Tony Curtis is very absorbing ;)

My Tony Curtis obsession has subsided a little bit, but as no bisexual 60s Hollywood star has taken his place yet, my internet searches still seem to be revolving around him ;-P

So firstly, here's a really nice interview with him in which he talks a lot about gender and sexuality in context of his film career.
I also found a great audio interview (part one and part two) - he's clearly a really good talker.

Thanks to Mr Curtis I have also discovered what I think are the two gayest action heroes ever lol In 1971 he starred alongside Roger Moore in a series called The Persuaders. I've looked around youtube for some clips and as far as I can make out the concept is that the two of them keep flirting with each other all the time ;) See for yourself - here and here. It's really cute ;)

Finally, I've been digging amongst my old video tapes, trying to find something with Tony Curtis and I've re-discovered The Defiant Ones. I'd totally forgotten the film (I'm not sure how I managed to do that as I remember really loving it when I first watched it and it's gotten the same reaction from me this time round too).
It's a film from 1958, but it's aged really well. It's the story of a black man (played beautifully by Sidney Poitier) and a white man on the run from the law. The catch is that they're chained to each other. It was the first Hollywood film that addressed racism so directly (and IMO in much less moralistic tones than what Hollywood does today). The film is much better than the trailer IMO ;-P but you can see the trailer here.

My sudden Hollywood obsession and the quest to find a star that isn't gay ;)

Why is it that whenever one has a lot of schoolwork to do, one always has an irresistible urge to do something else? (or at least that's what happens to me ;-P) I've got something like 4 tests and 2 projects over the next week, but am I studying? Of course not ;-P What am I doing? I'm getting unhealthily obsessed with Hollywood stars from the 50s and 60s. And lets get this straight (pun unintended ;-P) - I've never been a particular fan of old Hollywood movies before! I have sometimes enjoyed older films, but a lot of the time I've watched them because I feel I ought to build on my film history awareness rather than because I really want to see an older film. So why have I suddenly become obsessed with this particular topic? Your guess is as good as mine ;-P
Well ok... I do sort of know how it started - it's because of this blog ;-P I found a very interesting article about Method Acting and I'm drafting a post on it (which of course, as always, is turning out to be extremely long). I started looking for Laurence Olivier quotes on The Method because I knew he had spoken against it and... er... that wasn't a good idea ;)
What followed was that I became totally obsessed with Laurence Olivier for 2-3 days (that has subsided somewhat, I have now turned to Tony Curtis instead and I'm wondering who will be next ;-P).
Worse still, I somehow came across this:

And well... it fascinated me... It had never occurred to me that Stanley Kubrick tried to broach the topic of homosexuality in Spartacus. The reference is so slight that if you're not looking for the subtext you might not notice it - and yet this was enough for the censors to cut it.
It was interesting also that two big stars - Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis would have wanted to risk such subtext.

The Spartacus scene somehow led me on to other discoveries... In particular I started finding all sorts of rumours that Laurence Olivier might have been bisexual. As that sort of gossip has always amused me I followed it through. At first it seemed like gossip with little foundation, but what started making it much more fishy was the way Joan Plowright (Olivier's third wife) was being quoted and in particular that she had authorized a biography which claimed Olivier had had encounters with men. I finally came across this article which seemed to cover all the incidents that I found mentioned elsewhere. It is from the Daily Mail, so that's hardly a reliable source, but there was one bit in particular that caught my eye:
After Lord Olivier's death on July 11, 1989, aged 82, from neuromuscular disease and cancer, and his interment in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, his official biographer, Terry Coleman, asked Plowright if he had had homosexual affairs. She replied robustly: "If he did, so what?"
Tarquin Olivier, Larry's elder son, 'was hell-bent on censoring' the homosexual revelations in Coleman's book and attempted to pressure Plowright into withdrawing her permission. She refused, privately remarking that "a man who had been to Eton and in the Guards might be expected to be a little more broad-minded".

