David Henrie: The Wizard of Waverly Place re-wizards, but is he as gay-friendly and naked as his costars?

I thought lightning might strike twice, or rather five times. The Wizards of Waverly Place, which ran on the Disney Channel from 2007 to 2012, featured countless gay subtexts and about a dozen beefcake hunks who have gone on to a gay-positive adulthood.

Gregg Sulkin, left, displays his biceps and bulge in gay magazines.

Jake T. Austin starred in the gay-friendly The Fosters.

Dan Benson runs a gay-friendly OnlyFans page, where he reviews adult products and shows his dick.

Selena Gomez is "mostly straight," and reveals that her character, Alex Russo, was bisexual, but the Disney censors wouldn't let them say so.

David DeLuise is a gay ally who has a j/o video online -- after the break.

So what about David Henrie, who played eldest wizard in the family, Justin Russo?

Since Wizards, he has done a lot of voice work, and had minor roles in movies: 

Lane in Paul Blart, Mall Cop

Rudy Isling -- Walt Disney's competitor -- in Walt Before Mickey.

Clean Cut Man in Cardboard Boxer, about a homeless man who is forced into cage matches.

Sebastian in This is the Year, about a teen road trip.  David also directed, and his brother Lorenzo Henrie starred.  

The Young Ronald Reagan in a 2024 biopic.  Ugh.

Six episodes of Underdeveloped, a mockumentary about inept producers.

No gay content here.

 

David is now starring in Wizards Beyond Waverly Place:  Justin Russo gave up his wizard powers so he could marry a mortal woman.  Wait -- weren't his parents a mortal and a wizard?    Now he's a middle school vice principal with a wife and two sons, wearing an annoyingly overstated wedding ring that he flaunts around like a newly-engaged schoolgirl.

Trouble begins when he and his wife must become the foster parents to a girl who was raised in the wizard world.  And by the way, the fate of the universe is in her hands.

I watched two episodes -- awful.  No beefcake, no gay subtexts, except that Justin's son, played by Alkaio Thiele, doesn't mention an interest in girls.  A Redditer thinks that he will come out as gay eventually, but he'll have to get past his Dad first.

Is David at least gay-friendly in real life?  

Answer after the break. Caution: explicit.

"The Seminarian": Gay evangelical with an enormous penis looks for love, annoys his friends and the viewer. No, it's not Kelvin Gemstone

 

The Seminarian 2011: "A seminarian saves a lady's life. They fall in love."  And "A closeted gay seminarian struggles..."  Well, which is it?  It can't be both

.  The only way to find out is to watch on Roku (or to look very closely at the DVD cover).

Scene 1: Whoa, the first scene shows a very well hung naked guy changing clothes in his kitchen!  Now we know the audience they're going after.  

He's Ryan Goodman (Goodman, har har) (Mark Cirillo), who lives in an incredible decadent-red apartment with his "when will you find a girl and get married" mother.  He is about to graduate from a conservative evangelical seminary, but he doesn't want to become a preacher: he's applying to a Ph.D. program at Yale.   

Scene 2: Meeting with his thesis advisor. Ryan is writing on how "love and desire" encourage procreation, protection, and socialization, "which enable us to survive and persist as a species."  The point of life is reproduction?  That's the house, job, wife, kids trajectory that my parents were always pushing on me.  I thought a gay guy would come up with something less oppressive.  Besides, he forgot the theology. "Oh, right...um...when we love each other, we reflect God's love." .

Scene 3: A restroom hookup leads to a heart-to-heart.  The guy had a bad breakup six years ago, and hasn't dated anyone since.  "So you're content without love?" Mark asks, horrified.  Some people are aromantic, and some are asexual.

Scene 4: Mark has only one gay friend on campus, Gerald (Matthew Hanon), who has just been dumped by his boyfriend, and doesn't have the energy to listen to his "love is bollocks" moaning.  Also a sraight friend, Eugene, who plasters the campus with "Protect Traditional Marriage" fliers. 

Although he has a girlfriend, Straight Eugene argues that you don't need to be in a relationship -- God's love is enough.  If you disagree, you don't understand God, and what are you doing in seminary?  Judgmental, aren't you?  Oh, right, you're training to become a preacher, and hate gays for a living.

Scene 5:  Mark working on his thesis: "When you love another human being, you love God."  He pauses for cybersex with Bradley, his online boyfriend, who lives too far away to meet. 

