Proud: A young male model in Poland is gay, sleazy, frequently naked, and not at all proud.

The first episode of the TV series Proud has dropped on HBO MAX: "After a tragedy, a carefree young man must grow up or lose what he has left."  Nothing in the premise or episode synopsis suggests that he is a gay carefree young man, but dropping a show called Proud during Pride Month is a dirty trick if it's gay-free.  So we'll give it a try.   

Scene 1: Shaky hand-held camera follows the back of a Carefree Young Man's head as he walks past blurry people in a room.  They seem to be models waiting for an audition. The casting agent wants them all in underwear.   The Young Man sneaks into the bathroom, takes cocaine, does some push-ups, and heads for his audition.  

Wait -- they said underwear.  He strips, completely nude, explaining "I don't do underwear."

One of the casting agents says it's fine, "The kid's a free spirit."  You just like his cock, buddy.   He starts choking, so the young man gives him Heimlich. 

Scene 2: A blurry club, very dark, very red, very crowded.  Looks like mostly men.  The Young Man does cocaine, is absorbed by gyrating body parts, then follows a group of guys through the kitchen and into the dark room.  Ok, he's gay. And this must be Europe, where every bar has a dark room.  They don't usually put them next to the kitchen,though. 

The dark room is even darker and blurrier than the main club, but I think I see some kissing and rimming. 

Whoops, a girl bursts in and opens the curtains: "Party's over!  Get out!"  

Ulp, this isn't a dark room.  The Young Man invited four guys to an orgy at his sister's apartment!  Does the apartment open directly onto the kitchn of a gay club, or do we have to deal with inept editing as well as inept cinematography?

"I thought you weren't coming back until Monday," the Young Man says in a blurry, drug-addled voice.

"It is Monday, you idiot!"

"Dang, I have a very important meeting today!"

Scene 3:  After kicking the guys out, the Young Man -- Filip -- goes to the kitchen and asks Sis why she's so upset.  "We had an agreement -- no partying in the house! Plus you haven't taken out the trash or done the laundry.  Those are your two jobs!"

"I know.  I've been busy."

She wants him out.  She can't take his lack of responsibility, not doing any chores, always being drunk and high, strange men coming in and out all the time, with her child in the house. The child looks like she's about a year old. 

"But I'm broke."

"Then sell your motorcycle!" 

They argue for awhile.  Sister yells: "You think life is all fun and games, but today is the day you grow up.  Move out by this evening!"  This isn't carefree, it's pathological!

Scene 3: The naked Filip is getting dressed. We may get a brief cock shot, but it's too blurry to see anything.  A guy bangs on the door, asking for his money.  A lady walking down the hall says that she's walking Filip's dog, and he owes 50 zloty ($13) for dog food.  

The guy takes the dog.  Filip yells down after him, but he says "I want my money today!"

Filip pours some vodka into a coke bottle and jumps into a taxi to head to his very important meeting.  But he turns around to sell his motorcycle.

Scene 4: Two guys pick up the motorcycle, insisting that they'll only pay half of what it's worth. Hey, he has four of them!  And he's broke?  Maybe it's the cocaine.  The guy from his very important meeting calls, angry: "Where the hell are you?"

Left: The IMDB lists only Ignacy Liss, who plays Filip, but I found Mateusz Wieclawik in the closing credits.  I don't know who he plays; no one in the show has hair like that.

Filip takes a taxi downtown.  His agent meets him: "You're 45 minutes late!  Everyone is freaking out!  I'm tired of making excuses for you!"  Sort of a jerk, aren't you, Filip Baby?

Uh-oh, the guy he owes money to is there.  Filip pays with the motorcycle money, gets his dog back, and asks if he has any more cocaine.

On to the meeting!  They rush him into makeup, complaining that he reeks of alcohol and "things go better when the models actually show up." 

The makeup lady just got engaged, and her teenage daughter shows up and announces "I'm meeting someone."  This upsets her.  Must be a subplot brewing.

Scene 5: It's one of those daytime talk shows, show, just finishing a segment with an expert on marital conflicts.  Next up: the hosts will show you how to be chic on the beach. They approach the four models.

"Filip  is presenting a beautiful red brief cut."   

Uh-oh, Filip is high: he begins giggling, then throws up, then collapses -- on live tv!  They quickly cut to commercial. 

More after the break.  Spoiler alert: He lives.

Evan Jachelski: Rooster Spooner, angel, pizza boy, jock with a cock. Plus Andrew Santino and some Polish bulges

 In the season finale of Rooster, acerbic college writer-in-residence Greg  (Steve Carell) tells his students about the movie It's a Wonderful Life (1946), where Clarence the Angel convinces a down-and-out dude not to off himself.  They're confused by the line: "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings."  What if you're in an arcade, with bells ringing all the time?  You'd have a surplus of angels.

The guys decide to make some wings to wear at Greg's end-of-semester party.  Spooner shows off his while shirtless.  Hot twink physique with some delt and bicep development.

