Plot
Guy Stone (Matt Letscher) is blissfully closeted, picking up tricks for one-night-stands, while capturing the country's heart as "America's most eligible bachelor" (starring in such films as The Love Barrel and I Married the Ghost). However, Guy's carefully managed façade collapses when he comes up for the lead in S.R.O. studio's version of Ben-Hur . Things turn sour for the film idol when a fellow actor, Freddie Stevens (Jack Plotnick) (famous in the film for portraying "Captain Astro" in a succession of Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon-type serial films), decides to steal the lead in Ben-Hur from Guy by taking a picture of Guy exiting a gay bar. Freddie plans to out Guy to the world and ruin his career. Jerry (Veronica Cartwright), Guy's repressed lesbian ball-bustingly ambitious agent, connives to cover up the impending outing and ensure Guy the role in Ben-Hur by marrying her client off with great fanfare to the studio head's secretary, Sally (Carrie Preston), who just happens to also be a slavishly devoted Guy Stone fan. However, Sally isn't aware the marriage is a sham.
To avoid his adoring new bride as much as possible, Guy has Jerry sign him onto the next available film, which turns out to be 'Blood Mine' — a disastrously arch pro-union film about the corrupt goings on at a coal mine (with lines like 'how can they call this a MINE when everything is THEIRS!?!'). The studio head, in fear of the red-baiting going on in Hollywood at the time, decides — true to Hollywood stereotype — rather than stop production on the film to instead water down the pro-union content wherever possible. The young, idealistic, and terribly handsome writer of the novel that the film is based on, Rick Foster, quickly gets roped into convoluting the plot of this already-bad adaptation of his heartfelt book largely because of a chance meeting between him and the film's star, Guy. The attraction the two men feel for one another is instantaneous and propels the rest of the plot forward.
Ben-Hur is a 1959 American religious epic film directed by William Wyler, produced by Sam Zimbalist, and starring Charlton Heston as the title character. A remake of the 1925 silent film with a similar title, it was adapted from Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The screenplay is credited to Karl Tunberg, but includes contributions from Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman, Gore Vidal, and Christopher Fry. The cast also features Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Haya Harareet, Hugh Griffith, Martha Scott, Cathy O'Donnell and Sam Jaffe.
Veronica Cartwright is a British-born American actress. She is known for appearing in science fiction and horror films, and has earned numerous accolades, including three Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Her younger sister is actress Angela Cartwright.
The Celluloid Closet is a 1996 American documentary film directed and co-written by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and executive produced by Howard Rosenman. The film is based on Vito Russo's 1981 book The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, and on lecture and film clip presentations he gave from 1972 to 1982. Russo had researched the history of how motion pictures, especially Hollywood films, had portrayed gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender characters.
Boze Hadleigh is an author. Until the 1990s, he published some of his works under the pseudonym George Hadley-Garcia. Several of his books cover popular culture, show business, and LGBT culture. His 22 books have been translated into 14 languages.
Jack Plotnick is an American film and television actor, writer, and producer.
Carrie Preston is an American actress, director, and producer. She is best known for her roles as Arlene Fowler in the HBO fantasy drama series True Blood (2008–2014) and as Elsbeth Tascioni in the CBS legal drama series The Good Wife (2010–2016), the Paramount+ legal drama spinoff series The Good Fight (2017–2022), and crime drama spinoff series Elsbeth (2024–present), also on CBS. For her work on The Good Wife, Preston received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.
Henry Leroy Willson was an American Hollywood talent agent who played a large role in developing the beefcake craze of the 1950s.
Matt Letscher is an American actor, director and playwright, known for his roles as Captain Harrison Love in the 1998 American swashbuckler film The Mask of Zorro and as Colonel Adelbert Ames in the 2003 American film Gods and Generals. He co-starred in the 2016 Michael Bay film 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, playing Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. He has also portrayed Eobard Thawne / Reverse-Flash in The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow.
Sally Miller Gearhart was an American teacher, feminist, science-fiction writer, and political activist. In 1973, she became the first open lesbian to obtain a tenure-track faculty position when she was hired by San Francisco State University, where she helped establish one of the first women and gender study programs in the country. She later became a nationally known gay rights activist.
FAQs is a 2005 LGBT-themed independent film written and directed by Everett Lewis. The film tells the story of a group of young queer kids who have been discarded by straight society. They come together to form a de facto family under the wing of an African American vigilante drag queen named Destiny.
Gay pornography is the representation of sexual activity between males. Its primary goal is sexual arousal in its audience. Softcore gay pornography also exists; which at one time constituted the genre, and may be produced as beefcake pornography directed toward heterosexual female, homosexual male, and bisexual audiences of any gender.
Happy Ever Afters is an Irish film written and directed by Stephen Burke and starring Sally Hawkins and Tom Riley. The film was first shown at the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea on 10 October and released on 21 October 2009 in France. It tells the story of two weddings that collide when both receptions are held at one hotel.
Diane "Dee" Mosbacher is an American filmmaker, lesbian feminist activist, and practicing psychiatrist. In 1993, she founded Woman Vision, a nonprofit organization.
The Newsweek gay actor controversy refers to the reaction to a piece written in 2010 by Newsweek magazine writer Ramin Setoodeh in which he asserts that openly gay actors are not capable of convincingly playing straight characters. Setoodeh's article provoked strong reactions from both within and outside the entertainment industry.
Space Station 76 is a 2014 American parody science fiction film, directed by Jack Plotnick, and co-written by Plotnick, Jennifer Elise Cox, Sam Pancake, Kali Rocha, and Michael Stoyanov.
Rick Cassidy was an American pornographic actor, model and bodybuilder. He appeared in both straight and gay porn films, using the name Jim Cassidy for the latter, during the early 1970s.
When We Rise is an eight-part American docudrama miniseries about the history of LGBT rights advocacy in the United States from the 1970s to the 2010s. It was created by Dustin Lance Black and stars Guy Pearce, Rachel Griffiths, Mary-Louise Parker, Michael Kenneth Williams, Austin P. McKenzie, Emily Skeggs, Jonathan Majors, Fiona Dourif, and Sam Jaeger among 30 others. The miniseries premiered on ABC on February 27, 2017, with the rest of its episodes airing March 1 to 3.
Straightwashing is portraying LGB or otherwise queer characters in fiction as heterosexual (straight), making LGB people appear heterosexual, or altering information about historical figures to make their representation comply with heteronormativity.
Rock Hudson is a 1990 American biographical drama television film directed by John Nicolella and written by Dennis Turner. The film is based on My Husband, Rock Hudson, a 1987 autobiography by Phyllis Gates, actor Rock Hudson's wife (1955–1958). It is the story of their marriage, written after Hudson's 1985 death from AIDS. In the book Gates wrote that she was in love with Hudson and that she did not know Hudson was gay when they married, and was not complicit in his deception. The movie is also based on magazine articles, interviews and court records, including transcripts of the Los Angeles Superior Court trial after which Marc Christian won a large settlement from the actor's estate because Hudson had hidden from him the fact that he was suffering from AIDS. Later, Marc Miller accused the movie of malicious lies. In April 1989, the court award to Christian was reduced to $5.5 million.
