pass the time. I don't begrudge representational history its depiction of closet-trauma -- I know from a meanness seeping down bone-deep, our viciousness an armor we spend an hour adjusting in the mirror before we leave home each day. 

I just find and have always found Band's presentation of it so... presentable. Such a flat here's this thing, and here are a dozen people standing in a room telling us about it. I can't really get worked up either way. It's a piece of our past and like a faggy Renaissance Faire we'll trot it out and remind everybody, mostly ourselves, of it once in awhile. Putting the fairy in the Faire, the belle in the Antebellum Reenactment, it is what it is and I'm just opting out of caring much either way today, if that's alright. Sure I saw pieces of myself on-screen, but I have seen pieces of myself in puddles on the sidewalk with more Art to them -- maybe you'll have better luck, care more, and for that I wish you the best. I'm sure there will be something for me to stomp my foot or jerk my dick about tomorrow -- there always is.

The Boys Life

Break out your kerchiefs and busted perms, the first trailer for the Ryan Murphy produced and Joe Mantello directed updating of The Boys in the Band is here. Having first premiered ten thousand years ago on stage in the year that was 2019 and now transferred over to the small screen of your favorite Netflix interface this version casts Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer, Andrew Rannells, Charlie Carver, Robin de Jesús, Brian Hutchison, Michael Benjamin Washington, and Tuc Watkins, as the homos who lunch, brunch, and birthday dinner their way unto oblivion. Watch the trailer here, now, here:

This drops on Netflix on September 30th -- if you missed the photos I shared last week see those right here, and hit the jump for a couple more gifs of Matt Bomer being sex...

All the Boys Love Matty Bomer

.

Argh just realized these, the first photos from the Ryan Murphy produced and Joe Mantello directed adaptation of The Boys in the Band, have been sitting in my inbox since Friday -- that's what happens when you have three-day weekends all summer long. Now normally Matt Bomer could sit in my inbox for an entire three-day weekend and I'd be fine with it, if we weren't actually talking about a literal "inbox" but rather a metaphorical "inbox." But we're just talking about the boring email kind. Boo! Anyway these show off the cast of the recently staged Broadway show who reunited to film it for Netflix, including Bomer, Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Andrew Rannells, Charlie Carver, Robin de Jesús, Brian Hutchison, Michael Benjamin Washington, and Tuc Watkins. I feel like I heard one cast-member is different from the stage version but I never saw the stage version so what do I know? Nothing. Big lotta nothing. This hits Netflix on September 30th; hit the jump for a couple more shots...

Life's a Goddamn Laugh Riot

.

Ryan Murphy just announced on his Instagram that the stage show of Boys in the Band that he produced for Broadway last year is going to be turned into a new film for Netflix -- everybody is reprising their roles including yes, most importantly says me, Matt Bomer. Missing the above moment on stage was my biggest disappointment about missing the show and, you know, living in general. The film will be directed by the stage show's director Joe Mantello, and co-star Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Andrew Rannells, Charlie Carver, Robin de Jesus, Tuc Watkins, Michael Benjamin Washington and Brian Hutchison, and it's set to hit Netflix some time next year. Did any of you get to see it on stage?
.

A Weatherman of Words

.

It's not easy to get ten steps out ahead of your audience these days when everybody's looking for the game, but once again Steven Soderbergh lives to make it look easy -- High Flying Bird is as tricky a caper as his Oceans films but with serious-minded pursuits of the political sort switched in for silly card shark shenanigans. You get a sense of what's up about the time you notice it's a basketball movie without any basketball -- such is the conceit, what with a timely league shutdown its play-field, all the better to dribble one-handed behind your back.

Andre Holland's player rep Ray Burke wants to do the right thing, but how right is right enough, and where does a singular right stop and a broader sense of righteousness begin? His game's a tricksy one and as High Flying Bird coasts along, conversation to conversation, it catches you up in a Hawksian rhythm, the conversational minutiae of smart people smarting out over top of one another, so you lose its forest for its trees, its extra innings for its three-pointers.

That's as far as you're gonna get sports analogies from me, I'm already in over my head, and thank goodness High Flying Bird doesn't rely on my polyester-thin knowledge therein to get the game behind the game behind the game. The answers are all hand-delivered in the opening scene, neatly folded inside a manila envelope and carried around, spot to spot, like Hitchcock's Macguffin, like the bomb that blew up the little boy on the bus -- the right character will spot the hand-off, spill the secrets, and unfurl the what for when the right time comes don't you worry. These are the smooth hands of a master massaging over you -- just enjoy the sensations.

High Flying Suit

.

High Flying Bird could be 90 minutes of that shot of André Holland sitting at a table in that suit and I'd be in - looks like Stevie Soderbergh's got other stuff in mind according to the trailer but I'm just putting it out there, if he wants to release the "André Holland wears that suit and sits like that for 90 minutes" cut I'd pay good money for it. Here's the trailer for the actual movie:

.

.

When we wished SS a happy birthday on Monday we told you this film's released on February 8th, so it's right quick, and it's Netflix we're talking about so that's for everybody (insert asterisks to say that is meaning America at least). Also in this movie is Zachary Quinto, Zazie Beetz, Melvin Gregg, and Kyle MacLachlan, among many others. It's also screening one day early here at FSLC here in NYC as part of their upcoming Film Comment Selects annual program with Soderbergh and some cast in attendance, and I'm hoping to go to that -- check out the whole program for Film Comment Selects right here. As usual it's good stuff!
.

Live Long and Pecker

.

I'll never be accused of being the world's biggest Trekkie but I live with one and I appreciate the Trek universe fine enough - it's not a love, per se, but a genuine like for sure. If Bryan Fuller had stayed attached to Star Trek Discovery that might have changed - I'd have watched the show, at least! But he didn't, so I haven't gotten around to it - did any of you? Opinions seemed all over the place. Anyway I might have to give it a go now because the gorgeous and longstanding crush Ethan Peck (grandson of Gregory) has just landed the role of Baby Spock. Okay "Baby" is pushing it - Ethan is 32 now, which is the exact same age Zachary Quinto was when he took on the role in the 2009 Star Trek movie. Anyway you oughta scroll through our Ethan Archives, they're worth a click I promise, and then you can hit the jump here for a few more recent pics I just swiped off Ethan's Instagram as a means of celebration or whatever...

Tab is Coming To Town

.

Mark your calendars, gays and gay-lovers (or, you know, movie lovers in general I suppose) -- TCM is celebrating the life and work of the actor Tab Hunter this Friday with an all-day marathon of his movies! Starting with 1953's The Steel Lady, Tab's fourth film about a group of oilmen who uncover a WWII tank buried in the desert...

... they're screening eight films, running up through 1972's The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, which starred Paul Newman not to mention Tab's former flame Anthony Perkins. I've seen Judge Roy Bean (which in weird related news is being dropped on blu-ray tomorrow) but I haven't seen a single one of the other seven films they're showing - see the whole list and schedule on TCM's site right here. I'm gonna record them all! But what especially grabbed me...

... was their description of a film they are not screening, one I don't recall knowing about. (There's a chance he might've talked about it in his book and I forgot about it, I guess, since my brain is mush.) Here's what they write:

"Perhaps his finest performance was as the lonely Venice Beach psychopath of Curtis Hanson's directing debut, "The Arousers" (1973)..."

The film is also known as Sweet Kill and it is available on DVD -- have any of you seen it? I'm a big fan of Curtis Hanson already - The Hand That Rocks the Cradle forever - so this just jumped way way up my watch list. Anyway let's all tune into TCM this weekend and memorialize ourselves some classic Tab, people.

Fear Strikes Out Gays

.

The relationship between the actors Anthony Perkins & Tab Hunter in the mid-1950s is one we've covered here at MNPP plenty over the years - here's a little post but really just scroll through our Tab Hunter Archives and you'll see Tony all over the place. These classic Hollywood gay romances (see also Cary Grant & Randolph Scott) fascinate me, as I think they do any movie-loving homosexual so it was only a matter of time before Hollywood, full of movie-loving homosexuals itself, caught up. And by "caught up" I mean "gave a gay person enough power to produce something of this sort." 

Enter Zach Quinto! He's teaming up with his Star Trek buddy JJ Abrams to produce a movie about those two titled Tab & Tony, which will apparently take its inspiration from Tab Hunter's (wonderful) autobiography of a couple years back and which had a couple of chapters devoted to their time together. What I think is especially interesting about this is those two have never really seemed like they had the great love affair we might want to ascribe to them - it always seemed like they probably had some really good sex but that was followed by just a couple of deeply difficult years together, made all the harder by a business that refused to let them just be, but also by a mis-matched clash of personalities.

Those two factors fed one another, obviously - their relationship fell apart when Tony pursued a film role, that of baseball player Jimmy Piersall in the 1957 film Fear Strikes Out (and a terribly, terribly apt title, that; that could probably be the title of the bio-pic itself), which was a role Tab had just played for TV; basically Tony swept in and stole Tab's big role out from under him. 

Anyway as soon as this news broke last night everybody on Twitter was throwing out casting ideas - this was a good one, I thought...

.

Well because it should be Andrew Garfield and Billy Magnussen.

— Ryan (@sortathatguy) June 6, 2018

.

... although they're both 10 years older 

than Tab & Tony were at the time. 

I thought maybe you could go this way:

.

I have to think about it more but you could probably just throw a couple of random twinks from Dunkirk in there and call it a day pic.twitter.com/Rshf733ogO

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) June 7, 2018

.

But I am putting it to y'all!

Give up some casting ideas in the comments...

One Boy in the Band in Particular

.

I've had to stop paying attention to Broadway stuff lately because Broadway's too expensive for me right now so I've just had to shut my mind off to the fact that The Boys in the Band is happening... but this official picture of Matt Bomer in the show is making that real, real difficult. See all the pictures over at Playbill. If anybody needs a date let me know... especially if your name is "Matt Bomer."

.

Zachary Quinto & James Franco Rubbing Scruff

.

Even though it's been on Netflix for awhile I still haven't sat down to watch I Am Micheal, the gay conversion therapy movie starring James Franco and Zachary Quinto yet - have any of you? The tepid reviews dulled my enthusiasm... as did the word that their on-screen three-way with Charlie Carver was apparently a dud. How do you make that be a dud? Anyway when I saw the new Out Magazine photo-shoot of James looking really very good the other week I thought maybe I should go back and give it a chance. Thoughts?

Good Morning, World

.

I think the heat is making Zachary Quinto overheated (or maybe it's just having a gorgeous male-model boyfriend like Miles McMillan that does that) but his Instagram this summer has been too hot to handle (too cold to hold), finally culminating yesterday (although the summer ain't over so let's not say he's done) in that shot of Miles... presenting. (Thanks to Manuel for the heads-up) 

Thank you, Zachary. I've seen some people deriding their exhibitionist streak, but I will not be one of those people. I like to look, they like to show, this is a relationship for the ages. Hit the jump for a few more shots of the duo that I've gathered up...

Good Morning, World

.

i just april fooled the hell outta him.

A post shared by Zachary Quinto (@zacharyquinto) on Mar 31, 2017 at 10:59pm PDT

.

I don't know why this picture that Zachary Quinto posted of himself and his boyfriend model Miles McMillan sent me off on this whole thought train this weekend, but it did, and the gist was just basically about how nice it is that we now have gay celebrities who can make us think about them having sex. (Note to self: "April Fooled the hell out of him" is a great euphemism.)

I don't say this just as a person who likes to think about Zachary Quinto and Miles McMillan having sex (although I do) but rather as a citizen of these here United States who's watched up until only recently the process of "Coming Out" be all about declaring one's self an island unto one's self - Here I am, I am queer, singular.

Eventually we could get married and have babies - respectable things, and everybody knows that once you get married you're not having sex with each other, hardy har. And babies were fine because homosexuals don't make babies when they fuck, so that was never about our icky bedroom habits.

And some people probably think Zachary's oversharing on social media, but I think what he's doing is important. Maybe not "sitting at the front of the bus" important, but it's a little thing and little things pile up, change minds. People look at that picture and they think, "Those two men have sex with each other." And some of us - some who were prone to it before seeing the picture and some who were not prone to thinking such thoughts before seeing that picture - think, "More, please."

Anyway, hi. Happy Monday.

.

The Bitter Tears of James T. Kirk

.

That picture of Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto on the Star Trek Beyond red carpet in Sydney (via, thanks Mac) is giving me some serious Petra von Kant sense-memories...

... so now I'm probably going to have to sit here for the rest of the afternoon and imagine a remake of Fassbinder's film starring Star Trek actors. I mean you just try to un-see the sight of Simon Pegg playing Irm Hermann's personal assistant character, I double and triple dare you...

Which Is Hotter?

.

I was a little bit shocked to read that Wentworth Miller is turning 44 today, but so he is; I was less shocked to read that Zachary Quinto's turning 39; that seems about right. Anyway it's the birthday of two of the biggest officially homosexual actors in the biz - Wentworth did give up acting for a hot minute so he could write movies for Park Chan-wook, but he seems back to it. (It is insane that a new Prison Break is coming, you guys.) So let's superficially judge them!

.

.

Jonathan Groff Three Times

.

I'm sure all you queens have already stampeded over to this Jonathan Groff interview, it's been making the rounds, but if I did happen to beat you to the punch go on and hit it up, it's a really fun and open chat with the fun and open fellow. (There are a couple more pictures, too.) Anyway I was tempted to quote the part where he talks about being flattered by our collective boners over him and Russell Tovey fucking but I actually think this portion where he talks about what coming out meant to him and his career is most worthy:

"When I came out, I understood that maybe I wouldn’t be the male romantic lead in a Nicholas Sparks movie. And I’m okay with that. I love theater. I came to New York to be a theater actor. There are a lot of out gay theater actors. When I came out, I made peace with the fact that maybe I wouldn’t be a huge movie star or a huge TV star. But I’d rather be a working actor and not hiding anything in my personal life. Weirdly, after I came out, I began to get a lot more film and television work. That’s all a way of saying that the reason I don’t mind talking about it over and over is because that is the way acceptance happens, and that’s the way you break down those walls. It’s what Harvey Milk said about coming out to all your friends. It’s important. And the more we talk about it, then the less we’ll finally have to talk about it. And for me personally, it feels liberating. I enjoy talking about it because I felt I couldn’t talk about it for so long."

Zach's Mask of Sanity Slips

.

I feel just like Nettie in The Color Purple - all sorts of things have gotten in the way of me blogging this week (sickness, computer trouble) but NOTHING WILL KEEP ME FROM IT!!!! Ahem. So yeah this news about Zachary Quinto joining Hannibal for a guest-starring bit is a couple of days old, is my point. But maybe you missed it! Maybe your brother-in-law chased you on a horse and then you got shipped off to Africa and a bulldozer tore down your church and you're only now back on the internet and you're an old lady and we're all sitting on the porch wearing pants - PANTS! - and sipping lemonade or whatever, well now you know, Zachary Quinto will be on Hannibal. Happy cry!

.