How Much Would You Pay For Jon Bernthal?

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Exactly forty years after Richard Gere slipped into (and out of) some of the most stylish clothes ever put on a movie screen (in the process turning himself into forty years worth of a sex symbol) it looks like they're going to try to turn Paul Schrader's classic trash American Gigolo into a TV series, with The Punisher actor and bruiser fetish object Jon Bernthal selling his ass this time for top 2020 dollar. This gives me some feelings! And not just those ones, down there. Although obviously I mean those ones too. American Gigolo is still scorching hot here on forty years later -- I just re-watched it a year back and Richard Gere's charisma, which is one word for it, simply cannot be over-stated. Jon Bernthal, it must be said, is also mighty sexy! It's a very different kind of sexy, though...

Gay rumors about Richard Gere (nevermind the gerbils) probably found their footing thanks to his specific breed of anti-machismo -- even when he stomped his little feet and tried to lean into the New York Tough Guy thing (think Looking For Mr. Goodbar) he did it with a dancer's grace; it was never convincing, and he did it with a smile, like he knew he was playing a fetishized role for you. Bernthal on the other hand comes across much more convincingly as a genuine tough guy. There's a whole thread in the American Gigolo movie involving gay panic (I talked about it some back in 2018 when I last posted about this film) -- I can't remember how specific they get but as I recall Gere's male prostitute character Julian does not want to slide into tricking with men; I can't remember if he outwardly states that he'd done it before or not, but it's clear he prefers working with ladies (especially when they look like Lauren Hutton). 

Will this thread stay in a 2020 series run by the dude who made Ray Donovan and starring the dude who played The Punisher, or will it now be de-gayed? Has Jon Bernthal ever played any sort of gay before? I always got a little bit of a homoerotic whiff off of his relationship with Rick in The Walking Dead, but I can't think of anything else. I hope it stays! Keeping a male sex-worker rigidly heterosexual in this day and age seems real goofy to me. But we'll have to wait and see. For now let's spend some of that time with a few more Bernthal photos after the jump then...

Good Morning, Bernthal

Well this is a happy surprise -- after those first photos from the prison set of the upcoming American Gigolo television program starring Mr Jon Bernthal left us just a liiiiittle bit wanting (it wasn't that Bernthal didn't look good, cuz duh, it was just that it didn't feel like what we think of when we think of American Gigolo -- it felt like some overly butch Sons of Anarchy shenanigans were going down) today we have a batch of Bernthal playing in the surf (via) and...

... changing in the parking lot and this is more what I had in mind. I have been trying since this project was announced to keep an open mind on this since I have come to appreciate Bernthal over the past few years (in ways I didn't when he was pushing that bad accent on The Walking Dead), so let's take these photos as a good sign of things to come. What photos? These photos, after the jump...

Jon Bernthal Lines Up The Bottoms

There are a couple of actors who've slid off of my reserve mood-board and straight onto the official canvas of my dreams this past couple of years and Jon Bernthal, in case you hadn't noticed, has definitely been one of them. I hate hate hated his performance on The Walking Dead -- nobody should let him anywhere near a southern accent ever again -- but he's proven himself a capable screen-presence enough over the past couple of years, and then he got The Haircut, which, well... I have talked about The Haircut before. It's a demarcation line. And he was real good on Daredevil and The Punisher (having hot homoerotic chemistry with both Charlie Cox and Ben Barnes) and then he was the only thing worth looking at in Ford V Ferrari (god what a dreary movie that was)... yadda yadda cut to yesterday and I am now digging up terrible comedies he made over a decade ago where he flashed his bum for gifs. We come a long way, Baby Bernthal! 

