Romance, Bromance and Plain Old Friendship – Passions and Problems

[PeterRS]

Another in the occasional series of articles from a website I occasionally wrote for a few years ago. The others in the series are Plus ça change . . . Thoughts on the March of Time in this forum and Experiences of Asia (Gay-Related) to While Away These Difficult Times under Gay Asia. This one was sparked by an interview I saw on CNN.

I always wonder: who will be next? CNN anchors coming out, I mean. Anderson Cooper had been the subject of rumours for years. Even then, it took some time before he came out on air. Now we know – too well, because it is far too often mentioned that he is a father, even though he is no longer partnered with the man with whom he had the baby. Don Lemon’s engagement to his fiancé is talked about quite a lot in the little dialogues – bromances – he has each time his weekday show abuts that of the non-gay Chris Cuomo. 

Then there is the channel’s travel/business guru, the goofy Richard Quest, a refugee from the more staid world of the BBC seemingly decades ago, and no doubt surprising to some a barrister who was called to the English bar (the legal one) in 1983. Quest’s coming out followed an interview he had with Lord John Browne, then the CEO of the oil giant BP. Browne, in the closet for 50 years, had been forced to come out after his much younger boyfriend spilled the beans. Browne then wrote a book about his secret life titled The Glass Closet. This tells the story of Browne’s brief double life and his 3-year relationship with a Brazilian he had met on an escort site, his first and only gay affair, even though he had known he was gay since leaving his boarding school. Threatened with exposure by a tabloid newspaper, he tried to get the story quashed. It did not work. Six months short of his 60th birthday he came out as a publicly gay man and has since become a gay activist.

The evening following their interview, Quest admitted he had felt guilty discussing homosexuality with Browne. He then told the world that was because he himself is gay. Did anyone really think he could not be? A man who takes his teddy bear with him on all his overnight freebie flights around the world for his Travel Show?

Quest had also been a naughty boy. In 2008 he was stopped going through Central Park after closing time. He was found with a stash of crystal meth, a rope around his neck tied to his genitals and a sex toy in the trunk of his car. The media had a field day but CNN supported him even though he has never explained why he was there and what he was doing. After six months they even gave him a new show.

I mention all this because I think one of CNN’s great assets is now being underused. Christiane Amanpour is an excellent journalist and interviewer. She has been with the channel for over 25 years. She did leave for a short time in 2010 to join ABC News. This was not a marriage made in heaven. Her programme tanked big time and after little more than a year she left ABC and returned to CNN’s embrace.

Her interviews are usually deep and interesting, bringing out a lot about the interviewee. I still recall an interview with actor Andrew Garfield about his appearance as the lead in the Broadway revival of the 2017 London National Theatre’s production of Tony Kushner’s stunning 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the AIDS crisis Angels in America.Kushner also took part in that interview. 

The point of this post is more about the importance of friendships no matter what’s one’s partnership state. Which brings me back to Ms. Amanpour. Only occasionally I feel she does go a bit overboard and gush too enthusiastically. Back in 2013 she interviewed two celebrated actor knights, Sir Ian McKellan and Sir Patrick Stewart. Both were in London to appear in Harold Pinter’s play “No Man’s Land” receiving stellar reviews. Four years earlier they had appeared on stage together in Berthold Brecht’s Waiting for Godot. It had taken those four years for them each to be free to appear together on stage again. 

Which is perhaps a little surprising given that these two acting greats are the best and closest of friends. Yet one is gay and proudly out. The other is totally heterosexual having married his third wife in 2013. The actors first met back in the 1970s when working at England’s Royal Shakespeare Company. McKellan by then was well known as one of the UK’s finest up-and-coming actors, almost certainly known to Stewart but not to the public as being gay. Stewart was little more than a jobbing actor with a wife and two young children.

