Chocolate hottie Mehcad Brooks whom you may recognize from HBO’s True Blood or from season two of Desperate Housewives reveals in an interview with Honey Magazine that he refuses to get married until gay people have the same right.

Do you consider yourself the marrying kind? Do you want that?
I haven’t even gotten that far. But yeah, I want a wife, I want kids. The whole thing. But I’m also not even concerned with marrying somebody until it’s legal for everybody to get married. And what I mean by that is the whole Prop 8 thing.

Why is that cause so important to you?
I find it really offensive. I just find it really problematic when you start throwing people’s rights away. Until we get our gay brothers and sisters back into a realm of consciousness that everyone else is in, it’s just not right. A woman who’s getting married — it’s probably going to be a gay man who made her dress, and a gay man who’s doing her hair and makeup, but he can’t get married. How messed up is that?

His next project is a film by X-Files creator Chris Carter called Fencewalkers, which for whatever reason still has no plot description listed.

Now I’m off to finally watch the True Blood finale!

By now I’m sure everyone’s heard the news, beloved actor and 80s dance icon Patrick Swayze has succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 57.

His publicist, Annett Wolf, told The Associated Press in Los Angeles that Mr. Swayze died with family at his side. Mr. Swayze’s cancer was diagnosed in January 2008. Six months after that, he had already outlived his prognosis and was filmed at an airport, smiling at photographers and calling himself, only half-facetiously, “a miracle dude.” He even went through with plans to star in “The Beast,” a new drama series for A&E, and filmed a complete season while undergoing treatment. Mr. Swayze insisted on continuing with the series. “How do you nurture a positive attitude when all the statistics say you’re a dead man?” he said to Bill Carter of The New York Times last October. “You go to work.”

My favorite Swayze films were definitely To Wong Foo, Ghost, and Dirty Dancing.  I had a professor in college who worked as a local news reporter and he said of all the celebrities he’d interviewed Patrick was the absolute nicest one.

We’ll miss you Sam Wheat!

Months ago when reports were swirling of Patrick being near death, Whoopi Goldberg declared on The View that she owed her Oscar to him.

69 year old Kathryn Joosten of Desperate Housewives has been diagnosed with lung cancer.  You’ll know her as Mrs. McCluskey, or as Mrs. Landingham from The West Wing.  This is a recurrence of cancer she battled back in 2001.

She tells EW:

“I’ve got a little hang up here,” she said of the battle she faces. “But we’re going to handle it and move forward. I’m doing great.” The 69-year-old, who also played Mrs. Landingham on The West Wing, says her treatment may disrupt shooting on the ABC series.

And People:

The actress broke the news to her Housewives producers Monday morning as she expects her shooting schedule could be interrupted for treatment. “They’re totally supportive,” she says. “I said, ‘If you want to put it in the story line, do it! Tell anybody you want, because the public’s going to know.’ “

Joosten has won two Primetime Emmy awards for her work on Desperate Housewives and is beloved by the devoted fans of the program as the pesky, outspoken but lovable neighbor who feuded with Lynette back in season one.  I know the statistics for lung cancer aren’t very good, but I hope she can pull through.

Here’s one of my favorite scenes with Lynette and Mrs. McCluskey.

A male reporter embarrassed himself and George Clooney at the Venice Film Festival when he removed his shirt and proclaimed he wanted George to “take him now”.

Matt Damon and Steven Soderbergh talk more about “The Informant”, the film where Damon had to gain 30 lbs to play a man who blows the whistle on his company’s price-fixing scheme.

A gay man in Thunder Bay, Canada was brutally beaten by six to eight men with bricks, and will now require reconstructive surgery to deal with the damage done to his face.

Openly gay Representative Barney Frank is eyeing a position in the Obama cabinet.  I doubt it will happen, but if it did he’d be the first gay person ever in the Presidential cabinet.

Ntozake Shange was slated to write and direct the film adaptation of her play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, but now Tyler Perry has stolen the entire film from her.

Female UK prison officer wins case against correctional facility she claims treated her unfairly for being young, female, and pretty.

More tour dates have been canceled for homophobic Jamaican singer Buju Banton.  One of his most popular songs talks about shooting gays and burning their bodies.

Proud, admitted homophobe Tim Hardaway is now working hard to save gay lives.  He says “we don’t have to accept the act, but we have to accept them as people.” How generous of you.

A gay man in Ontario is now needing reconstructive surgery after being attacked by at least 6 men with bricks.

John “Jake” Raynard suffered 15 fractures to his cheekbone, a broken eye socket, a broken jaw and a broken upper palate when six to eight men surrounded him near a North Cumberland Street business. Raynard, 30, and two friends were smoking outside of a bar after last call when a man approached them for a cigarette. The three friends walked away from the man after he became aggressive. Raynard said as they walked toward the Water Street Bus Terminal a group of males followed them shouting derogatory comments about their sexual orientation.

