Boy Culture Recaps NYC Pride

Click over to Matt Rettenmund's Boy Culture for a massive photo recap of NYC Pride. Politicians, movie stars, beefcake, and bears!

NYC Pride Names 2015 Grand Marshals

Via press release:

Heritage of Pride, organizers of NYC Pride and the annual New York City Pride March, today announced the event’s Grand Marshals for 2015. This year’s marshals are: Sir Derek Jacobi and Sir Ian McKellen, both openly gay English actors currently co-starring in the PBS series “Vicious.” Sir Jacobi is primarily known for his stage work and in films like “The King’s Speech” and “Gladiator” while Sir McKellen is often recognized for his recurring roles as Magneto in the “X-Men” films and Gandalf in the “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” films; J. Christopher Neal, New York-based artist and leader of FluidBiDesign, an advocacy group and a community for fluid men of African descent; and Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, considered the mother of the Ugandan LGBT rights movement and co-founder of the first Uganda Pride celebration.

All of the grand marshals appear in the clip below in which McKellen and Jacobi dish quite amusingly.

Gandalf & The Cookie Monster

(Tipped by JMG reader Alan)

SUNDAY: PBS Debuts Britain's Vicious, Gay Sitcom Starring Ian McKellan

Via the New York Times:

If it is surprising to see esteemed actors like Mr. McKellen and Mr. Jacobi trading barbs in a traditional, multicamera sitcom recorded in front of a studio audience, “Vicious” further astonished British audiences, when it ran on ITV last year, with its very premise. It cast Mr. McKellen (of the “X-Men” and “Hobbit” movies) and Mr. Jacobi (“I, Claudius”) as two fussy, feuding partners in a gay relationship of nearly 50 years. “Vicious” was successful enough to earn a second season, but it was also criticized by British publications like The Stage, which said that its “gay characters are nothing more than camp stereotypes” and that the scenarios “bear no resemblance to the lives of the viewers at home,” while The Guardian wrote that the series “cheerfully trades in clichés of homosexuality.” As “Vicious” arrives in the United States, the debate over its depictions of gay men reopens an argument that has confronted American comedies like “Will & Grace,” “Glee,” “Modern Family” and other shows with gay characters. Is a television character who exhibits stereotypically gay qualities a stereotype himself? Or does the presence of such figures demonstrate that TV is making progress on gay representation? And who gets to decide what attributes are offensive, or stereotypical or gay?

Photo Of The Day

Many more super fun NYC touristy shots are here. (Via JMG reader Scott)

TRAILER: X-Men: Days Of Future Past

Ian McKellan On Coming Out

Via Buzzfeed:

McKellen noted that, according to Marvel, young Jewish, Black, and gay people are the biggest readers of the X-Men comics. “These are all people who, well, feel a little bit like mutants,” he added. As for those who still feel that way, and are living in the closet, McKellen said, “I feel sorry for anyone who feels the need to lie about themselves. That’s not good for you. It doesn’t lead to a happy life. And I’ve never met a gay person who came out and who regretted it. Never. So, my advice to anyone in the closet — it doesn’t matter whether they’re a teacher, or a politician, or a priest, or an actor — come out. Join the human race.”

Football!

Happy New Year From The X-Men

Ian McKellen: The British Government Warned Me Against Traveling To Russia

Actor Ian McKellen yesterday said that the British government has warned him that he would not be safe in Russia.

In an interview with the Radio Times magazine, the openly gay actor, 74, said he was told by Britain's Foreign Office that it could not "protect him" from the laws. In July a nationwide law banning distribution of "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations" among minors was passed in Russia. “Imagine trying to be a gay actor, a gay anything in modern Russia?," Sir Ian told the Radio Times. “Where to be positively oneself, to be affectionate in public with someone you love of the same gender, or to talk of that love in the hearing of anyone under 18, will put you in prison? "That’s why I can’t go to Russia."

TRAILER: X-Men: Days Of Future Past

Trailer recap:

The ultimate X-Men ensemble fights a war for the survival of the species across two time periods in X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. The beloved characters from the original "X-Men" film trilogy join forces with their younger selves from "X-Men: First Class," in an epic battle that must change the past -- to save our future.

4M views in one day.

Tweet Of The Day - Patrick Stewart

For those unaware, those statues are part of George Segal's Gay Liberation monument in Christopher Park, which is in Sheridan Square in the West Village. Stewart had a scene with the statues in the 1995 movie, Jeffrey.

(Via Towleroad)

HomoQuotable - Ian McKellen

"As a gay participant in the opening ceremony of the London Paralympics in 2012, I am angered by the International Olympics Committee's announcement that harsh Russian anti-gay laws do not transgress its own Sixth Fundamental Principle of Olympism that 'any form of discrimination is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic movement.'  In Russia, it is now effectively illegal to speak about homosexuality in public. That means that openly gay visitors to Russia, including Olympians, are only welcome if they bring their closets with them. I agree with the Human Rights Campaign that, 'The IOC has completely neglected its responsibility to athletes, corporate sponsors, and fans.'" - Ian McKellen, writing on his Facebook page.

Ian McKellen On The Sochi Olympics

Magneto Marries Professor X

Last week Ian McKellen officiated at the wedding of Patrick Stewart to Sunny Ozell in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

HomoQuotable - Sir Ian McKellan

"Lest we forget, this nasty, brutish and short measure of the third Thatcher administration, was designed to slander homosexuality, by prohibiting state schools from discussing positively gay people and our 'pretended family relations.' Opposition to Section 28 galvanised a new generation of activists who joined with long-time campaigners for equality. Stonewall UK was founded to repeal Section 28 and pluck older rotten anti-gay legislation from the constitutional tree. This has taken two decades to achieve.

"Pathetically, in her dotage, Baroness Thatcher was led by her supporters into the House of Lords to vote against Section 28's repeal: her final contribution to UK politics. She dies too early to oppose Parliament's inevitable acceptance of same–gender marriage. Thatcher misjudged the future when, according to her deputy chief whip, she 'threw a piece of red meat (Section 28) to her right-wing wolves.' Some of these beasts survive her, albeit de-fanged. When, to take a recent example, a disgraced cardinal delivers anti-gay diatribes, the spirit of social Thatcherism is revealed as barren, hypocritical and now pointless." - Sir Ian McKellan, writing on his website.

X-Men Stars Are Coming To Broadway

Via the NYT's Arts Beat:

The theater and film stars Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, known for their chemistry in the “X-Men” films as the friends-turned-foes Magneto and Professor Xavier, will return to Broadway together in the fall for an unusual two-play repertory of Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” and Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” the producers said on Thursday. Directed by a fellow Englishman, Sean Mathias, the two plays – both bleakly funny existential classics by Nobel Prize-wining writers — will run in rotation, sometimes on adjacent nights and possibly on the same days as matinee and evening performances.

Ian McKellen: I've Never Met A Gay Person Who Regretted Coming Out

(Via Towleroad)

Ian McKellan For New Zealand Marriage

McKellan: "Marry me in Middle Earth."

Ian McKellen Backs UK Bullying Campaign