Michael Lucas

Born in 1972 in Moscow, activist, columnist, documentary film-maker, lecturer, porn star and explicit gay film producer Michael Lucas (birth name Andrei Treivas) was raised in a secular Jewish family during the oppressive communist era. He was the target of anti-Semitism as a youth, and some of his ancestors had been killed in the Holocaust. His great-grandfather was a rabbi who was murdered in his own synagogue by the Nazis. Michael was given his mother's maiden name at birth specifically because Treivas sounded less Jewish than his father's surname, Bregman.

Lucas has an interesting back story. He earned a law degree from Moscow State Law Academy in 1994, after which he owned and operated a travel agency. Three years later he was living in New York city, with stops in Germany and France along the way. Treivas began his porn career in Munich by working in straight films, but while in France he began an association with Jean-Daniel Cadinot in gay porn. By the age of 25 Andrei Treivas became an exclusive porn actor for Falcon Studios, who, without his counsel or permission, had given him an Americanized name – Michael Lucas. Nevertheless, he had greater ambition than being a porn star, and he got lucky. He was awarded  a green card through a lottery system.

In 2004 he became a citizen of the United States, and in 2009 took dual citizenship with Israel. The following year he renounced his Russian citizenship as a protest against Russian homophobia and anti-Semitism.

With money earned from working as a male escort, Lucas started his own gay porn production company in New York in 1998. Lucas Entertainment is now a leader in the adult entertainment industry, having produced more than 300 films. His production company employs fifteen people who work in a midtown Manhattan office rented for nearly $20,000 a month, and Michael’s home apartment boasts original Robert Mapplethorpe art on the walls. To say that this immigrant has achieved success is understatement.

In 2000 Lucas moved his Jewish grandparents to New York, and one of the first things he did was take them to see the giant menorah in Central Park, so that they could witness that it had not been vandalized. He wanted to share with them the unbelievable freedoms Americans have.

In 2008 he married his partner of eight years, Richard Winger, a businessman and president emeritus of New York’s LGBT Center. In 2014 Lucas announced that they had divorced.

As a columnist for Out, The Advocate, Huffington Post and Pink News, Michael’s reputation is controversial, and his writing is highly opinionated and outspoken. Speaking regularly at universities such as Stanford, Yale, and Oxford, he discusses social, political, and sexual issues. Lucas has been on the cover of hundreds of magazines worldwide and has been profiled in many mainstream publications ranging from New York magazine to The New Republic.

In 2012 he wrote, produced and directed a documentary titled Undressing Israel: Gay Men in the Promised Land, which extols the tolerance of the Israeli State. A second documentary was made in 2014, Campaign of Hate – Russia and Gay Propaganda. Both received critical acclaim and have been presented at numerous film festivals.

As the gay news magazine The Advocate wrote, “Michael Lucas has used the stardom porn gave him as a platform to speak out against drugs, unsafe sex, child exploitation, anti-Semitism, religious oppression of gays, and a host of other social problems. Bold, honest, and passionately opinionated, Lucas continues to challenge conventional thinking in all of his pursuits.”

(Sources: MichaelLucas.com, vice.com, The Advocate, Wikipedia)

Billionaire David Geffen

Update!
Less than 48 hours after publishing this post, I learned that Geffen and Lingvall have announced a split. Maybe Geffen should consider a reconciliation with Cher - she has no problem hanging with the boys. Here's the report:

“After six years of a life he could only dream of, former California college student Jeremy Lingvall (28) has split from his partner, billionaire media mogul David Geffen. The pair have parted ways because ‘the relationship had simply run its course’, the New York Post reported. A  source also claimed that there was ‘nobody else involved’.”

During their relationship Lingvall accompanied Geffen everywhere, even to the White House. Jeremy attended dozens of A-list celebrity parties he would have never have had access to on his own. But with no civil partnership or other property arrangement, Lingvall will not be entitled to any of Geffen’s riches now that they have split. Lingvall and Geffen began a relationship the year Jeremy graduated from college, 2006. I suppose Lingvall will have to dust off his resume and beef up his gigs as a DJ, often in partnership with Scissor Sisters’ front man Jake Shears; they call themselves Krystal Pepsy. I’m not kidding. So read my original post with those facts in mind: 

I try to avoid posting snarky stuff, but I am possessed of demons this morning.

