vids from this week

I went to Chicago the other day to get an award from the film festival and had a gay old time. Below is a video of me discussing the bullying issue as part of the Q and A after the screening of The Tempest. And then there's me ranting on about Shakespeare in America. And then something for our Spanish speaking friends

 And immediately below I am discussing my show on Sunday at Joe's Pub, a benefit for Fight Back NY.

Help Lance!

My friend and musical husband Lance Horne is making an album but needs help funding it.  It is an album of all his songs, sung by a variety of peeps including moi.  I do American, and I laid it down, as we say in the trade, last week). Here's a little vid telling you all about it.  Lance is a really amazing musician, composer and just all round crazy talented and lovely man, so please help him.  There are kickbacks galore!!

what I've been up to...

I'm in a film called Into The Woods, and i did a day on it a couple of years ago when I went into the woods with director Jenifer Elster. She has written a piece about it all here for the Huffington Post and I have to say I am more confused than I was when I did it. The website is equally oblique and opaque.  But it is very intriguing. I can't wait to see the film if only to see if she really did include a story I told about teenage masturbation.

I went to the opening of David Mamet's  A Life In The Theater and saw my old pal Patrick Stewart who was amazing, starring alongside T R Knight.  I had never seen this play and found it really funny and touching and unexpected. I thought the NY Times review was mean and, not to labour a point on this post but here goes, masturbatory.

I also caught up with my dear friend and former roomate Matthew Bourne when his utterly stunning production of Swan Lake returned to NYC at City Center.  Run, kill, do whatever you can to see this amazing evening in the theater. I will give you your money back if you don't get swept up in it.  And also there are multitudes of utterly ravishing young men playing swans, sweating and hissing, so it's a win win situation in my book.

I totally forgot that I had actually gone on one night in this production, playing an autograph hunter in the Act 2 opening scene , when it was first mounted in London in 1997. So I can say I have appeared in Matthew Bourne's West End production of Swan Lake!  Life is complete!

In The Good Wife this week Eli nearly choked when he saw Alicia's brother saying that her husband was homophobic. he was especially bummed as he was about to get a big contribution for the campaign from the Chicago gay community. This storyline kind of tramsmogrified into a Jewish/Palestine debate after that.  So the gays and the jews covered in one fell swoop! And yes, I too appreciate the irony of me saying 'I'm not gay' on national television. But it's called acting, people!!

Finally here's a PSA I took part in recently for Hollywood Arts...

Hello!

So the Obama administration is going to appeal the Federal Court's decision last week that DADT is unconstitutional.  Even though The Pentagon, yes, that's right, the fucking Pentagon was going to adhere to the decision and stop firing military personnel who were found or confessed to being gay. WTF?!  We keep hearing that Obama is an ally, that DADT will end under his watch, but what do we actually get? Diddly squat thus far on a federal level and in addition to that some very offensive statements that would have made the Republicans look bad.  I am patient. Being a homo in America you have to be. But they do not have to do this.  And in a time when America is full of hatred of all kinds, but especially hatred towards young gay people, what message is the President sending when he repeatedly goes out of his way to spread the message that the gay population is not worthy of the respect that everyone else is?!

How can we counsel our children not to bully their gay classmates, or pry and mock their gay friends, when they see their President, their beloved President Obama, refusing to do the equivalent in regards to troops and other adults.

Words and images matter, people.

I am going to be performing in a benefit for the Ali Forney Center on November 8th, and a video of a song I have recorded with David Raleigh, Ari Gold and Billy Porter. It's a cover of That's What Friends Are For.

Give a damn

Last night I was was in LA for the reading of Terrence McNally's play Some Men, a benefit for theCourage Campaign. It was such a great night, and I loved hearing the play again. I had seen it in NYC when it premiered a few years back and it was great to perform it. It is a sort of collage of experiences of gay mens' lives over the course of a century.  I think Terrence is such a great writer and a lovely man, and indeed the whole team last night - which included actors Jason Ritter, Justin Kirk, Michael McKean, John Glover, Luke Macfarlane, Josh Stamberg, David Alan Grier, Lily Tomlin, director Micheal Morris - made it such a great experience, andthe schlep from Miami and now back to NYc was so worth it for such a great cause.

Cyndi Lauper shot this PSA about the horrible recent spate of gay student suicides.  It's really powerful.  Pass it along.

gay gay and more gay. Deal with it

I had a lovely weekend in Miami, where I was honoured with the Leadership award by the Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The Task Force is a great group and I really feel organisatons like it and Fight Back NY are the way ahead: direct action, no more conciliation and politciking from huge costing corporate giants like the HRC. We need to have action, people. People are dying in this country because we don't have equality. Kids are killing themselves because our government is not sending out the message strongly enough that we must be respected and treated equally.

I also discovered this weekend that my friend Tony is the Meryl Streep of cheerleading. Really. He actually said that. I am speecheless with awe.

The brilliant Cynthia Nixon was giving it what for yesterday at the New Yorker festival.  Watch this clip and show it to anyone you know who doesn't get why we want marriage equality.