Category: Hollywood

Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style

I watched last night’s premiere of Bravo’s TGGTS and was very disappointed. Gunn was a likable, quirky and warm authority figure on “Project Runway” with his trademark quips of “get to work” and his understanding of the struggles faced by creative people.

But his new show, where he and cold, humorless model Veronica Webb visit a fashion victim, proved that he has more than his share of unappealing pretentiousness. I almost cringed at his dressing down of a nice woman as she put on clothes from her own closet that didn’t meet Gunn’s standards.

Of course, the whole b.s. aspect of these makeover shows is to pretend that people have low esteem and mental blocks that can miraculously be changed by a snappy new haircut, some Jimmy Choo’s, and a makeover by make-up artist who will advise that only 10 layers of mascara can bring out THE REAL YOU.

This show was also extremely overproduced with its nauseating bring-me-to-tears addition of a bonus diamond wedding ring, and the appearance of a mother who just got out of surgery and wouldn’t miss her daughter’s “life changing experience.”

Gunn may be at the top of his game as an arbiter of what people should wear, but this show manages to be a makeover in reverse for this queer eye, who turns from a fashionable friend into a finicky fop.

A close friend writes:

A-

Sorry I couldn’t make lunch today. I’m working again
at another job that I hate, and even though it’s not
the world’s highest position, it’s in TV with all the
horrendous “crisis” situations that make finding or
not finding a picture of Lindsay Lohan trashed, into a
tragedy for the editor, the producer and me.

It’s made me think…do I really want to work in TV?
And for a long, long time the answer has been no. I
don’t have an answer for what I want to do, but I
don’t want to waste my time working on collaborating
on projects that I cannot possibly see through. By
personality, or ego or intelligence…. I’m just
temperamentally unsuited for television and to work in
it kills me a little each day.

I’m here sitting at this Dilbert desk in bug ridden,
urine smelling old theater building in Hollywood where
the “CEO” arrives to work on a skateboard and has the
PA dress the elevator with a shower curtain to “give
it a little class”. The monsters of Reveille have
marched through here, dropping insults and orders and
calling one editor “fat-boy”.

I’m being micro-managed and hen-pecked and stepped
upon with all the petty dumbness of a job that demands
mastery of every celeb photo site and keeping an
editor supplied with enough images to turn out 60 two
minute commercials a day of Paris drunk, Lindsay’s
car crash, Britney’s baby , etc. I can barely leave my desk
to pee for fear that another set of images are needed
so that the lawyers and the website can upload the
shit by 8pm tonight in Bill Gates’ hometown.

Here is what I see: sour faced fat editors, who sit in their
darkened booths all day,playing with iPhones and surfing Facebook,
acres of xCel rows on my screen that grow and grow with labels and names
that will never be comprehensible, “celebrity” contestants
who are eager to participate in a show that is aired on a
website that nobody visits…..

Yesterday, I left the job.

Regards, Larry

Isaiah Washington

I watched and listened to the actor Isaiah Washington last night on “Larry King”. This was his chance to explain the tempest over his alleged remarks, which boiled over and eventually, ended with the star actor’s termination from ABC-TV’s “Grey’s Anatomy”.

The way he explained it, the argument was between Patrick Dempsey and Mr. Washington and concerned Mr. Dempsey’s lateness on the set and inconsideration to the other cast members. “Fag” or “faggot” or whatever was thrown around and other obscene words were used as the two men fought.

Ridiculously, Larry King (as if it were still 1955) said he never ever used the word “fag”. Maybe “sissy” but not “fag”. I doubt there is a single person on the planet Earth who hasn’t used the word “fag”. It’s the standard way that men put each other down. If somebody is drunk in a bar and is about to throw a punch, they usually preface it with, “You fuckin’ fag, I’m going to beat the fuckin’ shit out of you….” Or something like that.

Washington, whether he was truthful or not, certainly convinced me that he had not intended to insult real life fag and blandly serviceable actor, TR Knight. But Knight, perhaps, seeing a way to elevate his own droopy stature, and kick off a highly talented fellow actor, used the classic victimization tactic as a way of empowering himself. Just as some African-Americans are quick to use race as a way of gaining power, so do some gays use an ersatz ethnicity of gayness as a power maneuver.

My own impression of Washington is of a man who has rich talent, depth, knowledge and the ability to know how use his voice and body to convey emotion. He was guarded last night, but the moments where he seemed ready to break down were not phony or surface. Only a few nights earlier, the empty vessel of Paris Hilton, beloved by the entire Hollywood establishment, said nothing for one hour. One minute with Washington was, unlike Paris, ennobling.

The more frightening aspect of the “Grey’s Anatomy” anti-gay slur controversy, concerns the censorship machine and legal colossus of the Walt Disney Company. They alone, like Sadaam, will determine what type of speech is appropriate for their employees and under what circumstances. Mr. Washington was on the job, not on the air, and yet his employer treated his accidental and regretted remarks as high crimes. His career was cut short; he suffered shame and humiliation and now will lose many thousands, if not millions of dollars, in income. In years to come, he will be labeled with a prejudice he doesn’t really countenance.

Political correctness, when practiced by a trillion dollar international conglomerate, against one lone human being, is like stopping a shoplifter in Ralph’s by dropping an atom bomb on Los Angeles. Disney, when it is not attacking, is perhaps the world’s biggest moral coward, unable to stand up for one minority individual, even as it falsely and pretentiously carries the banner for collective minority rights. Profits, not principals, are the driving force here. Advertisers might back out! Neutrogena might pull their eye cream spots from “Grey’s Anatomy”! Quel horreur!

I like and admire Isaiah Washington. He doesn’t need to “come clean” about anything because free speech and freedom of thought are why we live in the United States.