Aaaaanyway all of that is my long-ass introduction to today's news, that Mr. Bernthal is creating an Amazon series for himself called -- ahem -- The Bottoms. He's creating, starring, co-writing the thing, which THR calls a long-gestating "passion project," and here is how they describe it and I quote:

"The Bottoms will follow the interconnected systems of family structures, friends and neighbors, law enforcement, and criminality all intersecting in Shreveport, Louisiana in the early '90s. Set in a particularly wild corner of the Deep South, the show will examine the inflection points, the blurred lines, and the human cost on all sides. Details on which role Bernthal will portray were not immediately available. "

Now, ya see, we have already run into a problem here, Jon. You're setting your series, that you will star in, in the "Deep South"??? Please tell me that your character will be a Northerner, with a Northerner's accent, who comes down to the Deep South to visit and gets embroiled in the local Southern-accented criminality, all while maintaining a proper and respectful elocutionary distance. Please! We've been through so much together. I don't know if I can make it through any more Hee-Hawing shenanigans. (Also I really hope this doesn't effect the American Gigolo series he's been attached to.)

In related news I made this gif pic.twitter.com/DCvt7eoe5W

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) December 1, 2020

Jon Bernthal Nine Times

I was hoping that the interview attached to these new photos of Jon Bernthal for GQ Hype would be more about his reboot of American Gigolo and less about him playing a cop in his new series We Own This City, which premieres this weekend... but that was obviously a fool's hope, since Gigolo comes out who-knows-when, and WOTC comes out this weekend. Alas, nobody ever lost a bet by betting on me playing the fool. Gigolo comes up for a brief moment but just for Jon to reiterate that he's uncomfortable being seen as sexy, something we've taken dude to task for saying before. Ya sexy, bitch! As this very photoshoot proves! Hit the jump for it...

I Am Link

--- Now Them's Some Women -- I was already pleased as a punch to the happy-places when it was announced back in December that not only was Sarah Polley planning on directing her first new movie in nine years (an adaptation of the book Women Talking) but that it was going to star Frances f'ing McDormand, so trying to measure my renewed enthusiasm when a big batch of absolute queens were further announced to fill out the film's cast this week would be a folly's errand. Stratospheric shit! Said queens include Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, and Ben f'ing Whishaw, oh my! The story "follows a group of women in an isolated religious colony as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of sexual assaults committed by the colony’s men." This is gonna be something y'all.

--- Friends No More -- I'll admit that my enthusiasm for In Bruges director Martin McDonagh has been dulled a bit by the projects he's done since that -- Seven Psychopaths and especially Three Billboards (ugh) were big letdowns for me -- but today's news that he's reuniting with the stars of his original masterpiece, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, for his next one well that gives me renewed vim n' vigor, McDonagh-wise. The film will be called The Banshees of Inisherin and will film in August and is about a pair of lifelong friends who're navigating the awkward space where they no longer want to be friends.

--- Ain't No Mountain -- Similarly it's hard to get too worked up over a new Doug Liman movie, even though his earliest work I glommed onto, 1999's Go, ranks among my all-time faves, since he hasn't made anything as good since. But I'm gonna give him another chance with this next project because it stars Ewan McGregor and Ewan is always worth a chance. It's a biopic of adventurer George Mallory, who tried to climb Mount Everest back in the 1920s, and it will co-star Mark Strong and Outlander hunk Sam Heughan.  Oh and it'll be called Everest, just like the Jake Gyllenhaal movie from a couple of years back, but I have a feeling that if Ewan has a nude scene in his Everest movie he'll let them leave it in, unlike Jake, so Ewan wins.

--- Step Up -- Another addition to the incredibly stacked cast of that true-crime adaptation The Staircase, which already had Juliette Binoche, Colin Firth, and Toni Collette -- ex-twink Dane DeHaan will now also be sleazing around the joint. I was going to make a joke about how he could play The Owl but I don't know if any of you will get that joke. Anyway I apparently missed the news that the series will also co-star Parker freaking Posey too! Everyone, literally everyone, will be there. get me to this set!

