13 reasons why we love Dylan Minnette. Hint: #12 involves his beneath-the-belt gifts

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Gavin Lewis: Is the Prince of Peoria packing? Or are his abs enough? With Gavin, Jordan, and Tim Nelson's stuff

The Prince of Peoria (2018-19) was an attempt by Netflix to break into the teencom market with a Hannah Montana-type premise: Emil (Gavin Lewis), the young prince of a ridiculously over-the-top country, goes undercover as an ordinary exchange student in Peoria, Illinois.

I grew up near Peoria, so I was hoping for shots of local landmarks.  But, except for the opening montage, you might as well be in Albuquerque.  No Peoria landmarks are mentioned in the two episodes I reviewed.

An unbridled id, Emil forms an "unlikely" buddy bond with overachieving superego Teddy (Theodore Barnes, the one who doesn't have his shirt off).  Emil teaches Teddy not to be so uptight, and Teddy teaches Emil to be more responsible.

The gay subtext is played with, as in "The Bro-Posal," when Emil proposes (asks Teddy to make their relationship official), and is rejected.

And in "Robot Wars," advertised as "Emil develops an instant crush on Ryan, Teddy's long-time rival." Turns out that Ryan is a girl with a boy's name!  Fooled you!

You probably didn't watch, but you'll certainly be interested in Gavin Lewis now, at age 21.

Researching topics other than Gavin's abs is rough.  Only one instagram post, no Facebook account, no X, a very common name.  According to Wikipedia, he was born in Salt Lake City, so we can guess that he's Mormon.  

At age nine Gavin was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.  Nick Jonas came to visit him, resulting in his interest in a stage career (his parents being theater professionals helped, too).  He booked his first movie role at the age of nine, and soon moved to Los Angeles to start auditioning.

Pre-Peoria work includes Just Jacques, Ominous, Real Boy, NCIS, Hey Arnold, The Bugaloos, and No Good Nick.

After Peoria, Gavin got a starring role in  Little Fires Everywhere (2020), a Hulu drama about: "the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger in believing that following the rules can avert disaster."  Geeze, just tell us what it's about. Does anyone start a fire?

Gavin plays Moody, the youngest son of the "picture-perfect Richardson family."  In Episode 2, he "grows frustrated as Trip tells him Pearl friend-zoned him and is hanging out with Lexie."  I don't know what that means.

The other guys in the photo are Moody's brother Trip (Jordan Elsass) and his friend Brian (Stevonte Hart).  Sorry, they're all heterosexual, but there's a gay character: Moody's older sister, "the black sheep of the family," naturally.

And Jordan Elsass reputedly has a j/o video somewhere online.

In the Western Old Henry (2021), a farmer and his son (Tim Blake Nelson, Gavin) take in an injured man (Scott Haze) with satchel full of cash.  He claims to be a lawman who was ambushed by bad guys, but the posse that arrives claims that he is the bad guy.  Who to believe? 

You'll have to watch.  Meanwhile, here's Tim's d*ck to tide you over.

Gavin's character doesn't display any heterosexual interest.

More after the break

"Peninsula": Gay-subtext buddy bond in a post-Apocalyptic Korea. But is it ruined by meeting The Girl? With bonus Korean cocks

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A classic gay-subtext romance in "Godzilla v. Kong: The New Empire." Plus some penises, of course.

 

For Movie Night this week, we sawGodzilla v. Kong: The New Empire (2024).

I didn't actually understand what was going on most of the time:

 There was a Hollow Earth, which you can only get to through a space warp.

A Lost Civilization that predates anything on the surface, where people communicate through telepathy and use crystals to manipulate matter and antimatter.

A Chosen One.

A tribe of giant apes that live next to a volcano, and keep a giant glowing stegasaurus captive.  King Kong joins them, becomes their leader after fighting an evil dude, and adopts a baby ape.

