No, It’s Not The Tom Cruise Story

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Mitchell: Do you want a drink?
Alex: No.
Mitchell: Why? Did life suddenly get beautiful?

That’s how people talk in The Little Dog Laughed, the brilliantly funny play about a ruthless agent trying to keep her gay client in the closet. Written by Douglas Carter Beane, the show is playing now at the Cort Theater on Broadway in an open run. It’s a must-see.
    Mitchell is a movie star on the rise; Alex is Mitchell’s hustler-boyfriend; Ellen is Alex’s sort-of girlfriend; Diane is Mitchell’s agent. Diane’s mission: to wrest control of a career-making script by a gay playwright and use it to make Mitchell an A-lister. The problem: if everyone thinks he’s straight and he plays a gay role, he’s Oscar material. If he’s gay and plays a gay character, he’s doomed to the art-house circuit.
   Hooksexup caught up with Beane as he took a break from casting his next Broadway-bound show: a stage-musical adaptation of the camp classic Xanadu. — Ada Calhoun

I like to think Hollywood is more accepting than it was in the ’50s, but watching The Little Dog Laughed, I realized that even today, an A-lister can’t be gay.

It’s still a factory town! I think it’s a business decision on the part of the studios. They’re terrified of people having any reason not to go to a film. I think it’s also about the desire people have to see their movie stars mated in ways they could imagine. For Xanadu, I’ve been reading a lot of Greek mythology. It’s like we’ve created Hollywood so we can mix-and-match our gods the way they did.

When Hooksexup interviewed Don Roos a while back, he said he didn’t want his actors to come out, even though he’s gay himself. He said he wanted actors whose personal lives were secret so they could be blank slates.
So, he wouldn’t hire a straight man who had dated a lot of women? Is that what he’s saying? That would be the logic.

I think that was his logic, more or less. He said anyone whose personal life was all over the tabloids — Brad Pitt in the thick of the Jennifer Aniston break-up, say — would be too tainted for him to use.
[Laughs.] I think the studio would have a little talk with Don about that if it came to Brad Pitt. They’d say, "Don, why don’t you go get your blank slate and enjoy your little independent movie." That’s Hollywood-cracked logic, though. It’s all about imagining three times over what someone needs or dislikes. But I guess I understand it. I mean, there’s a small town in Pennsylvania — Tunkhannock, where my family’s from — and there was all kinds of fury about Brokeback Mountain playing there. People were freaking out because they were extending it. Of course, they were extending it because people were buying tickets. They don’t extend movies that people don’t see. I think to be in that [Hollywood] world would be very frustrating. I think if that were my whole means of expression, I’d be as crazy as those people are.

Are there exceptions to the stars-can’t-come-out rule? I loved the line in the show where Mitchell says he thinks he can come out and still be a star and Diane says, "Are you British? Have you been knighted?"
Sure. If you’re in television but you’re not the romantic lead on the show, like T.R. Knight or Neil Patrick Harris. Women can be bi or out. But men have to be heterosexual and happily married or serial bangers. They basically have to be heterosexual sex addicts. That’s fine! We love it! He can’t make a commitment: he’s healthy.

People are so afraid of male sexuality.
It’s like when Bruce Weber’s photographs started appearing. People were freaking out because men were sexual objects. Straight men were freaked out by the idea that it would turn them on or that they’re not measuring up to that. I was like, now you know how a woman feels like every time she walks by a newsstand.

That’s what makes Mitchell so thrilling a character. He dates girls but only has sex when drunk and with male prostitutes. It’s refreshingly complicated.
I think there are those incredibly late-blooming guys out there. They show up on a lot of the chat rooms where I check up on who’s coming out or not coming out.

Ooh, where’s that?
There’s one called Datalounge. It’s very bitchy-queeny. They had a category, "How you know someone’s gay." One was when they say in an interview, "I’m just so busy with my career right now, I don’t have time to date." Oh, ree-ally? I have one in my show: showing up at an awards show with your mother. That’s a red flag.

People who know about the rather tortured path your play As Bees in Honey Drown has taken since being optioned might think you were the gay playwright referred to in Little Dog Laughed. He’s seduced by Diane and Mitchell in a breathtakingly manipulative lunch meeting.
Am I the seduced gay playwright, the gaywright? Certainly those things have been said to me in meetings. But I’m really mean to him. "He Meaning Him" [as the playwright is called by Diane] is a real jerk. I would be really self-loathing if that were a self-portrait. He sells out worse than anyone in the end. He took the lunch. Diane even says in her mind: "What are you doing here?" If you don’t want it to be a film, you don’t take the meeting. The situation is very similar to what I’ve been through on As Bees in Honey Drown, but it’s not me.

The scene where the playwright is flattered and reassured and ultimately taken is so brutal.
Originally that scene was a ten-minute play in the Tribeca Theater Festival with Julie White and Josh Hamilton. At the end of the scene, Diane reads the terms of the contract that He Meaning Him is signing, and every phrase is from one of my contracts. I went through all of them and highlighted the most ridiculous lines, like "in perpetuity through the end of time."

Diane (played brilliantly by Julie White) is one of the best roles for a woman I’ve seen in a long time. Even though she’s evil, I found myself admiring her. She’s really good at her job.
She’s at the top of her field. I wish she had a little more righteousness and a personal life, but other than that, she’s popping. What if she were on the side of right? What if her profession was to settle Darfur? Oh, my God! We’d be done and out. Don’t you wish she were on the bipartisan Iraq study group? But she’s chosen the entertainment business because of her own weaknesses.

Not unlike how many of us would rather read tabloids than watch the news.
Everyone I know who follows world events watches The Daily Show and BBC News. They’re watching comedies and other countries. If I find myself taping Katie Couric or Brian Williams, I find myself screaming, "Tell us! Just! Tell! Us! What’s! Going! On!" We get titillated: sexy, sexy page scandal! It was so sexy, sexy when there was a gay prostitute in the press corps. But then it went away. What’s it about? Why was he doing overnights at the White House? Why were they planting a gay prostitute to give them crazy questions? Doesn’t that say something about their point of view, that it requires you to hire a prostitute to tell you you’re doing a great job?

In meetings, Diane asks everyone, "Is everybody happy?" By the end of the play, the word had a really creepy connotation.
Happiness has become a catchphrase for settling for other people’s expectations. In the Declaration of Independence, it’s "the pursuit of happiness." No one says you have to be happy. And that’s what it’s about: trying to find out truly what you are and truly what you need. That’s opposed to "I need the Xbox." "I need to listen to this song." "I need whatever." On TV, I saw this scene in Iraq with a woman crying and a soldier there getting frustrated. Finally, he yelled at her, "We’re giving you your freedom!" Yeah, not so much. You killed her husband, sir. Freedom there means the ability to buy an Xbox. But to be profoundly happy is an ongoing excursion.

[Laughs] I feel like Buddha with a cellphone here. Now I’m going to go listen to Charlene sing "I’ve Never Been to Me" and laugh. Do you know that song? It’s about a woman who’s got it all. [Sings] "I’ve been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me." There’s a very sophisticated line in the version on the album: "But you know what truth is? / It’s that little baby you’re holding / It’s that man you fought with this morning / The same one you’re going to make love with tonight." Abusive husbands: that’s what’s real! It’s so bad. It’s so good.  n°

To buy tickets for "The Little Dog Laughed," visit www.thelittledoglaughedonbroadway.com/.