--- What's Good For The Gigolo -- An update on a project we've been keeping tabs on: the series re-do of American Gigolo starring Jon Bernthal got picked up by Showtime, a ten-episode order. It's actually technically a sequel to the movie starring Richard Gere; Bernthal's playing the same character, just years later after he's gotten out of jail. See all of MNPP's previous coverage on this series here, but pay special attention to this post. That's the winner.

--- Til Death Do -- Kristen Wiig is going to star in an adaptation of the upcoming book called The Husbands, which "follows an overworked mother who, while house-hunting in a nice suburban neighborhood, meets a group of high-powered women with enviably supportive husbands. When she agrees to take on a legal case involving the untimely death of one resident’s husband, she risks exposing not only the secrets at the heart of her own marriage, but the true secret to having it all, one worth killing for." I can't for the life of me tell the tone from that description; it could be dead serious or it could be Desperate Housewives. Even a gender-flipped Stepford Wives maybe?

--- Channing Sandwich -- Speaking of movie descriptions that I can't get a handle on the tone for, Zoe Kravitz has gone and written herself a star vehicle called Pussy Island (indeed) that will have her heading to the orgy-centric tropical getaway of a tech-billionaire (to be played by Channing Tatum, somehow); while there things go from sexy to dangerous, or something. I don't know. Just throw me in a Channing Tatum Orgy and I'll figure it out as I go.

--- And Finally since I began this post with a crazy stacked cast I'll finish with the same - Apple is producing a psychological-thriller series called Surface from the creator of the High Fidelity series, and it will star several MNPP fave babes including Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Stephan James, Ari Graynor, François Arnaud, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Marianne Jean Baptiste. Good grief -- Get me to that set! To all of the sets! I gotta get the fuck outta my house! Ahem. Surface is described as "an elevated thriller about a woman’s quest to rebuild her life after a suicide attempt, and her struggle to remember – and understand – everything that led up to the moment when she jumped." Gugu is the lead. (And hopefully Oliver & Francois are sharing a trailer.)

Oh I See You, Jon Bernthal

What I imagine is the final full trailer for the forthcoming American Gigolo series starring Jon Bernthal has dropped (thx Mac) -- the series premieres on Showtime on September 9th, so this will probably be it I am guessing until then. Here was our first glimpse, and you can see plenty of other earlier coverage further back in our archives -- like a horny maniac (what's new) I have been covering this one since it was very very first announced, simply a whisper of a maybe dream. Watch:

So how are we all feeling on this at this point? As expected slash worried it's reading super straight... not that Paul Schrader's original film wasn't super straight but it at least flirted with gayness -- in the way it ogled Richard Gere and in those later scenes that explicitly talked about his character's gay hustling history. But I'm not sure if this show will even go to those places? Which seems like a strange step backward? There are thankfully a couple of gratuitous flashes of Bernthal seen, but he's obviously a much butcher presence than Gere ever was. And like the series Hung did before I think it's a mistake to pretend male prostitutes can support themselves through exclusively hetero means. I just don't think that scenario is believable. But I don't know -- all I have seen is what y'all have seen. We'll see for real come September. I just hope they have some secret gay up their designer sleeves.

Jiggle Them Gigolos, Jon Bernthal

Our first official look at Jon Bernthal in the American Gigolo series that I have been going on and on and on about ever since we first heard about it has arrived via EW today -- not only are there several photos of the show's cast (which includes people who aren't Jon Bernthal, apparently, who cares), but there's also a teaser trailer, and...

... it's filled with shots like that that are doing the convincing for us, that this should exist. Obviously I don't know that Jon can approximate the effortless suave cool sleazy fuck-boy energy that Richard Gere did in Paul Schrader's 1980 movie, but I will sure watch him try! Here's the trailer:

I still don't see a release date for the series (Showtime just keeps saying "Coming Soon") but I'll keep you notified. For now hit the jump for a couple more gifs from the trailer of note...