Another giant stegasaurus, which fights King Kong in Egypt and takes out the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Nearby Cairo is an Orientalist myth instead of a modern city with skyscrapers and Starbucks.  

Is that a gay couple?

A giant glowing moth.

A fight between the two dinosaurs and two apes that takes out Rio de Janiero.

I guess you just have to say "Look!  Monsters fighting!"

Five people go to the Hollow Earth to check on Disturbances in the Force or something.

1. Mikael (Alex Fern, top photo), the driver of the transport vehicle, who gets eaten by a man-eating plant right away.  

2. Ilene Andrews, an expert on the Iwi Culture of Skull Island, where King Kong lived before he moved to the Hollow Earth.

3. Her adopted daughter Ji, the last of her tribe, who doesn't speak.

4. Tripper (Dan Stevens, left), a roguish, devil-may-care monster veterinarian.  

5. Conspiracy theory podcaster Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry).

When Tripper shows up, you assume he's going to be smooching with Ilene by fadeout.  That's what happens in 300,000 action adventure movies, right?  

Nope.  He mentions that they were friends in college, but gives no hint of a past or present relationship. Instead, he starts flirting with Podcaster Bernie, who is suspicious at first but warms up to him.

They hug.

More after the break

Max Casella after dating Doogie: Christian Bale's buddy, Tony Soprano's driver, Timon, Bottom, bi. With a small d*ck bonus.

 

In the early 1990s, if your parents belong to a certain socioeconomic class, you were required to watch ABC's ultra-conservative programming block on Wednesday nights: 

The Wonder Years, with Fred Savage as a boy winning the Girl of His Dreams in the 1960s.

Home Improvement, with Tim Allen grunting with tools.

Coach, with Craig T. Nelson as a...football coach.

And Doogie Howser, MD, with Neil Patrick Harris as a 16-year old who somehow managed to finish medical school, become a doctor, and get girls.

I wasn't of a certain age, I was not living with parents of a certain socioeconomic class, so on Wednesday nights I was watching Seinfeld.   Not Doogie Howser, because of its ridiculous premise and "Girls are the meaning of life!" ideology.  

 But I did notice Max Casella, who played Doogie's buddy: 22-26 years, "cute as a bug's ear," as the oldsters would say, and a member of the Short Guy Brigade at 5'7".

As everyone knows, Neil Patrick Harris came out a few years after Doogie, and for some inscrutable reason agreed to play "himself' in the homophobic Harold & Kumar movies and heterosexual horndog Barney on How I Met Your Mother (2005-14).  More recently, in Uncoupled (2022), he played a gay man dealing with the death of his partner and suddenly becoming single at midlife. 

But what has Max Casella been doing?

I'm researching the three standard questions: 

1. Any gay roles?

2. Gay in real life?

3. Any n*ude photos?  

1. Any gay roles?

In Newsies (1992), a Disney movie about the newsboys' strike of 1899, Max plays Racetrack Higgins, who may be gay or bisexual.  When focus character Jack (Christian Bale) says that they can't beat up the newsboys who refuse to join the strike, he "jokingly" suggests kissing them.

In Ed Wood (1994), the biopic of the director known for crossdressing, Glen or Glenda? and Plan 9 from Outer Space, Max plays Paul Marco, the gay actor who often starred in Wood's films.  His sexual identity is not mentioned here.

Later Max moved into animation, voicing characters on Pepper Anne, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Kim Possible; and video games such as Jak and Daxter (a humanoid elf and his previously-human otter-weasel buddy) and Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony (he doesn't voice Gay Tony).

He appeared in 28 episodes of The Sopranos (2001-07) as Benny Fazio, who is partnered with Chris Moltisanti and sometimes works as Capo Tony's driver.  He's married with children.

Inside Llewelyn Davis (2013) depicts a day in the life of the folk singer (Oscar Davis) in the early 1960s Greenwich Village scene.  Max plays Club Manager Pappi Corsicato, who has sex with Llewelyn's girl.

