Ibrahim Eloouhabi: The "I Killed a Kid" kid tells us his pronouns, models some Liberace outfits. Is that enough? With nude Costner and Moroccan dudes

 

I felt like I should profile one of the actors from In the Hand of Dante, to get something of value from it (other than picking up my bilingual edition of The Inferno again).  So  I checked the actors who played teenage Dante, the murdered Bartender, the guy who killed his father,  the boy with a big knife (who was killed), and Mephistopheles, but none of them were suitable.  How about the boy who tells his uncle, "I just killed a kid"?  It's not clear in the movie (nothing is), but he grows up to be focus character Nick (Oscar Isaacs, right).

Ibrahim Elouahabi gives his pronouns (he/his), and speaks Arabic.  That's enough for a profile. 

Not just Arabic.  He also speaks Turkish and Darija (Moroccan Arabic) and he is studying French. 

Left: Moroccan guy.

Darija is not intelligible with Modern Standard Arabic: it has reduced the number of vowels, adapted its grammar to Tamazight (Berber), and borrowed much of its vocabulary from French: forshita (fork), tabla (table), boulis (police).

Ibrahim's family is from Morocco, but he was born "on the vibrant streets of Brooklyn," according to his hyperbolic IMDB bio.  He began his career in 2019, as a fashion model for Zara, Nike, and Macy's.  Soon he was performing in commercials for Brawny paper towels, Magic Spoon (upscale cereal), and Marriot Vacation Club.

His on-screen performances begin with two shorts, The Prescription (2020), no description available, and Roque (2022), about Salvadorean poet Roque Dalton.  Ibrahim plays Roque as a boy, and Jaden McKnew (left) as an adult.

Next came a small role in Audrey's Children (2024), a biopic of Dr. Audrey Evans, who developed "revolutionary treatments" for sick children.

In Ebenezer the Traveler (2024), the ghosts of Scrooge, his sister, Jacob Marley, and a grown-up Tiny Tim are assigned to help an aspiring singer in modern-day Oklahoma.  I think Ibrahim plays her son.

More after the break

"In the Hand of Dante": Film noir about an original Dante manuscript, set in a 1950s-era 2001. And it gets more confusing. And homophobic

I love the Divine Comedy, at least the Inferno, where Virgil guides Dante through the stages of hell.  He puts the sodomites in the Seventh Circle, where fire rains down on those who "do violence against nature," but at least it permitted me to
mention LGBT people in an Italian class in the 1980s, when otherwise the rule was "Don't mention them, they don't exist."  

So I'm going to watch the new movie In the Hands of Dante, about the discovery of an original Divine Comedy manuscript.  Maybe there will be gay characters, probably not, but I'll still get to hear that beginning phrase again: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura (at the midpoint of life's journey, I found myself lost in a dark forest).

We've all been there.

Scene 1: Dante climbs a rocky cliff.  Meanwhile, sometime in the 1940s or 1950s, an obnoxious novelist (Oscar Isaacs) complains to his friend that his books are too brilliant to be edited. "I'd rather the stableboy f*ck my wife than see my work edited." Heterosexual identity established immediately after his obnoxiousness.

Oscar Isaacs' backside

"So, what's your book about?"

"It's a translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. I've been working on it for ten years." 

Friend squeezes his shoulder.  "You're still hot after ten years."  Wait -- are you flirting with him?

" By the way, who is Dante?"  Say what?  Who doesn't know Dante?

"An old dead guy.  But he got trapped in the cage of rhyme and meter.  I'm breaking out, so my translation will be far superior to the original."  The greatest work in Italian literature?  You planning to improve on "Hamlet" next?

Scene 2:  Newark, 1969.  A young boy enters a middle-class house and tells his Uncle, "I just killed some kid."  He explains that the boy (Gavin Weingarten) had a big knife, and asked if he wanted to die.  He tried to defend himself, they struggled, and he managed to stab Knife Boy.  

Since he doesn't know who the boy was, and no one saw them, Uncle says that he should forget about it.  But don't make "malarkey" a habit in the future.  Are you going to grow up to be Our Hero? But you're way too young. That would make the "I'm a better writer than Dante" conversation sometime in the 2000s, and it was obviously in the 1950s.  Maybe Uncle is Our Hero?

Scene 3: Bora Bora, seaside, 2001. Our Hero on a hammock, writing in his notebook about "creamy white gardenia blossoms" and "faded petroglyphs."  So you must be the Boy who killed someone, now middle aged, but it's a parallel world with the look and feel of the 1950s: no computers or cell phones, men wear hats and smoke constantly, writers use pencils. 

Our Hero tells us that the Nine Heavens of the Paradiso is a bad translation; It's really Nine Skies.  The last and rarest of them is the Sky of Illimitibleness.  Or you could say "Endless," if you weren't a pretentious jerk.

Cut to the Young Dante sitting under a tree, looking at the Illimitible Sky.  

