Happy 44th Birthday to Gale Harold!

Happy Birthday to a beautiful man and a wonderful actor, Mr. Gale Harold!

Happy 41st Birthday, Gale!

To a lovely man and a wonderful actor!

Have a great birthday, Gale, you're looking absolutely fabulous!

Pre-opening night article on Orpheus Descending

Here's a wonderful pre-opening night article about Orpheus Descending with lots of Gale quotes!

He talks about the play, a surprising, but wonderful description of his audition for Queer as Folk, plus a bit about his reasons for choosing to play Valentine ‘Snakeskin’ Xavier. Fabulous! :)

Orpheus Descending, presented by Frantic Redhead Productions, opens Jan. 15; plays Thurs.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 2 pm; through Feb. 21. Tickets: $25. Theatre/Theater, 5041 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles; 800.838.3006 or brownpapertickets.com/event/92508.

“Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you - gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.”
–Tennessee Williams

Who can forget the admonition to dear Hansel & Gretel to “Not look back!” as they fled from danger to a safer place? The same again with Lot and his wife in the Bible. And, so too, with Orpheus who descended into Hades to charm the gods with his sad songs so he could save his lady Eurydice and ascend back to life.

Poor Orpheus did look back, with resulting consequences for him and his lady. Even the great mythmakers couldn’t agree if he was a hero (Virgil) or a coward (Plato). Getting him right has always been a complex journey. Perfect pickins’ for our own Tennessee Williams who set this legend of repressed desires in the American South.

For Williams, his recounting of the myth centered on the power of passion, art and imagination to redeem life and return it to vitality. In 1940, Williams’ version became his first Broadway-bound play, aptly titled Battle of Angels. The critics, like so many infernal gods, sent him straight to Hades.

“I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night.” –TW

For 17 years and through five major rewrites, Williams finally got his play a better ascension on Broadway in 1957 under the present title Orpheus Descending. Two years later, he turned it into the film The Fugitive Kind starring Marlon Brando as Valentine ‘Snakeskin’ Xavier, Anna Magnani as Lady Torrance and Joanne Woodward as Carol Cutrere.

According to Williams, the play was the “emotional bridge between my early years and my present state of existence as a playwright.” First loves are hard to forget, their songs and images play on in our heads.

So that we don’t forget…Denise Crosby, Gale Harold and Claudia Mason, under the direction of filmmaker Lou Pepe, are firing up a six-week run of Orpheus Descending for Los Angeles audiences, opening this Friday, January 15 at Theatre/Theater.

Who are these intrepid actors, where did they come from and why did they choose to ride Williams’ Southern Gothic roller coaster of a melodrama? Let’s see…

“Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life.” –TW

We start with Gale Harold as Valentine “Snakeskin” Xavier. It would be more polite or conventional to start with one of the ladies, but Snakeskin and perhaps Harold himself are anything but conventional. Williams describes this Orpheus as “having a wild beauty about him,” a drifter who “can burn a woman down.” Wow!

As you know Harold from his television and film work, he certainly has the wild beauty and burn ‘em down business pretty well handled. Among his many roles, he’s been the lead Brian Kinney on Showtime’s hit series Queer as Folk, Susan Meyers’ lover on Desperate Housewives and Wyatt Earp on HBO’s Deadwood. But, did you know he began as an intern at A Noise Within?

Onto Denise Crosby as his Eurydice, Lady Torrance. You probably know she’s a part of the Bing Crosby family dynasty. She created the starring role of Lt. Tasha Yar in Star Trek, the Next Generation. But, did you know she was nominated for a Best Actress Ovation Award for her performance as Lil in Last Summer at Bluefish Cove which opened at Theatre Geo in 1994?

And, this Claudia Mason, playing the lonely and vulnerable exhibitionist Carol Cutrere. You may know her as one of the world’s top models and in the biz since she was discovered at age 13. She was also a Woody Allen favorite in the film Celebrity. But did you know she has her roots in off-Broadway theatre and is the daughter of Clifford Mason, playwright, novelist and critic for the New York Times?