The article led me on further... For one it mentioned an encounter between Olivier and Marlon Brando. I'm not sure I believe that one, but apparently there are other sources which suggest Brando may have been bisexual.
The article also mentioned an incident in which John Gielgud was caught in a public toilet trying to pick up a guy (he was arrested for it).
Finding it amusing that so many stars of the era seemed to be gay or bisexual I thought I'd try to look for somebody who was straight ;) So I searched for stuff on Charles Laughton - like Olivier and Gielgud he was also a very acclaimed British theatrical actor who'd done a bit of Hollywood. I thought it likely that he wasn't much of a sexual experimentator - I knew he had been married to just one woman his whole life (unlike most of the stars of that time). Well, I was wrong *grin* Laughton's wife, Elsa Lanchaster, had outed her husband as gay in her autobiography and apparently that was the reason for them never having children.
Feeling rather gigglish by this point I went to my dad (who had after all watched Hollywood in those times) and told him about my discoveries. He had also heard about Laughton and Gielgud, though Olivier and Brando surprised him. Having shown him the Spartacus scene, I joked I should check whether Tony Curtis was straight. My dad said he was pretty sure Curtis was straight (and I rather thought so too), but I ended up checking it up anyway just for a laugh. At first it seemed I had finally found somebody who *was* straight though probably promiscuous (6 wives! and his present one is 42 years younger than him!), but lo and behold, I found an interview with him in a gay magazine ;) Here's what he says in it:
Speaking of men and men … well, first, how old were you when you got to Hollywood?
I was 22. That was 1948.
And as beautiful as you were … I mean, you are still good-looking…
Thank you.
But as beautiful as you were, I’m assuming that you…
I had more action than Mount Vesuvius.
So, both men and women put the make on you.
Men, women, children. Animals!
I can’t wait for the headlines–"TONY CURTIS INTO BESTIALITY."
[Laughs] I loved it, too. I loved the affection of everybody around me. I participated where I wanted to, and I didn’t where I didn’t. It wasn’t like I said, "Well, I won’t do this or I won’t do that." I just had a chance to have great wonderful friends of all ethnic backgrounds, all sexual genders, and that’s the joy of being an American, that’s the joy of being alive, where all of your friends can be who-ever they want to be.
I'm not sure how serious he was about the children and animals ;) He clearly has a rather crass sense of humour, but especially in context of what he says after that he seemed fairly serious about the men ;) So yet again my quest to find a straight star had failed ;)

Am I the only person who ends up doing such moronic things rather than study? ;)

J. K. Rowling interviewed by PotterCast

PotterCast is the leading Harry Potter podcast. They got to interview J. K. Rowling in December and it's a really terrific interview :) It's very much an interview done by fans and for fans, so it has a completely different feel then what you normally see (a lot funnier and the questions are a lot more detailed).
If you're a Harry Potter fan yourself and you've read book 7 then I urge you to check it out! :)

Another Shahrukh interview (OSO promotion)

A lot of the time when I don't post for a long time, I re-start by posting something completely random and short, so this will be no exception ;)

Here's Shahrukh at his flippant best, promoting Om Shanti Om :) It's a 3 part interview embedded as a playlist, so I hope it works right... Part 3 is by far the funniest :)


P.S. I'm expecting to be quiet throughout January as well, but hopefully halfway through February I'll be writing a bit more :)

Order of the Phoenix publicity in full throb

The new Harry Potter film has now released and the publicity for it is going on in full throb, which means there's loads of great interviews with the Trio (and Daniel Radcliffe in particular) floating around.

Here's a long interview with Daniel Radcliffe from Entertainment Weekly. He talks a lot about Equus in it. My favourite bit from it is:

The publicity photos for the play were extremely provocative, and spread all over the Internet as soon as they were released. What was it like shooting them?
I remember being a little bit hyper that day. At that point, we'd just done the nude scene in rehearsals [for the first time]. And I was basically wanting to get my kit off as much as I possibly could, to try and get used to the idea, and in front of as many strangers as I could. I'd be like, ''Ready now? Is this where I take them off?'' And they'd be like, ''Dan! Hold back! Wait! Just give us 10 minutes, please!''


Daniel Radcliffe on Regis and Kelly:


Daniel Radcliffe on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno:


Daniel Radcliffe on the Late Night with Conan O'Brien (part one):


And here's part two:


Here's the whole Trio on Unscripted. It's a little stiff at the beginning, but gets hilarious by the end :D


And this is a bit of Emma Watson doing publicity on Extra:


And here's a longer interview on the David Letterman show. I was actually shocked at how patronizing Letterman was at the beginning especially. But maybe I'm oversensitive or something. She handled it well at any rate :)


And finally, this is Rupert Grint on the Craig Ferguson show:


Post edited to add another article from Entertainment Weekly. It talks a bit about some on set stuff, for example:
A few hours later, Oldman has nailed his scene, decompressed, and begun bantering naughtily with his castmates. ''Have you noticed,'' he asks Isaacs, ''how long my wand is?'' ''Yes,'' Isaacs volleys back, ''it expands in the warm, doesn't it?'' Radcliffe listens and grins broadly. He asks Oldman for advice on a tough role he's signed on for in Equus, a London revival of Peter Shaffer's 1973 play about a troubled stable boy, for which Radcliffe will appear naked eight times a week. ''You'll have to shave,'' Oldman tells him. Radcliffe's wide eyes open even wider: ''What — down there?'' Oldman nods, eyes closing. ''Especially down there.''