The Point

Last night I received the Point Foundation's Courage award in Los Angeles.  The Point Foundation gives scholarships to LGBT graduates who have been marginalised in some way due to their sexuality or gender identification.  It is a really inspiring outfit and I was indeed so inspired by the last event of theirs I attended in NYC that I have become a mentor and had my first session with my lovely mentee this past week.

The also lovely Rebecca Romijn, my fellow blue person in X Men 2, presented me with the award and I said in my speech how I had discussed the notion of courage with my mentee. Here's what I think: we need to stop putting the message out into the world that just living our lives as queer people is an act of courage. I think that plays into the hands of people who would like to make our lives so difficult that we would indeed need to be courageous just to be.  I personally don't feel courageous. If I were living in, say, Malawi or Iran or Wyoming and saying what I say and being who I am then yes, perhaps I would be courageous.

 But all I do is live my life the way I want to, say what I think, do what I think is right.  Now what I do have is some power. I have a voice.  I can provoke and enlighten and challenege prejudice. I can be heard.  So I accepetd the award, at my mentee's suggestion, in the spirit of using my power responsibly.  I pledged to continue to live my life, tell my story and responsibly use my power for ever.

In other news, I have become obsessed with the pianist Glenn Gould. I saw a really fascinating documentary about him last week and now am about to watch 32 Short films abut Glenn Gould, which stard Colm Fiore whom I worked with in the movie Titus (or as I called it Tight Ass)

Talking of Shakespeare, I saw The Tempest last week.  The movie version that I am in, that is.  I really liked it. It is being screened at the NY film festival next weekend but I will be in Miami to receive another lovely gong from the Lesbian and Gay Task force (see the box on the right).  It is in cinemas in early December.

Whilst in LA I did a photo shoot with my firend Traver Rains which I cannot wait to see as it involves some nudity (not mine) and beer. haha. There's a teasing end to this entry. As it were, missus. Arf arf.

Uggh! DO ask, DO tell!

Did you hear about how Senate Republicans blocked the repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' even though nearly 80% of Americans support repealing this discriminatory military policy?

Well, the fight isn't over. A federal district court recently ruled that 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is unconstitutional and if Attorney General Eric Holder agrees not to fight the federal court's decision, DADT could soon become a relic of the past.

Attorney General Holder and the Justice Department may be our best hope to repeal DADT. But we need your help to make sure the Administration gets the message now. 

Please add your name to the letter to Attorney General Holder today and ask him NOT to appeal the federal district court's decision? It takes just a minute of your time:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/DontDefendDADT

Thank you so much!  On a lighter note, last night I went to the premiere of Howl, the film about Allen Ginsberg. It was really amazing. I had no idea about the obscenity court case that happened after his epic poem was published, and the film managed to cover it all whilst also letting the entire poem be heard (and seen thanks to some great animation sequences).  The lovely James Franco is Ginsberg and I exhort you all to go and see it when it is released, as it's really inspiring to see films that are not the usual formulaic, cookie-cutter types being done so well, and so please support it!

Gosh it's all about supporting things today. While we're on the subject, the T shirt I wore last night to the premeire was designed by my friend Traver Rains for his T-Rains line. Support him too!!

No more ask alan

Hello peeps

I have decided to stop the ask alan part of my site. It has been great for me to have contact with you, and I have enjoyed being able to answer your questions, but recently I have felt it has become a little too much to deal with. There have been a few incidents that have led me to making this decision, interestingly enough one of them being the broadcast of my Who Do You Think You Areshow on the BBC last week.

That show was probably the biggest merging of my public and private lives, and I felt very exposed by it.  I am so glad I did it, but the access that so many people had to me in such a vulnerable place made me realise that I perhaps feel too duty-bound to be open and maybe too available to you.  I guess it just made me realise that it's ok for me to take a step back if I want to.

 I got loads of response for the show via ask alan, and even though they were all very positive, I still felt that I was allowing so much more of the outside world into my life at such a vulnerable time than I needed to, or more importantly, wanted to.

So I hope you understand. It has been good, but all good things must come to an end as the Bard said.

I have also had a bit of an epiphany about doing this blog at all. My reason for starting to do it every day was to get myself to the computer, to get back into writing again and to find my voice through words once more.  I feel I have done that, but lately I have felt more that it has become a duty, a bit of a chore and I have started to get anxious about something that should be joyous and an outpouring of what I am feeling.

So...I am going to blog less. Not every day.  Maybe somtimes I will, but mostly just when I fancy it.

There, I've said it.

Now I am off to do a photo shoot with Honey and Leon for Cesar Milan's magazine!!  And here's a clip from last night's party for The Good Wife season 2 and the first season DVD release.

Who I think I am

My Who Do You Think You Are has just been broadcast in the UK, and I want to thank all those of you who have already written to me to share your feelings and send me messages of support about it.  I didn't see it tonight, as I am in New York, but all day I have been thinking about it, and I have to say I am overwhelmed with the number of emails and calls I have had even in the last half an hour since it finished.

