Phillip Spaeth

Two months ago the NBC network premiered Smash, a musical drama series that concerns itself with the creation of a new Broadway musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. After encouraging ratings, the show was renewed for a second season after just seven episodes had aired. It’s not just GLEE anymore.

Angelica Huston is featured in an important role as the musical show’s producer, but our focus is on the man candy – several gay characters played by attractive men. One of those is the character of ensemble member Dennis, played by the handsome and openly gay 25-year-old actor Phillip Spaeth (above). He has Broadway credits that include roles in Wicked, Mary Poppins, West Side Story and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Spaeth also had a role in the movie Hairpsray (2007) and has made guest appearances on TV shows such as Gossip Girl and Royal Pains.

Spaeth (in red T-shirt above) and Smash co-star Megan Hilty (in pink) have known each other for eight years, as both were in the cast of Wicked on Broadway; Megan was Glinda, and Phillip was the flying monkey Christery. Phillip found out he had been cast in the part just before he graduated from high school in New Jersey.

Spaeth has commented that he wanted the public to know of his sexual orientation because of those young people who are dealing with bullying or struggling to come to grips with their sexual identity. He is happy that the show normalizes homosexuality into just another type of identity. Spaeth said that it would be a disservice to young gay people for him not to acknowledge his homosexuality in real life.

“You know, at the very base of it, it’s just love. You can’t really help who you fall in love with, and you can’t really censor yourself in the show, because gay life is such a huge part of Broadway. There are a lot of gay men on Broadway, and I think the show is doing a good job in showing acceptance and authenticity. The gay relationships formed on the show are very sweet and loving, and they’re very supportive, which should be the case in any relationship – gay or straight.”

Phillip acts as an unofficial behind-the-scenes photographer on the set, sharing many of the images with fans on Twitter. His years of dance lessons are evident in this Smash Press Kit photo (right).

Smash airs on NBC on Monday nights at 10 pm. You can follow Phillip on Twitter at @phillipspaeth

Emilio Baz Viaud

Self-Portrait (1935)
Watercolor and dry brush on cardboard, 36" x 24"

This delicate but arresting self-portrait was painted when Mexican artist Emilio Baz Viaud (1918-1991) was just seventeen, three years before he entered the Academy of San Carlos. Whatever precocious talent he may have had as a child, it was apparently refined while watching his older gay brother Ben-Hur Baz Viaud at work on his own precisionist drawings. Ben-Hur, twelve years his senior, had also studied at the Academy before moving to New York in 1926, where he established himself as a successful commercial illustrator.

Emilio traveled several times to visit his brother, and it likely that he painted this work on one of those trips. Unlike his later self portrait (1941), shown below, this one from 1935 lacks any overt references to Mexico. Indeed, Emilio’s teenage image is closely related to a self-portrait by Ben-Hur, holding a brush at his easel, painted in the same year. In Emilio’s 1935 self portrait he wears a white shirt so simple that the buttons remain concealed; his hair is meticulously creamed and combed, and his young skin flawless. He holds a green pencil in his right hand and grips his elbow with the left, forming a stiff right angle that locks the lower half of the composition in place. The young artist strives for absolute elegance, perhaps hoping to prove a sense of sophistication beyond his years.

 

By comparison, the later self portrait casts aside delicacy, portraying a man with hyper-masculine, movie star good looks – bronzed and healthy. With pencil in hand and an almost hidden sheet of paper under his left elbow, Emilio is seated in front of his work table, ready to begin. Proportions and perspective are deliberately distorted, lending a slight surrealistic accent to the portrait.

These two self portraits, dated just six years apart, provide a telling window into the artist’s psyche. Unfortunately, Emilio Baz Viaud was little known, even in his native Mexico. It was not until late in his life that his work was reassessed and appreciated by a larger audience.

Born in Mexico City, Emilio first studied architecture. He was later taught painting by Manuel Rodríguez Lozano (1896-1971), a mentor who was also an openly homosexual artist. Emilio did not have his first exhibition until 1951, although his works were displayed alongside such eminent artists as Siqueiros and Diego Rivera.

Influenced by the Magic Realism movement, Emilio’s meticulous technique of applying oil paint to dry surfaces was praised by colleagues and critics, who unanimously compared his work to Renaissance artists such as Dürer and Boticelli.

