was they measured how gay it was. On a scale of one to 10.”
— Sarah Silverman
There’s always a modicum of truth in humor.
Remember when the showbiz satire site Dateline: Hollywood “reported” that 2006’s homo-hot gladiator movie 300 was the “first gay porn movie to gross over 70 million dollars”?
We do. We laughed really hard. Almost as hard as when that same site’s front page screamed out: BRITNEY SPEARS ANNOUNCES PLANS TO EXPOSE ANUS!!
But back to the 300 lampoonery. Dateline: Hollywood’s pseudo feature on the film featured an “interview” with Don Fanaras, one of the film’s “producers.” Mr. Fanaras revealed how 300’s core audience was “mostly men who are in denial that they are attracted to other men.”
It gets better: To help those closeted creatures along with their denial, Fanaras explained: “We always throw in a ‘hot chick’ so that the guys can convince themselves she’s the reason they got an erection and continue with the fantasy that they are 100% heterosexual.”
OK, so jump cut to real life:
Seems big time writer-director Jason Friedberg — one of the masterminds behind Hollywood’s Scary Movie franchise — took Dateline: Hollywood’s satire to heart and ran with it.
Friedberg begins work next month in New Orleans on Hunting and Fishing, a big gay screen spoof of 300.
Set to star in the flick is Kevin Sorbo, television’s own Hercules (above and right).
“This is incredibly gay, this movie. It’s a stretch for me,” Sorbo says.
As the captain of the Spartan army Sorbo’s character is set to kiss another man. When Friedberg asked if that was a “deal breaker,” Sorbo responded, “It could be. No tongue, or I’ll kill the guy.”
Uhm … sure.
But we’re wondering just how big of a “stretch” this gay acting might be for Sorbo.
In his salad days as an aspiring fashion model Sorbo wore his share of flamboyant attire for the cameras.
“Colorful” clothing that might have been snatched up during a madcap International Male shopping spree. (Not that wearing chain link-inspired tank tops makes anyone gay, mind you).
But enough rummaging through Sorbo’s closet. After his reign as Hercules, and his starring role in the sci-fi hit Andromeda inquiring minds want to know: What’s Sorbo’s hot bod like now?
Is he any sort of competition to Gerard Butler, the ab-tastic, boner-inducing star of 300?
Kevin told columnist Marilyn Beck that he’s in good-enough shape for his Spartan role: “I’m not a six-pack. I’m more of a four-pack these days. I don’t lift heavy like I used to. I’m not benching 360 anymore.”
Oh, fuck it — who’s counting?
Look for Hunting and Fishing’s debut in 2008 — at a coliseum near you.
I remember him to be a lot hotter than he is in those first two shots and a lot less hot than he is in the bottom two.
But even in the fishnet tank top, he suffers an unfortunate and wholesome resemblance to mid-through-late-90s+still-struggling Christian Contemporary pop idol Michael W. Smith, who also, of course, is completely not gay.
No disrespect to the “Scary Movie” crew, but it does seem like another case of the hetero crowd making a very late-in-the-game realization that’s been common knowledge in gay circles since the 50s. Gladiator/Pepla epics have had a gay fan base going back to the days of pin-ups like Steve Reeves, Reg Park, Mark Forest, Gordon Scott, Ed Fury, Brad Harris, etc. It’s an in-joke for us that the genre is homoerotic. The next big newsflash: bodybuilding magazines, physique pictorials, and art nudes aren’t just being bought by athletes and art students.
It also seems like there are only three ways for a hetero actor to promote a same-sex love scene on screen in the hopes of diffusing any erotic tension: treat it like a complete giggly joke, be as condescendingly prissy as possible, or threaten to beat up the guy you share a liplock with. Again, never heard that before.
The next big newsflash: bodybuilding magazines, physique pictorials, and art nudes aren’t just being bought by athletes and art students.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN?????!!!!!!!
Gladiator movies homoerotic? News flash! Remember in 80’s comedy classic Airplane!, Peter Graves asks a young boy “do you like Gladiator movies?” with a leer that would set off alarms in today’s ‘protect our children’ atmosphere.