“In memory, everything seems to happen to music.” –TW

For these actors, there certainly has been a sweet soundtrack to their lives…especially in their memories of theatre and what keeps them attracted to working on the LA boards.

Crosby remembers the “most profound event that shifted everything was Tamara. We thought it would last three months and it lasted for years.” (Note: Tamara became Los Angeles’ longest running play.) “I started as understudies for Tamara and the Ballerina. They generally didn’t take the understudy up into the main role because the understudy was too valuable, covering several roles.

“But, for me, it was the opposite of All About Eve. Our lead, Margot Bionne, knew she was leaving and purposely missed the night the producers were in the audience. ‘That way they can see you can do it,’ she said. She was right and I ran with it for months and months. So many industry people would come. It was then I got my audition for Star Trek.”

Mason calls herself the “classic Manhattan mix-black father, white mother.” She enjoyed her New York theatre days especially her success as the lead in the off-Broadway production of Boxing Day Parade. But, she’s happily settled in Los Angeles for five years now and was named Outstanding Female Actor in a Lead Role by Reviewplays.com for her work in the world premiere of Two Ships Passing at the Pan Andreas Theatre.

“You can be young without money but you can’t be old without it.” –TW

Harold’s memories may be even more recognizable to theatre actors. “We were doing Cymbeline at LATC, he recounts, “and I was getting to that stage in my career where I was thinking New York or Chicago. I wasn’t a good auditioner in LA. I hadn’t mastered the Shurtleff style. But, my manager wanted me to audition for Queer as Folk. It was presented more like a movie for cable so I went to read.

“I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care how I looked. I had $5 to my name and ran out of gas on the way to the audition. I had to hunt around in my car to find enough change to get there.

“I had seen the original British version of the show and I knew how an American would play the role-unapologetically OUT, take it or leave it. So I opened up my guns and let them blaze. When I was done, I let them know ‘if you want me back, I can’t read Monday…I have to strike Cymbeline.’”

Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life. –TW

Why choose Orpheus Descending to perform?

Harold is big on his coach Kim Gillingham. “I am fascinated,” he says, “by how she guided me to make choices amidst all the chaos and to find the feelings that allow me to hold onto those choices. At the end of last year, I called and asked her if she knew of something more rigorous that I could work on every day. She called back and recommended this play. Val. It was a very terrifying thought, and exciting.

“First and foremost, there are the words. He built this man’s way of speaking-’a peculiar talker.’ I’m from Atlanta and spent my formative years in Florida, Georgia and Alabama. There’s French, Spanish, Italian and black culture. It’s phraseology.

“It’s like a symphonic arrangement and, when we’re all talking to each other, the strings play together on stage. They talk to each other with echoes of a mandolin or violin. As our director Lou Pepe says ‘it’s an incantation.’”

For Crosby, “It has to be challenging for me to want to do it. I’ve not done Tennessee Williams, and that is thrilling, a personal favorite. Imagine this Italian, this character who came to rural Mississippi with a mother who was ‘very fair.’

“It will be an eye-opener because people like to make assumptions about Italians, pigeon-hole everyone. Why not make Juliet black and Romeo blue?” And, in this case, Lady Torrance blonde. You go, girl…er, Lady!

Mason “almost had a vision of this staircase even before reading Orpheus Descending. I think Carol Cutrere is the soul of the play. Even when all the cattle are going in one direction, her spirit is not. All artists can relate to that.

“Carol stands for the blacks in the play. She took a stand and went the other way in this repressed racist town. All that, mixed with her sexual liberation. It costs her. But, she keeps running with the call of the wild.

“I think Carol and Blanche in Streetcar are Tennessee’s two greatest women.”

“Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.” –TW

With the excitement mounting for the opening of this production, the great enthusiasm the actors have is also mixed with the challenge of doing justice to Williams.

