Jonathan Lipnicki: The most surprising skinny kid to muscleman transformation of the 2000s. And he's an ally. With Jon's backside and Boo-Boo's dick

 

Born in October 1990, Jonathan Lipnicki became a famous actor at the age of five, playing Tom Cruise's son in Jerry Maguire (1996); comedian Jeff Foxworthy's son on his show (1996-97); and the charge of wacky alien-nanny Bronson Pinchot in Meego (1997). 

Then came four box office-topping movies:

Stuart Little (1999) and Stuart Little 2 (2002): His new brother is a mouse voiced by Michael J. Fox.

The Little Vampire (2000): He has a gay-subtext buddy bond with a vampire, which becomes even more blatant in the animated remake, The Little Vampire 3D (2017).

Like Mike (2002): His buddy finds a pair of magic sneakers that allow him to become a basketball superstar.

Between 1996 and 2002, Jonathan was a superstar.  He appeared on every talk show you could name -- Leno, Letterman, Rosie O'Donnell, Sharon Osbourne. He presented at the American Comedy, Kids' Choice, and British Comedy Awards. He won a Critics' Choice Award.  The media went crazy when he appeared at the Spiderman premiere with Daryl Sabara, the second most famous child star of the 2000s.

Then he started fading away, with movies like When Zachary Beaver Came to Town (2003) and The Teacher from the Black Lagoon (2003), and occasional guest spots.  You could see him on Dawson's Creek, Touched by an Angel, and Monk, but you probably didn't.

It wasn't due to lack of talent. Jonathan was being bullied, branded a "has-been," told "you'll never book a job again,"  harassed with homophobic slurs, attacked for "being gay" (although he's actually straight), "made to feel like garbage every day" through middle school and high school.  He was suffering from anxiety, depression, and nearly daily panic attacks.  His battle with depression is ongoing, but his Jewish faith helps.  And working out. 

Around 2008, a rash of "Where is he now?" articles appeared, with detailed attention paid to Jonathan's increasingly buffed physique.  He was playing water polo and basketball, training in mixed martial arts, and lifting weights.

If you last saw him as a cute kid holding hands with a vampire, the change was astounding.

Becoming a muscleman didn't exactly restore Jonathan to superstardom, but he was very busy, starring in Youthful Daze (2014-15) and Interns of FIELD (2016), Mr. Student Body President (2017-18), and Joe Schmo (2025); plus many movies and shorts.

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He shows his butt in Pitching Tents (2017).  A high school senior has to decide whether to go to work in the factory or study art. Also, he and his buds kiss girls.  I think Jonathan plays one of the friends.  Booboo Stewart (d*ck after the break) plays another.

More after the break

Peter Billingsley: The lingerie lamp kid, a Beverly Hills brat, Whips, ropes, and perhaps Peter's peter

 

Even  though a few years have passed, Peter Billingsley is still know as the kid from A Christmas Story (1983).  You know -- the bespectacled 9-year old in the 1950s, whose only Christmas wish is "a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass and this thing that tells time."  

Hardly anyone saw it in theaters in 1983, but it has become a TV tradition -- TBS usually mounts a 24-hour marathon -- so you've probably seen A Christmas Story as often as the much gayer White Christmas or It's a Wonderful Life.

I don't really care for it. There's a creepy lamp shaped like a lady's leg in lingerie (that turns Ralphie on), a nasty bully, a borderline-abusive Dad, a gun as a major plot point, and no cute guys or discernible homoerotic subplots (although some of the cast has gay connections).

And the mythos hasn't gotten better.

The top photo is Braeden LeMasters, who played Ralphie in A Christmas Story 2 (2012).  Six years later, Ralphie wants a car and the Girl of His Dreams.

I think it got worse.

In The Dirt Bike Kid (1985), a modern retelling of "Jack and the Beanstalk," the 14-year old Jack (Peter) is sent to buy groceries, but gets a magic dirtbike instead.  He uses it to clean up the corrupt town, save a struggling hot dog stand, and become a town hero. He expresses no heterosexual interest, but no same-sex interest, either.  He has a buddy (Chad Sheets), but  his main emotional bond is paternal, with Mike (Patrick Collins), the owner of the hot dog stand.

 In Russkies (1987), it's the heart of the Cold War, Danny (Joaquin Phoenix) and his friends Adam (Peter) and Jason (Stefan DeSalle) find a a Russian sailor, Mischa (Whip Hubley), washed up on the shore. Adam  is obviously entranced by the beefy, bulge-laden Mischa, especially after he takes off his shirt at the doctor's office.

 

But it is Danny who acts as his friend and protector.  He hatches a scheme to smuggle Mischa to Cuba, whence he could get back home.  When the baddies shoot Danny down over the water, Mischa rushes to the rescue. Later, Danny rescues Mischa.  Though the movie ends with Mischa going  home, the experience changes Danny forever; it is his Summer of '42.

An anti-gay slur (this was the 1980s, after all), but no girls thought of or spoken of.

Left: Whip's butt and back balls.

In Beverly Hills Brats (1989), Scooter (18-year old Peter) is ignored by his rich father (Martin Sheen) and bullied by his siblings, so he fakes his own kidnapping, hiring the bumbling thugs Clive (Burt Young) and Elmo (George Kirby).  The thugs are hostile at first, but soon come to feel sympathy for the lonely Scooter.  Again, an anti-gay slur, but no expressed interest in girls.  Instead, Scooter tries to reach out to the thugs for emotional support.

By this point, Peter was starting to muscle up; in fact, he later played a high school athlete abusing steroids on an Afterschool Special.  But he also started to heterosexualize up.

Here he shows some bicep in VideoZone (1989), a tv commercial series about the merchandise advertised in Full Moon productions.

He appears in 11 episodes of Sherman Oaks (1995-97), an early example of the mockumentary format, as the hetereo-horny teenage son.
 

More after the break

Shia LaBeouf: From gay-subtext teencom to heterosexual porn. At least he shows us his dick a lot.

Even Stevens (2000-2003) was one of the first, and best, of the Disney Channel teencoms, featuring middle-school boyfriends Louis and Twitty (Shia LaBeouf, A.J. Trauth).  Episode plots emphasize their romance:

Louis becomes jealous when Twitty starts hanging out with a girl.

Louis becomes jealous when Twitty starts hanging out with a boy.

Louis becomes a celebrity, straining his relationship with Twitty.

 I remember an episode where they were sitting together on the couch, not on opposite ends like most people, but squeezed in with their thighs pressing together.  "They're not even trying to hide it," I thought.  

Add Nick Spano as a hunky older brother and Fred Meyers as older sister's swishy bff, and you have a gay-subtext classic. 

Seasons change, teencoms are cancelled, and the actors move on.  Nick Spano, top photo, majored in English literature at UCLA and now runs the Re/Creation Cafe.  

AJ Trauth, left, lives in Ohio. 

Fred Meyers is a paramedic.

As far as I can tell, they're all heterosexual in real life.

And what about Louis Stevens, Shia LaBeouf?

He moved into dark, depressing indies about lost, dying, grieving, and enraged youth:

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints: as his friends are killed or kill themselves, Shia believes that he is protected by the saints.

Bobby: The night of Robert Kennedy's assassination

Disturbia. A teen under house arrest "rear-windows" a serial killer.

When he veered into science fiction, as in Transformers, it was always a boy and a girl gazing into each other's eyes forever.

He shows his penis on screen for the first time in the 2012 music video Sigur Rós: Fjögur píanó, which looks Icelandic but is actually in English.  It's about a boy and a girl gazing into each other's eyes forever.

More dick and a Catholic priest after the break