Pics of the Day

It is premiere day for the reboot of American Gigolo starring Jon Bernthal, and EW was kind enough to share that image to entice us all. "Entice" doesn't even begin to get that quite right -- bewitch is more like it! I haven't seen any of the series yet -- I decided not to nag at them about screeners since I have had about fifteen million other things on my plate recently -- so I'll be watching it with you fine people this weekend. I don't even know -- is this one episode a week? I could check but I'm feeling lazy. I'm just here for the pictures right now. 

Thankfully so is Tumblr, as its full of such sights right this moment. Maybe I'll just go stare at the gifs and forego the show altogether? The reviews, which I've admittedly only glanced at tweet-length, don't seem too kind? Bahh who am I kidding, I'll watch the whole damn thing at some point. I've been covering this series since it was just a glimmer in Jon Bernthal's slicked-back hair. Anyway if y'all watch it over the weekend do tell me about your experience with it in the comments. And in exchange I'll give you some more of those gifs I was talking about after the jump...

Good Morning, World

My assumption is that this photo of Jon Bernthal was taken on the set of his forthcoming update of American Gigolo because -- and this took some real hardcore detective work on my part -- he looks exactly like he looked in that footage from the set of that show that I posted last February. From the handlebar 'stache down to those gray sweats, and every tat in between. (For those of you wondering about this look matching with your image of Richard Gere in the 1980 film, Bernthal is supposed to be playing the same character once he's getting out of prison for the death at the end of the film -- and uhh spoiler alert for a 40-year-old movie.) Anyway I don't actually know where this image came from (I got it off a random Tumblr) and I still don't have any update on when this show will air but I felt the need to share the photo for obvious reasons -- if you know where it came from original do tell! I am especially curious because it looks to me like it could be a frame taken from an Insta-story and who wouldn't want to see this moment in motion? 

Good morning!

Good Morning, World

I have to admit when I first heard that Jon Bernthal was going to star in a TV update on the sex fantasy that was Richard Gere in 1980's American Gigolo I had, well I had a lot of thoughts, but none of them involved it being a tough-guy prison series. And I don't quite think that's what it's supposed to end up being either from what I have read -- it's supposed to be set after our titular gigolo (his name's Julian Kaye, which is such a wildly 80s name) gets out of jail after a very long stint for the death that ends Paul Schrader's film. But these first images from the set, of the prison stuff being shot (via), still have me a little... off-balance.

The show is coming from David Hollander, who did a bunch of Ray Donovan, so it's probably gonna be a pretty dude-centric show. (Neil LaBute's name is also in the mix in some capacity, so yeah.) The movie, if you haven't watched it lately, is... not dude-centric. It's not just the leering at Prime Gere, although that doesn't hurt -- while it remains skittish about Julian's gay tricking that shit is there, more and more as it goes along, and feeds into that dead-body finale. I'm just... I remain curious to see if (like Hung before it) this "update" will be less gay than it should be, less gay than what came before, and these prison vids are feeding right into my skepticism. Not that I'm not enjoying them in their own way!

Good Morning, World

I've been too busy with other things to start watching the American Gigolo series but it looks like this week's fourth episode finally gave us some of what we were hoping for those many years back when we first posted about this project -- Jon Bernthal starring in a re-do of American Gigolo demands (at least) butt, it demands pull-ups and jumping rope in underwear... it demands some damned gratuitousness! And looks like they delivered some. Anybody watching? I have only heard bad things, which is why I haven't prioritized it. Hit the jump for all the gifs...

Good Morning, World

I thought I'd been keeping tight track of everything "Jon Bernthal in the new American Gigolo series" related but I only now laid my eyeballs upon this hefty offering from the man himself via his Insta last week -- in his caption he says they just wrapped shooting, one assumes the pilot; I thought Showtime had already ordered this to series! I wouldn't have gotten myself all worked up if I'd known I might never see this at all. Okay I still would've gotten myself worked up over those shots of him playing in the surf -- that part would have stayed the same. Anyway I guess now we wait and see. And this photo (that's the show's crazy fortunate costume designer standing behind Jon) is not a bad thing to stare at in the meantime.