Saturday, August 30, 2008

British Journalism, Victim of the "Love, Sydney" Syndrome

What is this, 1957?

From a feature in today's Telegraph, on Kevin Spacey's latest endeavor, a gig teaching at Oxford:

"One of Hollywood's more mysterious personalities, Kevin Spacey is urbanely witty and talks articulately and passionately about his work in the theatre while keeping his private life very much to himself."

Ick. Unless I'm much mistaken, an English translation of that might read something like this:

"gay gay gay gay gay urbanely witty gay gay gay gay private life gay gay gay shirtlifter poofter McQueen. Gay."

I've always liked Nathan Lane's approach; oblique, up to a point, yes, but infinitely more witty than clamming up and having your publicist force the interviewer to write pablum like that. When finally sick to death of getting asked The Question, Nathan replied: "Look, I'm 40, I'm single, and I work in musical theater - you do the math!"

Kevin's a lovely and talented man, no question - but how often do you have to get mugged cruising at 4:30 in the morning before you realize you're really (what with the Romantic Lead years now firmly in the rear-view mirror) not going to lose any roles by coming out?

1 comment:

  1. Quite true. And worse than his closet-led life is the press going along with it using such coy euphemism enriched code as this. Is it 1957?

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