Crosby finds it a “very demanding emotional piece. He doesn’t write light frothy comedies. The challenge for me is to connect all those emotional through lines to what is the truth of the moment.

“So I had to do a lot of research on the history of the time…looking at photos and listening to a lot of music. Music is important here. Then, I could find what in my life to connect this to. It’s a big three-act play, with dialect. She’s very passionate, very full of life and experiencing a sexual reawakening with this younger man.”

Harold, that “younger man,” says “I have a 1001 fears. We can sit around on a blanket with some wine and grapes and get to them all. But mostly, when there’s such a great playwright, you don’t want to sully his adaptation of a myth that makes rocks cry.

“There’s also the fear of the next trap - don’t play the metaphor. Val is a singer and a hustler…a man on the run, not a man with a lute serenading a nymph. I do perform ‘Heavenly Grass’ though, the most terrifying thing of all.” Terrifying perhaps because Williams wrote it himself. An ethereal ode to his audience.

Like her haunting character, commenting on all the action, Mason muses that “when we’re ignited by something so great, by one of the greatest writers, there’s a whoosh - and, the fear mongers we all have, are there.”

“I have found it easier to identify with the characters who were frightened, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.” –TW

Sounds like a good bet for theatergoers to enjoy these actors in a play about living bravely and honestly in a fallen world. Tennessee Williams began these themes here with his Orpheus and Eurydice and evolved them through the many works of his career.

Here’s hoping your feet take a walk in his heavenly grass.

Article by Geo Hartley

Production photos by Robert E. Beckwith

Source

Falling for Grace DVD Release from CD Universe - Update.

Well, after several emails to and from CD Universe, the situation appears to be this.

The DVD was released on 1/5. Stocks were exhausted immediately probably because of high demand, which is fantastic news for Gale and Fay! Not such good news for those of us who missed out on the first shipment!

However, CD Universe tell me that the re-release from the vendors is due on 1/12 and we will be informed by email as soon as this new release is shipped.

I was so annoyed when I received the first email that I immediately re-ordered the DVD from Tower. On further contemplation this was particularly pointless as the release date from Tower is the same - 1/12. So I've now cancelled the Tower one and am sitting tight with CD Universe. I figure if I missed out on the first release from them, I must surely be somewhere near the top of the second release!

Anyway, after all the time I've been waiting to see this film, another week or so isn't going to kill me... drive me up the effin' wall, yes, but definitely not kill me! :)

Press Articles on Orpheus Descending today...

A couple of mentions of Orpheus Descending in the press today. One in the LA Times, which is were this gorgeous photo is from and another in Playbill. Here's the Playbill article which includes another couple of new black and white photos - see them at the end of this post. Can't wait for this!

Gale Harold and Denise Crosby will co-star in the Theatre/Theater production of Tennessee Williams' short-lived Broadway drama Orpheus Descending in Los Angeles.

Harold ("Queer As Folk") will star as Val opposite Crosby ("Star Trek TNG") as Lady Torrance in Williams' 1957 play that offers a retelling of the Orpheus myth reset in the American South. Documentary filmmaker Lou Pepe ("Lost in La Mancha") directs the production that will open Jan. 15 and run through Feb. 21.

The cast will also feature Claudia Mason, Robert E. Beckwith, Curtis C., Francesca Casale, John Gleeson Connolly, Kelly Ebsary, Andy Forrest, Sheila Shaw and Geoffrey Wade.

According to press notes, "Guitar-playing drifter Val Xavier arrives in a small town looking for work and the opportunity to renounce his wild ways, where he meets Lady Torrance, a woman with a tragic past who longs for rebirth. Known as one of Williams' more complex plays, Orpheus Descending explores the power of passion, art, and imagination to redeem life and return it to meaning."

Orpheus Descending is produced by Ginger Perkins, Frantic Redhead Productions.

Original Source










Recognise the shirt, well it's definitely Gale's own... looky!

