The Michael Musto Interview

PHOTOS: Above: The great Michael Musto at an ACT UP Times Square rally against "Don't Ask, Don't Tell'. Below: Former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey and I at the same rally.

I have lived in New York City for approximately a third of my life and I truly don't know anyone who has been as brilliant at capturing the city's queer nightlife and LGBT revolution quite as successful as Michael Musto. Michael is usually described as a gossip maven, which might be quite alright, but I just think he is so much more than that.  We run in a few common social circles but I had never really gotten the chance to interview him. I am glad to say I finally had an opportunity to do so.  One caveat: I was just as nervous as when I interviewed JLo and might have tried to cram too many questions into the interview.

Other than that, enjoy, plus or minus a tape-recorder snafu:

Blabbeando: It took a while for it to come out but it’s finally here. I know you have a new book. What’s it called, when is it out and what’s in it.

Musto: Well, it first was supposed to come out last year on Alyson but, then I don’t know – you can read the gossip columnists for what happened there. But now it’s coming out on Vantage Point Books and it’s currently available on Amazon and the official pub date is September 1st.

It’s called “Fork on the Left, Knife in the Back” and to me the title hopefully show the way I like to throw the bourgeoisie cultural standards against the wall and to shatter everything and say ‘I may have the fork in the proper place but I’ll definitely be using the knife to stab you in the back’.

Though of course I have gotten stabbed myself sometimes. It’s a collection of some of my best columns over the years. I’ve been doing The Village Voice column now for over 26 years.

Blabbeando: Are there some new essays as well?

Musto: There are. The introduction is new and I have a new essay about social media, a new one about what’s so appealing about blind items, I have one about the celebrity closet and I have one about why I finally started blogging and what that experience has been like.

Blabbeando: It’s not your first book but this one seems to have a specific focus on the 1990’s and the so-called noughties. I know a lot of things have changed since the days of Michael Alig days and kids voguing at the West Side Piers. I wanted to find out what you felt has changed for the better and what’s changed for the worse.

Musto: Well, in the mid-90’s the club kid scene imploded and this kind of ‘Sex and the City’ mentality started taking over – a very kind of affluent, little black dress, bottle service, Meat Packing District kind of lifestyle. And it seemed like the clubs were fading from view in favor of bottle-service lounges and it was all based on credit cards and just using your expense account as a weapon.

Blabbeando: So in some ways the 80’s are coming back and people spending all that money on drinks and all the other stuff…

Musto: Well, as tacky as it is, I hope it’s coming back in some ways because it would mean that there is some money being pumped back into the scene - but nightlife is usually not about money, it’s usually about the disenfranchised people. The people who own the clubs can have money but the people who go there should be the oppressed underprivileged people who come together to create family and to celebrate and to misbehave in interesting ways so that’s what I long for.

It’s like the Meat Packing District was the enemy that was destroying the nightlife but now it’s all come together on the same plane because every Tuesday and every Thursday all the club kids go there. You know, Le Bain is the roof top place there, so it’s almost like we’ve all have found each other on the same plane.

Similarly, I used to be against people like Jim McGreevey and I thought he came out for sleazy reasons - that he had a lawsuit for sexual harassment – but now we are all on the same level because I run into him at all the same activist events so we are all fighting for the same thing - and we all end up on the same level. That’s the great thing about New York.

Blabbeando: Well Jim McGreevey is always at the ACT UP rallies…

Musto: Yeah, you know what I mean? And some of the columns in this book are me sorta screaming about Ellen DeGeneres who believe it or not wasn’t out at one point? And there was a big debate about whether she should come out and even whether her fictional character on her sitcom should come out and I wrote a piece about the absurdity of how we were debating whether a fictional character should come out of the closet. But now Ellen gets all the props for being not only openly gay but really having done so in a very fierce out open way. And Rosie, same thing.

I mean so much has changed. It’s a whole different landscape from when I started out in the 80’s. Back then there were just a handful of people who were out. I think I was the only out gossip columnist and that, of course, was pre-internet – and that changed everything. Information became available and accessible to everybody and the proliferation of cable channels changed everything because everything became visible, drag queens and a whole variety of gay representation. So this is the world I dreamed of, in a way. But there is still so much more to fight for.

But you are right about Broadway; a lot of these super-liberal Broadway shows were leading the parade for gay equality.

