Reel Thoughts Interview: Wickedly Talented

To look at Kyle Dean Massey’s resume, you, like him, might marvel at how in 2011, he played “a dead teenager, a Winkie Prince and a tap-dancing cowboy. Now let’s start all over.” Massey is a much sought-after actor who starred as the lead singer in Altar Boyz, as the “dead son” in Next to Normal and then as an aspiring country music singing cowboy whose main rivals were drag sensation Varla Jean Merman and hilarious out comedian Leslie Jordan. The show’s title Lucky Guy didn’t prove prophetic as the show closed quickly on Broadway. The good news is that it is bringing Massey back to Arizona as Fiyero, the gorgeous “Winkie Prince” who falls for the not-so-popular Elphaba in Wicked.

I spoke with Massey,  the handsome star and strong anti-LGBT bullying advocate, while he was finishing a long stop in Los Angeles.  “It’s always different,” Massey explained, about how coming back to the show on tour compares to doing Wicked on Broadway. “The chance to get to do the show in different cities has an effect on it as well. You learn that people in different cities are going to react differently, and that makes it exciting.”

Massey came out with a moving “It Gets Better” video because the Arkansas-born actor wanted kids to know that he came from the same background and now he’s on Broadway. “It’s a disservice to the younger generation not to speak up. What motivated me to make mine was to make it for young gay theater kids.”

Having played the lead of Altar Boyz and now the romantic lead in every tween girl’s favorite musical Wicked has made Massey a teen idol. I asked him which show had the bigger groupies, and he responded that the “Altarholics” were more interested in the performers, while Wicked’s fans are more focused on the show itself. “People get very nervous at the stage door. They’ll ask to take a picture and you can literally see them shaking. That’s the great thing about theater, you can wait by the stage door and meet whoever you want, right after you’ve seen them on stage.”

Asked for the reason for Wicked’s popularity in the LGBT community, Massey replied, “Not to stereotype, but it’s based on The Wizard of Oz. What little gay boy wasn’t obsessed with that movie... I mean, come on,” he said laughing. "The music is very accessible and it’s just spectacular. It just hits on every level. Gay audience, straight audience, there’s something in there for everyone.”

“People identify very closely with one or the other girls, or even my character, who’s changed for the better. It’s just about allowing yourself to be different and how “different can be good” and how you have to look past some things in order to figure out what you think is best or good, or right or wrong.”

“Fiyero is a Winkie prince, and he’s always compared to JFK Jr. He’s royalty and he’s kind of a playboy. Everyone knows who he is, like the male version of a Kardashian. He’s just famous for being famous. He hasn’t done anything and isn’t motivated, he’s always had the means to make people do what he wants. He meets Elphaba and he is so intrigued that he doesn’t “work” on her, that his tricks don’t work on her, and so consequently, he listens to her and learns from her and by the end, he realizes that he wants more than just getting everything he wants, he wants to do good.”

“That show was certainly not smooth sailing,” Massey admitted about Lucky Guy, where Varla Jean Merman played a conniving country star and Leslie Jordan was her partner. “But Jeffrey (Roberson, Varla Jean's alter ego) and Leslie were serious pros. They are both so talented and they brought so much to the table. Leslie was constantly telling stories and I was thinking “You’ve got to be kidding. You’ve got to write a book!” I got to have a lot of fun scenes with Varla. She tried to seduce me, it was just campy and over-the-top and we got to have a good time.”

Xanadu, starring Cheyenne Jackson, was another highlight for Massey, who played a roller-skating muse. “That show was so fun, it was really like the little show that could. No one thought the show was going to run, and here we were getting Drama Desk and Tony Award nominations and appearing on all the morning shows. I don’t think that I’ve had more fun on a show ever.”

Tempe audiences will be the last to see Massey in Wicked, for now. Gammage is his last stop on the tour, but you can also see him on an upcoming episode of the CW show Heart of Dixie, where he plays a stripper who drives a party bus.

When told about Arizona Governor Janice Brewer’s “tiff on the tarmac” with President Obama, the photo of which has been photo-shopped to make Brewer into the Wicked Witch of the West, I asked Massey if all witches are redeemable or just Elphaba. “Well, Glinda is the one who’s redeemable, because Elphaba was always good. Some people, you can’t. Some people are too far gone, that’s for sure,” he said, laughing.

The Wicked tour is now playing through March 11 at ASU Gammage in Tempe, Arizona. For more information on these and future tour dates, visit the official Wicked website.

Interview by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reverend's Preview: AFI Fest 2011

The trailer for Clint Eastwood's latest epic, J. Edgar, shows Leonardo DiCaprio as the equally respected and reviled founder of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, holding the hand of his #2 and confidante, Clyde Tolson (handsome Armie Hammer), in the backseat of their limousine. While historical evidence of a long-rumored romance between the two men is scant, the new film clearly entertains the rumors. The truth may be revealed in Hollywood tonight, when J. Edgar has its world premiere during the opening night gala for AFI Fest 2011, presented by Audi. It will open in theaters nationwide on November 11.

