Atticus Mitchell: "My Babysitter's a Vampire," "Stonewall," "Now I can be who I am," and nude photos, but has he done anything gay lately?

 

When I was researching Star Trek, Strange New Worlds, I looked for nude photos of various cast members, and found several of Atticus Mitchell, who played an ensign "scared by a dog" in one episode.  

You are probably more familiar with him as Benny Weir of My Babysitter's a Vampire (2010 movie, 2011-12 tv series):  teenager Ethan (Matthew Knight)  battles demons, zombies, and various paranormal perils with the help of his buddies, Benny (Atticus, left) and Rory (Cameron Kennedy), plus his sister's vampire babysitter. 

Everyone was intensely hetero-horny, but there was a lot of beefcake. Here the guys agree to be sacrificed so an ancient Aztec goddess can be reunited with her boyfriend.  She's not interested in them, and they're going to die, but that's not important.  She's a girl, so whatever she wants, she gets. 

My earlier review of the series pointed out a lot of gay subtexts.  Here Benny distracts Ethan's girlfriend so he can smooch on Rory.  It's probably a behind-the-scenes shot. 

Born in Toronto in 1993, Atticus became interested in acting in elementary school, and performed in four plays while at St. John Elementary School:

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs of the Black Forest

James and the Giant Peach

50 Below Zero

When he graduated to Malvern Collegiate Institute (a public high school, in spite of the ponderous name), Atticus switched to on-screen acting with the teencom How to Be Indie (2009-2011), which is about an Indian-Canadian girl, not indie rock. Dylan Everett (26 years old in this photo) played her best friend.  Atticus played a bully.

Next came Vampire, followed by the teen movie Radio Rebel (2012), about a shy high school girl with a secret identity as an underground radio dj. So she's Hannah Montana.  Atticus plays Gabe, a musician who tries to sneak and snark his way into air time, and his future boyfriend or good buddy Adam DiMarco plays as Gavin, the girl's "love interest."  

Aside from Vampire, Atticus is best known for his role as Mickey Hess on Fargo (2014): he runs a shady trucking company with his dad and brother. No girlfriend, but he is established as heterosexual by playing with a female "sex doll."

I was more interested in the role of Matthew in Stonewall (2015), about the 1969 riots that started the Gay Rights Movement, with Danny (Jeremy Irvine) as a white masculine Saviour from Indiana.  

Problem: Matthew doesn't appear in the synopsis, and I don't recall him from watching.  But surely he's gay.

Nude photos after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

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.  

Gideon Gemstone's Secret Life, Part 1: Jimmy Olsen finds out that the Gemstones do it big

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Ted Prior: Man-mountain hero of the macho 1980s, Chippendale dancer, Playgirl model. Any gay content?

 

N*de photos of this guy have been sitting in my "to profile" file since March, and since I have some free time today (and my pageviews are down by about 70%)," I'll give him a try.

His name is Ted Prior.  He was active primarily during the 1980s Reagan-Bush era  man-mountain craze, when Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and a dozen lesser lights -- Chuck Norris, Reb Brown, Steven Seagal, Michael Pare -- stormed into POW camps and drug lord lairs, got tortured while shirtless, single-handedly defeated entire armies, and won The Girl, thus demonstrating the "supremacy" of white heterosexual America.

Born in New Jersey in 1959 and raised in Baltimore, Ted originally planned to become a professional bodybuilder -- he states that he won Teenage Mr. Maryland and "ten other awards" before he turned 19.  He moved to Los Angeles, in fact, so he could train at Gold's Gym.

But he worked in theater, too, and once he hit L.A., a walk-on as a bodybuilder in an episode of The Incredible Hulk (1981) convinced him to try his hand at acting. His first starring roles were in  Sledgehammer (1983) and Killzone (1985), written and directed by his older brother David.

Most of Ted's work for the next twenty years would come from David's production company, Action International Pictures: Operation Warzone (1988), Jungle Assault (1989), The Final Sanction (1990), Raw Justice (1994).

Ted's most famous film, Deadly Prey (1987) is a sort of The Most Dangerous Game. People are being kidnapped and taken to a secret jungle enclave, where the evil Colonel Hogan (David Campbell) has his mercenaries hunt them down.  Vietnam Vet Mike (Ted) is grabbed while taking out the garbage, brought to the enclave, stripped, greased, gawked at, and forced to run naked through the jungle.  Uh-oh, they kidnapped the wrong guy.

He is shirtless throughout: a major draw of the film, as you can see from the VHS tape cover.

In November 2024, the Lyric Hyperion Theater in Silverlake, the second gay neighborhood in Los Angeles, held a "Deadly Prey" day, and promised Ted Prior "in the flesh," har har.

The only other Ted Prior movie that I reviewed was Lost at War (2007): five soldiers are trapped in a foxhole while mysterious creatures force them to re-live painful moments of their past.  It is heavy with gay subtexts.

During the 1980s, Ted worked as a Chippendale dancer.  This led to modeling gigs in the  October 1983 and March 1984 issues of Playgirl.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.