George MacKay: The time-traveler's buddy chooses movies about endless pain, misery, and despair. Just because he has a small dick?

 

I've been watching 11.22.63: Jake (James Franco), disillusioned by how awful his life (and everything in general) is in 2016, takes a time portal to 1960 in an attempt to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy and make life perfect. In Episode 2, he hooks up with Bill (George MacKay), a Kentucky redneck with a standard Stephen King backstory -- abusive father, murdered sister.  

They have to live together for several years while waiting for Lee Harvey Oswald to show up, so they pass themselves off as...um... brothers.  Not much of a gay subtext--  Episode 3 is entitled Other Voices, Other Rooms, but it has nothing to do with the Truman Capote novel about gay awakening, and Bill's heterosexual identity is established very quickly, when the guys relax by going to a strip club.  But at least some people suspect that the two are a gay couple, and Bill is beaten up in what we would call a homophobic hate crime. Later he is institutionalized and given shock therapy, a common experience for gay men in the early 1960s.  And killed.

So, a queer-coded character, displayed in his underwear a lot.   Enough for me to check to see if George MacKay has played any other gay-subtext roles, or is gay in real life.

He was born in 1992, and broke into film as one of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan (2003).  Then he played a gang member in The Thief Lord (2006), which I recall as having a gay-subtext romance.

Next came a long string of angst dramas :

The Boys are Back (2009): man with a dying wife and estranged sons.

Private Peaceful (2012): Tommo (George) has a brain-damaged brother, sees his father being crushed by a tree, loses the Girl of His Dreams to his other brother (Jack O'Connell).  They go to war together, and Bro disobeys an order to abandon the wounded Tommo, and is executed.  Sounds delightful.  

How I Live Now (2013): Daisy, who has a dead mother (of course), survives a nuclear war, sees her friends massacred, finds her boyfriend (George) severely injured, and nurses him back to health.  Lovely.

 The Outcast (2015), a two-part tv movie: Lewis (George) sees his mother drown (of course), and grows up feeling responsible, so he self-harms and sets a church on fire.  He spends time in prison, then confronts his toxic family members (hint: every man is bullying and abusive),  and confesses his love for The Girl of His Dreams before...you guessed it...going to War. Ugh!  Or as one reviewer notes, a "relentlessly emotional, heart-tugging story of tragedy."

Does every single one of George's movie and tv roles involve crying over the endless misery of life?  I'm surprised someone doesn't start singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

Let's check his gay and gay-subtext roles:

I  already reviewed 1917 (2019).  The tragedies piled on World War I soldier George and his gay subtext boyfriend (Richard Madden) were laughably unyielding.  The darn thing was too grim even for torture porn. But the gay subtext lasted until the last scene, with a last-minute tacked-on reference to a girlfriend back home.  I can hear the writers panicking: "Wait, we forgot to establish that he's straight! Quick, add a line about a girl!"

Left: Richard Madden in Sirens. He's playing the gay Ashley Greenwick (stereotyped name, that) caught in the act.  I don't know who the disgusted buddy is. 

Pride (2014): Members of the gay group LGSM are raising money for the families affected by the British Miners' Strike (1984).  Joe (George) is so closeted that his out-and-proud boyfriend dumps him, and dies of AIDS two years later.  Bummer, but at least it's a gay role.

True History of the Kelly Gang (2019): George plays the notorious Australian bushranger (outlaw), who has a gay friend (Nicholas Hoult) and likes to hang out affectionately with his male crew, but also gets a girlfriend.  It ends badly.

In Femme (2023), George plays Preston, a homophobic gang member  who beats up and then starts hooking up with a drag queen.  But she gets revenge by filming their encounters and showing his friends, so they suspect him of being gay.  Preston gets angry and beats her to a pulp, but doesn't kill her.

OMG, George, what is this, Hee-Haw?

Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me

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.  

"Unstable: Rob Lowe and son are grieving, the Pilgrim Twins have small dongs, and there's a gay sycophant

 

 I haven't watched many of Rob Lowe's recent tv shows or movies; I had the impression that he wasn't entirely gay-friendly.  But he stars with his son, John Owen Lowe (below),in the 8-episode Netflix sitcom, Unstable.  I reviewed Episode 4, "Pilgrims and Sex Parties," since sex parties are a gay community thing.  

Premise: "Unstable genius" Ellis (Rob), who owns a biotech company, spirals out of control after the death of his wife (red flag!), so he brings his son Jackson (Johnny) aboard to smooth things out.  Except Jackson is a flautist.  How would that even work?

Scene 1: The biotech company.  A lady in a business suit complains that a photo of Ellis with a hawk on his head has gone viral, creating a meme where he's called the Wizard of Odd.  Ellis doesn't care: he's busy channeling his inner child and monkeys. 

Left: Lowe butt

Meanwhile, the obsessive Smithers to Ellis' Mr. Burns, Malcolm (Aaron Branch), has a meet-cute with the new HR Guy, but is too flustered about HR regulations to flirt.  A gay character in the first scene!  I stand corrected.

Scene 2: Ana, Ellis's main ally on the board of directors, asks how he's handling the grief over his Dead Wife.  Not well , he says: after losing the most wonderful person in the world, life is meaningless. After four episodes?  Usually Dead Wives are mentioned once to establish that the guy is heterosexual, then dropped.  Is this a show about grief?  

