Congrats to Kate McKinnon, who will apparently join SNL in April as a new cast member. She will be the first out lesbian cast member. And as a major bonus—she's hilarious! I loved her on Big Gay Sketch Show.
Went to the Quad tonight for the 7:15 show of BearCity, Doug Langway's bear rom com about a group of men looking for love, self-acceptance and the occasional cheap thrill, and was surprised how much of a good time I wound up having.
BEARCITY Cast & Creators @ The Quad NYC Premiere 10.22.10 from Matthew Rettenmund on Vimeo.
BearCity—co-written by Langway with film writer Lawrence Ferber—is sort of like a hairy, white Noah's Arc with some Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City thrown in. Tyler (first-time film actor Joe Conti) is a preppy thesp who's sick of acting like he isn't wildly attracted to bears. He meets furry partners Brent (Big Gay Sketch Show's Stephen Guarino) and Fred (Brian Keane) and is taken under their paws, finding himself introduced to 400-pound Michael (Gregory Gunter) and his cubby hubby BF Carlos (James Martinez) as well as the hottest bear in town, silver-haired and silver tongued Roger (CSI's Gerald McCullouch). Instant community!
Are they hirsute-able for each other?
Tyler falls hard for Roger, who seems to resist returning the favor to protect his rep among the muscle bears—as much as Tyler has felt expressing his attraction to bears to be a second coming out, Roger feels the same way about expressing his attraction to a non-bear.
One of Big Gay Sketch Show's most talented, Julie Goldman, and Brandy Howard cracked me up with this semi-serious yet fully funny rant against gay jokes in movies like Hot Tub Time Machine. Love Goldman's spoiled princess character who bursts out around two minutes in.
Choice exchange, which acknowledges, perhaps, the futility of trying to explain why some jokes are okay and some are not:
"Like, I'll take a rape joke. I'll go retard. I'll go...fat, even. I'll go fuckin' fat, obese, retard rape.""Baby? Punch a baby?"
"Punch a baby, even. Yeah!"
"Kill a baby?"
"Kill a baby."
"Make fun of old people."
"Yes."
The skits were filmed AGES ago, but most are pretty fresh. It's gotten edgier as it's gone along. I still think the Rosie O'Donnell bits are completely counter-productive and unfunny. The best was their Amazing Race send-up, which casually outed Hugh Jackman, Tyler Perry, Queen Latifah and several others...but in a funny way.
