Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts

Theo Taplitz: Jewish homophobe, gay kid, wyrm, artist, filmmaker, with some cocks and butts, and a lot of "after the death of"

  


Having had a Jewish partner for ten years, I get sort of nostalgic for Jewish culture, so  when a cute guy appeared on the icon of Bad Shabbos (2024), I clicked without doing any research.   I found three siblings and their partners preparing for Shabbos dinner with their upscale New York parents.

1. David (John Bass, seen here nude in Baywatch) and his shiksha-but-converting girlfriend Beth.  Her parents from Wisconsin are coming, too, and he is worried that they will "freak out."  It's dinner with prayers, what's the big deal?

The security guard downstairs tells the girlfriend to be sure to sit next to Ritchie, because "He's the shit."  So I kept waiting for Ritchie to arrive.  But no such person appears in the cast list. 


2. Abby and her boyfriend Benjamin (Ashley Zukerman), who hate each other.  He actually hates and insults everything.









3. The third sibling, Adam (Theo Taplitz), is still a teenager, in his room, working out to strobe lights and techno music.  David cautions that his future in-laws are from Wisconsin, not used to families arguing, like New York Jewish families do, so play it cool.

"But what about Benjamin?  The way he insults me!  Do I have to be polite to that slimy cocks*ck?"

"Yes, even to that...um...cocks*ck."

"Ok, I'll try.  But if that cheating cocks*ck starts something, I can't promise that I won't defend myself!"

Ok, three homophobic slurs in ten seconds.  I'm out.  But I wanted to know about Theo Taplitz, who so easily agreed to batter around homophobic slurs and insult LGBT viewers.


An article in Adroit gives his biography: Born in Laurel Canyon in 2003, attended the Los Angeles High School for the Arts, became a Scholastic Art and Writing National Gold Medalist twice, graduated in 2021.  

Enrolled at Columbia University as a John Jay Scholar, probably graduated in 2025.  His work "explores the middle ground between objective and subjective experience and the ruptures that occur in that unstable territory."  Um...does this explain why you're ok with homophobic slurs?

He's got 15 writing/directing credits on the IMDB, beginning when he was 13.  Quite a prodigy, but.....

True Places Never Are (2015): A boy trapped in sadness...next!

Requiem for Mr. Cromwell (2016). A boy trapped in sadness...again?

Dybbuk (2017): his little brother plays the dybbuk

Goodbye, Sam (2018): Sam is a dead parrot.

This House Has Eyes (2019): The eyes are watching a father and son at the end of the world.

Grey Heart (2019): After the death of...  When I was studying Creative Writing, they told me that the first rule of short fiction is: someone has to die or be dead.

Gable (2023): A young man uses the voice of Clark Gable to communicate with his catatonic grandfather.  Darn, I thought it would be about the House of the Seven Gables.


I'm getting depressed.  Let's get Theo's butt in here.  And there's nothing particularly homophobic about the content so far.

Theo has 17 acting credits on the IMDB, but they are mostly the shorts he wrote and directed.  Only a few other projects:


Little Men
 (2016): After the death of -- well, who cares, all fiction must have someone dead -- Jake (Theo) and his parents become the owners of an apartment building. He becomes friends with Tony (Michael Barbieri), whose mother has a dress shop downstairs.  They help each other out; Tony even defends Jake when bulllies "insult his sexuality."  Of course, being called "gay" is a horrible insult, because gay people are so horrible, right?  But Jake's dad decides to triple the rent; Tony's mom can't pay, and is evicted.  And of course the boys can no longer be friends.

More after the break

Nicholas Hamilton: From depressed Outback teen to curious superhero, gay actor into exotic cocktails and girls. With n*de photos

 


 The n*de celebrity subreddit posted some photos of actor Nicholas Hamilton. 

Never heard of him, but according to Wikipedia,  he is gay, and came out at age 18.  So researching this guy will be easy: I just need to answer the third question in my profile: has he played any gay characters?

But doubtless someone who has been out since he started in show business will choose only gay roles.  Why would he want to play a straight character?

More bio: Nic was born in 2000 and grew up in Alstonville, New South Wales about 2 1/2 hours south of Brisbane.  His first acting role was Elvis Presley in a grade school play.  He decided on an acting career after his uncle died of cancer in 2011. 

His on-screen career begins with an episode of the Australian teencom The Mako Mermaids (2013) and a lot of shorts:

Time (2013): A boy is bullied due to his belief in time travel.