Tulsa King (2024-): Sylvester Stallone plays a mob boss who tries to start a new cosa nostra among the Oklahoma cowboys.  Max plays Manny Truisi, formerly a soldier in the Invernizzi Family, who tried to assassinate Stallone's Dwight, then fled. and started a new life working on a horse ranch.  He's got a wife and kid.

More after the break.  

Paradise: Gay-subtext President and Secret Service Guy, annoying cliches, murder, a silly plot twist, and James Marsden

A tv series called Paradise just dropped on Hulu, recalling the annoying Netflix habit of impossible-to-research one-word titles.  But the icon shows two men and a woman, and the first episode icon, two men together.  So maybe some gay characters, or at least a gay subtext buddy bond.  Let's check.

Scene 1: Xavier (Sterling K. Brown) wakes up on one side of a bed, feels the pillow on the other side, and flashes his wedding ring.  Annoying cliche #1: Dead wife.  Heterosexual identity established in a gesture at Minute 1.  He morosely gets up, dresses with just enough beefcake to show his scars, and writes messages in marker: "Eat me first!"; "Get brushed!" "Dress your teeth."  Har-har.

He leaves to go jogging, greeting the neighbor in his vine-covered nuclear family house, through Annoying Cliche #2: a small town that looks like it's the 1950s -- past a store with one of those toy horse rides outside, for chrissakes.  They're all setting up for the big, important carnival. 

Past a rich dude's house, where Agent Pace (Jon Beavers) jokes that he's getting old and about to have a heart attack (Sterling K. Brown is only 49; you can run into your 80s).  

He counters that Agent Pace runs a 14 minute mile. "But I lift, dude."   

"But...the world's biggest biceps don't make up for the world's smallest dick." Annoying Cliche #3: The size of your dick correlates with your worth as a human being.  These guys are both jerks.

Scene 2: Back home.  Annoying Cliche #4: teenage daughter and preteen son. Why can't it ever, just once, be the other way around? They discuss his diet -- he's getting fat -- and his inability to sleep since the Wife Died.

Left: Sterling K. sort-of smiling.  His character displays only two emotions, anger and sadness.

Xavier eats his daughter's eggs instead of his own, creepily grabs and threatens to tickle her, and Annoying Cliche #4: kisses the top of her head.  

The son is reading James and the Giant Peach. Xavier disapproves.  Why?  It's about a boy whose parents are killed by a rampaging rhinocerous, so he is sent to live with his abusive aunts...oh.

Scene 3: Back to the rich person's house.  Agent Pace had to go home to use the bathroom, so Jane is working in his place.  Xavier goes through the gate, past the fountain and into the house, where two other agents, Rainier and Brooks, meet him.  "Rich guy isn't up yet, and it's 10:00 am."  He must be getting special security due to a death threat. 

Through the house -- all white, with ferns -- past pictures of Rich Guy and his buddies.

Up the stairs, knocking on the door. "Mr. President."

Wait -- does he mean the President of the United States?  But this ain't the White House!  It could be a Mar-a-Lago sort of presidential retreat. 

He bursts in to find the President dead on the floor,  in a pool of blood.

Scene 4: Five Years Earlier: The President (James Marsden, top photo) asks Xavier (left) to remove his shoes before entering his office (not the Oval Office).  He won the election last night, as the incumbent, but his opponent "had the brain of  Goldendoodle" (isn't being stupid a requirement for the job?).   He wants Xavier to be his lead secret service agent, or rather "by my side for the next four years -- and after." He mentions his future retirement without mentioning "beautiful women" -- queer code.

But why Xavier?  "You're the best, and you're black."  Why, are you into black guys?  He's a Southerner, so he can't have an all-white staff.  

The President prides himself on being an outsider,  unconventional, but able to make the hard decisions, because "The world is 19 times more fucked up than anyone realizes."

