Nieuws: Bret Easton Ellis over de verfilming van Fifty shades of Grey
In een artikel in Out magazine hekelt Bret Easton Ellis de ‘gatekeepers of politically correct gayness’. Naar aanleiding van reacties in de media op de coming out van basketballer Jason Collins zegt Ellis: ‘Was I the only gay man of a certain demo who experienced a flicker of annoyance in the way the media treated Jason Collins as some kind of baby panda who needed to be honored and praised and consoled and—yes—infantilized by his coming out on the cover of Sports Illustrated?’ Ellis zegt zich vooral te ergeren aan: ’the subsequent fawning over Collins simply stating he is gay (…) (George Stephanopoulos interviewed him so tenderly, it was as if he was talking to a six-year-old boy.)’
Ellis gaat in het artikel ook in op een uitspraak die hij eerder op twitter deed over de vertolking van de rol van Christian Grey in de verfilming van Fifty shades of Grey:
I never said Gay Actors Can’t Play Straight Roles. I said that openly and famously gay Matt Bomer who is publicly married to his partner seemed a weird idea for the role of the very straight BDSM freako Christian Grey in the movie adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey. I thought this because of Matt’s easy openness with being gay (which I whole-heartedly encourage and applaud, especially for an actor with leading-man looks working in a homophobic casting biz) and with baggage that I believe would distract from the heavy sexual fantasy of that particular movie. A key exchange in the first section of the book is Anastasia’s open questioning of Christian’s sexuality and his insulted denials—with Bomer in the role, it becomes a very META scene. Right now, in this moment, this particular casting would be a distraction—the public/private life of the actor mixed-up with playing a voracious het predator.