The Streak
 (2013): In spite of the misleading title, not about streaking, about a man who wants to honor the memory of his dead father by ending his evil uncle's "cricket streak."  So I guess Uncle always beat Dad at the game of cricket?

Jackrabbit (2013): A boy in the Outback has an abusive father.

There are lots more, but I'm fast-forwarding to Nic's full-length movies:

Strangerland (2015): a teenager (Nic) and his sister disappear in the Outback.  So, like Picnic at Hanging Rock?  

"There is a stillness in the air, and I'm in it. There are no sounds, no whispers, no shadows, no darkness. And just for a moment, there is no 'you', no 'me'. And I'm not lost."

Sounds like he's into the sister


Captain Fantastic (2016): in spite of the misleading title, it's not about superheroes, it's about a family living off the grid because they want to be critical thinkers or something.  Nic plays one of the children.

It (2017) and It: Chapter 2 (2019): Nic plays Henry Bowers, a sadistic bully who torments the Losers Club.  Turns out that he's the puppet of the transdimensional being known as It.  In the original novel, he's bisexual, doing things with a boy and a girl, but this does not occur in the movie.





In 2018, Nic graduate from high school and came out. Now we'll see the gay roles, right?

Endless (2020): High school graduates are separated by a tragic accident, one goes to limbo, and the other finds a way for them to get together again.  So, Orpheus and Eurydice?   It's heterosexual high schoolers played by Nic and a girl. 

In spite of the misleading title, the tv series Action Royale is not a spy spoof: A teen (Nic) starts an underground e-sports ring to pay off his father's gambling debts. He gets a girlfriend.

Brave the Dark (2023): High schooler Nate (Nic) is "engulfed by darkness" due to "traumatic childhood memories."  He's taken in by his drama teacher in 1973 and 1986.  None of the reviews mention gay characters.

Three movies, all straight?  Let's hope you do a better job of LGBT representation in your tv shows, buddy.


A 2020 episode of Love, Victor, about a gay guy trying to come out. Rahim (Anthony Keyvan) makes a date with Charlie (Nic) on a dating app, but when they meet in person, the dude rejects him for being too feminine. 

8 episodes of The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh (2024): An FBI agent is trying to deport the Indian-American family next door.  Then his son (Nic) falls in love with their daughter in a Romeo-and-Juliet thing. 

5 episodes of Gen V (2023-25) an Amazon Prime series about a superhero academy.  Maveric (Nic), who can turn invisible, is dating a girl who can turn into an alpaca (he's into it).  He admits to peeking at both men and women in the shower while invisible, but that's more curioisty than an expression of bisexual identity. Dude is definitely hetero-romantic.

One episode as gay, 14 as straight or straight-ish.  7% is not a great record.


More after the break.  I tried to post the n*de photos twice, and got censored.  This is the third time. Caution: Explicit.

"And Just Like That": Carrie's return has elitism, bisexuals, dongs, musems, marital spats, s'mores, and shoes. Lots of shoes.


I never watched Sex and the City when it first aired on HBO (1998-2004), although I knew about Mr. Big (Chris Noth), for obvious reasons.  Who wants to watch four super-entitled New York-centric ladies having lunch? The only episode I watched featured Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) investigating bisexuals for her "Sex and the City" newspaper column.  

Her conclusion: they are all gay, and fooling themselves.  Bisexuals don't exist. 

So much for bi representation. 

Researching this review, I discovered that Carrie has a stereotypic gay best friend with the incredible name Stanford Blatch (why, was Bruce Van Swishington taken?).  

Having never watched the original, I've never been interested in the 2021-25 sequel, And Just Like That (presumably the title means that 20 years have passed "just like that"). But I've seen n*de guys parading around on occasion, and the plot synopses mention several LGBTQ characters.  We'll see if the portrayals are cringy.


I'll identify the five main ladies by their careers.  From left to right, Filmmaker Lisa, Art Dealer Charlotte, Columnist Carrie, Realtor Seema, Lawyer Miranda. 

Episode 3.5, "Under the Table," has three main plot threads.

The Charlotte/Lisa Plot:

Scene 1: The Guggenheim.  I love that museum.  Wait -- they didn't visit, they're just walking past. Art Dealer Charlotte's boyfriend Harry (Evan Handler) reveals that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but they found it early, so he has a 98% chance of full recovery. 

