Actors/Actresses: July 2006 Archives

Being gay AND Latino, I'm really looking forward to catching "Quinceanera" when it opens in LA next week. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and was one of the highlights of the recent Los Angeles Film Festival. On Friday (Aug. 4.) "Quinceanera" opens in Los Angeles and New York.

Set in Echo Park, the storyline involves 15-year-old Magdalena (Emily Rios) who is kicked out of her house when she gets pregnant but is welcomed into the home of her great-uncle Thomas, who has also taken in gay nephew Carlos (Jesse Garcia), a tough young cholo who got the boot from his parents' home because of his sexuality.

The back house rental where Uncle Tomas rents a house on property recently purchased by an affluent white gay couple (David Ross and Jason L. Wood) who led the gentrification in the neighborhood. From there, twists and complications arise in this critically acclaimed movie directed by Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer.

Garcia is the subject of a profile in The Advocate, the national gay and lesbian magazine. Here are some excerpts from the piece:

Although many sexy straight actors have played gay on-screen over the years -- Jake , Heath, Colin, Jude -- it's hard to imagine any of them being man enough to do what newcomer Jesse Garcia did to boost morale on a particularly tense day on the set of the acclaimed new film "Quinceañera." "I went to wardrobe and said, 'It's crazy out there, give me some clothes!' " recalls the Rawlins, Wyo. -born actor who, in his 2-plus years in Hollywood, has turned up in a slew of commercials as well as on "The Shield," "Unfabulous," and in the HBO movie "Walkout." "Then I walked, like, a block and a half down the street and onto the set in high heels, a miniskirt, and this black top that was 10 sizes too small for me." So what got into him exactly? "During my sketch comedy days, there was this character I used to play named Meringue who was really over-the-top," he explains, "so I brought Meringue back to life on set, and everyone just died laughing."

"It was like somehow Carmen Miranda had taken over Jesse's soul," recalls Wash Westmoreland, who cowrote and codirected "Quinceañera" with his real-life partner of 11 years, "Grief" director Richard Glatzer. (Their previous film collaboration was the gay cult fave "The Fluffer .") "Jesse knows how to work it," confirms Glatzer. "I've worked with people who are straight but playing gay, and in subtle ways they always want to let you know they're straight. Jesse never had to say anything about his sexuality. I don't think the crew knew what he was, and he didn't care. Then he threw Meringue in there, and it was, like, 'Wow, this is a very liberated, fun guy.'"

"Carlos's story line is the nexus of looking at homophobia in the Latino community and racism in the white gay community," explains Westmoreland, who moved with Glatzer into the same Echo Park neighborhood five years ago. "When we first auditioned Jesse, we immediately saw this incredible vulnerability that was perfect for the part." They just had to rough him up a little. "We kind of created a veneer over the sensitive Jesse," says Westmoreland, "and made Carlos from that, with the gang clothes and tattoos and the shaved head."

The end result is a tender and indelible portrait of a young man trying to find himself in a rapidly changing world -- and a career-launching performance for Garcia. "Jesse, as an actor, has so many emotional layers, and he's so ready to go to places and try things," says Glatzer. "He's almost a return to that kind of '50s innocence, like Brando and Dean, where you don't need to think of what you are sexually, you just go with it."

You know him as a nerdy, but endearing, 40 year old virgin. Or as the boss on NBC's "The Office" for which is was recently nominated for an Emmy. In this week's new Fox Searchlight film "Little Miss Sunshine," Steve Carell plays Uncle Frank, a gay man on a road trip from hell with his family as he recovers from attempting suicide.

I saw the movie in a sold-out theater at The Grove recently and it is a GEM! It was laugh out loud funny plenty of the time but also moving. It is one of the best movies I have seen this year.

"Sunshine" is enough good that I won't quibble about another film with a suicidal man recently dumped by his lover. In "Poseidon," Richard Dreyfuss was preparing to take leap off the boat (still upright at that point) until he saw the giant tidal wave in the distance. Suddenly, he didn't want to die so much. In "Sunshine," Carell is fired from his university job and his pain is made worse by the fact that his ex his left him to hook up with his academic arch-rival who is also riding atop the best sellers list. Ouch!

Carell is terrific in a role that is a departure for him. When he runs into the young boyfriend who jilted him at a convenience store (and hides his still bandaged wrists), your heart goes out to him. Then you root for him to get over the little jerk. What's nice is that by film's end, you know he has regained his spirit.

Directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, "Little Miss Sunshine" also stars Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette. It primarily tells the story of young Olive (the adorable Abigail Breslin) whose dream is to be a beauty pageant winner. When she's invited to the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in California, her eclectic family embarks on a road trip filled with revelations, realizations, and quirky adventures.

Check out a lengthy review in the AfterElton.com Web site.

This is something I planned to take to my grave. But after seeing "Clerks II" over the weekend, I feel compelled to come clean. I have something...I have to tell you. Now, it's not like I'm straight or anything or inning myself. But true confession time: I have developed a huge crush on...Rosario Dawson!

I think it's allowed. I have plenty of straight male friends who have admited their guy crushes to me, the one guy they'd switch teams for, or who they just think is hot. Brad Pitt gets the most mentions, Richard Gere used to and I have one friend with a longstanding crush on Harry Connick Jr. (good taste all!)..

But enough about those silly boy crushes. This is about the ravishing Rosario. She cast me under her spell last year when I went to see the big-screen version of "Rent." She was one of only a two cast members who did not originate their role in the movie on Broadway. Among this supremely talented group, Dawson more than held her own with the sexy duet "Light My Candle" followed a short time later by my favorite number in the entire movie: "Out Tonight."

And so, the crush began. It grew after seeing Rosario in "Clerks II," which I thought was a fine follow-up to the original movie that I had seen at least five times. In this comedy, Rosario doesn't get to sing but she does dance a little on a rooftop and she has such a radiant smile. She gives the slacker comedy some real heart.

Ricki Lake, who has had plenty of gay fans ever since she burst onto the scene as the lead in the original film version of "Hairspray," was at the Showcase Theater Monday night with the rest of the cast of her new movie "Park," her first big screen effort in ages.

In this uneven ensemble comedy about 10 random Angelinos whose lives collide during their lunch hour in a section of Griffith Park, Ricki and Cheri Oteri of SNL fame share a long make-out scene inside a car. Ricki has tailed her husband (William Baldwin in a wacko performance) to the park and catches him cheating with another woman. After she and Oteri trap him in his car then vandalize it, Oteri throws out the idea of becoming lesbians. They go for it right there. Post-kiss, Oteri is appalled. Lake comes out of the kiss a lesbian. By film's end, she is headed to a bar on Santa Monica Boulevard.

After the screening, I asked Ricki how it felt to be back in the movies.

"It's really, really fun and I'm really proud of this film," she said. "I had to fight for this part."

Writer-director Kurt Voelker joked that he made Lake and Oteri "kiss many, many times, over and over again for different angles. Finally Cheri said to Ricki, 'Get off of me!'"

Among those in the near-capacity audience were members of the talented cast, many who looked sorta familiar and have appeared scores of television shows and films including Trent Ford, Maulik Pancholy, Anne Pudek, Melanie Lynskey and Anthony "Treach" Criss. All are mega-talented but the real standout was Dagney Kerr who was hilarious as a hysterical suicidal woman who keeps getting foiled in her attempts to do herself in. Whenever Kerr is on screen, the movie works.

The film, which took 21 days to shoot, does not yet have a distributor.