Scene 6: Mark decides to busybody into his gay friend Gerald's relationship, but  they have reconciled and don't want him nosing around.

Cut to the gym, where Mark is talking to his other gay friend about the Online Boyfriend. "So he lives far away.  You have to go see him, or you will never find love."  Dude, you live in Los Angeles.  Just walk into any bar and say "I have 8 inches.  Who wants to buy me dinner?"

Cut to Mark sitting on a bench, looking morose while Straight Eugene flirts with his girlfriend.

More Mark after the break

Charles Ambrose: Civil War soldier, coast guardsman, martial artist, male model. With some risque photos

 

A partial cast list of Righteous Gemstones Episode 4.1 as appeared, with Charles Ambrose as Union Soldier Stephens.  Time for a profile.

His real name is Jason Ambrose, also Jason Charles Smith, and he's from Sandwich, Illinois, 60 miles west of Chicago. He attended Waubonsee Community College, then studied comedy at the Second City in Chicago.  I wonder if his standup routine is about growing up in Sandwich.

His resume lists several local Chicago-area plays, including The Music Man, The Moon is Down, Act Your Age, The Dating Game, and Julius Caesar.  And skills including combat, archery, horseback riding, firearms, rock climbing, jiu jitsu, and motorcycles.

Plus modeling.

23 credits on the IMDB, beginning in 2008 with the short Hell Mary.

Then occasional guest spots on tv, one or two every year.  Most of these characters don't appear in the plot synopses:

Andy on Sons of Anarchy, featuring the backside of Charlie Hunnan

Zane on Henry Danger

Deputy Jimmy on Lovecraft Country

Donny in Hollywood Vampire

Lucas in NCIS: Los Angeles

Coach Watkins in The Wonder Years update, with Julian Lerner as Brad Hitman.

His most substantial role to date: 23 episodes of the soap General Hospital, playing Ambrose, henchman of the evil Victor Cassadine.  On Victor's orders, he kidnaps Liesl Obrecht, kidnaps Ace Prince-Cassadine, and almost kills Spencer Cassadine

Coming up: The Legend of Van Dorn, about a Confederate soldier played by Lee Wilson, who was "immensely attractive to women."  Never to men, of course.  He was murdered by a husband upset over his wife's canoodling.  Charles plays General Red Jackson, another real-life figure.

And Secrets and Yards, about a small town football team with secrets.

More Charles after the break. Caution: Explicit.

"The Holiday Exchange": Immensely wealthy A-gays look for love at Christmas. Watch with your grandmother

  

It's not even Halloween yet, but the romcoms are started.  

Darn, they all have such interchangeable titles that I forgot which one I'm reviewing. Oh, right, The Holiday Exchange, on Amazon Prime.  

The icon shows a woman torn between two men, and the blurb is about a guy going on a "holiday exchange" that he found on a gay app, so I suspect some "mistaken for gay" jokes as the guy finds the Girl of His Dreams.

Scene 1: A guy wearing an eye mask and a frilly shirt wakes up -- gay. Close-up of a photo of him and his boyfriend -- gay.  He knocks it over, drinks some booze, and shaves and applies femme moisterizer products -- gay. 

A guy texts: "Wilde, call me back," but he ignores it.  Moisturizer guy is named Wilde, like Oscar?  Gay. He's played by Taylor Frey, top photo, who also wrote the screenplay.

Knock on the door: It's femme fashion designer Chase, Colton Tran, and a woman, with ideas for his wedding outfit: "Your Mom told us that your Big Day was coming."

"Nope, you misunderstood, I'm not getting married, I'm selling my company."

"Oh, well, we have ideas for that, too."

Wilde goes annoyingly over the top complementing Fashion Designer Chase; he is an angel, a shining light, goodness personified; he has created everlasting happiness for literally thousands of people by...um...designing their clothes. 

Back story: Wilde just dumped his boyfriend, Sean.

Scene 2:  An idyllic village, over the top idyllic, Currier & Ives idyllic. 

George tells his business partner Oliver, Rick Cosnett, how they met, confesses to drinking too much, and then lays on the over-effusive praise.  

Oliver is also an angel, goodness personified, spearheading drives that raise billions for charity. He's single-handedly wiped out world hunger.  Don't introduce Oliver to Chase the Fashion Designer, or they'll cancel each other out.  

