Good Morning, World

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I've had Richard Gere - specifically American Gigolo - on my mind these days because, well, I don't really need a "because" right? That is prime pretty stuff. Anyway the above shot is from An Officer and a Gentleman (and I am flabbergasted I've never posted that before, from what a quick scan through the archives tells me) but this week's banner (my birthday week banner!) is American Gigolo, so I'm covering all my bases. But I'm thinking of Gigolo specifically thanks to Halt and Catch Fire, Lee Pace's new show; I haven't seen last night's episode yet but the previous week's made it clear that they really need to be pushing Lee's costuming into Gigolo territory.

They're almost there, and I suppose even with a man as good-looking as Lee there's bound to be disconnect cuz nobody's ever gonna look as good as Richard Gere looked in American Gigolo, but I still think they should be trying harder.

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poll by twiigs.com

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Alright anyway what with Richard on my mind I did gather up a few pictures as-of-yet unposted (for comprehensive previous Gere-age, hit this link) which I'll toss after the jump for us to enjoy. There's more Officer nudity, weird Japanese underwear advertisements, and near make-outs with Billy Baldwin to be had, let's hit it!

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, World

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Some Blondie popped up on my iPod this morning (instantaneously making it a better morning, bless that Debbie Harry) and that mixed with the other's week's re-watch of American Gigolo and multiplied by yesterday's post ruminating on the theater antics of Paul Newman led me down the rabbit hole this morning of "Richard Gere starring in Bent on Broadway in 1979." He played the Clive Owen role (Mmm Clive Owen in Bent)... or rather the Ian McKellen role as it was originated in London. It wasn't Gere's first time on stage - he spent much of the 70s as a theater actor, understudying and replacing about fifty percent of the male characters in Grease for awhile - but his turn in Bent did smack right up against his turn in Gigolo, not to mention falling after his turns in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (swoon) and bouncing around in a jockstrap with Diane Keaton in Looking For Mr. Goodbar.

In a 2015 interview Gere said he thought nothing of doing the play, and its gay sex scenes, at the time - honestly before AIDS swept in and really and truly fucked up America's idea of gay sex I don't find it hard to believe; the trajectory of LGBT acceptance was set to chart an entirely different course circa the late 70s and early 80s. Anyway Gere got a fine review for Bent in the NY Times - "It may sound odd to speak of the actor's work here as subtle; but the state of mind that dictates his increasing ferocity is intricate, intelligible, as inevitable as it is appalling. Mr. Gere is a remarkable performer."

What What WHAT?

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So I'm innocently clicking around news-stories just now, minding my own business, beginning to feel the boredom of the early afternoon weigh upon me, when I see a headline over at DH about Sharon Stone signing on for a movie. I really haven't ever written much on Miss Stone but she's my kinda crazy - I really almost always dig what she's selling. Yes even - especially! - in terrible movies like Catwoman or the Diabolique remake - she makes great camp in the sort of way we don't get often enough anymore. So I miss her and was interested to see what she'd signed on for. I didn't expect much - her career's not been too much of anything since that second (and criminally boring) Basic Instinct movie tanked - but like I said, I was bored and looking for anything. Here's how DH describes the film:

"Sharon Stone tells Prestige magazine that she's signed on to the Anya Camilleri-directed thriller "Satisfaction".

The story follows a male prostitute in London who loses both the wealthy older woman who has been taking care of him, and the escort agency he works for.

Searching for a new woman to take her place, he comes upon Stone's character and it seems the pair have fallen in love. When the agency starts sending him out on jobs again, he "starts trying to break her down... it's incredible what they do together: a very, very fascinating journey" says Stone."

I've never head anything this director Anya Camilleri, so I had no idea what to expect. It could be some straight-to-video Euro-trash flick, lingering on bosoms and sleek Ferraris... basically it could be Basic Instinct 3 just with 100% more man-whore and a little extra dash of cougar-itis.

But then, WHAM, the last sentence of this article hits:

"Chris Evans and Carice van Houten co-star."

!!! Oh... my... God! !!! Oh my God! Chris Evans! Male prostitute! Chris Evans... male prostitute. Chris Evans, male prostitute!