Spooner has been basically a background player, a member of gay-subtext Tommy's friend group with a salacious name.  His scenes consist mostly of buddy-bonding with George or J.D. But that unexpected shirtless shot was stunning, in a series that has been skimpy with beefcake, so I wanted to do a profile of actor  Evan Jachelski.

Evan was born in September 2003, and grew up in Hanover, Pennsylvania, a rural community about an hour north of Baltimore.  He is close enough to his Polish heritage to know some slang terms: badooshk, asshole; kutas, cock; chuj, cock; palka, big cock.

Apparently he needs to describe his cock quite often.  

He attended South West High School, where he played football, and trained with the Baltimore Improv Group. 

He graduated in 2022, and moved to Los Angeles to become an actor, starting with commercials for Peloton exercise equipment (playing a buffed sufer) and Reebok shoes. 

In a 2023 episode of Dave: the mild-mannered wannabe rapper (Dave Burd) returns to Philadelphia to look up the childhood Girl of His Dreams, who stuck him in the friend zone.  He's homophobic, referring to the jock who won her as a c*cksucker, but also into guys, at least according to some photos that show him rimming.  

Evan played "Matt's Replacement," presumably someone who took over for Dave's roommate / manager, Matt (Andrew Santino, left). But I couldn't find him in the episode.  Maybe he wasn't blond.

For a more serious artistic turn, Evan starred in The Red Market (2024), a short that made the film festival circuit and won some awards.  Drowning in debt, Zephyr (Evan) contacts a secret organization to sell his body parts. 

Gay actor Ramiro Leal plays the mad doctor, and Maddox Anaya (gay) and Ryan Rathburn (unknown, left) play shirtless hunks.  Actually, from what I can tell from the teaser, it's all shirtless hunks. 

More after the break

"A Real Pain": Buddies have wacky adventures or a Dark Night of the Soul in Poland, but I'm off to the Horseman's Club

 

A Real Pain (2024), on Hulu, is advertised as a wacky buddy comedy with Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg, touring Poland, with a lot of exteriors.  

No doubt they are both absurdly heterosexual and will meet The Girl of Their Dreams, but it will be fun to see how quickly their heterosexual identity is established. 

 Besides, I'd like to see some of the sights, like the Jewish Museum in Warsaw and the University of Krakow. .

Not to mention Kieran's backside.

Scene 1: Benji (Kieran Culkin) is sitting in the airport waiting for David (Jesse Eisenberg), who is just walking out the door of his Manhattan brownstone.  He keeps calling: heavy traffic...no, it lightened up...Ok, so David is the Stick-in-the-Mud, Benji the Free Spirit.

At the airport, Benji grabs him and makes him twirl so he can see his cousin's butt.  Um...an interested in a guy's butt is a sign of gay identity.

He brought yogurt, and some weed for when they reach Poland: "They're not going to arrest two Jews for a little weed."

He chats up the TSA lady: "Her Dad does security for the Knicks."  This annoys David. Doesn't count as heterosexualizing him.

Priya made some trail mix for them.  Doesn't count: she could be an aunt or a sister.

Scene 2: On the plane, David has to take the middle seat. Bummer.

They discuss their back story: David works in digital ad sales, and Benji is a deadbeat. They haven't seen each other for a while.  They're going on a Heritage Tour of Poland.. wait, they're Jewish...is this a tour of the sites of pograms and concentration camps? 

Naw, who would want to see those?  Poland has 1000 years of Jewish history.

Later, David takes his prescription meds and gazes at a video of his daughter. Heterosexualized at minute 6.30. 

It's actually Jesse Eisenberg's real-life son, Banner.  I was confused by his long blond hair.

Scene 3: At the Warsaw airport -- "Welcome to Warsaw" sign in English.  They meet their driver. Some nice location shots as they drive through the city, but David is still gazing at that video of his son.   Why the heck aren't you looking out the window at this major European capital that you've never been to before?

They check in, retrive a package of weed from the desk clerk, and head up to their room. When David kicks off his shoes, Benji complements him: "You have really nice feet.  Graceful as fuck. Reminds me of Grandma's feet."  Foot fetish? Benji is giving off some gay vibes.

Scene 4: Tour Guide James (Will Sharpe, top photo and left) introduces himself: Not actually Jewish, but a degree in Eastern European Studies from Oxford.

The others in the tour are:

1. Marcia Kramer, recently divorced, from New York.  Her mother survived the camps. One of the cousins is obviously going to fall in love with her, but I'm not sure which.  Maybe David is divorced, and Benji's interest in men's butts and feet is supposed to be wacky, not homoerotic.

2.-3. Diane and Mark (Daniel Oreskes), an elderly couple. 

Daniel Oreskes has 40 acting credits on the IMDB, including The Sopranos, Law & Order, Ray Donovan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Only Murderers in this Building.  He is heterosexual.

4. Eloge, from Rwanda, converted to Judaism.  He's a survivor of the Rwandan genocide.

The Cameroon-born Kurt Egyiawan is a British theatrical actor who has appeared in The Exorcist, House of the Dragon, Bodies, and Kaos.  No intel on whether he's heterosexual or not.

More after the break