"Black Sheep" Arrives in TooStoned!

"Black Sheep" Arrives in TooStoned!
Originally uploaded by azLee

Yippie Skippy! I just found out that New Zealand's comedy horror "Black Sheep" will be playing at the The Loft Cinema on August 10. Here's the trailer and site for the movie.

Other events coming up there are a "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" and ABBA sing-a-long, another Buffy Sing-a-long, "Polyester" in Odorama(!), the Tucson premiere of "La Vie en Rose" about Edith Piaf, "Team America" sing-a-long, "Can't Stop the Serenity" charity event with the movie "Serenity", "Phantasm" with an actual appearance of Angus Scrimm!, and "Shaun of the Dead" as part of their cult classic series. Looks like a great summer of flicks at the thAYter!

R.I.P. Charles Nelson Reilly

R.I.P. Charles Nelson Reilly
Originally uploaded by azLee

Charles Nelson Reilly, Tony-Winning Comic Actor, Dies at 76

Charles Nelson Reilly, who acted and directed on Broadway but came to be best known for his campy television appearances on talk shows and “Match Game,” died on Friday in Los Angeles. He was 76 and lived in Beverly Hills, Calif.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, said his partner, Patrick Hughes, who is his only immediate survivor. Mr. Reilly had been ill for more than a year, he said.

Long before moving west to become what he somewhat ruefully described as a “game show fixture,” Mr. Reilly was an actor and an acting teacher in New York City. In 1962, he won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Bud Frump in the original Broadway production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”

But he was proudest of “The Belle of Amherst,” a one-woman play starring Julie Harris based on the life of Emily Dickinson, which he directed on Broadway at the Longacre Theater in 1976, said Timothy Helgeson, who collaborated with him on the show. Two decades later, Mr. Reilly directed Ms. Harris and Charles Durning in a revival of “The Gin Game” at the Lyceum Theater. He was nominated for a Tony for best director in 1997, and Ms. Harris was nominated for best actress.

His final work was an autobiographical one-man show, “Save It for the Stage: The Life of Reilly,” in which he recounted his difficult childhood. Born in the Bronx, the only child of a Swedish mother and an Irish father, Mr. Reilly told of the pain of being considered the oddest member of a decidedly odd family.

He explained the title of his show by saying that, when he was a child, his mother would often cut him off from speaking by admonishing him to “save it for the stage.” His father, he told audiences, never got over having passed up a chance to move to Hollywood and work with a budding animation artist named Walt Disney.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Mr. Reilly, with his ascots, oversize spectacles and over-the-top penchant for double-entendres, was a regular on television. He appeared more than 95 times on the “Tonight” show with Johnny Carson and was a panelist on game shows like “Match Game” and “Hollywood Squares.”

In a 2001 interview with The Advocate, the national gay magazine, Mr. Reilly reflected on the effect those shows had on his professional prospects. “You can’t do anything else once you do game shows,” he said. “You have no career.”

Mr. Reilly’s openly gay persona was many years ahead of its time on television, and it had its risks. He recalled being dismissed early in his career by a network executive, who told him that “they don’t let queers on television.” Paul Linke, who directed the one-man show, said Mr. Reilly later had the last laugh when he would page through TV Guide and count how many times he was on the air that week.

Tinky Winky Says Bye-Bye to Jerry Falwell

Tinky Winky Says Bye-Bye to Jerry Falwell

The former TV star recalls the trauma of being called gay by the conservative preacher.

By King Kaufman

Tinky Winky: Tinky Winky, with his handbag, left, has long denied rumors of an affair with former costar Po, right.
Originally uploaded by azLee.

May 16, 2007 | Eight years ago the Rev. Jerry Falwell warned parents that BBC children's television star Tinky Winky was a hidden symbol of homosexuality. Falwell died Tuesday at 73, and the world wanted to talk to Tinky Winky.

"They're calling again, again, again," he said by phone from his home in Islington, in London. A spokesman said the former "Teletubbies" costar got more than 100 calls from reporters in the hour following news of Falwell's death.

"Oh dear, it's easy to say the wrong thing here," he said. "Tinky Winky sad whenever someone dies, but ..." He left it hanging there.

In a 1999 article in his National Liberty Journal headlined "Tinky Winky Comes Out of the Closet," Falwell pointed out that Winky could be taken as representing gays.

"He is purple -- the gay pride color, and his antenna is shaped like a triangle -- the gay pride symbol," Falwell wrote. "The character, whose voice is that of a boy, has been found carrying a red purse in many episodes and has become a favorite character among gay groups worldwide."

In the resulting media firestorm, gay-rights activists called for Winky to come out while Christian groups demanded the BBC fire him so that he couldn't, in Falwell's words, "role-model the gay lifestyle."

"It was traumatizing, really," says Winky, who now owns a holistic healing center and makes occasional appearances on British TV. "I'm a very private Teletubby. I just wanted to get away, go over the hills and far away. But when you're 7 feet tall and purple with an antenna on your head and a TV screen in your belly, where are you going to go?"

Winky says he tried to contact Falwell after the article came out, but the evangelist wouldn't take his calls.

"I wanted to know why he didn't talk to me first," Winky says. "It's not like I'm hard to reach. Have the pinwheel call me. But really I just wanted to clap him on the head with Tinky Winky bag."

The star never has clarified his sexual orientation, insisting on his privacy and denying rumors over the years that he had affairs with two of his costars on the 1997-2001 show, the male Dipsy and the female Po.

"We love each other very much," he says. "Big hug. But it's not like that. It was a kids show, know what I mean? And this Falwell guy and his followers wanted to turn us into something else. We weren't modeling a gay lifestyle and we weren't trying to corrupt anyone's kids. We were just kids ourselves, really. Give us a little Tubby toast or custard and a film of some kids washing clothes or something, that's all we needed. We didn't give a shit about modeling a lifestyle."

Tinky Winky sounds angry. The wounds are still raw.

"I'm just practicing my craft, working for the kids, and all at once the tabloids are everywhere on me," he says. "I couldn't even go out. Was it a gay club? Was I talking to a woman? It was bollocks."

Winky chuckles. "I must say, though," he says, "without getting into too many details, we had a girl in the group who ran around this kids show yelling, 'Cooter! Cooter!' And I'm the gay one? Do me a favor."

Through a spokeswoman, Po declined to comment for this article.

Winky says the Teletubbies stay in touch, and he remains friends with both Dipsy, who owns a nightclub in West London where Winky is often seen, and Po. Winky says he and Laa-Laa never really got along during the show's run, but, "We're fine now. We've come to appreciate each other."

Asked about Falwell's death, Winky turns serious and chooses his words carefully.

"I'm not going to pretend I'm sadder than I am," he says. "There were late nights during the dark times when I wished to hear news like this. I'd be lying if I denied that. I don't feel that way anymore. I like to think I've grown over the years, gotten past all that pain.

"But at the end of the day, I'm not terribly sad, and I think a lot of people feel the same way. Jerry Falwell was a divisive person, a hateful person, and what I've tried to be all about, in the Teletubbies days and since then, has been love. I've got to keep it that way. I don't want anybody feeling good about it when it's my time for Tubby bye-bye."

Down Memory Lane

...and not believing this was 30 years ago now. I was thinking of a Kid Creole and the Coconuts and the band that they originated from and was wondering if there was ever a video of it. Lo and behold (and thanx to YouTube) there was. I present Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band: