"The Feast of the Seven Fishes": All of the tropes I hate, but I still liked it. With Skyler Gisondo and bonus Italian dicks

 

The Feast of the Seven Fishes just dropped on Netflix.  All I know is that it's a Christmas movie starring Skyler Gisondo, so the likelihood of gay characters or even subtexts is minimal.  I'm going to watch anyway.

Scene 1: Beautiful establishing shots of a mining town in West Virginia, winter 1983.  I loved that year!  Madonna, Michael Jackson, "I'm Coming Out," Tom Cruise, Family Ties, Mama's Family.  Tony (Skyler Gisondo) is painting by the river and gazing at his acceptance letter from a prestigious art school.  Angelo (Andrew Schultz, below) and his penis, "Mr. Boner," stop by to tell him about a party with girls desperate to have sex with any guy who asks. 

 "Nope, I'm not going."  Not interested in girls, buddy?

Well, how about coming along on his date?  There will be extremely horny girls there, too. "Nope."  If I didn't know from the plot synopsis that he has two girlfriends, I'd have pegged Tony as gay.

"Please. My penis hates being alone with girls."

"Ok, I'm in. Just to please your penis." He doesn't really say that.

Scene 2: Back in his shabby working-class home, someone named Pap tries to get Tony drunk on homemade hooch.  There's no one named "Pap" in the cast list, but he could be Tony's dad, played by Paul Ben-Victor.

 We cut to a super-elegant mansion, where a super-elegant rich girl named Beth yells at her even-richer  boyfriend Prentice (Allen Williamson, left) for backing out of his promise to spend Christmas with the family.  He's going skiing with his friends instead. Prentice, baby, the first rule of relationships -- never leave them alone at Christmas. They'll be screwing someone else by Boxing Day. 

Mom is upset: "You'll never land a rich husband with that attitude!  Like all men, he prefers the company of other men."  So all men are gay?  

Beth wants a husband who will spend time with her.  That's what gay bffs are for, girlfriend.

Scene 3: Beth hanging out with her Italian-American friend, complaining about this whole "get a rich husband" thing.  They smoke pot.  

Meanwhile, Tony's Uncles Carmine and Frankie, brothers, not a gay couple(Ray Arbruzzo, left, Joe Pantoleone) are stocking up on booze, when they see Tony's Ex throwing herself at a truck driver.  They discuss her boobs for several minutes before getting around to complaining about her post-breakup downward spiral.

Cut to Tony's cousin Juke (Josh Helman, left and below), the family intellectual, telling his buds about the Feast of the Seven Fishes, although they obviously already know: it's a traditional Christmas Eve dinner consisting of seven types of seafood.  I thought it was a religious thing, Jesus with the loaves and fishes.

He stops to complain about not having a girlfriend, which is especially tough at Christmas. Foreshadowing -- ten to one he gets with Tony's Ex-Girlfriend, the one who throws herself at truck drivers. 

Scene 4: Rich-girl Beth and her friend,  incredibly high, stare at the menu at a hot dog restaurant, trying to decide what to order.  How about hot dogs?  They discuss going to a party tonight, but all of the parties are full of girls desperate to have sex with any boy who asks, so they'll get groped and prodded all the time. "Well, maybe I'll do a little groping," the friend jokes.  So she's a lesbian?

Nope.  "I've been dating this guy and his penis." Wait -- her boyfriend is "Come along on my date tonight" Angelo and his penis Mr. Boner.  And Angelo  has this cousin: "Cute, nice, smart..."  A gay guy would immediately ask "How big is his cock?"  

"Maybe you could come along on my date tonight, and dump your Christmas-hating boyfriend for Tony? Or at least seduce him and then dump him on New Year's Day?"

"Sure, I'll give it a shot."

Left: Juke butt.

More after the break

Peter Billingsley: The lingerie lamp kid, a Beverly Hills brat, Whips, ropes, and perhaps Peter's peter

 

Even  though a few years have passed, Peter Billingsley is still know as the kid from A Christmas Story (1983).  You know -- the bespectacled 9-year old in the 1950s, whose only Christmas wish is "a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass and this thing that tells time."  

Hardly anyone saw it in theaters in 1983, but it has become a TV tradition -- TBS usually mounts a 24-hour marathon -- so you've probably seen A Christmas Story as often as the much gayer White Christmas or It's a Wonderful Life.

I don't really care for it. There's a creepy lamp shaped like a lady's leg in lingerie (that turns Ralphie on), a nasty bully, a borderline-abusive Dad, a gun as a major plot point, and no cute guys or discernible homoerotic subplots (although some of the cast has gay connections).

And the mythos hasn't gotten better.

The top photo is Braeden LeMasters, who played Ralphie in A Christmas Story 2 (2012).  Six years later, Ralphie wants a car and the Girl of His Dreams.

I think it got worse.

In The Dirt Bike Kid (1985), a modern retelling of "Jack and the Beanstalk," the 14-year old Jack (Peter) is sent to buy groceries, but gets a magic dirtbike instead.  He uses it to clean up the corrupt town, save a struggling hot dog stand, and become a town hero. He expresses no heterosexual interest, but no same-sex interest, either.  He has a buddy (Chad Sheets), but  his main emotional bond is paternal, with Mike (Patrick Collins), the owner of the hot dog stand.

 In Russkies (1987), it's the heart of the Cold War, Danny (Joaquin Phoenix) and his friends Adam (Peter) and Jason (Stefan DeSalle) find a a Russian sailor, Mischa (Whip Hubley), washed up on the shore. Adam  is obviously entranced by the beefy, bulge-laden Mischa, especially after he takes off his shirt at the doctor's office.

 

But it is Danny who acts as his friend and protector.  He hatches a scheme to smuggle Mischa to Cuba, whence he could get back home.  When the baddies shoot Danny down over the water, Mischa rushes to the rescue. Later, Danny rescues Mischa.  Though the movie ends with Mischa going  home, the experience changes Danny forever; it is his Summer of '42.

An anti-gay slur (this was the 1980s, after all), but no girls thought of or spoken of.

Left: Whip's butt and back balls.

In Beverly Hills Brats (1989), Scooter (18-year old Peter) is ignored by his rich father (Martin Sheen) and bullied by his siblings, so he fakes his own kidnapping, hiring the bumbling thugs Clive (Burt Young) and Elmo (George Kirby).  The thugs are hostile at first, but soon come to feel sympathy for the lonely Scooter.  Again, an anti-gay slur, but no expressed interest in girls.  Instead, Scooter tries to reach out to the thugs for emotional support.

By this point, Peter was starting to muscle up; in fact, he later played a high school athlete abusing steroids on an Afterschool Special.  But he also started to heterosexualize up.

Here he shows some bicep in VideoZone (1989), a tv commercial series about the merchandise advertised in Full Moon productions.

He appears in 11 episodes of Sherman Oaks (1995-97), an early example of the mockumentary format, as the hetereo-horny teenage son.
 

More after the break

Players: Romcom with a sports writer who ends up with who you expect, plus a bi guy who hooks up off-camera and some butts

 

Brock O'Hurn is starring in a new movie on Netflix, Players: a female sports writer named Mack has a foolproof plan for hooking up with guys, but then she falls in love with a hookup.  Do straight women really have trouble finding guys to have sex with?  Aren't they, like, hit on constantly?

Her best buddy is played by Damon Wayons, who I thought was homophobic due to the shockingly hateful In Living Color (Remember "Men on Film"?).  In 2019 he apologized for some homophobic tweets from 2011 to 2016: "I was unaware of the emotional impact they would have."  He is currently the executive producer of Glamorous, which stars a nonbinary or femme gay guy, so we'll check....

No wikipedia plot synopsis, no LGBTQ representation in the trailer. Grr -- I hate these Netflix one-word titles!  They make it impossible to research.  No way to tell if there are any minor "sassy work friend" gay characters, except by watching.

Scene 1: At a bar, Bran (Augustus Prew) and his crew discuss strategies for getting him into the pants of his target: pretend to be drunk and spill a drink on her?  Steal her scarf and pretend that you found it?   They decide on Fiji Fantasy: Bran and his "girlfriend," Mack, argue and break up in front of the target.  The girlfriend is careful to emphasize that it's not about the sex: he is incredibly fantastic at that; she just feels inferior because he's so rich and has been with so many attractive women. 

Their buds Adam and Little (Damon, Joel Courtney) watch in adoration: "This is a master class."  I think it's a little heavy-handed.  Unless she's a complete nitwit, the target will catch on that it's a hookup scam.

Scene 2:  She's a nitwit.  While Bran is off sexing her, the others walk home.  Adam wonders what will happen when the target finds out he's not rich.  "Are you new here?  After the sexing, he'll never see her again."  

Uh-oh, Bran calls: he "bucknerded" it by forgetting the name of his "girlfriend."  Why not use the same name every time? 

 But it doesn't matter, because hes's moving on to a new target; the guy by the white owl back at the bar.

A guy?  The buds approve  "Been awhile -- I like your style."  Mack suggests "Run Time Step."  Little, who happens to be Bran's baby brother, offers to help.

We don't see the play.Why do we see the girl target but not the guy target?  Afraid the audience will be offended by a gay hookup?  

Instead, we continue to focus on Adam and Mack.  They discuss their problems working for a newspaper, a "dying medium," Mack's new feature on memorable local sports, and "we're perfect for each other but don't want to admit it"."  The background song: "What cha waiting for?  Your prayers have already been answered!"  

Left: Joel Courtney's butt.

More romance after the break

Isaac Ordonez: A sweet, sensitive, queer-coded Pugsley Addams. WIth Chris Pine, Skyler, and some nude Hispanic dudes

 

The Pugsleys, the younger brother of the Addams Family mythos, usually get poor plotlines and poorer treatment.  They are bullied, tortured, ignored, used as playthings.  In Season 1 of Wednesday, Isaac Ordonez's Pugsley was not much different.

But during the hiatus between Season 1 and Season 2, Isaac grew up, becoming taller, huskier, bringing a dark nervous energy to the newly teenage Pugsley.  He has stepped out of the shadow of his sister to become his own person, with independent interests and goals -- a sweet, sensitive, traumatized soul trying to find emotional connection.  Friends.  A boyfriend.

Born in 2009, Isaac began acting in 2016 as the preternaturally smart Charles Wallace in A Wrinkle in Time, the adaption of the Madeleine L'Engel fantasy.

Chris Pine played his "captured-by-the-darkness" father.

Left: since Isaac is 16 as of this writing, I'm not looking for any nude photos, but he works mostly in media aimed at the Hispanic community, so here's a  guy from Puebla, Mexico

Next came some shorts: 

Dia de los Carpas (Day of the Tents): A group of boys help an undocumented girl get to the beach, where she has a magical secret. 

Psycho Sally:  No synopsis online, but there's no one named Sally in the character list.

Dispara y Mata (Shoot and Kill): A father tries to get his son (Isaac) to eat by telling him a story of survival in the Colombian jungle. 

More after the break. Caution: Explicit