February 28, 2003
GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11
eveningsout
Super
by John Graves
Bowl ads have both hits and misses
Several advertisers spent over $2 million on gay-themed ads to run during the Super Bowl telecast in January, including a number that were questionable in the gay images they portrayed.
Mike Wilke, who writes Gay Financial News' "Commercial Closet" column, says Anheuser-Busch continued what he calls "a perverse campaign" from DDB Needham that contained several anal jokes. In the Super Bowl ad, a clown walks into a bar wearing an upside-down suit, with the man inside actually standing right side up. Speaking from the seat of the pants, he asks the bartender for a beer. When he drinks from the bottle, everyone grimaces at what the camera doesn't show— he looks like he's giving himself an enema. Then the man asks for a hot dog. The bartender says sternly, "I don't think so."
In an earlier ad from the same agency, a man is hiding under the bar. When a softball team comes in and orders 30 beers, the bartender confuses the man's butt with a bottle opener. That one earned a negative rating on Wilke's web site CommercialCloset.org.
Anheuser-Busch, which Wilke says has pursued the gay market since 1996, refused comment about the new clown ad.
Another Super Bowl spot for Smirnoff Triple Black Ice by the Diageo ad firm features a woman named Alex waiting to meet a blind date named Brad at a bar. At first, she accidentally introduces herself to the wrong fellow. But when her real date shows up, he turns out to be a self-centered stud wearing a tacky suit and gold chains who drives a Corvette with "The Brad" license plates.
The first guy notices her disappointed look before Brad spots her. He saves the day by quickly introducing himself to Brad as Alex. Brad flees, thinking his blind date is a man.
Wilke says Diageo, which markets Tanqueray, Cuervo, Captain Morgan and Bailey's to the gay community, "refused to comment and did not even return numerous calls about the Triple Black Ice spot."
In an ad showing life with or without a Nextel cell phone, comedian George Lopez discovers that his daughter has borrowed his
car.
In the "with" scenario, he uses the cell phone to tell her to bring the car back. Without the phone, Wilke says, he must borrow her pink Volkswagen Beetle with a "Boycrazy" license plate. When Lopez pulls up to a stoplight, a carload of guys next to him gives him
the eye.
Nextel's ad agency, Mullen Advertising, declined to speak with Wilke, saying it did not intend gay innuendo.
Prior to the Super Bowl, Wilke says Miller Brewing Co. attracted much attention for Catfight, an ad with two smartly-dressed women who bring back Miller's classic "Tastes great-Less filling" debate in a battle in which they tear each other's clothes off and tumble into a nearby fountain.
In the middle of the action, two guys discuss what a great ad the fight would make and one asks, "Who wouldn't love that?" The two men's girlfriends, sitting next to them, stare in disbelief.
Wilke says that in cable and late-night TV versions, the women land in a tub of wet cement where one says, "Let's make out." He says a same-sex kiss was shot by ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, but it never got past the cutting room.
Although Advertising Age's critic called it an "abomination," and many women say it is a return to sexism, Miller says the ad has also gotten much support.
"People don't often take the time to make compliments, but 45% of feedback was positive," Miller spokesperson Scott Bussen told Wilke. "For the remainder, the vast majority was focused on saying that it was 'inappropriate' and that was mostly parents. About 10% of the complaints received perceived us as endorsing lesbianism.”
Wilke says that an ad agency source tells him that a follow up reverse fantasy for women is planned for the spring and may include men in a similar, tongue-in-cheek situation.
On a much better note, openly lesbian polar
explorer Ann Bancroft is being featured in a Clarinex ad in which she tells how the product saved her much pain on her record-breaking trek across Antarctica in 2000 with Liv Arnesen.
GSA member makes All-USA team
Justin Kidd, a 23-year-old international studies student and member of the University of Denver Gay Straight Alliance, was one of a number of outstanding college achievers named to USA Today's 2003 All-USA College Academic Team, published in the February 13 issue of the paper.
Kidd taught English, art, and gym to children at a summer camp outside Sarajevo where he had teens read Romeo and Juliet and stage a simplified version of the play to explore ethnic tensions and integration. Kidd, a Truman Scholar, also started a non-profit organization to build the Children's Literacy Center in Denver.
Besides his work with the D.U. Gay Straight Alliance, Kidd worked with the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund in Washington, D.C. while
gay. It means homosexual. And you're using it to be insulting, which I find rather offensive."
"Then, believe it or not, people made a valiant effort to find other words for what they wanted to say," the 17-year-old Hale concludes, "In class, "That's so gay' and 'faggot' are no longer used."
Six Feet Under returns
The new season of HBO's Emmy-winning series Six Feet Under gets under way on March 2.
"Fans will be happy to know that the new season promises to be every bit as twisted and tortured as the first two," said USA Today's Donna Freydkin, after she saw a screening of the first two episodes on February 19.
·
Among the many other storylines set for this season, gay funeral director David (Michael C. Hall) and his African-American cop boyfriend Keith (Matthew St. Patrick) go into couples therapy to try and work out the difficulties they have had in their relationship.
spending a semester there at George WashingReflections in a Queer Eye
ton University.