"So," Ana says, changing the subject, "About the hawk-on-your-head story, that reporter screwed you in the ass with a King Kong dick?"   Sounds like a fun date, but I think it's just a homophobic reference to the hawk-on-the-head story.

Scene 3:  Ana the Board Member runs into Ellis's son Jackson, the flautist-biotech scientist, and asks how he's handling the grief over his Dead Mother.  Not well;, he says; the grief comes in waves.   She notes that she's still playing the harp, so why doesn't he stop by with his flute for some "pluck and toots."   That sounds dirty.

Scene 4:  In the lab, scientists Luna and Ruby are looking through microscopes, trying to shame some cells into dividing.  They discuss Luna's never-seen "loser" boyfriend Brian and Ruby's ex-boyfriend - Jackson!  A heterosexual flautist?  How odd!

Sycophant Malcolm comes in all flustered over his meet-cute, so the scientists offer to create a litmus test to determine if HR Guy is actually interested. 

Ellis enters the lab, announcing that he's ready to go back to work: "If we can get some reductive oxidant on the anode..."   Uh-oh, he peers into a microscope and starts crying.  Too soon.  Strange -- usually working helps you deal with the grief.  Maybe the Dead Wife was a scientist.  

Scene 5:  Business-Suit Lady approaches the mansion of JT and Chas (JT Parr, Tom Allen, left), who are trying to destroy Ellis.  Boyfriends? No, brothers: they mention their father.  She orders them to back off, or she will post an embarrassing video. 

 "The sex parties?  We don't care -- everybody in tech goes to sex parties."  

No, actually she has a film of the two pretending to be Pilgrims.  If it gets out, no girls will come to their sex parties, so they'll have to have sex with guys.  "Ugh!  Gross!  Ok, we'll back off."  So these are heterosexual sex parties?  I've never heard of such a thing.

More grief 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

Does Kit Harington really have a tiny pecker? And what's wrong with that? With examples of tiny peckers.

 

I never heard of Kit Harington before yesterday, when a reader mentioned that he appears in Season 3 of  Industry.  I was going to do a profile, but got sidetracked by Kit's penis.

I don't like the beard.  He looks better clean-shaven.

Apparently Kit is or was the resident hunk on Game of Thrones.  I only watched ten minutes before being turned by the constant naked ladies, but here he's kissing a guy, so he's played a gay character.

But not in Thrones.  Costar Nicolaj Koster-Waldau notes  “a change in the level of female lust in the room when Kit is there, which all the males find annoying and disrespectful."

First, how can he help it if all the women in the world lust after him?  It's not his fault. 

Second, why do all the males in the world find it annoying.  Surely there's at least one or two gay men on Earth, Nicolaj?

You're from Denmark, which has gay marriage,  and you starred in Bent, about gay men in Nazi Germany.  You played a gay character!  You should know that gay men exist, friggin' homophobe!

I'm already angry with Kit, and he didn't even make the homophobic statement.    

Everyone on the internet thinks that he's got a small dick, due to an article that states that Kit Harington is the reason Jon Snow, presumably his character, has a tiny penis.

But actually the writers "got even" with him for being so attractive -- only to women, of course -- and had someone reference his  character's lack of penile hugeness: "What kind of God would have a pecker that small?

In real life, all we have is this heavily censored j/o session. 

And this photo, from Fleshbot, advertising a "gay make out session" between Kit and Chris Zylka.  Except it's Chris Zylka, whom Kit kisses in The Death and Life of John F. Donovan.

More cocks after the break

The Naked Thugs: Danny McBride thinks we "won't like these dicks." Is that even possible? With chubby guy bonus.

Commenting on the frequent male nudity in the first season of The Righteous Gemstones, Edie Patterson said "We're not gay baiting" (using the term wrong), and Danny McBride (Jesse) claimed that gay men "won't like these dicks." 

Nonsense.  All dicks are beautiful. Big, small, thick, thin, micro, they all draw us toward the power and promise of the male body.  

And the rest of these guys ain't bad, either.

They are a group of thugs hired in Episode 1.3 to take down Eli by destroying his satellite church.  He gets the upper hand and humiliates them by forcing them to run naked through the shopping mall.  

1. Casey Hendershott (top photo), who has played a variety of mobsters, bouncers, rednecks, serial killers, and miscellaneous miscreants.  He didn't show us his junk, but his physique more than makes up for it.

2. Zach Osterman, a Savannah, Georgia-based actor who appeared on Danny McBride's previous show Vice Principals. He's an avid cosplayer, gamer, comic book fan, ghost-tour guide, and pizza expert.  Some people with his physique get fat-shamed and size-shamed, so it took a very positive self image for him to agree to bare it all for Gemstones viewers.  

It was worth it.  He's easily the cutest of the trio.

3. Justin Matthew Smith, who has 29 acting credits on the IMDB, plus a special thanks for the short The Runner.  Nothing wrong with his dick.

The Running of the Butts.  The guys and some extras are forced to run through the mall nude, as the shoppers all laugh at them.

Why is male nudity assumed humorous for the viewer and humiliating for the subject?  If I saw one of these guys running through the mall, I would not be laughing.

 

Bonus chubby guys after the break