The gold-standard in this genre will of course always and forever be Richard Gere in American Gigolo, and if this film can sell Mr. Evans the way Gigolo did Mr. Gere, then you can expect me to buy a movie theater to live in for the rest of my life where this movie will be beamed 24/7. Although I really really hope Evans has ditched his publicist's terrible and stupid nudity ban. Foolishness!

Of course, Ashton Kutcher recently tried this sort of flick to no avail (although we did all appreciate the nakedness he employed in this pursuit, so thanks for that, Ashton), so it could go either way.

I do need to take a breath here, calm down, and also give love to the Carice Van Houten half of this equation, because I adore that woman and have ever since Verhoeven's Black Book and have hated the lack of her in my cinematic life, save a few dull scenes with nothing to do opposite Tom Cruise's floppy hair in Valkyrie.

Anyway. Yay Carice! Yay Sharon!
And... Chris Evans, male prostitute... EGADS.
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Why Not a Quick Gigolo Break?

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This is in reference to nothing but itself, but since its "self" is Richard Gere in American Gigolo it's worth enough, plenty even -- I was looking up something completely unrelated when I stumbled upon this great big high quality promotional shot of all that -- ALL THAT -- and once I regained consciousness I realized that I have possibly never seen this photo before? Even if I have it's never been this HQ anyway, so here it is in all its glory either way -- click on Richard Gere to make him embiggen.

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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!

Great Moments In Movie Shelves #163

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I have only seen American Gigolo a couple of times in my life, but I've watched this scene way more than that - dozens and dozens of times have I beheld the wonder of Richard Gere hanging from the rafters doing his skimpy-shorted work-out routine. 

So why did I never notice he did his skimpy-shorted 

work-out routine in front of shelves until now?

Well I suppose the answer is there in the question 

- I only had eyes for the skimpy shorts, of course. 

But once I saw the shelves there was no going back. The shelves in Julian's apartment actually play an important role in the plot of the film - they have their own arc!

Perhaps not as important an arc to the film's success as the arch of Richard Gere's backside, I'll grant you that. But an arc nonetheless. 

Julian's pad (as with everything Julian touches) represents the dream of 1980 bachelor-hood. He looks GQ appointed in every outfit he wears, he's got all the gadgets, he fucks every woman in sight. (And maybe a few men it's implied, and since this was pre-AIDS that wasn't so bad). This place was the Platonic Ideal of male singledom.

The stereo system in particular is fetishized - all the better to groove to all the Blondie via Giorgio Moroder tracks. But then...

... a dame's gotta go and get in the way! Lauren Hutton's politician's wife Michelle immediately inserts herself in front of His Shit - you gotta choose, bucko. 

After Julian and Michelle sleep together the first time she's woken up to him cooing on the telephone to a client and what do you suppose they are talking about?

They're talking about his boner. But specifically they're talking about his boner in relation to his stereo system, and how he wants the woman on the phone to help him upgrade it. Subtle, it ain't. Michelle later offers to pay for his stereo herself, but he doesn't want that - he wants her to fuck (these two talking about "fucking" a whole lot, using that word - lord knows I'm as vulgar as they come but it's kind of weird and off-putting the way they do it) for himself, for pleasure, not for stereo equipment. 

There's your first mistake, buddy! later on the two argue in front of the shelves - once again he's isolated in the frame while she's inserted among them. Your shit ain't your shit no more, Jules. he tries to reclaim his space, his manhood, for a moment here...

... but she gets the better of him again.

It should be noted that the vertical blinds in this film are off the charts but nowhere are they better used than this scene, where we cut from the above shot...

... directly to a prison environment. As Debbie Harry sings in "Rapture" he's through with eating cars he's eating bars, wall to wall, door to door, hall to hall, he's gonna eat 'em all. The bars of the vertical blinds, the bars of the prison cell, and the gay bars where he talks tricks...

He's gonna eat 'em all. And they're gonna eat him up in return! (I said this movie wasn't subtle.) Cut to the next time that we see Julian with his shelves and...

... they've suddenly become a Noir-lit source of danger - they've been poisoned!!! He has just seen the character called "Blond Boy" (yes that's really the character's name in the credits) lurking outside of his apartment building - "Blond Boy" works for his enemies and has probably planted evidence in Julian's apartment that make him look guilty of a murder he didn't commit. And so Julian rips his shelves apart! The horror!