For a short time in the 1970s Emilio Baz Viaud dabbled in abstract painting, but his legacy comes from his work realized prior to 1955, especially his portraits.

Chuck Palahniuk

After his electrifying debut novel, Fight Club (1996), became a publishing sensation and celebrated movie in the late 1990s (film still above), Chuck Palahniuk (pronounced PAHLA-nick) maintained a shroud of privacy over his personal life. He had a reputation as a quirky individualist, keeping a tight rein in controlling what the public knew about him. Over the years, several publications reported that he had a wife, but no further details were forthcoming. Turns out, those reports were false. He had all along been in a long-term relationship with a man.

When the 41-year-old writer thought Entertainment Weekly reporter Karen Valby was about to out him, he filed an MP3 audio report on the web site, The Cult, in an attempt to beat EW to the punch. Unfortunately, his audio post talked trash about Valby. It turned out his fears were groundless, because when the feature story appeared in the fall of 2003, it made no mention of Chuck’s homosexual relationship. She simply reported, “Palahniuk has no wife and declines to discuss his personal life on the record.”

Although Palahniuk quickly removed the audio post, it was too late. He had already outed himself. Fight Club had been his career-making book, spawning a true cult of hyper-masculinity. Throughout the country men had subsequently founded clubs where they engaged in unregulated fighting, in imitation of Chuck’s scenario in Fight Club. Certainly Palahniuk had to wonder how those myriad fans might color their opinion of him with the revelation that the book was the work of a gay male. He may have recalled John Cheever, whose bisexuality was revealed to the general public only after his death. Critics and other writers suddenly focused on Cheever’s sexuality, instead of commenting on the value of his works and his place in literary history.

Palahniuk had a lot to cope with. Some of his fans thought that Chuck was embarrassed by his homosexuality, because of his quick removal of the self-incriminating audio post. He had other things on his plate, as well. Just four years prior to his self-outing, his father, Fred, had been dating Donna Fontaine, whom he had met through a personal ad. She had an ex-boyfriend, Dale Shackleford, who had recently been imprisoned for sexual abuse. Shackleford had vowed to kill Donna  as soon as he was released from prison. After his release, Shackleford indeed followed them to Donna’s home after they had gone out on a date. Shackleford shot them both and dragged their bodies into Donna’s house, which he set on fire immediately afterwards.

While on tour to promote his novel Diary in 2003, Palahniuk read aloud a short story titled “Guts”, a graphic over-the-top tale of accidents involving male masturbation. It was reported that several dozen listeners fainted at the grizzly details. Playboy magazine would later publish the story in their March 2004 issue, but they refused to publish another story along with it, because they found the second work too disturbing. Chuck continues to read “Guts”(from his book Haunted), and people still continue to faint.

You may test your fortitude by reading it at this link:
http://chuckpalahniuk.net/features/shorts/guts

A week ago Chuck Palahniuk survived a freak car accident. He was sitting in his car parked in a driveway when a semi trailer hit his vehicle on Friday, March 23, 2012. UPI reported that , “the semi’s driver took a curve too fast, tipping his trailer. The trailer slid toward Palahniuk’s car and struck the side of it before coming to rest blocking the westbound lanes.” His car was destroyed, but both Chuck and the semi-driver escaped unharmed; the trucker was ticketed for negligence. Palahniuk’s webmaster tweeted: "Spoke to Chuck last night. He’s fine and is recovering. Thank you all for your well wishes."

Palahniuk now lives as an openly gay man, and he and his unnamed male partner (and two dogs) reside in a former church compound outside Vancouver, Washington, in the state where he was born in 1962. They also share a second home in Oregon.

His most recent novel is Damned (2011), which concerns a thirteen year old girl who finds herself in hell, unsure why she has been sent there, but tries to make the best of it. Palahniuk has described the novel as if “The Shawshank Redemption” had a baby by “The Lovely Bones” and was raised by Judy Blume. “It's kind of like The Breakfast Club set in Hell.” Palahniuk has said the novel was written as a way to deal with the death of his mother from breast cancer in 2009. Highly positive reviews followed its publication.