From Idol to diva
American Idol star Kelly Clarkson had an acting role in Issues 101, described as a "gay adult film featuring male nudity." "Not only is she the American Idol, but she is also the gay diva," Ted Trent, owner of the web site outofthecloset.tv, told Us Weekly.
Diamond-studded digs
Got a few million dollars lying around? The Spanish-hacienda-style mansion that Liberace lived in until his AIDS-related death in 1987 is up for sale for a mere $2.75 million.
Built in 1930, the seven-bedroom, 8,000 sq. ft. house is filled with the ornate chandeliers and sconces typical of the late gay pianist's style and features a master bedroom with its own cloistered courtyard and a private powder room hidden behind bookshelves, People magazine reports.
Soaping up Frasier's Daphne
General Hospital's Cynthia Preston (Faith) went to extraordinary measures to play Jane Leeves' (Daphne on Frasier) partner in the upcoming film The Event, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
"I tried to get cast on The Event for months," Preston told ABC Soaps in Depth, a soap opera magazine.
"Finally, the director said, 'I love your work but I don't want your look.' My hair was long," Preston explained, "so I said, "I'll cut it short, dye it black, put blue highlights in it... I don't care. I'll do anything.'
999
Preston says she went light, since Leeves is dark. "I chopped off all my hair, made it a paper-white platinum and pink fuscia mullet. I have piercings, tattoos and a New York accent."
Preston said The Event is "a sobbing with your head in your hands, laugh-out-loud movie based on a true story about a series of unexplained deaths that occur among the gay community in New York's Chelsea."
She added, "This movie is sprinkled with
gold dust."
By the way, the magazine says daytime TV's first lesbian character was Lynn Carson, a doctor on All My Children on whom patient Devon McFadden developed a crush in 1983. In a March 4 report, it notes that Jeffery Robertson, better known as his drag persona Varla Jean Merman, was picked to play Rosemary Chicken, a cross-dressing prostitute who had a run-in with Simone on the February 21 episode of All My Children.
Tolerance on Parade
Lynn Minton, who edits the teen op-ed column Fresh Voices in the Parade Sunday magazine supplement, asked his readers, "Have you changed someone's attitude or behavior?” a few weeks ago.
Alice Hale of Greenacres, Washington responded, "In class, I used to hear many people say "That's so gay' and 'You're such a faggot' as kind of all-purpose insults. Finally, I spoke up and said: You look up the word faggot. It means a bundle of sticks. You look up the word
The Bravo cable network has ordered 12 episodes of The Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a new reality series in which five gay consultants will offer advice in the areas of personal grooming, fashion, food and wine, etiquette, culture and interior design to terminally unstylish straight guys.
David Collins, the show's openly gay creator, a 36-year-old former movie producer who lives in Boston with his boyfriend of 13 years, came up with the idea for Eye at an art opening. Collins and his friends cracked up as they observed a woman in her 30s drag her schlumpy husband over to three impossibly stylish gay men and ask them for pointers on how to improve her husband's look.
"It hit me like a brick," Collins told Phila-
delphia Inquirer columnist Gail Shister, "Those guys had the queer eyes for the straight guys. I said: There's something here."
Collins told Variety's Melissa Grego the show "is not about gay or straight. It's about guys helping guys. Gay or straight, we all want to look good, feel good and have great shoes, of course. We're not trying to turn the guy gay. We want him to go back to his wife or girlfriend cooler and feeling better about himself. We want him to know it's okay to think about his shoes or get a manicure."
While Collins maintains that Eye will break down gay stereotypes, Ron Cowen, co-executive producer of Showtime's hit Queer as Folk, worries it will reinforce them.
"Not all gay guys have perfect bodies and great hair," Cowen told Shister. "It's a superficial way to judge somebody's worth, and it perpetuates the notion that gay men are silly queens only interested in the latest fashion or fabulous restaurant."
But Daniel Lipman, Cowen's Folk co-producer and life partner of 30 years, disagreed, telling Shister, "People in the gay community have always been a step ahead."
The show's first season, expected to debut on Bravo sometime in July, will focus on subjects in New York City.
If The Queer Eye for the Straight Guy becomes a hit on Bravo, the series might be moved to the cable network's new owner, NBC.
John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, a lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7:30 pm, and at www.wruw.org. See what's coming on TV in the Couch Potato Report, under “Entertainment" at www.lgcsc.org. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contribute to this column.
northcoast MEN'S CHORUS
RICHARD COLE, MUSIC DIRECTOR
Everything's Coming
UP
NDHEIM
Waetjen Auditorium Cleveland State University
SATURDAY 8:00 PM
MARCH 29
SUNDAY •
3:00 PM MARCH 30
Tickets may be purchased at the following locations:
tickets.com www.tickets.com 1.800.766.6048
Diverse Universe 12011 Detroit Ave. Lakewood
Body Language 11424 Lorain Rd. Cleveland
Angel Falls Coffee 792 W. Market St. Akron
High Tide Rock Bottom
1814 Coventry Rd. Cleveland Hts.
Single-concert tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door.
For more information: 216.556.0590 | www.ncmchorus.org | info@ncmchorus.org
Design: GLYHEX