His problems: he is too busy with his day job as a divorce lawyer, his numerous charities, and taking over Dad's business when he retires to get a boyfriend. Coworker George is in favor of being single. This must be the "mistaken for gay" guy.

Wait -- they specifically state that they live in Los Angeles.  The establishing shot was a New England Currier & Ives village. What the fudge?

Out in the elegant party, Saintly Oliver talks to James, who works in his company.  They hedge around the discussion of why their last date was so awful. So Saintly Oliver and Moisturizer Wilde are both gay?  Who's going to hook up with the lady in the middle of the icon?  

No,  James "can't" get together during the holidays: he'll be seeing family, driving up the coast. Dude's not into you. 

I'm watching with subtitles, so I can't hear the accents, but these people are saying "Happy Christmas" to each other.  Could they live in Britain, but be having an elegant party in L.A.?

More after the break.

Stephen Louis Grush: from Pericles to Peter's militia, with lots of gay roles and a few dicks in between

 Stephen Louis Grush grew up in New Orleans, and graduated from Roosevelt University in Chicago with a BFA in Theater. He has over 30 credits on the IMDB, often in projects that emphasize gay subtexts, or texts.

In Catch Hell (2014), two toughs (Stephen Louis Grush, Ian Barford) kidnap a Hollywood actor (Ryan Philippe) with the intent of torturing and killing him.  They do a lot of torturing, but Junior (Stephen) also falls in love with him.

Ryan Phillippe's butt as Junior prepares to...you know.

Stephen's butt and dick, as they strugle.

In Gracepoint (2014), Stephen plays a plumber's apprentice who may be gay, accused of murdering a small boy.

More Grush after the break. Caution: explicit.

"Decline and Fall": Theology student sent down for immorality in 1930s Oxford, with Oxfordian dicks and bums

 

After Brideshead Revisited appeared on television in 1982, everyone thought that Evelyn Waugh was a gay writer, and started buying up the original novel from 1945, as well as his other novels, Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies.  Turns out that he was straight-ish, regretted the gay romances of his Oxford years, and thought of same-sex love as decadent and immoral, or at best adolescent experimentation that you give up once you are old enough for the "real love" of a woman.   So I don't expect the  2017 BBC adaption of his Decline and Fall, streaming on Amazon Prime, to have any gay characters. 

Or maybe not.  Waugh derived the title and central theme from The Decline and Fall of the West, by Otto Spengler, which theorizes that societies inevitably decline into moral decadence.  Including LGBT people.  So maybe there will be some homophobia.

Scene 1: The Bollinger Club at Scone College, Oxford -- har, har -- is trashing their common room.  Meanwhile, quiet theology student Paul Pennyfeather  (Jack Whitehall, top photo) is sitting quietly with his friend Potts (Matthew Beard, left), who wants to go to a church tomorrow and "make some rubbings."  He means rubbings of tombstones, but...har, har.  Paul refuses, whereupon the friend says "I'll make some rubbings for you."  I'll bet you will...

On his way home, Paul runs afoul of the Bollinger Club, who strip him naked and force him to run across the quad.  Although he is not responsible, he is expelled from Oxford for "moral malfeasance."  

Scene 2: Generally men sent down for moral failings become schoolmasters, and there's a position available in Llanaba, Wales, to teach English, French, German, Latin, and coach cricket.  Paul doesn't speak German, but the job agent tells him to fake it.

Scene 3: Paul arrives at Llanaba, finds his way to the school, which is actually quite ornate, and is introduced to Captain Grimes (Douglas Hodge),  just as he is disciplining a student for whistling.  The other students were whistling, too, but "it makes no difference."  He gets 100 lines, and next time a beating. 

Then the Headmaster  and his daughters, whom Paul snubs.  Not into girls, are you?  He's in charge of the fifth form (15-16 year olds), games, carpentry,  and fire drill, and he'll be giving Best-Chedwyth organ lessons.  "But I don't play the organ."  "You do now."

Scene 4: The shabby Fifth Form classroom.  Headmaster advises Paul not to mention why he was sent down, and rushes away.. The students make fun of "Good morning" and role call, lock his desk drawer, and give him trick chalk. 

Scene 5: After the first class debacle, he rushes to the common room, and meets the hard-drinking Prendergast:  "You'll hate it here.  I do.  We all do."  Then to his room to unpack his stuff and be depressed.

Cut to dinner: teachers have to eat with their students. Paul is still depressed, the students still disrespectful, the food greenish slop.  