Before then it so happened I had seen McKellan during my student years. On a visit to Scotland, I was fortunate to catch a couple of plays being performed at the celebrated Edinburgh Festival, Shakespeare's Richard II and Marlowe's Edward II – the one where Edward is gay and ends his days with a red hot poker up his bum. Playing the title role in each was a young English actor about whom there was a considerable buzz in theatrical circles. The friend who accompanied me was then at drama school and madly in love with him. Unfortunately, he told me, the actor already had a boyfriend. That was the first time I knew Ian McKellan was gay.

For both actors Hollywood eventually beckoned, first for Stewart when he was cast in the hugely successful “Star Trek: The Next Generation” television Series in 1987. McKellan continued mostly as a superb stage actor until he found himself in Hollywood in 1998 cast as the ageing real-life gay movie director James Whale, a role that won him a nomination for Best Actor at the 1999 Oscars. 

 

By then McKellan had come out as gay and was increasingly in demand in the movie world. It was when he was cast in the first of the “X-Men” series in 2000 that he renewed his friendship with Stewart, also cast in the film. As Stewart said in an interview with The Mirror online –

“On movies like that you spend more time sitting in your trailer waiting to work as opposed to being in front of the camera, I’d known Ian back in the 70s but never well - and to be honest I was always a little intimidated by him. But we hung out a lot and found out that we had huge amounts of things in common.”

That friendship was to grow into what the tabloids have called the most famous “bromance” in Hollywood. For Stewart’s latest marriage in 2013, McKellan became an ordained minister in some obscure Church, flew to America and officiated at the ceremony. And when McKellan’s movie “Holmes” opened in London in 2015 the pair even enjoyed a lips-on-lips kiss.

Watching the interview was fascinating. Seeing these two great actors in the twilights of their lives and careers, they reminded me how important are the bonds of close friendship. In the gay world, it’s all too easy to lose ourselves in the affections of our partner or the latest boyfriend whilst giving less attention to friendships, especially those developed over decades. 

As I have grown older, I have realised that close non-gay friendships are very important in my life. Gay men do not need to live in their own gay ghetto or to mix mostly with their gay friends. We live in a diverse world, as McKellan and Stewart know well.

You can watch their fascinating short interview here (unfortunately you have to copy and paste the link and then it takes a little time to load).

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/10/17/intv-amanpour-ian-mckellen-patrick-stewart.cnn

PS: It was only while revising this article that I learned Christiane Amanpour had announced three weeks ago that she had been diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer. She underwent a successful operation and is now undergoing several months of chemotherapy. Hopefully her cancer was discovered early and I wish her a full recovery. 

[TotallyOz]

Beautifully written and thought out.

I was lucky enough to see McKellan in person at the Globe and have drinks with him at a pub much before he became famous. He was very distinguished even back then.

Anderson Cooper has done a great deal for the gay rights movement. I have always admired him and think he is a great anchor. I do wander why he gave up on his friendship with that comedian he used to do NYE with each year. Not a great friend if you put someone aside like that.

 

[PeterRS]

1 hour ago, TotallyOz said:

I do wander why he gave up on his friendship with that comedian he used to do NYE with each year. Not a great friend if you put someone aside like that.

I believe it was CNN who fired her. She had shown a severed head of Donald Trump on air and that was felt to be one joke too far for the channel.

This was one of Anderson Cooper's classic interludes.

 

[JKane]

Kathy Griffin.  She mentions the fickle friends that turned their backs on her in her latest special.  I watched it a while ago, remember kinda enjoying it.  

https://www.amazon.com/Kathy-Griffin-Hell-Story/dp/B07VVWGC85

Heaven forbid a comic pushes the envelope about Trump!  He's NEVER pushed any envelopes... or broken damn near every norm of class or decency...  

 

[msclelovr]

Thanks for the interesting post @PeterRS 

I agree with you on the importance of friendships, especially “close non-gay friendships” as you state. I have 3 such friends I’ve known for 50+ years and I’ve 2 gay friends I’ve known for 40+ years.