In other news, they're going glamping (glamor camping) with the kids at Governors Island this weekend.

Scene 2:  Nuclear family breakfast in a huge, super-elegant kitchen. Filmmaker Lisa won't be back from filming her documentary until late Friday, so she tells her husband, Herbert Wexley (wow, what unrealistic entitled name), to take their children to Governors Island for glamping with Charlotte and her boyfriend. 

Husband is played by Chris Jackson


Wait -- this is the first he's heard of it. "No, I've told you several times." "No you haven't."
 
"Sorry, I can't do it.  I have a photo shoot for my campaign."  He has to pretend to be a "regular guy," eat one of those...um...frankfurter sausage things...and ride on the...you know, the poor people train...the subway.  

"You can do the 'regular guy' shoot on Monday, " Filmmaker Lisa commands. "This weekend we're going glamping with the Goldblatts."


Scene 3:
 Art Dealer Charlotte is trying to cook, but she's too distracted.  Her friend Anthony (Mario Cantone, left) asks if she's ok. 

Her children, a girl and a nonbinary person, ask if they can skip glamping.  "No, you're going" It's important because her boyfriend has prostate cancer, but he doesn't want them knowing that.

Scene 4: Governors Island (no apostrophe), just south of Manhattan, with views of the skyline.   The nonbinary child notes that there's a spa and go-karts. 

Art Dealer Charlotte's boyfriend complains about the mosquitos. 

 Filmmaker Lisa bursts in, and her husband criticizes her for being late. "Well, four hours ago, I was in Atlanta."  Then they bicker because one of them told the other to buy chocolate to make s'mores.  This couple is on the outs.

Scene 5: A tent big enough for three beds and a living room set. The boyfriend and the kids are lounging around, playing on their cell phones, when Art Dealer Charlotte bursts in and complains that they should be doing outdoor activities. They refuse. My parents used to say that on family vacations.  "You shouldn't be lounging around the cabin reading comic books.  Go enjoy the outdoors."  

How does one "enjoy" the outdoors? It's a place you go through on the way to enjoying things.


Meanwhile, Filmmaker Lisa and her husband bicker. She takes a photo of him and their kids.  When he looks at it, he accidentally scrolls to the last one she took: a selfie with her editor Marion (Mehcad Brooks).

"Are you having an affair with Michael B. Handsome?  Talk about getting your chocolate in Atlanta!"

"No, it's just a work crush."

He continues to growl, so Lisa stomps off, and runs into Charlotte at the pier.  They complain about their partners, and decide to ditch them and take a spa day. 

Cut to the spa. Close up of ladies in bikinis.  They're really pushing the heterosexual male gaze. 

Carrie/Miranda and Seema after the break

"The Cat and the Moon": An almost canonical gay couple and a gay-subtext romance on the Mean Streets of New York


The Cat and the Moon
 (2019) was advertised as a "coming of age" movie with Alex Wolff (left) playing an updated Holden Caulfield.  So I  went in expecting depression, drugs, suicide, heterosexual machinations, and rampant homophobia. I found lots of drugs, suicidal ideations, insanity, and heterosexual romance, but no homophobia, and so many gay subtexts that I couldn't keep track of who was in love with whom.  


New Guy (Alex Wolff) moves to New York City while his mom is in rehab, stays with his dad's old buddy (Mike Epps, who reputedly belongs to one of these cocks).  He gets involved in a lot stuff.  This review will only cover the gay subtext scenes.


Scene 1: 
New Guy's first day in school.  Boyfriend (Giulian Yao Gioello, left), hot for the new guy, befriends him and shows him around.

Scene 2: In algebra class, two stoner buds are playing a game involving fluttering their hands together. 

Scene 3:  New Guy is in the restroom, trying to get high with a bong made of a toilet paper roll, when the stoner buds come in, bickering like an old married couple and talking like "he got into my motherfuckin' grill, yo."  

One stands at the urinal; the other doesn't have to go, so he just stands nearby to get a peek at his bud's penis.

They introduce themselves as Seamus and Russell (Skyler Gisondo, Tommy Nelson).  I'll call them Gay Guy and Straight Friend.  They invite New Guy to a party Friday night.

"Wait -- will your girlfriend be there?"  Gay Guy asks.  

"Yes."

"Fuck!  You never pay attention to me when she's around."  To New Guy: "His balls just evaporate when she's around." That must make sex difficult.