J. Edgar won't be the first movie to at least allude to questions about Hoover's sexuality. In 1991, Oliver Stone's JFK featured Tommy Lee Jones giving a mincingly-gay performance as Clay Shaw (a.k.a. Clay Bertrand), a New Orleans businessman accused of taking part in a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy that involved Hoover's FBI and the CIA. The film also alleged that a ring of early-1960's call boys existed to discreetly serve political power players, including Hoover.

The new movie was written by openly gay screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who won an Academy Award for his excellent script of 2008's Milk. Black has been a busy boy lately, having also penned the stage play 8, about the continuing battle in California over marriage equality. 8 had its world premiere in September at Broadway's Eugene O'Neill Theatre. In a recent Out magazine interview, Black said of his work on J. Edgar: "To the conservative right, Hoover was a hero. Of course, in the gay community, you hear he was gay and a cross-dresser. I was curious about where the truth lies. Here is a guy who was arguably the most powerful man in the United States in the 20th century... The truth was often more heartbreaking, more horrible than what people think."

Judi Dench, as Hoover's seemingly manipulative mother, and Naomi Watts also headline the film's all-star cast. DiCaprio may seem an unusual choice to play the title character, even with prosthetic make-up. Black defended the casting, saying "Hoover was a pretty good-looking guy in 1919! He was very fit... they called him 'Speedy.' It's not a huge stretch."

What is known about Hoover's relationship with Tolson is that the unmarried Hoover named the man he described as his "alter ego" as recipient of his estate upon Hoover's death in 1972. Tolson also received the American flag that draped the casket at the end of Hoover's funeral, and is now buried near Hoover at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC. Whether Eastwood and Black's J. Edgar reveals anything more remains to be seen. Still, it may emerge as one of the biggest gay-interest movies of 2011, if only due to the pairing of photogenic DiCaprio and Hammer.

Now in its 25th year, the AFI Fest annually spotlights several GLBT-interest films and/or filmmakers. Other screenings in this vein between now and November 10 will include the world premiere of With Every Heartbeat (a.k.a. Kyss Mig), a lovely, sincere domestic drama from Sweden about two women (one of them engaged to a man) who unexpectedly fall in love with each other during a family gathering; an evening with gay auteur Pedro Almodovar, this year's guest artistic director, which will include a screening of his Law of Desire as well as conversation with Almodovar and a yet-to-be-revealed "special guest" (could it be Antonio Banderas?); and Wim Wenders' 3D dance spectacle Pina.

Though I'm not a fan of its source material, I am looking forward to the fest's screening of Carnage. Based on the excessive, inexplicably acclaimed play God of Carnage, the usually-restrained Roman Polanski directs a dream cast (Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly) in the film. I'm also excited about the Los Angeles premieres of We Need to Talk About Kevin, starring GLBT fave Tilda Swinton as mother to a sociopathic son, and Lars von Trier's apocalyptic Melancholia. Watch for my reviews of these awards contenders in my festival wrap-up report here next week.

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.

Reel Thoughts: They Called Him the Streak

Talk about a streak of fame! Robert Opel made Academy Award history when he famously ran naked past presenter David Niven at the 1974 Oscars, which led Niven to quip, “Isn't it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?" To show how far we haven’t come, this streaking stunt was decades before Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl “Nipplegate,” which seems almost quaint in comparison, yet Jackson’s areola ignited much more rabid Right Wing mouth-foaming than Opel’s penis. Opel even got invited to The Mike Douglas Show where the host serenaded him alongside Bea Arthur.

Uncle Bob (available on DVDthis week), as you might guess from the title, is a tribute to the man who gained national fame in an instant, made by his namesake and nephew Robert Oppel. The film is a fascinating look at a man who was a pioneer in gay rights political action, as well as an erotic photographer who created images as controversial as Robert Mapplethorpe’s. Sadly, Uncle Bob was murdered in 1979 in his San Francisco gallery called the Fey-Way Studios by thugs demanding drugs and money. The younger Oppel spends the film trying to make sense of how and why his uncle was gunned down in front of witnesses.

Oppel mixes archival footage with recreations of events where he plays his uncle, including his murder, and the effect is sometimes effective and sometimes too over-the-top and badly acted. Opel’s death occurred shortly after he staged an “execution” of Harvey Milk’s Twinkie-loving killer Dan White while dressed as “Gay Justice.” Director Oppel (seen, like his namesake in archival photos, frequently full frontal during the course of Uncle Bob) uses a heavy hand to explore the possibility that this act of performance art enraged the San Francisco Police Department, and that they somehow orchestrated his uncle’s murder.

This tangent, with scenes of cops yelling “Kill! Kill!” into the killer’s ear in a jail cell, isn’t necessary, though, because Uncle Bob was a fascinating man who interviewed and worked with the likes of Divine and the infamous Cockettes. The interviews with those close to Opel provide an engrossing look at life in the 1970’s Castro District of San Francisco, and more specifically a moving portrait of a man who led a radical and trail blazing life who was cut down in his prime.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.