Falling for Grace DVD from CD Universe!

Really, really pissed off now!

I received an email this morning from CD Universe saying:

At the time you placed this order, the item was a pre-order. The street date has since passed and the item is still not available from our vendors, and is now on backorder.

I wasn't THAT upset when I read it, just thought oh, well it'll be here soon... until I went on to Gale's IMDb message board and read that several people have been sent emails from CD Universe saying that their DVDs have been shipped! WTF!

What liars the people at CD Universe are, blaming the vendors when in fact it's obvious that they didn't order enough copies from the vendors to cover their pre-orders! I've now ordered it from Tower who say it will be available from 12th January, so the race is on! If I end up with two copies, one of my friends will be the lucky recipient of a wonderful Gale Harold film for their birthday this year!

To all those who did receive the "DVD is shipped" email from CD Universe, congratulations you lucky buggers! ;)

Tonight's Doctor Who...

... the last one with David Tennant.

I just spent the last twenty minutes of it weeping.

Happy 2010!

Wishing everyone health, prosperity and happiness for the coming year.

With much peace and love to you all.

It's going to be a fabulous Gale New Year, too! The Falling for Grace DVD coming out in the next couple of months. I hope everyone has pre-ordered their copy from the Falling for Grace website with a chance to win some great Gale stuff. Or you can pay less at CD Universe or Tower Video. The latter two will ship internationally.

Of course, the other thing starting the new decade off with a bang - crikey, where did that last one disappear to - is Gale on stage in Orpheus Descending in California during January and February. Hoping those of you who are lucky enough to go have a super time. I suppose just being able to see Gale in the flesh is enough to make that happen!

As for resolutions, well I don't think I'll be making many. It's six years since I resolved to give up smoking and that's probably the only successful resolution I've ever made! Looky, still going strong:



QuitMeter Counter courtesy of www.quitmeter.com.

So, this year I'm just going to resolve to try hard at anything I do. To live life with a smile on my face and to try to help others as much as possible and treat those I meet, no matter how trying, with kindness and generosity.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays...

Falling for Grace DVD Pre-Ordering

The Falling for Grace website has been revamped here and you can now Pre-Order the DVD from there with a chance to win prizes. The price is US$24.98 with US$5 shipping and handling.

This is great news for everyone... but for two things.

Firstly, it appears that there is NO International shipping, as it only gives options for addresses in the US and Canada. So, we overseas fans will have to buy it elsewhere and THAT means no bonuses or chances to win the jeans worn by Gale for us!

The second thing, which is almost worse than the first, is that apparently they are sticking with that god-awful picture of Gale on the cover!!!!

ETA: Just pre-ordered mine from CD Universe for US$24.69, this is £15.84 in real money and includes shipping and handling, but no chance of those jeans! They will ship worldwide.

Silent monks singing Hallelujah!

Missed this last year! It's fabulous...


and there's always time for a repeat of this classic... The Twelve Gays of Christmas!

Calling all Gale Harold fans who have knowledge of Los Angeles...

In the event that a Gale fan from another country - who missed out on the Suddenly Last Summer Gale event in NY a few years back through a set of unfortunate circumstances - was stupid obsessed fanatical mad enough to buy a ticket or tickets for Orpheus Descending and managed to gather together the serious amount of spondulicks necessary for a return flight to LAX.

Is it possible that there is someone out there able to recommend a hotel within walking distance of the Theatre for said out-of-towner? A hotel which, hopefully, alongside being reasonably clean and neither bed-bug nor flea infested, won't add too much to the already straining financial burden and leave a Gale fan just enough to purchase a souvenir programme or two.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. :)

More on Gale in Orpheus Descending

So, whilst some of us Gale fans who are lucky enough to live in, or near, LA are booking their tickets for Orpheus Descending and getting nearer and nearer to exploding with excitement. The rest of us might just want to think about the play and how we think Gale will handle the part of Valentine Xavier.