Scene 4:  New York, 2001, "That time when the daylight sky was an oppressive, low-lying glare of white, and the dark of night was..."  So, summer.  Is this one of your stories, or really happening in-universe?    A greasy-haired guy named Louie (Gerard Butler, but blond and greasy) saunters into a closed bar and orders a Dewars and water.  He criticizes the bartender's moustache: "You see a guy with a moustache, he's either a cop or a (homophobic slur)."

I expected L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle, the love that moves the sun and the stars, and I'm getting Charles Bukowski, homophobia, and a parallel world where the 1950s never ended. 

"By the way, you ever take it up the ass?" Louie asks.  "Might make a man out of you."  But then he calls him a c*cksucker.  Twice.  Are you homophobic or not, buddy?  

He criticizes the Bartender and his wife for being excessively ugly, and threatens his nine-year old daughter.

Next topic of conversation: the Bartender's Uncle, "a real fuckup," who opened the bar, but pissed his money away gambling.  Wait, is that the Uncle from 1969?  So the Bartender is Our Hero?  But he's supposed to be in Bora Bora, writing pretentious crap.  And the Uncle was elderly in 1969. No way he's alive in 2001.  

Unc owes the gang a lot of money, so his nephew the Bartender is going to provide it.  Louie takes tonight's proceeds, $1,200, then orders the Bartender to go down on him.  But he shoots him as soon as he gets on his knees.

What does this have to do with Dante?

More after the break.  Caution: It gets more confusing, but there are cocks.

Daniel DeSanto: The gay kid in the Midnight Society, a Mean Girl, a Sicilian assassin, a short guy with a big dick. Who cares if he's straight?

 

Submitted for your approval: Nickelodeon's Are You Afraid of the Dark (1992-1996), an anthology of ghost and horror stories told by -- and evaluated by -- a group of teenagers called the Midnight Society.  

It aired at 5:30 pm on weeknights and 9:30 pm on Saturday night, so I didn't watch often, but I recall a few episodes. 

"The Tale of the Water Demon": Tony Sampson steals a gold watch, which draws the wrath of the water demon and threatens his gay-subtext buddy, Charlie Hofheimer

"The Tale of the Zombie Dice":  Jay Baruchel (top photo) fights a video arcade owner who is shrinking teens and selling them as pets.

"The Tale of the Phantom Cab": While lost in the woods, Jacob Tremblay (no relation to Jason Tremblay) and his brother stumble upon a monstrous being who keeps teenagers captive unless they can solve a riddle.

And I recall three of the teen actors who appeared in the frame sections, squabbling, flirting, forming alliances:

Bookish intellectual Gary (Ross Hull, left), the leader.

Frank (Jason Alisharan) the leather-jacket bad boy

Prank-loving, irreverent Tucker (Daniel DeSanto, right), Frank's younger brother, who joins the Midnight Society in Season 3, and stays through the series finale.  He becomes the leader of the Midnight Society in the revival series (1999-2000).

You're probably expecting a profile of Ross Hull, who is gay in real life, and rather built; but Gary turned me off by crushing on Sam (a girl) and eventually dating her.  

Frank competed for Sam's affections, too. 

But Tucker never expressed any heterosexual interest; indeed, he seemed to have a "he's arrogant!" love-hate attraction to Frank. 

He pushes to get his friend Stig (Codie Wilbie) to be admitted to the group in Season 6.  In the revival series, he and his friend Quinn (Kareem Blackwell) found the new Midnight Society together.    

Plus his stories are about friendships that are threatened, or grow stronger, through paranormal peril.  A lot of gay coding for Nickelodeon in the 1990s.

I didn't follow any of Daniel's post-Dark works. Somehow I had the impression that he played Elaine's boyfriend Jake on Seinfeld (a recovering alcohol, he goes off the wagon due to Jerry's negligence, and seeks revenge,)  But the episode aired in 1991, when Daniel was 11 years old.  Jake was actually played by David Naughton. 

When I was reviewing an episode of 100 Things to Do Before High School for my profile of Max Ehrich, I thought I saw him playing Mr. Roberts, the guidance counselor, but that's Jack De Sena

Our Daniel, a Toronto native, was a busy child and teen actor, specializing in horror for obvious reasons:

Gabe, who visits Egypt with his uncle and uncovers a mummy's curse in two episodes of Goosebumps (1995).

Theo in two episodes of The New Ghostwriter Mysteries (1997): he helps the gang and the ghost foil a corrupt cop, and later, thieves who target seemingly worthless items.

Zeke, a teenage theater employee who helps Taylor Handley foil The Phantom of the Megaplex (2000).  

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

"The Feast of the Seven Fishes": All of the tropes I hate, but I still liked it. With Skyler Gisondo and bonus Italian dicks

 

The Feast of the Seven Fishes just dropped on Netflix.  All I know is that it's a Christmas movie starring Skyler Gisondo, so the likelihood of gay characters or even subtexts is minimal.  I'm going to watch anyway.

