"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

"F*cking Adelaide": Queer musician Brendan Maclean returns to his awful home town, shows his backside and a rando's d*ck

 

F*king Adelaide  (2017), now streaming on Amazon Prime, is a comedy-drama about a family drawn back to Adelaide when Mom makes an Earth-shattering announcement.  There are six 15-minute long episodes.  I watched the first, about Eli.

Scene 1: Adelaide, 1999.  A boy in drag is singing to his two sisters as they hide in a sheet-draped-over-chairs tent from their yelling, smashing-things parents.  He stumbles, but his older sister tells him to just keep singing: "One day you'll get out of here, and you'll be a massive star. I know it."

Scene 2: Sydney now.  The adult Eli (Brendan Maclean), wearing a weird headdress, is trying to perform on a broken keyboard.  Cut to him kissing his girlfriend in their apartment.  He's straight?  WTF?

It was a misdirection -- Eli is still trying to perform in a coffee house that looks like an apartment.  He is angry because the couple is kissing instead of paying attention. 

It probably wasn't a misdirection for Australians.  Brendan Maclean is a well-known queer musician, with six EPS, two albums, and a number of songs for tv episodes.    

He became infamous in 2017 with the music video for his song "House of Air," which pretends to be a training video on "homosexual encounters" around 1980.  Strangely, the performers actually engage in the more unusual acts, which may be gross to some viewers, but just simulate the everyday acts.

Brendan was interviewed in Issue 2 of You Otter Know, a queer zine produced by Harry Clayton-Wright during the COVID lockdown in 2020-21. He discusses "lip synching in a jock, hands tied to an over-hanging bar as I'm whipped by a gimp."

He has 14 acting credits listed on the IMDB, including Klipspringer in The Great Gatsby (2013) and How to Make Gravy (2024), "an adaption of Australian music legend Paul Kelly's classic song."

The song is a monologue: a man calls his friend from prison, saying he won't be home to make the gravy for Christmas dinner, so he's giving him the recipe.  

After a look at Brendan's butt, we can return to the episode.  

As Eli continues trying to perform in the apartment-shaped coffee house, Mom calls: she bought him a ticket home.

"Nope, I'm busy.  I've got gigs and a boyfriend and a life. I can't just go running off to Adelaide." 1350 km, a two-three day drive.

The woman in the snogging couple says she used to know a guy from Adelaide.  Maybe you know him?  That happens when I say I'm from Illinois.  

Scene 3: Eli heads to the pub and asks bartender Nathan (Drew Proffitt) to let him perform.  "Nope, I pay you to tend bar." 

"Ok, then, where are my wages?"

"Oh, I gave them to your boyfriend Peter."

They get into a fight over whether Eli can drink free, and bartender Nathan fires him.

More after the break

Kurt Ostlund: Disney Channel's Slab, comic book fan, bank robber, gay best friend, n*de bodybuilder

Mr. Young (2011-13), on Disney XD, featured Brendan Meyer as a genius who graduates from college at age 15 and, instead of taking a professorship at MIT and working on the string theory of the universe, becomes a high school science teacher.  In standard teencom style, he has a best friend, a crush, and a bully -- all students at the school -- and hilarity ensues.  And a lot of tongue-lolling, jaw-dropping "Girl of My Dreams" heteronormative ideology

But it wasn't totally execrable. There was a gay-subtext bromance between the buddies, and the bully Slab (Kurt Ostlund) only expressed heterosexual interest once.  Plus he had some gender-atypical traits that key in to gay stereotypes.

I've checked the adult careers of the three main male actors, and it looks like Slab is the only one with gay potential.  So let's take a look:

Not him, a Playgirl model from 1991 and current disc golf champion.  The name is close, though.

Our guy went on to play more slabs in heteronormative projects:

Hothead in Mark & Russell's Wild Ride (2015): two high schoolers try to win the Girl of Their Dreams or something.

Oggy in Unseen (2016): A family man who's invisible searches for his missing daughter.  It's not a comedy.

But then he went full-on bear to play gay-vague or "no expression of heterosexual interest" characters, such as a comic book fan who is targeted by a ghost for stealing important issues in an episode of Supernatural (2018).

Soldiers in Project Blue Book (2019) and The Terror (2019).

Strong Boy in 15 episodes of Snowpiercer (2020-2022), about a train that carries the last survivors of humanity after the world becomes a frozen wasteland.  He is brain-addled from his trauma, but eventually recovers, joins the resistance (there's always a resistance), and sacrifices himself to save his friends.

More after the break

Jake Short: Disney's ANT Farm genius plays a lot of girl-crazy teenagers, but his recent social media posts reveal...

Jake Short was born in 1997 in Indianapolis.  After some early roles, he became teencom-famous in ANT Farm (2011-14), a Disney Channel sitcom about a middle school for gifted students (ANT stands for Advanced Natural Talents).  His Fletcher Quinby is an artistic genius, and of course heterosexual, with two girlfriends before the series ends.

This led directly to Mighty Meds (2013-15) with comic book fanboys Oliver and Kaz (Jake, Bradley Steven Perry) discovering a hospital for superheroes, and eventually acquiring superpowers of their own. They have a gay-subtext romance, although each dates girls.

Jeffrey James Lippold, left, played The Crusher in 15 episodes.

In the spin-off Lab Rats: Elite Force (2016-17), they team up with superheroes Bree and Chase.

We can say that the adult Jake appeared in All Night (2018), a tv series about high schoolers locked in the school overnight for a bacchanal involving s*x and other illicit activity.

And Man of the House (2018), about two divorced sisters who move in together, and their son has to learn "what manhood means when he's entirely surrounded by females."  Just grow a pair and make them a lesbian couple.

The First Team (2020), only lasted for six episode, but it's from the BBC, so that may not indicate a failure.  It follows three players in a British Premiere League Football Team (the most prestigious).

In Supercool (2021), Neil (Jake) wishes to be cool enough to talk to the Girl of His Dreams, and the wish comes true, straining the relationship with his bff (Miles G; Harvey).

There's nothing s*xual going on in this scene.

S*x Appeal (2022) is about a girl who wants to do it a lot of times, so she'll be ready for her long-distance boyfriend, played by Jake.

And that's about it. Not much since 2022.  Jake has been playing golf, running a podcast....

More after the break