Of course, if you are going to see the play and don't know, and don't want to know, what the play is about, you'd better not read any further. For everyone else, here's a description of the character he'll be playing. I'm thrilled that he's got this part and I think that if Gale can relax, this character is absolutely perfect for him!

Valentine Xavier is a wandering singer and musician of about thirty who is described in the stage directions as having a wild beauty about him. He wears a snakeskin jacket, mottled white, black, and gray. In the bars of New Orleans where he sang and lived wildly, he was known simply as Snake-skin. Val always carries a guitar with him, and he describes it as his ‘‘life's companion.’’ Music saves him whenever he gets into a bad situation. The guitar itself is covered with the autographs of famous blues singers. Val is a free spirit who does not fit into conventional society, and it is significant that the Choctaw cry given by the Conjure Man, a cry of wild intensity, coincides with Val's first entrance.

Val was raised in a place called Witches' Bayou, and he claims to have unusual powers of self-control. He can hold his breath for three minutes, stay awake for forty-eight hours, and not urinate for a day. He also claims that his body temperature is two degrees higher than normal, like a dog's. He left Witches' Bayou when he was in his teens and drifted to New Orleans, where he soon found that women were irresistibly drawn to him, but he eventually tired of their attentions and of the dissipated life he was leading.

Val is basically a good-hearted man who has insight into the deeper longings of life. He can sense what others really need and desire, and he knows how to give comfort when it is needed. He himself says that although he has lived among corruption (in New Orleans), he is not corrupted. In Two River County, however, people find his manner sexually suggestive, although he does nothing deliberately to cultivate this impression. However, because he is an artistic spirit who does not fit into the accepted ways of thought and action, and because he allows himself to be drawn into an affair with Lady Torrance, he is hunted down by the men of the town.

Gale in Williams' Orpheus Descending...

What wonderful news! I really, really hope he can make this part his own and nails it on stage. Wish I could get there to see it, but alas that's not to be...

Gale Harold, Denise Crosby, Claudia Mason to Star in Orpheus Descending at Theatre/Theater
By: Dan Bacalzo · Dec 9, 2009 · Los Angeles

Gale Harold, Denise Crosby, and Claudia Mason will head the cast of Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending, to play Theatre/Theater in Los Angeles, January 15-February 21. Lou Pepe will direct.

This modern version of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is set in the American South of repressed desires. The cast will also feature Robert E. Beckwith, Curtis C., Francesca Casale, John Gleeson Connolly, Kelly Ebsary, Andy Forrest, Sheila Shaw and Geoffrey Wade.

Harold, who plays Valentine Xavier, is best known for his role of Brian Kinney on Showtime's Queer as Folk, and his stage credits include Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer for the Roundabout Theatre Company. Crosby, who plays Lady Torrance, received an Ovation nomination for her performance in Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, and her TV work includes the role of Lt. Tasha Yar in Star Trek, The Next Generation. Mason, who plays Carol Cutrere, began her career as a teen model, and her Off Broadway credits include Boxing Day Parade and The Glass Menagerie, while her film and television work includes Celebrity and Outpatient.

Original Source

If anyone not familiar with the play is interested in reading a summary, go here. Obviously there are major spoilers!

Randy - New Advocate Interview

Randy interview in the Advocate. Some rehashed old questions, but overall a really interesting interview, love this! :)

Look out for his answer to one of the last questions about nude pictures of him when playing Alan Strang in Equus! Randy may be upsetting some fans with the way he answers, I'm afraid! I just wish that the lady in question posts a link to this photo now!! Hahahaha!