Scene 1: Beautiful establishing shots of a mining town in West Virginia, winter 1983.  I loved that year!  Madonna, Michael Jackson, "I'm Coming Out," Tom Cruise, Family Ties, Mama's Family.  Tony (Skyler Gisondo) is painting by the river and gazing at his acceptance letter from a prestigious art school.  Angelo (Andrew Schultz, below) and his penis, "Mr. Boner," stop by to tell him about a party with girls desperate to have sex with any guy who asks. 

 "Nope, I'm not going."  Not interested in girls, buddy?

Well, how about coming along on his date?  There will be extremely horny girls there, too. "Nope."  If I didn't know from the plot synopsis that he has two girlfriends, I'd have pegged Tony as gay.

"Please. My penis hates being alone with girls."

"Ok, I'm in. Just to please your penis." He doesn't really say that.

Scene 2: Back in his shabby working-class home, someone named Pap tries to get Tony drunk on homemade hooch.  There's no one named "Pap" in the cast list, but he could be Tony's dad, played by Paul Ben-Victor.

 We cut to a super-elegant mansion, where a super-elegant rich girl named Beth yells at her even-richer  boyfriend Prentice (Allen Williamson, left) for backing out of his promise to spend Christmas with the family.  He's going skiing with his friends instead. Prentice, baby, the first rule of relationships -- never leave them alone at Christmas. They'll be screwing someone else by Boxing Day. 

Mom is upset: "You'll never land a rich husband with that attitude!  Like all men, he prefers the company of other men."  So all men are gay?  

Beth wants a husband who will spend time with her.  That's what gay bffs are for, girlfriend.

Scene 3: Beth hanging out with her Italian-American friend, complaining about this whole "get a rich husband" thing.  They smoke pot.  

Meanwhile, Tony's Uncles Carmine and Frankie, brothers, not a gay couple(Ray Arbruzzo, left, Joe Pantoleone) are stocking up on booze, when they see Tony's Ex throwing herself at a truck driver.  They discuss her boobs for several minutes before getting around to complaining about her post-breakup downward spiral.

Cut to Tony's cousin Juke (Josh Helman, left and below), the family intellectual, telling his buds about the Feast of the Seven Fishes, although they obviously already know: it's a traditional Christmas Eve dinner consisting of seven types of seafood.  I thought it was a religious thing, Jesus with the loaves and fishes.

He stops to complain about not having a girlfriend, which is especially tough at Christmas. Foreshadowing -- ten to one he gets with Tony's Ex-Girlfriend, the one who throws herself at truck drivers. 

Scene 4: Rich-girl Beth and her friend,  incredibly high, stare at the menu at a hot dog restaurant, trying to decide what to order.  How about hot dogs?  They discuss going to a party tonight, but all of the parties are full of girls desperate to have sex with any boy who asks, so they'll get groped and prodded all the time. "Well, maybe I'll do a little groping," the friend jokes.  So she's a lesbian?

Nope.  "I've been dating this guy and his penis." Wait -- her boyfriend is "Come along on my date tonight" Angelo and his penis Mr. Boner.  And Angelo  has this cousin: "Cute, nice, smart..."  A gay guy would immediately ask "How big is his cock?"  

"Maybe you could come along on my date tonight, and dump your Christmas-hating boyfriend for Tony? Or at least seduce him and then dump him on New Year's Day?"

"Sure, I'll give it a shot."

Left: Juke butt.

More after the break

"Caravaggio's Shadow": As time goes by, the gay Baroque painter becomes more and more straight. With nude Italian men

When my generation was growing up, teachers, reference books, and movies always presented historical figures as absolutely, undeniably straight.  My paperback copy of The Importance of Being Earnest said that Oscar Wilde was imprisoned "on scandalous charges."  I asked the teacher what those charges were. She said she didn't know.

In the 1980s, we started to uncover the "lies, secrets, and silence," reveal the gay men and lesbians of the past who had been denied us.  We collected them like beacons of hope in a homophobic world: Plato, Aristotle, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, Gertrude Stein, Michelangelo...and Caravaggio (1571-1610), who introduced the Baroque style of bright, naturalistic color to Italy, who scandalized the art world by using thieves, beggars, and prostitutes as models for religious-themed paintings.  And who was gay.

Everybody in West Hollywood went to Caravaggio (1986), by filmmaker Derek Jarman (who announced that he was gay later that year). We were expecting a lot of cute Italian guys (there are some), and hoping that they would be nude (no). 

We were also hoping that Caravaggio would be presented as gay, but resigned to the likelihood that he would be straightwashed: turned heterosexual, or mostly heterosexual (a few men as trivial dalliances as he pursued the Woman of His Dreams).  

He was straightwashed.

As a child and teenager, the artist (Dexter Fletcher, left), is the victim of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.  This "turns him" gay, or rather pansexual. 

As an adult (Nigel Terry), he is a decadent figure like something out of a Pasolini film, consorting with men and women, although he prefers women.   He seduces both Raduccio (Sean Bean) and his girlfriend Lena.  But Raduccio is just a dalliance; the heterosexual romance is True Love.  Then Raduccio kills Lena, and a distraught Caravaggio kills him.  Gay lives must always end in tragedy.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.