[In setting up the interview I had mentioned Broadway Impact and their role in the marriage equality fight in New York State]

Blabbeando: I might be wrong, but I’ve been reading your columns since the mid-80’s and I think for a while there you wrote a lot about how bad your sex life was…

Musto: [Laughs]

Blabbeando: But then something happened recently, within the last five years, and you started writing about how it’s getting better. Does get better?

Musto: Yeah, it’s weird because I am past the age when you’d see anything happening. It’s probably because I dropped down my wall. I always had a wall around myself. If someone approached me I would do anything possible to scare them away.

Blabbeando: Well, I don’t know if you mom is alive, but did she react?

Musto: [Pauses....] To me getting fucked!?

Blabbeando: Well…

Musto: [Busts out laughing]

Blabbeando: …to you writing about all the sex you’re having.

Musto: Well, you know, I don’t really tell my family that much of anything. The less you let them know the better. Thank God they don’t read my column or if they did they’d have a heart attack.

Blabbeando: Going back to marriage equality and all that other stuff: I know there is talk about a new gay metropolis hotel with a huge gay dance club and we might have a lesbian mayor in Christine Quinn and all the gays are getting married and, you know, isn’t it a little bit much?

Musto: [Laughs] Well, I would never complain about it because it’s the world I fought for and dreamed of but as gay becomes more and more common-place there is a risk of it being a little bit banal. I think thanks to Lady Gaga and “Glee” and all that stuff ‘gay’ is kinda, you now…

[OMG, I know this makes me a Luddite dork but the cassette tape stopped at this point. Yes. Cassette tape. Don’t ask. Michael and I began discussing ways in which there are a plethora of issues that have yet to be tackled before achieving full equality, including transgender rights and the alarming issue of homeless LGBT youth. So, in other words, ‘we join this interview while already in progress’ as they say in the news biznez]

Musto: We are never going to be able to say ‘Oh, we’re there, we’ve arrived, we have a place at the table’. No way. To this day gay marriage is a huge issue, Christine O’Donnell just walked off Piers Morgan’s show because he asked her about it. So it’s absurd that we have to fight for the right to be human. It’s like we are living these incredible lives, we are doing all the things that we want and yet there are still people who think we have to prove our right to be American citizens? It’s so ludicrous.

Blabbeando: For a while there, all these channels - VH1, The E! Channel – everybody was rushing to do these talking head gossip shows and I know you were invited to be part of some of them but sometimes you’d get booked and then be dropped. What was that experience like and do you get recognized more out on the street for being on those shows.

Musto: I’m still all over TV. Just in the last month alone I was on talking head shows on Current TV, TV Guide Network and Biography Channel and then I pop up on Theater Talk, and I was on Keith Olbermann, so I’m still getting massive recognition from being on TV.

The funny thing is none of these things pay so you are basically a free unpaid whore and you have no rights. They can cancel you at any moment. Or you can do a two-hour interview where they grill you about every aspect of - let’s say Lindsey Lohan’s career - and then they’ll just use one sound-bite that you could have done in your sleep or you could phone it in. But ultimately it’s worth it because it is kinda intoxicating to see yourself on TV and people respond to it in a way that they don’t necessarily respond in print. You know what I mean? When they see you and they recognize you from TV they really wet themselves. And it’s nice for me, I get a nice feeling about it because I have low self esteem [laughs].

Blabbeando: OK, you now this is coming and I am going to ask for a reaction. I’m going to read something that Anderson Cooper read out loud live on TV sometime last week. He was reading a Tweet about himself and he said:

Watching Anderson Cooper giggle is like watching a unicorn fart rainbows. 

Did he come out?

Musto: He said that?

Blabbeando: Well, Is he now officially out? --- or not?

Musto: Well, he giggles like a schoolgirl every New Years when he’s on with Kathy Griffith…

Blabbeando: Or like a hamster…

Musto: Or, like a gerbil, maybe, I don’t know, but he's in what I call a glass closet. In other words, he lives a gay lifestyle but he won’t say on the record that he’s out and I’ve always had a problem with it. And I think Don Lemon coming out kinda showed, obviously, you can be a CNN anchor and be out. You can do it.

Blabbeando: Well, I just felt that going out live on his show and mentioning ‘unicorns farting rainbows’ was pretty close to saying "Yes, I am".

Musto: That pretty much, yeah, that says it all. That’s basically his coming out. I thought the giggling itself was his coming out but the unicorn remark just confirms it.

Blabbeando: And, finally, I know you’ve taken to blogging and also to Twitter and I wondered if you had any advice for newbies who wanted to start.

Musto:: I would say first of all, to really find your voice and you can only do that by doing it, by writing. The more you write the more you’ll be able to find your particular tone as a writer. And also don’t just write about anything. If you don’t have any passion for a subject don’t even address it. I mean, I’m not gonna write about the Superbowl. I don’t even know when it is. I may write about the half-time show. But people can tell if you are faking it or if you are just doing some kind of rote, routine blog or Tweet. So just send out stuff you care about. And don’t blog or Tweet every time you go to the bathroom - unless it’s a really major bowel movement.

Blabbeando: And do you have any favorite bloggers that you read?

Musto: I try to follow as many celebrities on Twitter as I can. I just love reading Paris Hilton, Jane Fonda, Roseanne, anybody famous. And I think in a way Facebook took away from blogs, like it’s kind of a new blog. People that in the past would have had a blog or a website now just put their brainfarts on Facebook all day. So that’s where I find myself drawn. I post my blog posts all day there and it’s fun to see the conversations that you start when you throw an idea out there into the blogosphere.

Blabbeando: Yeah, and once you start blogging then there is something new, there’s Twitter and then there’s Tumblr, and whatever comes next.

Musto: I know! And my fingers are like in agony. All that linking!

Blabbeando: So anyway, thanks a lot for the interview, Michael.

Musto: Thank you so much.

Related:

• Michael Musto's column at The Village Voice here
• Michael Musto on Facebook here
• Michael Musto on Twitter here

Partner scoops!

This is not one of the biggest blogs out there nor a particularly interesting times sometimes but, weirdly, it's often listed as one of the top five or ten Latino blogs out there and the top Latino gay blog in the United States - if you go by Technorati rankings.

This means that I am often pitched lots of stories, some of which have nothing to do with the topics I cover, and also receive lots of invites to partner on a project.  I mostly turn all of them down as I enjoy keeping the blog free of too much clutter.

Tonight, though, I am proud to announce that I've accepted an invite to join an editorial advertising partnership launched by Guanabee.com called "Partner Scoops" as featured in a widget I placed on the left hand column of the blog.

I've always loved Guanabee's irreverent editorial take on all things Latino and join them and other sites like Latin Gossip to cross-promote each other and ad what I hope will be worthwhile content to the site.

I often complain there aren't enough Latino-focused blogs out there and this is a great way to promote each other.

Actor Jaime Camil says kissing scenes with male co-star are being edited out from telenovela

This is unusual:

Jaime Camil, the leading actor in a new telenovela being broadcast in Mexico, has expressed frustration and disappointment with Televisa, the parent company, for editing out scenes in which he is shown kissing male co-star Jose Rohn.

"Los Existosos Pérez" ["The Successful Perez Family"], an adaptation from an original Argentinian series, is a half-hour comedy of mistaken identity and intrigue set in and around a television news studio.

Camil plays Gonzalo González, a man hired by the station owners to impersonate top rated news anchorman Martín Pérez, after the star anchor has an accident and falls into a coma (Camil plays both parts).

Unbeknownst to the impostor, a very public marriage between the anchorman and his female news co-host is a sham, and is a cover for a long term relationship between the anchorman and another man.

The impostor suddenly finds himself trying to deflect the anchorman's male lover's advances without letting the lover know he is someone else, while secretly falling in love with the female co-host. Hilarity ensues [preview here].

I've checked out a few of the episodes that have been posted on YouTube and haven't been too impressed. It's not a bad show in particular, but it's not a good one either. Using the gay storyline to elicit laughs seems a bit retro, even though it's been described as a huge step forward for Mexican television. It doesn't help that the actors who play gay men camp it up a bit to project 'gayness' - and that includes Jose Ron as the anchorman's lover and an actor playing a gay network assistant. It's not in itself a bad thing, but it's a tired old stereotype nevertheless.

All of this would be par for the course and might not even merit a mention except that Camil spoke up last weekend.

Interviewed by a gossip show correspondent in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the telenovela is being shot, Camil said he was perplexed about several kissing scenes that had been shot between him and Jose Rhon which were either edited out or shortened when televised [see YouTube video below].