“It was like they were waiting in the woodwork,” said Raynard, who is gay, from his hospital bed. “The crowd just seemed to get bigger.” One of the men grabbed Raynard’s friend and started choking him. Raynard said he struck the man that was assaulting his friend and then began yelling at the group to try and scare them away. “I managed to fend off six to eight people by yelling long enough to get them (Raynard’s two friends) into a cab,” said Raynard. Once his friends were in the cab, Raynard said the group surrounded the taxi, preventing him from getting in.

He decided to run through a nearby alley towards a local restaurant instead, grabbing a brick for self-defense as the men chased him. “I was screaming loud enough to wake up six blocks,” said Raynard. “How did nobody hear me?”

No arrests have been made.  When will this ever stop?

Gay screenwriter/director Mike White is at the helm of a new HBO comedy pilot starring the fabulous Laura Dern, who caught HBO’s attention with her priceless portrayal of Katherine Harris in the movie Recount.

The Hollywood Reporter scoops:

Mike White and Laura Dern’s comedy project at HBO is moving forward with a pilot order from the network.

The single-camera comedy, tentatively titled “Enlightened,” stars Dern as a self-destructive woman who has a spiritual awakening and becomes determined to live an enlightened life, creating havoc at home and work.

“The only thing I can think of cooler than making a show at HBO is doing it with Laura Dern,” White said. “I am totally stoked.”

I’m a huge fan of Mike’s because of his films The Good Girl (one of my favorites of all time) and Chuck and Buck.  Not so into School of Rock, Nacho Libre, and Year of the Dog, but hey, at least we have a gay screenwriter out there that’s making movies that appeal to mainstream audiences.

Everyone knows how I feel about the term “chick flicks” and the deep-rooted misogyny in our culture that puts female-centered media at a huge disadvantage in mainstream television, film, and publishing.  Many female authors have had to use pseudonyms because publishers have found that otherwise men will see a woman’s name attached to the book and not give it a chance.

It doesn’t surprise me considering basically anything that comes out in theaters that isn’t about men going around killing each other or trying to get laid is considered a “chick flick”, which of course has a negative connotation.  Meanwhile women still turn up in droves to see whatever lame ass Michael Bay flick is out this month.

Yet for all the obstacles women’s films have, the ones that do quite well don’t get their fair share of credit.  Even after Juno, even after Twilight, even after Mamma Mia, even after Sex and the City, it’s still a huge uphill battle to get studios to greenlight films with female protagonists.  And as Meryl Streep explains, it’s not just the studios, but also the theater chains who decide which films to carry.

“It’s always a shock to the studio,” Streep says with real firmness, “because men run the studios and live their own fantasies through them. It’s harder for a man to jump inside a woman character’s mind and imagine, ‘This could happen to me’ than it is for a woman to imagine herself as a male character.” But surely the profits count? “They see it and they understand that there is a market and it will make them an enormous amount of money, but we all respond to instinct and it’s their inner boy that jumps up and goes: ‘Yeah, I wanna see another GI Joe’.”

“Parts are rare,” Streep says, “the amount of product is rare. It’s a large machine that markets these films, that makes theatre [cinema] owners commit their theatres half a year in advance — that’s how it works. Are they gonna buy GI Joe or are they gonna buy Mamma Mia!?”

Mamma Mia! did great business, I say. “They’re still not sure,” Streep counters. “You need a good salesman. Those films have done well, yes, that audience is there, but it doesn’t go on the first weekend [which the industry nervously observes].”

In a separate interview screenwriter/director Nora Ephron weighs in on the problem as well.

When she was inducted into the Academy of Achievement in 2007, Ephron said she took up directing because “90% of the men directing movies have no interest in women in any real way, except as girlfriends or wives. They don’t really want to make movies about them, and they don’t.”

They’re both absolutely right.  With Mamma Mia and Sex and the City grossing over a billion dollars collectively worldwide, and Julie & Julia already grossing over $80 million on its way to 90 million one would really wonder why Hollywood isn’t clamoring to cash in on more women’s films.   But as has been stated before, whenever a female film does well it’s always written off as a “fluke” or the the little film that could.  But every time some mindless action film with some “hot chick” running around like a piece of meat needing to be rescued does well at the box office, it’s reason to make 20 more just like it.

I have no idea why, but for some reason CNN has decided to hail Perez Hilton as a pioneer for gay Latinos in America, and makes him the main topic of their piece on gays and lesbians coming out of the closet in the Latino community.

Perez Hilton is a celebrity blogger who dishes out the latest Hollywood gossip, but there’s something about his personal life you may not know.

Hilton is a Latino pioneer. He is one of the first Latino public figures in the U.S. to be openly gay. While Latinos have broken ground on the U.S. Supreme Court, in Hollywood and in professional sports, gay Latinos in the nation’s public arena remain largely invisible.