I disagree with some of what you wrote about Ian McKellen (a tiny thing but that’s the correct spelling). I’ve seen him act on stage several times - I rate him as good but not one of the greats - and he’s popular because of his film-work. My view may be influenced by knowing more of him as a person. He was well-known as a gay man (in London at least) for many years and I met him in the 1970s. We did not get on well as I was a gay activist back then and came out at 21. He certainly refused to help or support gay causes for a long time. McKellen was in the closet for many years; he seemed to enjoy having what he termed the “queenly nickname” of Serena. I think he came out only in the very late 1980s after he’d achieved success and after his soon to be ex-boyfriend, a theatre director, had come out and IIRC disclosed their relationship in the media to no one’s surprise. 

[PeterRS]

1 hour ago, msclelovr said:

My view may be influenced by knowing more of him as a person. He was well-known as a gay man (in London at least) for many years and I met him in the 1970s. We did not get on well as I was a gay activist back then and came out at 21. He certainly refused to help or support gay causes for a long time. McKellen was in the closet for many years; he seemed to enjoy having what he termed the “queenly nickname” of Serena. I think he came out only in the very late 1980s after he’d achieved success and after his soon to be ex-boyfriend, a theatre director, had come out and IIRC disclosed their relationship in the media to no one’s surprise. 

Thank you for correcting my spelling.

You are correct. He did not come out until he was 49. But then, if my memory is correct, there were not many who came out in the 1970s/early 1980s. In the acting business. it was known that some people like Sir Laurence Olivier were bisexual and others like Sir John Gielgud were gay. But being found to be gay in England was a criminal offence until 1967. Gielgud had suffered considerably after he was found in a public toilet ("cottage") in the early 1950s and arrested. He was then also 49. Although one of Britain's finest actors and a major 'star', the negative publicity affected both his career and his health as he was to suffer a nervous breakdown soon after. I think this public humiliation of such a great actor inevitably affected the profession as a whole for many years even after the repeal of the homosexuality law. Another well known gay actor is Sir Derek Jacobi. The same age as McKellen, he also remained in the closet as far as the public was concerned only coming out, I believe, after McKellen.

Actors were paid peanuts in those days. Many, including McKellen, undertook extensive touring around major British cities to make ends meet, usually staying in theatrical 'digs' as hardly any could afford even a proper guest house. I believe it was also true that for many in the profession, although perhaps not for McKellen and some others, that you were only as good as your last performance. There remained in the country a general fear among local theatre managers and landladies about the local media finding out that a gay man was in a touring production. It seems ridiculous today, but then times have changed massively.

With the greatest respect, I do not think anyone could be blamed for being gay and remaining in the closet in those days. That was very much the course of my life until i came out in my early 30s. It would be particularly true of pubic figures. Offhand I cannot think of any actors who did, although playwrights like Joe Orton were openly (and some would say outrageously) gay while others like the stage designer/director Derek Jarman were not only out but activists as well. Were they not few and far between?

By the time McKellen came out, he was a very big name in theatre but had not yet made his name in film. He came out to the public in 1988. The reason he came out was not a result of being 'outed'. It was over a bill Prime Minster Thatcher was trying to ram through parliament prohibiting local authorities from promoting homosexuality especially in schools. McKellen spoke out against this on a radio programme and announced he was gay at the same time. So you could say he became an activist as he came out.

I think I wrote in another forum that McKellen has done a great deal since then to promote gay activism. He has spoken, often by video link or a taped interview, all around Asia. He even gave an interview to a gay magazine printed for some years in Chiang Mai! The story I like best is when he was performing King Lear in Singapore 14 years ago. Doing an early morning interview on one of the city state's radio stations, he was asked what he would like to see in Singapore. "I'd love it if someone could show me the way to a nice gay bar," was the reply. The producer had a fit and pulled the plug on the rest of the interview. 

https://www.smh.com.au/world/ian-mckellen-urges-singapore-to-recognise-gay-rights-20070717-o84.html

[PeterRS]

21 hours ago, msclelovr said:

He was well-known as a gay man (in London at least) for many years and I met him in the 1970s. We did not get on well as I was a gay activist back then and came out at 21. He certainly refused to help or support gay causes for a long time.

