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silverfoxesclub-digest In this issue:
-Joseph Fiennes
Subject: Joseph Fiennes
Subject: Believe it or not
You may remember that on July 8, 1947, witnesses
claim a spaceship with five aliens aboard crashed on a
sheep-and-cattle ranch outside Roswell, New
Mexico.
This is an incident, that many say has been covered
up by the government.
However, you may not realize that on March 31, 1948,
exactly nine months after that day, Al Gore was born.
Subject: Normal, Ohio
Of course, his family is totally fucked up,
but the viewer is left with the feeling that
Goodman is the only sane member of it,
and thank God he got away.
There are some great lines and a funny,
idiotic silverfox of a grandfather (Orson
Bean) who hates the fact that his son
(Goodman) is gay. Goodman gets off a good
one at his son's party celebrating the kid's
acceptance at medical school when he
proposes a toast "to the day you come
home knowing enough about surgery to
cut your grandfathers's head out of his ass!"
The family's embarrassment over Goodman's
being gay hilariously points up their own
dysfunctionality as people and family members.
Despite the hokum, the episode followed a
path which would be considered a true one
by anyone who has experienced the ignorance
and meanness of many around a gay person
who emerges from the closet at last.
Even the episode's climax illustrates the
perversity of people who cannot accept the
gay difference in someone they have previously
thought straight, i.e. nothing Goodman does, no
matter how right, can be good.
In one scene, he asks his son if the boy is
happy now that the kid has achieved the
goal of becoming a pre-med student. He tells
the boy further that what matters to him
as his father is that his son is happy within
himself, no matter what the world thinks of him.
Obviously, Goodman is revealing the central
factor in his own life -- having given up
everything the world expected him to be so
he could find happiness at last in simply
being unapologetically himself.
Unwittingly, he has planted a seed in his
son's mind, which blooms in the kid's
stunning announcement at the party later
that he doesn't really want to go to med
school because it doesn't make him happy
and, like his dad, he thinks it is better to be
himself, no matter what.
Goodman endures the family's rage
philosphically, and reveals at the end of the
episode that he is not returning to California.
He is going to stay in Normal, Ohio.
What I liked most about the episode apart from
its solid comedic structure was Goodman's
straightforward and honest performance as
a gay man in this situation. There was
nothing snide in his approach, or stupid. He
was bright and light. Yeah! A bit light in the
sneakers, hee hee, but he wore them well!
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End of silverfoxesclub-digest V1 #32
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Joe Fiennes (pronounced "fines") is
the hot younger brother of Ralph
(pronounced "rayph" instead of like
American "ralph...these guys are
Irish-born but brought up in England)
Fiennes. Ralph, of course, was
one of the stars (with Liam Neeson,
etc.) of "Schindler's List." Joe, shown
here, starred in "Elizabeth" and
also in "Shakespeare in Love," but the
acting honors went to Gwyneth Paltrow
and Dame Judi Dench. He should have
won something, as he was sexy and
petulant and convincing as Dudley, the
presumed lover of Queen Elizabeth I of
England, and was so gayly scintillating as
Shakespeare "in love" that he made it
easy to imagine the great poet-playwright
writing the "dark sonnets" to an unknown
male lover. Paltrow won the Academy Award
for her role in the latter film as the fictional
girl who inspired this fictional Shakespeare
to write "Romeo and Juliet," but she had
the good grace to wave her Oscar at the
Los Angeles ceremony, proclaiming to the
world, "This is for Joe!" Right on, babe! The
only thing better than that would have been
a trans-Atlantic shot of Joe waving HIS
"oscar" (hee hee!) right back!
John Goodman debuted his new TV
series, "Normal, Ohio," on the Fox
Channel tonight (Wed., 11/01/00), and
even if you don't like sitcoms (like me),
you might enjoy this one.
Goodman plays a middle-aged chub who
divorced his wife and left his family after finding
out he was gay. He moved to California
and in this first episode, entitled
"Homecoming Queen," that's just what
he is -- a queen who has come home to
Normal, Ohio, after his initial ventue into
the great, gay world.