And before you know it Julian has gone and committed murder, but even worse than that (way worse) -- he finds himself trapped in a tacky queen's apartment where there are no shelves at all.

So basically the entire message of American Gigolo, if I am reading it right (and I obviously am), is "Don't let anybody else use your bookshelves, or you'll end up in prison for murder." I can dig it.

Getting the Gigolos Back Together

What's that, you say? An opportunity to use an image of Richard Gere in American Gigolo? Yes, I will bite. And it didn't need to be this good of news but it did anyway -- writer-director Paul Schrader is going to reunite with Gere on his next movie! They haven't worked together since that 1980 film, so this is a reunion four plus decades in the making -- it's apparently an adaptation of Russell Banks' 2021 book Foregone, which Amazon describes thusly:

"At the center of Foregone is famed Canadian American leftist documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of sixty thousand draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Fife, now in his late seventies, is dying of cancer in Montreal and has agreed to a final interview in which he is determined to bare all his secrets at last, to demythologize his mythologized life. The interview is filmed by his acolyte and ex–star student, Malcolm MacLeod, in the presence of Fife’s wife and alongside Malcolm’s producer, cinematographer, and sound technician, all of whom have long admired Fife but who must now absorb the meaning of his astonishing, dark confession.

Imaginatively structured around Fife’s secret memories and alternating between the experiences of the characters who are filming his confession, the novel challenges our assumptions and understanding about a significant lost chapter in American history and the nature of memory itself. Russell Banks gives us a daring and resonant work about the scope of one man’s mysterious life, revealed through the fragments of his recovered past."

Sounds like something Schrader could make a real meal of, and it'd be swell for Gere to have a meaty role -- he's been doing terrific work for the past decade or so in movies that have flown under the radar but maybe this one, with this specific reunion, will make some noise. Also in that original link is word that Schrader wrote a script for Elisabeth Moss to star in and direct -- no word on what it's about but Moss has proven a solid director on The Handmaid's Tale and we of course (her awful religion aside) think she's one of the greatest actresses working today. So we'll follow this news too!

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.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

American Gigolo (1980)

Michelle: How many languages do you speak? 

Julian: Five or six. 

Michelle: Plus the, uh, international language? 

Julian: That's right. 

Okay so I'm just using Lauren Hutton's 71st birthday

as an excuse to post Richard Gere pictures, so sue me.

Hutton was also in my beloved Once Bitten, 

so probably deserves better... nah, more Richard Gere.

Pic of the Day

Similar to what I just said in my previous post about Franz Rogowski, one does have to wonder at what point Jacob Elordi will sell out -- I think he's got to be getting soooo much pressure from his people to make some generic well-paid crap (and I said "well paid" so don't come at me with those Kissing Booth movies he got famous with). And yet here we are with our first look at him in his next role in Oh, Canada! from iconoclast filmmaker Paul Schrader. There are more photos at that link -- the film also reunites Schrader with his American Gigolo star Richard Gere, and is an adaptation of Russell Banks’ novel Foregone about a documentarian who famously fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft  and agrees, as he nears death from cancer, to give an interview on his life. Gere plays the dying dude, and Uma Thurman plays his wife. I'm guessing Jacob Elordi holds the camera, since that is a picture of him holding a camera.

5 Off My Head: Hustle Here & A Hustle There

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With the excellent and strange hustler tale Sauvage / Wild out in theaters this week -- you can read my review right here -- it seemed like as good a time as any good time to turn our brains onto the subject of cinematic male sex workers. It's been said that every actress who's ever acted for longer than five minutes has had to play a prostitute at some point in their career and it's pretty damned true, but what about the menfolk hocking their physical wares on the screen? They're not nearly as common but they've turned out some of our most fascinating films about sexuality through the decades all the same. So let's do a list!

5 of My Favorite Movie Hustlers

Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in Mysterious Skin

"Different folks, different strokes."

Paul Varjak (George Peppard) in Breakfast at Tiffany's

"Fifty dollars for the powder room."

Julian (Richard Gere) in American Gigolo

"I'll do fag tricks. I'll do kink.
I'll do anything you want me to do."

Mike (River Phoenix) in My Own Private Idaho

"I love you, and you don't pay me."

Joe (Joe Dallesandro) in Flesh 

"How am I supposed to make any
 money without clean underwear?"

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Who are some of your faves? 

Share in the comments...

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