Anyway take a read:

Randy Does Andy

Queer as Folk’s Randy Harrison discusses his new role as late art legend Andy Warhol in Yale Rep’s POP! and his own status as a reluctant “post-gay” pop icon — plus his secret nude photos and the possibility of a QAF reunion.
By Brandon Voss

When The Advocate last spoke to him for a September 2002 cover story, Randy Harrison had only finished his second of five seasons as gay teen Justin Taylor in Showtime’s groundbreaking drama Queer as Folk but was already planning an exit strategy. “I sort have this image of myself sort of disappearing for a while and reemerging five to 10 years down the road again,” said Harrison, who was at 24 the youngest out actor on television. It’s been more than four years since the controversial series ended, but the stage vet, who made his Broadway debut as Boq in Wicked, has remained very visible in the theater world. Now 32, Harrison is currently creating a portrait of polarizing pop artist-filmmaker Andy Warhol in the Mark Brokaw-helmed world premiere of POP!, a Factory-set musical by Maggie-Kate Coleman and Anna K. Jacobs, which runs through December 19 at Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Conn. Advocate.com made the most of 15 more minutes with Harrison, who continues to elevate his “post-gay” position on fame, activism, and sexuality to an art form.

Advocate.com: How familiar were you with Warhol and the Factory before you started working on POP! at Yale Rep?
Randy Harrison: More than most. Near the end of college I was really into the Velvet Underground, which sort of brought me to Warhol. This was back when Kim’s video store was still open in the East Village, so I rented a lot of Warhol’s movies from there, like Lonesome Cowboys. I’m fascinated with him. I admire the fact that he just turned out art and created such challenging work, specifically his movies. I also think he’s funny as hell.

Did you study archival footage and old Warhol interviews to prepare for the role?
I did a bit of that, but I ended up having to drop a lot of it to tell the story. A perfect Warhol imitation doesn’t work for creating a convincing musical theater character. A lot of his real mannerisms weren’t useful, and you can’t really project his real voice and keep sounding like Warhol. He spoke in a monotone with almost no inflection and little enunciation in a flat Midwestern accent, which is completely untheatrical. I have to break into song as Warhol and have it be believable.

But since Warhol was an actual living person, do you feel a responsibility to represent him accurately?
Fortunately, this show is such a different context to put Warhol in, so I don’t necessarily feel the same obligation I would if I were doing Warhol in a film. Mine is a very fictionalized Warhol.

POP! doesn’t directly explore Warhol’s sexuality, but many critics over the years have examined the ways his homosexuality shaped his aesthetic and also posed an obstacle for him to overcome in his career. Some of his contemporaries were angered or intimidated by the frankness of his sexuality in his work, but he refused to butch it up for anyone. Do you relate to that aspect of Warhol’s character?
Oh, absolutely. There’s this fascinating book called Pop Out, which is like a queer studies examination of Warhol’s life and career. It’s interesting that Jasper Johns and Bob Rauschenberg were also gay but acted butch, so they wanted nothing to do with Warhol. To me, the most amazing thing about Warhol was that he intentionally played up the “swish” aspect — “swish” being the word that he used — in popism. I have a lot of admiration for that.

When The Advocate interviewed you in 2002, you said that you were scared you might be “perceived as a poster boy for something” because you “never really had any goals of activism.” Considering how much the marriage equality debate has heated up since then, have you found yourself becoming more political?
I always have been political, but I’m political personally and not as a celebrity. I’ll go march in Washington with my friends, but I’m not going to go as Randy Harrison the spokesperson because I’m not comfortable playing that role. But I’m active like any human being should be.

You also told The Advocate, “Besides the fact that I sleep with men, I have very little sense of being part of the community of homosexual people, for whatever reason. I have a group of six friends, two of whom are gay.” Now that you’re in your 30s, do you feel more connected with the gay community? Or, at the very least, have you made more gay friends?
[Laughs] I don’t have any more gay friends! Maybe I feel slightly more connected, but not really. I don’t feel hugely different about it. I’m still not engaged with gay nightlife, but I am a gay person who wants equal rights, so I’m engaged with that. All my friends, straight or gay, are engaged with that.

