Cullen Moss: Two drag queens, two homophobes, a security guard, a fairy, and a frontal

 

Cullen Moss is one of those actors who you've seen in a dozen tv shows and movies, but he is so completely immersed in the role that when you see him again, you don't recognize him.  

Born in Brooklyn but raised in North Carolina, he graduated from Mount Tambor High School in 1993 and moved immediately into local North Carolina theater.  A lot of iconic and gay-positive roles:

Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire

Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream

Alan Strang, the one who gets naked on stage in Equus

Clifford Bradshaw, the Christopher Isherwood character, in Cabaret

The drag queen Albin in La Cage aux Folles

The closeted, homophobic Roy Cohn in Angels in America

His tv career began with some voiceovers in the 90s, followed by a starring role in One Tree Hill, 2003-2012, as Junk Moretti, a high school boy with a "girlfriend who lives in Canada" (gay kids have all been there; mine lived in Paris). 

Later Cullen has played a detective in Your Honor, a cop in The Walking Dead, and ..his list of credits on IMDB goes on like that.

In a two-episode story arc on Eastbound & Down in 2013, Cullen played Mark, "the smarmy, slow-motion punching, donut-gifting smuck of a rental car company manager," boss of Danny McBride's washed-up baseball player.

This led to a role as Brock, head security guard of the Gemstone Compound in Righteous Gemstones Episodes 1.6 and 1.7.  Scotty, Gideon's "friend from California" and co-conspirator in the blackmail scheme, flirts with him to get easy access to compound, even asking for shirtless photos.

Brock returns in Episode 1.9, to deny BJ admission after he and Judy break up, criticize his name, and act like a macho jerk.

He returns in Episode 2.3, to announce that Eli's friend Junior is at the front gate.  Eli says to not admit him, and they argue.

More Cullen after the break

"Kim's Convenience": Korean family runs a convenience store in a gay-free Toronto. With some nude guest stars

 

Kim's Convenience (2016-21) on Netflix, features a Korean-Canadian family running a convenience store in a diverse neighborhood of Toronto.  For a change, they don't try to hide it: there's a Canadian flag over the counter, and frequent references to Toronto landmarks.

It seems a bit retro: LGBT people don't exist except in the first episode, when the curmudgeonly, old-fashioned Mr. Kim (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) refuses to allow a gay pride poster to be placed in his shop window, because why do gay people have to advertise themselves with a parade?  Koreans don't march down the street yelling "I'm Korean!"  If they're gay, why can't they be quiet, respectful gays?

I started to cringe, having heard this complaint a dozen times, even from gay people.  It is a standard homophobic misconception that Pride is about proclaiming that you have gay sex rather than celebrating survival in a hostile world.

 Accused of being homophobic, Mr. Kim backtracks by offering a 15% discount to gay people during Pride Week. Through the rest of the episode, he gets to decide who warrants the discount and who doesn't.

He tells Boy Toy (Alexander Nunez) "You're not gay, you're just pretending."  Boy Toy returns with a flamboyant friend as proof, but Mr. Kim merely asks him what his favorite movie was in college.  Caddyshack.  Straight.

But when a guy (Andy Yu) drops in to apply for a job, Mr. Kim offers him the discount.  He protests that he is straight, but Mr. Kim wink-winks "Sometimes it takes awhile for the gay to come out."

He does give the discount to a drag queen after a conversation about "Why you dress like a woman?"  She actually seems pleased by the question, and replies: "It feels comfortable.  It feels like home."

The episode was not exactly offensive, at least not offensive enough to turn off, but it made me uncomfortable.  It was like watching people talk about me behind my back.

No gay people appear again.  Evidently the gays were the problem of the week, and the show moved on:

A friend asks Mr. Kim to become a "wingman" on a double date.

A kid runs wild in the convenience store, and the mother refuses to discipline him.

Mr. Kim gets a crush on the new female pastor, and insists on not charging her for anything.

After the first few episodes, the convenience store was relegated to the B plot, while the primary plot involved the problems and relationships of the two Kim children:

Janet (Andrea Bang), a photography student at OCAD University, struggles to achieve independence by moving out, getting a job, and refusing to "marry a nice Korean Christian boy," to the consternation of her traditional parents.

Jung (Simu Liu, top photo), who hasn't talked to his father in years, apparently just so they can reconcile.  He works at a car rental company, where he has a crush on his female boss.  He doesn't appear to own a shirt.  The writers play up Jung's hunkiness deliberately, as a remedy to the countless sexless Asian characters in media.

Simu Liu has also appeared in the play Banana Boys, about the stereotypes Asian Canadian men face, and in the movies Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, One True Love, and Barbie.

Other male characters include:

Kimchee (Andrew Phung, center ), a clownish slob, Jung's roommate, coworker, and bromantic life partner.  

Gerald (Ben Beauchemin), their nerdish, self-depricating coworker, and eventually Janet's platonic roommate.

Terence (Michael Musi, left), another coworker at the car rental place, who Kimchee doesn't like.

Nude dudes after the break

Redeeming Dave: Church for losers includes Tony Cavalero, a drag queen, and a porn star. With nude Ryan Hughes

 

Redeeming Dave was a 2012 tv pilot by Dominic Russo (one of the creators of Workaholics). Comedian Aaron Rice starred as Dave, a guy who fails at everything, so he starts a church for losers.  Tony Cavalero played his friend Josh.

Who belongs to this church for losers?  An infographic word cloud in the show's trailer tells us: a smart ass, an ex, a police officer, a drag queen, a Sunday school teacher, a stripper, a bartender, and a failure.

The pilot is not available to be streamed, but Dominic Russo brings it up during an interview about  Workaholics, and shows us two scenes:

In the first, Dave and Josh discuss how the "he/she has a tiny little baby dick."  "He/She" is transphobic, of course. Then she walks by, and they are embarrassed.

" I'm wondering if the "drag queen" is actually a trans woman.

In the second scene, Josh is telling a grade school class that his friend got a hamster shoved all the way up his butt.  This is based on the homophobic urban legend that gay men like shoving rodents up there.

I can't really tell if the pilot is homophobic or transphobic based on two brief scenes, but since these were the scenes that Dominic Russo used to draw viewer interest, it seems likely that gay/trans identity was going to be a major focus.

The cast list includes Ryan Hughes as "Racist Cop" (must be one of the losers in the church).  I don't know if it's the same Ryan Hughes featured in Adonis Male in 2017, but just to be on the safe side, here are some nude pics: