Some Like It Hot. Some Are Just Stupid ...

...The gay scuttlebutt about the movie Spartacus has to do with the harmless scene between Tony Curtis and Larry Olivier which was restored in recent reissues of the film:

Marcus Licinius Crassus: Do you eat oysters?
Antoninus: When I have them, master.
Marcus Licinius Crassus: Do you eat snails?
Antoninus: No, master.
Marcus Licinius Crassus: Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?
Antoninus: No, master.
Marcus Licinius Crassus: Of course not. It is all a matter of taste, isn't it?
Antoninus: Yes, master.
Marcus Licinius Crassus: And taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals.
Antoninus: It could be argued so, master.
Marcus Licinius Crassus: My robe, Antoninus. My taste includes both snails and oysters.

Tony Curtis' Antoninus would have been fodder for the gay fantasy mill even without that scene not to mention the high level of electricity between him and Kirk Douglas in the classic epic.

Could Mr. Curtis have thought that he was somehow immune to the homosexual dream factory? Maybe Larry Olivier should have fed him more than a few innocuous lines of dialogue.

So it was with much trepidation that many heard prior to the Oscars when Mr.Curtis told Fox News's Bill McCuddy that he hadn't yet seen Brokeback Mountain and had no intention of doing so. He claims that other Academy members feel similarly. "This picture is not as important as we make it. It's nothing unique. The only thing unique about it is they put it on the screen. And they make 'em [gay] cowboys." Curtis reminded folks that his contemporaries wouldn't have cared for the highly acclaimed Best Picture nominee. "Howard Hughes and John Wayne wouldn't like it," Curtis said. ..The Left Coast Report points out that while Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon may have donned women's clothing for their film roles, at least they shaved their legs for the part.


Yes, how cute and enjoyable were the young Messrs. Curtis and Lemmon in drag in that very enjoyable classic flick. Mr. Lemmon's and Joe E. Brown's performances certainly go further in cinema history as opposed to Mr. Curtis' Cary Grant imitation. Cute but not Oscar worthy. Although his penchant for doing so puts Mr. Curtis in an interesting circumstance given what we now know about Mr. Grant.

Just to reiterate: It's pretty clear to me that an undetermined but not-miniscule percentage of Academy voters went for Crash the Tony Curtis way -- because it wasn't Brokeback Mountain, because they flat-out didn't see Brokeback, or just didn't feel good about supporting a film that messed with the iconic image of macho cowboys. Curtis said he wouldn't see it, an Academy-member uncle of a friend said the same thing, and I've heard or read about this same mindset among older Academy members from others around town. There were many Crash supporters who undoubtedly voted for it because they admired it the most...fine. (Let's presume that the majority of its supporters felt this way without homophobia clouding the issue.) But it's widely believed that others voted for it because it wasn't Brokeback Mountain.
I don't know what percentage, but with Ang Lee winning for Best Director I presume the overall margin was close. *-- Jeffrey Wells (Hollywood Elsewhere) * There was one report that it was as close as 4 votes.

One can only wonder why the true homosexual scene in Spartacus doesn't get much attention i.e. when Antoninus dies in Spartacus' arms and they declare their true feelings for one another cloaking it in paternal and filial terms: "I love you, Spartacus, as I love my own father."












It's as if Shakespeare and Freud had collaborated: a forced sword fight to the death between two men who love each other and then a death scene's declaration of love, it's as if Ang Lee had directed. What would Howard and John have said?