Scene 5: Back to the present.  Xavier notices two glasses, one empty; a cigarette on the floor; and something missing from the dressing room safe.  Also, in a photo of the President with his family, someone drew horns on his wife (Cassidy Freeman, Amber on The Righteous Gemstones).  

His son is played by Charlie Evans, left.  Unfortunately, that's also the name of a female actor who takes off her clothes a lot, so I can't research any beefcake for him. To get even, I'm putting a random n*de dude after the break.

Xavier calls for a lockdown, says he needs 30 minutes, and starts crying. So, you and the President were good buddies, huh?

Scene 6: Flashback to  the end of Xavier's first day in the secret service.  The President notes that he and his wife hate each other -- she'll leave him as soon as he's out of office-- and asks if Xavier has a wife and kids. Why, to see if he's available for snogging?  

"Only two kids?  Good.  It's a smart move to not have kids right now."  Why, global warming?

Scene 7: In the present, Xavier calls Agent Pace and orders him back to the house.  He resists, so Xavier says"It's bad.  It's really bad."

He heads to the basement to talk to Mike Garcia (Eddie Diaz), who is staffing the security cameras, to go through the President's day.  Workout, got out of his bathrobe for the first time in a week, coffee with Sinatra (don't get excited, it's a woman with a man's name).

Xavier was there: he remembers the President and Sinatra arguing about who has the biggest balls. 

Left: Marsden's backside

Then the President made pasta (from scratch) for dinner with his son, but the guy bailed on him and ate with his mother.   Then his usual (female) bedroom partner arrived. After the bedroom visit, he visited with his father, who stays in the guest house, then went to bed. Last person to see him was -- Xavier!

More after the break

Jeff East: Tom Sawyer's boyfriend, Disney teen, young Superman, naked fratboy, Pumpkinhead prey.

If you were young in the 1970s, Sunday night meant either church or The Wonderful World of Disney, countless movies set in the wilderness chopped up into 40-minute segments.  It was dreadful, but at least you got to see a cadre of teenagers personally selected by Walt or Roy Disney to represent "youthful masculinity":  Tommy Kirk, Kurt Russell, Tim Considine, James MacArthur.  

And if you could tell your fundamentalist, "movies are sinful" parents that you were going to the library downtown and sneak into a matinee, you could see Jeff East and Johnny Whitaker playng boyfriends.

Born in 1957 in Kansas City, Jeff had virtually no acting experience when he was chosen from among 1,000 hopefuls in open auditions to play Huckleberry Finn in Tom Sawyer (1973), with Johnny Whitaker as Tom.

They appeared together again in Huckleberry Finn (1974), with a romance that would be impossibly overt today.

Plus they both showed bare chests and bare butts, which would never be permitted today.  

Jeff went on three Wonderful World of Disney movies about big animals.  Disney loved animal stars.

Return of the Big Cat (1974): he has to save his sister from a cougar.

The Flight of the Grey Wolf (1975): he tries to re-introduce a wolf into the wild.  Nobody flies.

The Ghost of Cypress Swamp (1977): he has to save his dog from a panther, and runs afoul of a crazy guy.

This was the era of the big name teen idols like Shawn Cassidy, and a guy who fought panthers couldn't compete.  Jeff got very little attention in the teen magazines.

Jeff moved on to his first "adult" role as a college student who participates in a deadly hazing in The Hazing (1977),  also released as The Case of the Campus Corpse to make it seem like a comedy.  

Again he takes everything off -- he spends about half the movie in nothing but a revealing jockstrap.

Displaying his butt again.

And he has a painfully intense, gay-subtext romance with his costar, fellow college student Charles Martin Smith.

 

Charles Martin Smith's butt in Never Cry Wolf (1983), about a government researcher living with wolves.  

What's with these guys and their wildlife?

