#OLDER BALD GAY PORN STARS MOVIE#
They had wanted me to talk about how incredible it was for director Ava DuVernay to include someone playing the gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in the movie Selma, though the truth is, while the inclusion was lovely, it was basically a glorified cameo and his gayness was not mentioned, so it hardly deserved a Pride parade. (I’m still available, Claudia!) I must admit I wasn’t that upset when a streaming show on which people read fan letters they’ve written to celebrities wasn’t renewed.
But then you have docs that are postponed again and again, like a Claudia Schiffer–produced film about fashion that’s been bumped more times than my attempt to refinance. I totally understood when some docs I was scheduled to be in were scuttled because of lockdown the blow to my omnipresence is hardly the main casualty of Covid. For one thing, they will gladly set you up for stardom, then suddenly become as incommunicado as the shop owner who claimed to have Hunter Biden’s laptop. In addition to all that grief, letting this stuff dominate your schedule can be so damaging to your well-being that your head can barely keep chattering (though it manages). But when I sat down to be grilled, that was the very first question out of the interviewer’s mouth! I headed for the exit, screaming as if I’d just seen Freddy Krueger. When the director of a doc about a horror-film actor wanted to put me on camera for some ’80s-related insight, I agreed, but specified that there was a certain topic I wouldn’t address (long story).
I once did a 90-minute interview for a network’s pre-Oscar special and was cut down to just two biteless bites-“Michael Douglas is part of an acting clan” and “Warren Beatty is Shirley Mac-Laine’s younger brother.” I’m serious! Instead of using any of the seasoned observations about the Oscars I’ve cataloged over the years, they picked two utterances that were on the level of “Breaking: Water is wet!”
Considering the practically nonverbal childhood I evolved from, it’s head-spinning to emerge as the unofficial king of documentary talking heads, and to have so many people clamoring for my opinions. The director wanted me to provide some context for Persis’s career, and I gladly did so, delighted to have yet one more person aiming a camera at my face. Last year, I was even interrogated for a doc about Persis Khambatta, the obscure model-actor who played the bald Lieutenant Ilia in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, back in 1979. I’ve been interviewed for docs about gays, lesbians, bisexuals, “f*g hags,” and Paris Hilton. (Maybe someone should do a documentary about whether or not I get in.)Īs a sort of all-purpose bobblehead savant for the streaming era, I pop up in documentaries about nightlife, New York City, queer history, fashion, movies, celebrity gossip, politics, and porn stars. As someone who’s been privy to many cultural happenings for decades and remembers every second of it all, I’ve appeared in so many documentaries that a Facebook friend is seriously considering contacting the Guinness Book of World Records about it.