Scene 4; 
The party was cancelled, so Gay Guy and Boyfriend (from Scene 1) invite New Guy to a club .  Straight Friend and his Girlfriend will also be there.  So when they go out, it's Straight Friend-Girlfriend and Gay Guy-Boyfriend?  

On the way, Gay Guy and Straight Friend argue and break up.  The Girlfriend tells New Guy not to worry: they break up all the time, but get back together again. "Honestly, I think they just secretly want to fuck each other."  Ok, so it's not a subtext.



Left: New Guy Alex Wolff's penis

They end up partying on the roof. Gay Guy and Straight Friend kiss.  Wait, I thought you had other partners.

Later, while the guys are dealing with an overdose, New Guy and The Girlfriend bond.

More after the break

The Four Seasons: Elitist New Yorkers discuss True Love, with a gay couple, a lumberjack, Vivaldi, and a n*de Len Cariou



I lived in New York for four years while studying for my Ph.D.  One thing that bothered me was the parochialism, like that New Yorker cover come to life ("View of the World from 9th Avenue," by Saul Steinberg).  Literally everywhere else in the world was a cultural wasteland.

 Everyone always asked "Where are you from?", assuming that the answer would be "Scarsdale" or "Astoria."  I said Illinois:  "Oh, Chicago!  Now that's a second rate city!  Did you eat hot dogs at (snicker, snicker).baseball games?"

"No, my town was on the other side of the state, on the Iowa border."

"Iowa!  Ma and Pa Kettle chawing tobaccy!  How old were you (snicker, snicker) when you first saw one of those newfangled auto-mobiles?"

So I started saying "Los Angeles":   "How dreadfully superficial!  All about mindless movies and puerile television!  Do you watch (snicker, snicker) the A Team?"  

The Four Seasons, on Netflix, gave me a similar vibe: parochial, elitist, condescending, so I never made it through an episode.  But from what I can gather, it features three couples who leave the City (there's only one city) for a weekend getaway Upstate (there's only one state) four times a year.  There they talk in Woody Allen witicisms and discuss romantic love.

The main question is stated in the first episode:  Does each of us get a soulmate, someone chosen by the Universe to make our lives infinitely happy forever, or do we fall in love based on physical attraction and social compatibility, and then work to maintain the relationship?   Each couple will face a crisis that illustrates some aspect of the question.  


As the clickbait links say, the answer will surprise you.  Or not.  It's the theme of every romantic movie ever made.

But you may be surprised to find that one of the couples is gay.


Couple #1, Nick and Anne (Steve Carrell of The Office, left, Kerri Kenney):  What if you no longer love your soulmate?

Nick shocks everyone when he announces that he no longer loves his wife.  "Impossible!  You're soulmates!  You're destined to be together!"

When he dumps her anyway and starts dating the much younger Ginny ("The penis wants what the penis wants), his friends are all devastated.  If a married couple can break up, how does anything have meaning?

 His daughter, who attends an Ivy League College Upstate, maybe Vassar, writes a play in which her callous, unfeeling monster of a father announces: "I hate my daughter so much.  What could I do to cause her the most pain?  I know -- I'll leave my wife, thus destroying the family and making my daughter's life meaningless forever!"

The universe also disapproves of leaving your soulmate, and retaliates by killing Nick.  This leads to the discomfort of having the ex-wife and the horrible trollope he destroyed her life for showing up at the funeral.  Such a negative attitude toward divorce seems extremely retro.   


Couple #2, Danny and Claude (Colman Domingo from Fear the Walking Dead,  famous playwright Marco Calvani, left): What if your soulmate dies?

When Danny is diagnosed with heart disease, he leaves Claude to spare him the agony of seeing his decline and death, but Claude insists on getting back together: they're soulmates, in sickness and health. Someday one of them will die and leave the other alone, but the bereaved spouse will still find infinite happiness in the memory of their time together.

By the way, they have an open relationship, and have their "I'm leaving you so you won't feel pain" argument in the midst of a threesome with the Lumberjack (Jacob Buckenmyer).








Jacob Buckenmyer, seen here in Chippendales, is straight in real life.

More after the break.

Matthew William Bishop: Leatherman, muscleman, actor, LGBTQ advocate. With nude bodybuilder bonus.

 


If you saw this guy standing outside a brownstone in New York, would you 

a) Run away screaming; 

b) ask for his phone number;

c) just drop to your knees.