More butts after the break

Moises Arias: Rico on "Hannah Montana," grows up to play gay characters and show his bum, but is he actually gay? With a hung O'Hearn

 

In 2006, the Disney channel premiered Hannah Montana, about a teenage girl who is secretly a pop star (just go with it).  Hannah was surrounded by a coterie of hunks and hunkoids, including her father Robby (Billy Ray Cyrus), her brother Jackson (Jason Earle), her buddy Oliver (Mitchell Musso), her crush Jake (Cody Linley) -- and Rico Suave (Moises Arias), the billionaire's son, schemer, and prankster who ran Rico's Surf Shop and various other business enterprises.  

Rico's love/hate relationship with Jackson, his employee and classmate, eventually turned to love: they became best friends.  Maybe they were dating in real life, too.  Or maybe Moises was dating Ryan Ochoa, or Jaiden Smith, Will Smith's nonbinary and probably pansexual child.

By the time the series ended in 2011, Moises had become the best and brightest of the Short Guy Brigade: 5'1", muscular, cute, and "obviously" gay.

After Hannah, Moises concentrated on movies and tv shows with gay subtext buddy-bonds or even LGBTQ characters:

In The Kings of Summer (2013), two teenage boys, including Gabriel Basso (left), and their nonbinary, agendered friend Biaggio (Moises) decide to spend the summer together in the wilderness. 

I didn't see Ender's Game (2013), since it was based on a book by homophobic Orson Scott Card, but the plot synopsis suggests a love-hate relationship between far-future space captain Bonzo Madrid (Moises) and Ender (Asa Butterfield).

The Land (2016) features four teenage boys who want to be skateboard champs.

In Ben-Hur (2016), Moises plays Dismas, a Jewish zealot who tries to kill Pontius Pilate from Ben-Hur's balcony.  The guards arrest Ben-Hur, of course, but he loves Dismas too much to betray him.

In Five Feet Apart (2019), he plays a gay disabled guy who lives in a cystic fibrosis ward and facilitates his buddy's heterosexual romance.

He lives in a post-Apocalyptic vault-community and buddy-bonds with a boy in Fallout (2024).

More Moises after the break

"Teacup": Body-jumping aliens, two heterosexual romances, a gay subtext boyfriend betrayal, and Rob's knob

Probably-gay actor Jackson Kelley notes that he had a starring role in the paranormal horror Teacup, on Peacock. I figured he would be playing a gay character, so I checked it out.

The premise: On a farm full of good country folk, animals start behaving strangely, then people start trembling and speaking in riddles.  The power and WIFI go out. 

An invisible "teacup" trap marked by a blue line appears around the property; any person or animal that crosses it dies a horrible death.  A guy in a gas mask keeps patroling and gesturing.  Sound doesn't get through, so he uses a board to say things like: "Stay behind the line" and "Trust no one" 

The people trapped inside the "teacup" are divided into heterosexual nuclear families:

Family #1: James (Scott Speedman, left, from Animal Kingdom), his wife (a veterinarian), sick elderly mother, teenage daughter, and preteen son.

Family #2: Ruben (Chaske Spencer from Twilight), his wife, and his teeange son, trapped there when they brought their horse to see the veterinarian.   

Soap opera plotlines: The wife is secretly having an affair with James, and the son has been in love with James' daughter since he was in second grade, but is trapped in the Friend Zone (but not for long). 

Family #3: Donald Kelley (Boris McGiver. left) and his wife from the farm next door also happen to be there when the teacup is  put up.

The Newcomers: While everyone is dealing with the crisis and soap opera stuff, preteen Arlo (Caleb Dolden) tells his sister and her not-boyfriend that the Assassin is coming to kill them all.  The only way they can escape is with a multicolored liquid from a crashed meteor, so they gather a vial full.

Gas Mask Guy wants the vial, and crosses the blue line to get it, whereupon they stab him.  