Afterwards, Captain Grimes escorts him to the pub. They discuss the Headmaster's two daughters; Grimes is engaged to "the haybale," leaving "the male one" for Paul.

About the Fifth Formers: Don't try to teach them anything, just keep them quiet and beat them.  Grimes isn't cut out for teaching; he keeps getting sacked at private schools for "doing things," but fortunately he's a public school alumnus so he always gets another job. In Britain, "public schools" are like the private schools in America.  

During the War, he "did something" that almost resulted in a firing squad, but because he was a public school alumnus, they just transfered him to Ireland, where you can "do things" without penalty.  Same-sex acts?  But they wouldn't get you a death sentence in Britain at the time

The leering Philbrick (Stephen Graham, left) approaches and asks if either of them would fancy a woman tonight. You got any men? They refuse.  Grimes says that he doesn't really fancy women.

More after the break

Poltergeist, the Gay Connection: Gay actors, skeletons, AIDS awareness, some dicks, and "They're he-ee-ere"

This week for Movie Night we saw Poltergeist, 1982. which I saw sometime in the 1990s, when you still rented movies at Blockbuster. After so many years, the plot was still familiar, although I forgot a few details, like the last 20 minutes.

You know the plot:  the five-year old Carol Ann talks to "tv people," and one day they burst out of the tv set to the iconic line "They're he-ee-eere."  After some relatively harmless poltergeist activity, she is swallowed into a vortex that opened in her bedroom closet,  occupied by lost souls and a malevolent presence.  The family brings in psychic investigators to help, but things only get worse. Finally they call in diminuitive firecracker psychic Zelda Rubenstein, who sends Mom into the vortex to get Carol Ann back.

Little does she know. Afterwards the stupid family plans to move, but they stick around for a few days so Mom can take a gratuitous-nudity bath, and move Carol Ann and her brother back into the room with the vortex-closet!  It opens again, the malevolent force is stronger, and skeletons start popping up out of the ground.  

Turns out that the evil corporate guy built the housing development on a cemetery.  He moved the headstones, but not the bodies! The souls aren't lost, they're angry over being disturbed!

Finally the whole house implodes.  The family escapes through a maze of coffins and skeletons, drives to a Holiday Inn, and in a kicker, ejects the television set from their room.

The gender-polarized, heterosexual nuclear family myth is pushed as blatantly as the roomful of Star Wars merch that executive producer Steven Spielberg ordered, or the book about Ronald Reagan that Dad reads in bed.  And it only gets worse.

Dad Craig T. Nelson went on to star in Coach, which lasted for nine seasons.  In a 1991 episode, Coach discovers that one of his football players is gay, and is shocked, dismayed, angry, and finally accepting, the standard "friend/brother/ coworker comes out" plotline of the era.

Oliver Robins, who plays the 10 year old son, went on to write and direct heterosexual sleaze such as Dumped and Wild Roommates.

But there is also a critique of the heterosexual nuclear family myth.  The suburb, meant to be bucolic, actually looks awful, little houses "made of ticky-tacky," and it is literally built on the dead -- the bodies of the marginalized and oppressed, the racial minorities, the poor, the LGBT people who are excluded from "Paradise."

The housing development is named "Cuesta Verde," which sounds nice, but "cuesta" means "cost, price."  The price you pay for your cushy suburban lifestyle.

And there are some gay connections.

1. Dirk Blocker, son of Bonanza famed Dan Blocker, plays a benevolent neighbor.  He went on to star in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which has a gay character.

2. Max Casella plays Marty, in the first trio of paranormal investigators.  He tries to enter the vortex room and gets bit -- rather a bad injury, but he sticks around through the night anyway.  Hungry, he goes into the kitchen and lays a raw steak on the counter -- not even on a plate -- but it gets all maggoty, and his face comes off. It's just a vision, but he's heading for the door...

Poltergeist was the 22-year old Cal Arts grad's first on-screen role.  During the 1980s, he had a few guest spots, playing a yuppie, a lawyer, and a cop, but he was mostly involved in a theater company that he started with some fellow CalArtians. 

He notes that "we hung out, had fun.  We all used to smile a lot more."  West Hollywood in the 80s and 90s, when everything was bright and new, and magical.  The best of times.  

 

In 1993 Martin moved to New York to continue his playwright career.  He and his brother Matt wrote the book on Paper Moon, starring hunk Gregory Harrison -- seen here nude in The Harrad Experiment 

More after the break