How about now? 

He's Matthew William Bishop, who gave up a career in corporate public relations in 2021, when the acting bug bit.  His Some Kind of Wonderful, about four gay guy looking for love in Palm Springs, won four awards for Best LGBTQ Film. 

Then he hit the big time playing the silent supernatural Big Daddy, a symbol of AIDs in American Horror Story, NYC. (Set during the first years of the AIDS epidemic.)

Matthew is also a bodybuilder, obviously. He took first place at the 2023 Miami Muscle Beach Contest in the NPC Open Super Heavyweight Category.





And a philanthropist, devoted to recovery, AIDS awareness, and LGBTQ advocacy.  10% of the sales of this "Make the Deposits" shirt go to the New York LGBTQ Community Center, so it's probably not dirty.








This isn't supposed to be dirty, either, although a lot of the comments on his Instagram page were from people willing to "choke on it."












What they want to choke on, from his fitness model days.


More of "it" after the break

Northern Exposure, Episode 1.2: Progressive homophobia, three guys in a sauna, and much ado about a toilet.

 


We're watching old shows that we missed back in the day, like Northern Exposure (1990-95), about a young doctor forced to relocate from New York City to Cecily, Alaska, population 814.  It received 39 Emmy nominations and two Golden Globes, but I never watched back then because I figured it was just another "disease of the week" drama, and because of the opening: an ear-grating harmonica plays while a baby moose ambles down Main Street.

Three episodes in, and it turns out I was correct: it's a "disease of the week" drama with laconic jokes. Trigger warning: the first three episodes feature gunshot wounds,  cancer, death, and suicide.  And two different old guys who refuse to follow the doctor's instructions because they've always been independent.  The jokes are mostly of the "this town is so small!" and "it's so isolated!" sort.  

Joel (Rob Morrow, left) thought he was being sent to Anchorage, and  complains bitterly about being tricked into moving to a "hellhole" where you have to chop your own firewood and no one has ever heard of a bagel.  He does this in front of townsfolk, but it's ok, many of them are refugees from the Lower 48. Some came to escape from big cities, and some came for a visit and got stuck.  It's like "Hotel California": you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Episode 2 does something unheard of in 1990, in the heart of the AIDS pandemic and homophobic backlash: it mentioned LGBT people! Actually, 18 tv episodes in 1990 featured gay characters, but they were usually AIDS patients, murderers, or making a pass at a straight person. This episode was praised for its "progressive, gay-positive" message. Let's see how well it holds up in 2024.


Plot 1
features Ed (Darren E. Burroughs), an Indian youth, who is trying to be Joels' best friend, even though Joel treats him with unabashed contempt (but Joel treats everyone in town with unabaslhed contempt, so how could he tell?)..  His problem: Uncle Anku has blood in his urine, but refuses to see a Western doctor. He was a medicine man for 40 years; he believes in traditional Indian medicine.  

 Ed invites Joel over for dinner (KFC, flown in from Anchorage) and a sauna, hoping that he can convince Uncle Anku to get an examination.  Nope.  Joel visits several more times -- maybe he just likes being half-naked in the sauna with other guys?  Still no.  Finally he lays down the law: come in for an examination, or no more visits.  Psych!  Uncle Anku has seen a specialist in Anchorage!  Why keep it a secret, and put Joel and your family through so much anxiety?

This plotline has some gay subtexs.  Ed's interest in Joel seems more profound than "I'm lonely, and need a friend."

Plot 2: features Joel's toilet.  It doesn't work, but his landlord/love interest Maggie is still in the "I hate you!  You're arrogant!" stage, and refuses to fix it because what idiot doesn't know how to fix a toilet?  Oh yeah, prissy, elite, entitled, arrogant, sexy...um I mean arrogant New York snobs.  Joel tries to hire someone, reads a book on plumbing, and so on.  Eventually Maggie gives in.  Tenant law: you have to provide a working toilet. 


Plot 3:
Chris in the Morning (John Corbett, left), the radio DJ, tells us that when he was 15, he broke into a house intending to steal stuff, and found a book that changed his life: Walt Whitman's poetry.  Later, in juvenile hall, a guard beat him up for reading it, yelling that "unnatural, pornographic, homoerotic poetry" was forbidden. Chris hadn't realized that Whitman "enjoyed the pleasures of other men," and had to rethink his habit of beating up "queers."