Let me just add that in no way did my reply intend to be against gay activism. Far from it. I admire @msclelovrfor hi activism in the 1970s. Unquestionably that made it a lot easier for me and vast numbers of others eventually to come out. I just believe everyone then had a choice. McKellen made his and I can certainly understand why. 

[msclelovr]

What you write is very interesting @PeterRS I’d like to add a few observations. 

I met Gielgud in Amsterdam in the early 1970s. It’s true that he suffered badly after his arrest in 1953, but did you know that on the first night he returned to the theatre (after his arrest and being fined £10 for importuning), he was extremely nervous before he walked onto the stage…to be greeted by prolonged, loud applause from the audience?

I was a gay activist and quite involved with gay liberation from 1973-1988. I met many gay men who were involved in the performing arts; my second boyfriend was a ballet dancer. There certainly were actors other than McKellen who were out in London in the 1970s. Do you perhaps remember Ian Charleson? I met him several times. He was successful in films (Chariots of Fire, Gandhi) after working (with Gielgud among others) at the National Theatre. 
 

At that time, I met McKellen once at a party. I knew his boyfriend, the theatre director, a little better. IIRC they were living in Limehouse. I don’t know what McKellen’s income was, but his boyfriend was certainly well-paid as a theatre director - I can’t be sure but I think he was already under contract at the National Theatre then. 
 

I guess that my feeling that McKellen is over-praised as a ‘gay hero’ stems from my years as an activist. I feel that he shouldn’t be seen as a gay activist when all the ‘heavy lifting’ was done by many others. At the time, I was surprised at how readily some celebrities, gay and straight, offered to help; Elton John, Billy Connolly and Elizabeth Taylor offered generous support. I was very unimpressed that some well-known but closeted gay men like McKellen and Stephen Fry refused. 

[PeterRS]

5 hours ago, msclelovr said:

I guess that my feeling that McKellen is over-praised as a ‘gay hero’ stems from my years as an activist. I feel that he shouldn’t be seen as a gay activist when all the ‘heavy lifting’ was done by many others. 

I can understand that view. On the other hand, I think it is important not to think of activism as being related only to one country and one period of time. After he came out I believe he did lose what would have been his first major film role in a Hollywood movie being written by Harold Pinter who had specifically asked for him. The offer was rescinded when he came out. Hollywood still did not like openly gay activists in leading roles! 30 years later he finally received an apology!

The fact is he has been an activist for nearly three and a half decades. I believe activists at any time are worthy of praise, rather like Lord John Browne even though he did not come out until he was 60. McKellen has been especially idolised as a gay icon here in Asia, a continent where activism only started much later than in the west.

I have never met McKellen, but we had a close mutual friend in New York. Around 1990 Charlie founded an organisation to persuade the world's top artists and musicians to take part in events to raise money for AIDS charities in the USA. Charlie had headed a major artists' agency and so he had a direct line to many of those he requested to help. Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS gave Charlie an office and singlehandedly he raised many, many millions for local AIDS charities all over the USA. Much of the fund raising was persuading the rich and famous in each city to host $1,000 a head dinners in their homes at which artists like Renee Fleming, James Galway and ian McKellen would take part and donate their services. Charlie said McKellen could not have been kinder or more willing to help when he was in the USA.

But let's not quibble. He may have been blind to what he might have achieved had he come out earlier. But I believe he has rather made up for it since then.

[anddy]

On 7/13/2021 at 12:13 PM, PeterRS said:

Berthold Brecht’s Waiting for Godot. 

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot

[PeterRS]

9 hours ago, anddy said:

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot

Damn it! I knew his name began with 'B' 

[vinapu]

don't worry , you still can read "Mother Courage and her children " by Brecht after you are done  with Beckett's piece