For a Vanity Fair cover story in 2003 called “Gay-Per-View TV,” you participated in a glamorous photo shoot that featured the major cast members of Queer as Folk, Will & Grace, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, The L Word, and Boy Meets Boy. What was it like to play such a major part in that watershed moment for our mainstream media visibility when you didn’t even feel a part of your community?
For me, it all felt like a fluke. Now, looking back, I can sort of see how that kind of visibility was progress to some extent, but I remember doing that shoot and just wanting it to be over.

Are you serious? In one photo you’re inches away from Megan Mullally and hanging on Thom Filicia while Jennifer Beals is serving face in the corner. That shoot looks like it was a blast.
Really? Oh, my God, no. My memory of it is that it was stressful and nerve-racking. But I have a difficult time with photo shoots period.

Do you wish you could’ve achieved your current marketability in the theater world without actually having to do Queer as Folk?
Not really, because the only reason I’m financially stable is from having worked in television. I’m sure Queer as Folk opened up a lot of doors for me, even if it closed some too, so I’m grateful for it.

Echoing the controversial statements gay directors Todd Holland and Don Roos made earlier this year, Rupert Everett recently advised gay actors to stay in the closet, saying, “The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the ... film business.” As a former 25-year-old homosexual who hasn’t done much film work since Queer as Folk, do you think he’s right?
I’ve never really tried very hard to be a part of the film industry, so I don’t know if he’s right or not. Queer as Folk was a fluke, and then I just went back to theater. I’ve been significantly more satisfied with the work I’ve been doing since Queer as Folk ended. It’s been almost all theater, but that was my mostly my intention, so I’m doing what I always wanted to do.

But do you feel like your coming-out has hindered your career in any way?
I don’t know what decisions are being made behind closed doors in casting sessions or what people think of me, so I don’t know what kind of difference it would’ve made or what kind of career I would have now if I hadn’t come out. I just know that not coming out was something I wasn’t capable of doing. I don’t regret it. The one thing that’s been frustrating for me is that coming out has forced me to have to talk about my private life, which is something that I have no interest talking about in general. I don’t feel like actors should ever be obligated to open up about that. I want to be out because it’s important to me socially and politically, but at the same time I don’t think it’s anybody’s business who I sleep with.

Then it must have been strange when New York magazine put you on the cover of its 2002 “Gay Issue” and labeled you “The Post-Gay Gay Icon.” What did that mean to you?
At the time — and I was feeling this a lot when I was doing Queer as Folk — I was frustrated with how much ghettoizing there was of the gay community: The “us versus them” mentality as far as gays and straights. So I sort of understood the idea of “post-gay” as being beyond labels of sexuality.

A recent Newsweek article claimed that effeminate gay characters on television shows like Glee, Ugly Betty, Entourage, Modern Family, and True Blood might actually be hurting rather than helping the LGBT community. What do you think of the representation of gays on TV today?
I don’t watch all those shows, so I don’t really know who the characters are, but just the fact that they’re out there is important. Maybe adults can’t use them as a political tool in some way, but I know — and this was important to me when I was doing Queer as Folk — that any kind of visibility is a comfort when you’re 14 and living in the middle of nowhere. Now it’s easy to find two boys kissing on TV, so at least you don’t have to go to a weird video store to search for an old Merchant-Ivory movie.

In retrospect, could the substance-abusing, hypersexualized characters on Queer as Folk have done more harm than good in the long run?
Just last night somebody came up to me and was like, “I wouldn’t have gotten through my adolescence if that show hadn’t been on television.” So that good outweighs however obnoxious the show might have potentially gotten.

Do you ever stumble across the edited reruns that currently air on Logo?
No. I wouldn’t watch it. I have a lot of friends that I’ve made since the show who’ve never seen it, and occasionally they’ll say, “Oh, my God, I was watching TV and I saw that show you were on.” They always say, “You were so blond!”

What are the chances of a Queer as Folk reunion special? I’d totally watch A Very Queer as Folksy Christmas.
I’m pretty certain there will never be a reunion, but I do see the cast maybe once a year. I’m in New York and they’re mostly all in L.A., but when I’m out there I try to see some of them for lunch. We all get along.