It has been a pretty rocky summer for me and my family because of all the revelations and also some of the repercussions that it had for us all, so it's nice to have the show out there in the world and for everyone to know our grandad's story.

fashioned out

I am fashioned out. Really, it's exhausting. Thank goodness fashion week is ony twice a year.  Of course one of the reasons I am a little delicate today is that these fashion events and parties have hardly any food at them as nobody eats in fashion and so you just get loads of booze shovelled down your throat and nothing solid in your tummy, then you find yourself doubled over your kitchen counter at 2am eating soup like a turtle.

Last night I ended up at BES in Chelsea for a dinner for the lovely Nick Petrou, designer of Petrouman.  Nick is so talented and a really interesting artist so it was no surprise that he should have asked the legend that is Joey Arias to perform for him. And so Joey did, atop the bar, like the fabulous trooper he is.  A friend of Joey's gave me little clip on things that go on the end of your nails, and I spent the evening running them over people's scalps and other parts of their bodies that they would let me away with, making them shiver with delight. They were a huge hit!

Tomorrow in the UK BBC1 will be broadcasting my episode of Who Do You Think You Are at 9pm. It has already been reported in the UK press that one of the revelations of the show is that I found out my grandfather died playing Russian Roulette in Malaysia in 1951.  There are many other aspects to his story, but that obviously was the most shocking and hard to deal with.  But I'd like to say that the team from Wall to Wall, the production company, and especially the show's director Elizabeth Dobson, couldn't have been kinder and more sensitive in guiding me through this voyage of discovery and in their dealings with my family, epsecially my mum.  It was a very rocky and sometimes startling and upsetting jounrey, but one that I am so glad to have made because it solved a mystery that has long been unanswered for us all. As I say at the end of the show...

The truth can hurt but not knowing can hurt even more

I'm back

 

 

Hello! I had a lovely vacation. I didn't do very much except potter and cook and eat and read and saw off tree limbs. Oh, I trampolined a little, I zip corded and I swam and I cycled. But mostly I chilled out.

Then I came back into New Yok City and was flung into the madness of fashion week. Yesterday I went to my friend Chrisian Seriano's show which was a gas. I have also had some meetings and photo shoots and all sorts. Today I was at a lunch for Karl Lagerfeld (can you see how I am channeling him in the picture), then I shot a bit for Electric Company, which was very very exciting. Then I had another photo shoot and then I came to work on The Good Wife. It is 1.30 am and I don't know when I will be finished. I really, really want to go out to my friend Rich Morel's night called Blow Off because he is going to play the Next To Me remix that he produced. I have never heard it in a club and I think that would be very exciting.  So fingers crossed.

Tomorrow I am going to my friend Cynthia Rowley's show in the morning and then to some other events. Rock and roll baby.  Cynthia designed my old Hollywood look for the Emmys.

I am going to go downstairs to the set now and see if I can find out when I can go home. Or go out more like.

Alan is going on his holidays...

Sorry for radio silence but I have been wokring like a beeyotch.  We have been doing huge scenes on The Good Wife in a hotel in Manhattan that involve loads of the cast and tons of extras and lots of political machinations and I have been really exhausted and just crawling into and out of bed as soon as I get to my apartment door or wake up. It has also been unbearably hot in NYC, an end of summer heatwave.  Is it wrong to be glad of the effects of the hurricane about to hit so there will be an end to this oppression?

 

I have a long stint off now, and so I am going to have a little vacation and won't be blogging till later next week.  I was thinking about it, and I feel that, much as I enjoy this blogging lark, it has become a part of my daily routine and so should be avoided during a vacation when the true purpose is to vacate your life of all that is normal and routine to give yourself a change and a break. So, much as I will miss you all, I sense I must commit to vacation as stongly as I commit to everything else.

 

I have found some pictures online which show how I deal with the whorish aspect of being gifted things in swag suites. I take the piss and ham it up. Here I am gazing at my imaginary baby, enjoying the sensual pleasures of hair spray, channeling Groucho Marx and being broody with an Altoid lady.

I just had a chat with the Kings - Michelle and Robert - who are the creatrs of The Good Wife, and our producer Brooke, about Eli's future storylines, and I have to say it was very exciting and I am looking forward to lots of juicy scenes and dramatic revelations!  Of course I cannot possibly tell you any of them, but I do know that the new season begins with a bang on September 21st and the games will begin.

Next week is the beginning of Fashion Week in NYC and so my return to the blogosphere will coincide with it.  I am going to do video blogs of my experiences going out and about in the fashion madness, so look out for those.  Till then, I leave you with a story that the director I worked with today told me..

David Mamet was writing a screenplay for a Martin Scorcese movie.  Scorcese made so many suggestions and asked for so many changes that eventually Mamet told him to go fuck himself.  And Mamet's response to Scorcese's firing him off the picture for this outburst?  'He took it the wrong way!'