Meanwhile, James finds the injured Travis (Jackson) hiding in the basement, worried that he's "one of them" and ready to shoot.  As they have a standoff, Travis tells his story:

Gas Mas Guy at a Bar: Flashback to Travis as the new guy working at the bar, mesmerized by Gas Mask Guy, McNab (Rob Morgan).  Wouldn't you be?

Left: Rob Morgan having coffee n*ude.  But he doesnt' have a lot of tattoos; maybe it's his breakfast companion?

He's telling about the aliens who set force-field "teacup" traps that incinerate any complex organism that tries to get through.  They're non-corporeal, using human bodies as hosts.  They can jump from body to body.  Often the humans aren't even aware of it, so anyone could be hosting an alien.

Bartender Big Al tells Travis to pay attention to the other customers; he'll wait on McNab himself.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

The Binge: Skyler Gisondo's chest, two queer codes, some random naked guys, and a lot of queerbaiting

A review of The Binge (2020) praised the "strong friendship" between the central pair. Strong friendship means gay subtext, right?

So I sat through 20 minutes of a bad 1980s teen nerd comedy until the heteronormativity became overwhelming, then fast-forwarded to places where guys interacted without half-naked girls around.  Strong friendship means gay subtext, right? 

Not so much. Two queer codes, two queerbait characters, and 3,041 exclamations of "girls are the meaning of life!"

The premise: a new Prohibition.  All alcohol and narcotics are banned in the U.S., except one day a year you can have all you want.  This is ridiculous: The logistics of producing and distributing all of that booze would be a nightmare, and narcotics -- usually understood as opiates and opioids -- are very dangerous.  Combine them with booze, and you will die.  And what about the use of opioids as painkillers?  Anyhow, most abused drugs are stimulants like cocaine or hallucinogens like Ecstasy, and have little addiction potential.

The guys: Griffin (Skyler Gisondo. top photo) and Hags (Dexter Darden, right. not what it looks like),  high school seniors, are eligible for their first Binge.  They want to go to a big binge party, because the Girls of Their Dreams will be there, and they can ask them to the prom and then to get married. (To stir things up, Griffin's girl happens to be the daughter of the over-protective Evil Principal).

Most of the movie involves their misadventures in attempting to get there.  Griffin gets his eyebrow shaved off.  They try to resurrect an injured cow, and get squirted with milk (presented as disgusting, although you pour it on your cereal every morning).  There's a ludicrously stupid song-and-dance number that goes on forever and ever.  

The queer codes: The Evil Principal (Vince Vaughn, left), explaining the horrible things that happen to teens who binge, discusses a girl who "found herself on a private plane with twelve Saudi princes, never to be seen again."  Griffin asks Hags if he wants to end up that way: "On a private plane?  Absolutely!", implying that he wouldn't mind being the sex companion for a group of Saudi princes.  But then they begin discussing the Girls of their Dreams.

Near the end of the movie, the guys have broken up.  In a climactic scene, they cross a crowded dance floor to embrace.  That's an "affirming our love" moment.  But then they ask their girls to the prom.

Queerbait #1: They catch a ride with Pompano Mike (Tony Cavalero), who is driving a busload of half-naked girls to the party, but doesn't express any heterosexual desire of his own.

Queerbait #2: Andrew (Eduardo Franco), who acts like a stoner even in the absence of marijuana, doesn't express any heterosexual interest; he tags along on the guys' quest just because he is an outcast at the high school, and wants friends.  Besides, another of Eduardo Franco's characters, Argyle, had a gay-subtext romance with Will Byers in Stranger Things

In a climactic scene, Andrew is arm wrestling with, I think Seb (Esteban Benito).  I was fast forwarding, so I don't know the back story.  He says "I love you!," and Seb responds "I love you. too."  Andrew is elated: "I've been waiting all my life for..."  Psych!  Seb was just trying to distract Andrew so he could win!  That sounds like a gay exchange.

Disillusionment and dicks after the break. Caution: arousal.