Getting back to your theater work, the last time you appeared on the New York stage was this past spring at the Public Theater in Craig Lucas’s The Singing Forest, a complicated epic in which you played a gay Starbucks barista and a straight Nazi officer. In one scene, your Nazi character raped Olympia Dukakis’s character from behind for what felt like an eternity. Does that top of the list of surreal things you’ve had to do onstage?
Yes, it does. I was really excited to be a part of that project because I’m such a fan of Craig and the two roles I played were so extraordinarily polar opposite. I’d done a lot of classical work like Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Beckett, but I hadn’t done a new play since A Letter From Ethel Kennedy in 2002, so I really wanted to work on something new. It was a great experience. Olympia’s such a great actress, a great acting teacher, and a great person to just be in a room with so you can watch her work.

The reviews of The Singing Forest weren’t exactly raves. Did critics just not get it?
Oh, I don’t read criticism at all. I can’t. But I’d say 60% of actors don’t read criticism. It confuses you, so it’s just not worth it. I learned during Queer as Folk not to read any of the things people say about you.

You also played Alan Strang in Berkshire Theatre Festival’s celebrated 2005 production of Equus. How did you, unlike Daniel Radcliffe, manage to avoid having a picture of your penis posted all over the Internet?
Well, ushers were running down the aisles taking cameras out of peoples’ hands. Actually, I have heard that there is a way to get one — which isn’t a surprise, knowing some of my fans. I don’t know if it’s online, so you may have to go into one of those fan forums or live chats and talk to some middle-aged, overweight woman who probably has it in a file somewhere on her desktop.

Speaking of fans, novelist Christopher Rice once told me that he sometimes gets mistaken for you on the street. Do you ever get mistaken for Christopher Rice?
Nope. That’s weird, because isn’t he really tall? I often don’t get mistaken for myself anymore, which is comforting.

Original Source

Breathing Places

Come rain or shine, I shall be out in my garden between 11.00 am and 12.00 noon GMT tomorrow morning planting two trees for the BBC Tree O'Clock's Guinness world record attempt to plant the most trees in ONE hour!

My two beautiful trees will also count towards UNEP - Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign.

So, if you can spare an hour tomorrow and want to make YOUR part of the planet a nicer place to live, then you still have time to grab a tree - some are free from various places across the country - and get planting! Hope to see you there! ;)

Here's a cute video too:

Randy in video clip of POP!

Here's a video clip of Randy as Andy Warhol in POP! at the Yale Repertory Theatre. He looks fantastic and people who've seen it say he's brilliant in the part.

What's going on???

Why are links to past posts of mine showing up suddenly in Google alerts today? Some are MONTHS old! I don't understand...

Here's a pic (give it a couple of clicks, it does get LARGE) just to say sorry if you have a dozen links to my blog!!


EDIT: I think I figured out what happened. I couldn't find a couple of old posts and started fiddling about with the tags/labels. Didn't think at the time, but of course if you re-label a post google picks it up as new. Sorry people!

Gale sighted in Miami...

according to The Miami Herald:

Lunching at Michael's Genuine Food & Drink Wednesday: actor Gale Harold of Queer as Folk and Desperate Housewives fame.

So, what's he doing in Miami? Working (fingers crossed) or just a little holiday?

No idea what he ate, but here's the lunch menu, so, any guesses? Apparently it serves great food and it's "casual dress" so he's right at home! :)

Oh, by the way, I wonder if we'll see him in one of their $20 "organic" T-shirts? ;)

Original Source

Couple of new Gale pics...

Fay posted a couple of pics of Gale on her Facebook wall here. They are obviously the ones she promised to post way back when Gale joined her to do the commentary for the Falling for Grace DVD.

She says he's "quite funny in it..." - don't hold back with those gushing compliments, Fay, will you?


He looks damned cute in them though!