Billionaires love their flashy toys, and David Geffen (born 1943) is no exception. He has a weakness for boy toys and heart-stoppingly expensive yachts. He owns Pelorus+, a 377-ft. $300 million trinket with two helicopter pads and its own submarine (annual operating costs top $10 million - I'm not kidding). At 453 feet, the mega-yacht Rising Sun++ is 76 feet longer, making it the eight largest yacht in the world. It has a basketball court and 82 rooms spread over 5 stories. It's so long that it can't dock at most ports, because it exceeds their size limits. I’m not making this stuff up. Why settle for one yacht, when you really need two?

I think exactly the same way.

He also collects art, especially paintings by American artists. In 2006 he sold Jackson Pollock's  painting No. 5, 1948 (above) from his collection for $140 million. The sale made No. 5, 1948 the most expensive painting ever sold, outstripping the $134 million paid a month earlier by cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder for Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I**. No. 5, 1948 was originally owned by Samuel Irving Newhouse, Jr. and displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

President Obama meets Geffen's boy toy (above).

Geffen’s super hot 28-year old partner Jeremy Lingvall (born 1983, but perhaps a bit long in the tooth for true "boy toy" status), who graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2006 (!), attended the Obama’s first White House state dinner* (in honor of Indian prime minister Singh) on Geffen’s arm – well, not literally. And Lingvall didn’t have to lie about having a college degree. I should point out that Geffen is 68 years old, and if my math is correct, that makes him 40 years older than Lingvall (below, aboard one of Geffen's yachts, Rising Sun). I know, I know. But the man can afford it.

It doesn’t get any gayer than this: Imagine what Lingvall must think when recalling the fact that Geffen, his current sugar daddy, was gay icon Cher’s boyfriend for two years in the mid 1970s, ten years before he was born! Cher reported that, "People don't believe that, or they don't want to believe it, or they don't understand how it could be. But we were really crazy about each other."

Geffen and Cher in 1974 (left). Geffen's first move was to free the singer from her onerous business arrangement with estranged husband Sonny Bono, under which she was required to work exclusively for Cher Enterprises, which Bono controlled. Cher had no vote in decisions, even though she was the much bigger star. Geffen called the contract "slave labor." In short order, he had her quit The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. She separated from Bono and in time for the Grammys had a butterfly tattooed on her posterior to celebrate her emancipation.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. In spite of Geffen’s over-the-top acquisitions of both metal and flesh varieties, we can’t lose sight of his equally over-the-top philanthropy. He is a major supporter of medical research, AIDS organizations and the arts. In 2002 he gave a staggering $200 million unrestricted endowment to the UCLA School of Medicine. In 1995 he donated $5 million to UCLA's Westwood Playhouse.

Geffen is a self-made billionaire in the music and entertainment industry – by most accounts worth just under $5 billion (that's 5,000 million dollars - think about it). Geffen dropped out of several colleges and started working in the mailroom at the William Morris Talent Agency, where he forged a document in order to prove he had a college degree, a requirement for a promotion he was offered. He went on to found record and movie production companies and sign major talent (Dreamworks SKG, Geffen Records, Asylum Records, etc.). Geffen is an openly gay man named by Out Magazine as one of the 50 Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America, and he is listed by Forbes as one of the top 100 billionaires. And, if we dig down really deep and admit the truth, those of us who smirk and poke fun at Mr. Geffen do so because we’re really envious.

*Also in attendance at the 2009 state dinner were Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes and partner Sean Eldridge, chair of the U.S. Export-Import Bank Fred Hochberg and partner Thomas Healy, as well as activist Urvashi Vaid and her partner Kate Clinton. It is noteworthy that Geffen, a generous and dedicated Democrat, was seated at the Obama table, immediately to Michelle’s left. The times, they are a changin’.

**Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is on permanent display at the Neue Galerie in NYC, on the corner of Fifth Ave. at 86th St. Don’t miss the street level restaurant to the right of the entrance, the Viennese Cafe Sabarsky; it’s my favorite spot in NYC for breakfast (opening at a civilized 9:00 a.m.).

Pelorus, a 377 ft., $300 million accessory, overhanging the dock a bit:

Rising Sun, with rear basketball court:

Power Couple David Bohnett & Tom Gregory

Chicago-born David Bohnett is a billionaire philanthropist and technology entrepreneur. He is Chairman of the David Bohnett Foundation, a non-profit, grant-making organization with the goal of improving society through social activism. In 1994 he co-founded GeoCities, an Internet-based media and e-commerce company, subsequently acquired by Yahoo! in a $3.9 billion stock deal. Bohnett, 55, is chief executive of OVGuide.com, an Internet directory and search engine (funded by his venture firm), and is active in causes supporting AIDS research and the arts.

He pioneered and championed the concept of providing free home pages to everyone on the web and was involved with diverse web ventures, including NetZero, PlanetOut Inc., Stamps.com, LowerMyBills, Gamesville, MediaVast, and Xdrive. In 1998 he funded the creation of the CyberCenter, at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, for educational research opportunities to the local gay and lesbian community via the Internet. He also sits on the boards of several civic, philanthropic, and privately held ventures. Bohnett has also been a trustee of the Los Angeles County Museum and has served on the board of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he was involved in the recruiting and hiring of conductor Gustavo Dudamel. Here he is shown with one of the Los Angeles youth orchestras he supports.

Beginning in 1983 Bohnett was in a relationship with Los Angeles Municipal Court judge and AIDS activist Rand Schrader until Schrader's death in 1993. Bohnett was Schrader's life insurance beneficiary, and he used the funds to create Beverly Hills Internet, which was the precursor to GeoCities.

Until late 2010 Bohnett and his current partner Tom Gregory, owned a Beverly Hills house built for screen legend Gary Cooper in 1955. They acquired it in 1998, handsomely restored the A. Quincy Jones designed residence, bought the lot next door for added privacy, then sold both parcels for $15.5 million in 2010. They used the home for entertaining and fund raising events. Less than a mile away they resided in a 9,000 sq. ft. 1940s era Beverly Hills estate on Roxbury Drive, acquired in 2004 and sold for $23 million nine months ago. The house was across the street from homes formerly owned by Jack Benny and Lucille Ball. During the six years they owned both homes, they referred to the Gary Cooper house as their “country house” and the Roxbury Dr. residence as their “city house.” Two multi-million dollar homes a mile apart. Sweet. The couple also maintain a condo on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, a New York City pied-a-terre at the Sherry Netherland on Fifth Avenue, and a $12 million house in the Hamptons.

Gregory and President Obama flank Bohnett in this recent photo:

Tom Gregory, noted columnist, radio and television personality, is the owner of the auctioned pair of cowboy shirts worn by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in the film Brokeback Mountain. Gregory bid $101,100.51 for the shirts on a 2006 Internet auction. The shirts were put up for sale by Focus Features, the distributors of Brokeback Mountain, with the winnings being donated to Variety, a charity for under-privileged Californian children. Gregory calls the shirts the “ruby slippers of our time.” The shirts were expected to sell for around $50,000, but ended up going for twice as much when Gregory placed the winning bid just 28 seconds before the auction’s end. At the film’s emotional conclusion, Ennis embraces the entwined shirts as a symbol of loss of his and Jack's enduring love for each other.

Since 2009 the shirts have been on display at LA’s Autry National Center in Griffith Park, across from the zoo. The Autry, which celebrates the diversity and history of the American West, is named after Gene Autry (1907-1998), the singing cowboy, who dedicated the museum in 1988. The Museum of the American West in Griffith Park was founded as the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, featuring much of his collection of Western art and memorabilia. The Autry is the first major American museum to recognize the contributions of the LGBT community to the American West in a series of programs called Out West at the Autry.

www.theautry.org