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September 29, 2008

Openly Gay in Hollywood? The Pioneers. [NY TIMES]

An interesting article about what it’s like to be openly gay in Hollywood—difficulty in getting roles, dangers of being typecast, and yet a more open attitude from the mainstream, perhaps, than at any time in the past century. Click here. Excerpt:

 THERE’S a bisexual woman in “Bones” and a lesbian couple on “The Goode Family.” “Dirty Sexy Money” features a transsexual and “Brothers & Sisters” a gay marriage. In “Mad Men,” the Emmy-winning drama set in the early ‘60s, there’s

 Salvatore Romano, a self-loathing homosexual who marries a woman but pines for a male co-worker.

Never before have gay story lines been so prominent. Nor have there ever been so many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters on television — 83 by a recent count from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, not counting reality shows, daytime dramas or gay-oriented cable networks.

Hollywood, with its depictions of cowboy lovers and lesbian neighbors, has done much to make gay men and women part of mainstream American life.

At the same time, gay actors like Neil Patrick Harris and T. R. Knight play heterosexual characters on TV and in film, while couples — Ellen DeGeneresand Portia de Rossi — are covered by celebrity magazines as if they were any old romance.

“We’ve gone from the revolution to the evolution,” said Howard Bragman, a longtime Hollywood publicist who is gay and has advised actors like Amanda Bearse, of “Married … With Children” 

 

 

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