Hilton says deep-seated homophobia within the Latino community has forced many gay Latinos to go underground, but attitudes are shifting.

I suppose it says something about Hollywood and the media if Perez Hilton’s the best “pioneer” they can find, but at any rate they go to discuss the deep-rooted issues with homophobia among Latinos.

Like other gay people of color, Latino gays face a double bind: discrimination from mainstream culture and from their own community, Torres says.

This double bind presents an obstacle to Latinos who consider coming out. Their challenge: risking rejection from their family when they need their family as a refuge from racism.

They mention a poet who struggled with violent homophobia and his own self-loathing but later came to find acceptance.

Emanuel Xavier, a gay poet and spoken word artist, says he almost destroyed himself because he couldn’t find acceptance within the Latino community.

The New York-based poet says he grew up knowing that his sexual identity infuriated other Latinos. He once saw kids pelt a gay Latino hairdresser with stones. He routinely heard Roman Catholic priests condemn homosexuals.

His own mother called him names when she discovered he was gay, says Xavier, editor of “Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry.”

Xavier says he was so filled with self-loathing that he once sold drugs and engaged in risky sexual behavior.

“I became all those things society expected me to become,” he says. “I thought that was the only thing I could be.”

Xavier says he decided to ditch his reckless lifestyle and become a poet. He reconciled with his mother and took on a new mission. He wanted to show others that one could be Latino, gay and proud.

It’s an interesting piece on both the Latin community in the U.S. as well as the changing world in Latin America.  I just really wish they’d excluded Perez Hilton and not given him more reason to think he’s a legitimate celebrity.

Speaking of gay Latinos, this article reminds me of another article I read a while back about a Latin gay couple in the Bronx that had adopted children, and their day-to-day struggle in their community.  It also mentions how gay couples in the Bronx are more likely to adopt children than in any other New York City borough. It’s an interesting read.

Halle Berry is reportedly in advanced talks to star in the film Dark Tide, an action-thriller being produced by the people that brought us Twilight.

Variety says:

[Dark Tide] concerns a diving instructor who returns to the deep after a near-fatal incident with a Great White shark. “Dark” is set to lense in South Africa later this year.

Social Capital Films is arranging financing for the $15 million-$20 million pic. Company’s Martin Shore and Christopher Tuffin produce along with Tax Credit Finance’s Matthew Chausse and Plum Pictures’ Celine Rattray.

I’m always excited to see more action/thriller type movies starring women, though for some reason they rarely seem to do well.  I’m having a hard time remember the last one that actually did.  I could say Wanted, though Angelina was a supporting role.  Last one I remember after that is maybe Red Eye starring Rachel McAdams, but someone feel free to correct me.  This film is also written by a woman named Amy Sorlie, who as far as I can tell is a first-time screenwriter.

It bugs me that people bash “chick flicks” and say they’re the reason women’s films do so poorly at the box-office then when films are made that don’t fall into the stereotypical chick flick category like Invasion or The Brave One or North Country, no one goes to see them.  Speaking of The Brave One–Flightplan was in 2006 and that film did quite well.  We miss you, Jodie!

All of that said, Halle Berry’s never been a huge box-office draw, her highest grossing films are not films where she was given top-billing, and quality-wise her movies tend to be hit and miss.  I took a chance on Perfect Stranger and it was one of the worst films of that year.  Conversely, Things We Lost In The Fire was amazing and it was certainly her best performance to date.

It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out.  The budget is going to be between 15-20 million dollars, so there’s a lot of room for profit.

Several Billboards that quote passages from the Bible seemingly affirming homosexuality have appeared across the Texas interstate, and predictably so, it’s angered a number of Christians who’ve driven by them.

Christine Lutz was traveling down Interstate-30, just east of Fort Worth, when she came face to face with a billboard containing a pro-gay message. “I cringed. I was disgusted at the same time,” she said. The billboard angered Lutz so much, that she fired off a stern e-mail. “I said how dare you take the scriptures and twist it to fit your needs,” she recalled. There are four billboards with similar pro-gay messages along I-30 that have started a debate among Christians in North Texas. Rev. Jon Haack, with Promise Metropolitan Community Church, said, “If we go back to the gospel readings, we don’t find anything within those texts that discriminate or exclude against gay and lesbian people.

Gay and lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender people are part of God’s creation too.” Rev. Haack is with one of five local churches sponsoring the billboards that advocate gay acceptance by all Christians. One billboard reads, “The early church welcomed a gay man.” Another one reads, “Jesus affirmed a gay couple.”

There are more examples at the group’s website.  The Billboard are supposed to run for the rest of September.   Personally I would rather people stop believing in fairy tales and taking their cues from a book written by a bunch of men from the Bronz Age none of us will ever meet, but I suppose I’ll take the more tolerant brand of Christianity if I can get it.