Minnefield (Barry Corbin), who literally owns the town, hears the broadcast, and is irate. Making disgusting accusations about America's greatest poet!  He throws Chris through a plate glass window and fires him. Hey, that's criminal assault!.  He takes over the morning radio himself, and devotes it to "normal" music, like the soundtrack to Kiss Me, Kate (hey, Cole Porter was gay!).  Then Oklahoma! and Carousel.  The townspeople hate it; they prefer Chris's philosophical musings.  So the macho, homophobic guy likes gay-coded show tunes, har har.

Interestingly, a review of the episode calls Barry Corbin a "Broadway Superstar," but I can't find him listed in anything but Henry V.

At a town meeting to complain about the new radio format, Minnefield stands his ground: "Chris made a mistake, and he has to pay for it.  A breach is a breach." Seriously, why doesn't anyone call Minnefield out on his homophobia?  Do they all agree that it's wrong to mention gay people on the radio?  They demand that Chris be re-hired.  Nope!

After consulting with Joel, Minnefield gets back on the radio to explain.  "Whitman was a pervert, but he was the greatest poet America ever produced," and we shouldn't try to destroy him.  He mentions several other American heroes with personality faults: alcoholic, gambler, crossdresser...but we aren't allowed to discuss the terrible things they did.  We need to concentrate on the positive.  We need heroes.   "If Whitman were standing here today, and someone called him a fruit or a queer, that person would have to answer to me." So you're saying that it's ok to know that he was gay, but not to disrespect him by aying that he was gay?  

This, by the way, is a heartfelt speech, telling the audience what they should take away from the episode: being gay is horrible, but we should ignore it, because "we need heroes."   From the vantage point of 2024, it seems incredibly homophobic, but in 1990 it was a plea for tolerance.

Chris in the Morning apologizes. He didn't mean to defame Walt Whitman, but now he understands that it was wrong to mention that he was gay.  He gets his job back.

And the town library/general store has a run on requests for Walt Whitman's poetry.  


Beefcake: Joel, Ed, and Uncle Anku in the sauna.  Joel in the shower.

Gay Characters: Of course not, although in a few years, the town will host the second gay wedding on network television.

Homophobia:  Everyone seems to agree that calling someone gay is a defamation.  Even Joel the New Yorker.

My Grade: Even taking into account its historic context, this was a very difficult episode to watch.  And that grating harmonica solo opening!  D.



Above: Rob Morrow's butt in Private Resort. Left; Grant Goodeve, who plays Maggie's boyfriend (before she dumps him).

Set in the same time period:


"Sun in My Mouth": A depressed twink rides the subway, has explicit sex. And what he's been up to lately.


While looking at random cocks on AZ Nude Men, I came across Sun in My Mouth, with Artem Shcherbakov as a skinny, dissolute-looking twink who takes off his clothes on the beach while looking depressed, and then returns to his empty apartment to j/o on the phone while looking depressed.  Photos after the break



Black and white, extremely washed out, amateurish, with random close-ups of body parts and nonsequiter images.  It looked like one of those 1960s "stag films," or one of the early Gay Liberation movies like A Very Natural Thing.  But it is dated 2010.

Extremely mysterious.  Russia is a puritanical country.  How was it even permitted? And what is the meaning of "sun in my mouth?"  A Russian proverb?




 According to the IMDB, "It's a film about how we attempt to connect and understand other people by understanding ourselves."

I couldn't find the film itself, but the trailer is very artistic/experimental, black and white.  Artem rides a subway -- wait, those signs are in English -- walks on the beach, takes off his clothes, broods, goes home to an empty apartment, and beats off with a phone sex operator.

Is it even Russian?  Jessica Yatrovsky has nothing else listed on the IMDB.  The phone sex operator is played by Andrew Yang -- not a Russian name.

A man. So this is a gay film?  So Artem is depressed because he's struggling to come out?  


Artem has only one other acting role listed on the IMDB,  A Four Letter Word, 2007: "hook-up artist Luke considers becoming monogamous" for the "smug and handsome" Stephen (Jesse Archer, Charlie David).  He is listed as Vlad.

His Linkedin says that he is the founder of ROAR Games and Zheeshee in Brooklyn.  


His Facebook says that he was born in Minsk, Belorussia. He attended Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn and Touro College, where he majored in psychology.  He married Brian in 2021 and now lives in Washington DC.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.