"They are editing them for a reason [and] I still fail to comprehend why it is," he says on camera, and ads that "it's a bit frustrating, as an actor, to undertake a creative process [to create] a character and, suddenly, to have it cut off based on false morals or double standards that sometimes exist in Mexico."

He does admit that it's up to the producers to decide what makes it on air or what doesn't and says that he is happy with the way that the show and his character have been developing in the two months since it was launched.

Mexican gossip show NX, which captured Camil's seemingly unguarded comments, ran the interview with commentary. Highlighting how homophobic Mexican media can be, a member of the show jokes that Camil is just angry because he had to shoot the kissing scenes several times and had to kiss a man over and over.

Still, this IS Mexico, where these huge media conglomerates closely guard their product and content and where these increasingly multi-national telenovelas are produced to be sold later to the lucrative international syndication market. To a higher degree than Hollywood, stars who are part of Mexican show-business rarely speak up or criticize producers or companies, particularly if you are currently part of the show you are criticizing.

In that light, I think it's huge that a well-known telenovela star like Camil, who is actually playing the show's lead, is willing to go on record about his criticism and willing to question whether there is homophobia at play.

It'll be interesting to see if Camil's comments lead to Televisa reviewing what it shows and doesn't show in a telenovela that is supposed to embrace gay characters. It will also be interesting to see if Univision, which is scheduled to air the series possibly on prime time here in the Unites States, will also cut the kissing scenes or let them stand.

An aside: The show does mark the return of legendary telenovela star Veronica Castro to Mexican television. You might remember, in a somewhat related vein, that she refused to play a lesbian role on a Mexican TV special because she did not want to kiss another woman.

• Related: OMG. Charytin doesn't want the gay kisses to air! (via Guanabee)

Soccer player "outed" in Peru as Argentina hosts gay soccer tournament

Above: Goalkeeper Juan "Chiquito" Flores' professional soccer career might be coming to an end after a homophobic gossip show "outs" him (An extended version of the video here); Below: Argentina's main gay soccer team, DAG.

International gay soccer tournament takes over Buenos Aires - For months now I've been getting bombarded by so many press releases, news items and e-mail messages about this week's international gay soccer tournament in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that in some respects I will be oh-so-happy when the event ends this Saturday (additional information about the tournament can be found at Bloomberg Canada's Digital Journal).

No more newspaper articles about the Mexican team's pink uniforms! No more press releases about cute team mascots! No more debates about why there are no lesbian teams at a "gay and lesbian" event! Or complaints that the event is too expensive for the average Argentinean to attend! (the last two being pretty valid points but nevertheless I'll be happy when the e-mail bombardment stops).

Still, there is no denying that the event, the first of its kind in all of Latin America, is a landmark event that illustrates the amazing advances that the gay community has seen in the region over the last decade.

But, should there be a 'gay' soccer tournament at all? - Last week I read an interesting post over at Dollymix questioning the need to gave a 'gay' soccer tournament at all instead of "working to make straight football a more supportive and welcoming place for gay athletes and fans" which is fine and dandy - except that it's easier said than done.

I mean, to my knowledge, there has never been a single soccer player that has come out as being gay while still on a professional team and I can only name one player who came out after he finished his professional career - and he is said to have committed suicide in part over the pressure and stress that followed his announcement.

No doubt a reflection of the intense homophobia that haunts the sport. No wonder the Brazilian soccer world was "thrown into turmoil" as recent as last month over "insinuations that a player was gay" as this Associated Press article explains.

Peru soccer star in free-fall after video shows him canoodling with two men at a bar - Just a couple of weeks ago, on September 13th, a popular television gossip show in Peru ran video of an apparently inebriated Juan "Chiquito" Flores - a star goalie for Peru's Cienciano professional soccer team - standing at a 2nd floor bar terrace getting pretty chummy with a couple of male friends (see above).

In a longer version of the segment, the show goes at length about the women that have been rumored to be his girlfriends in the past, then takes a cheap-shot at his virility by showing scenes from a Punked!-type prank show in which Flores is caught shrieking when he thinks a television studio has caught on fire, and - finally - they gleefully unveil the video of Flores and his friends at the bar.

Flores' response could not have come faster. The day after the images aired he told Veronica Gasco of Peru21, in no unequivocal terms, that he was not gay and only liked women.

He said that he was out with friends and that the scenes in the video had been taken out of context, that he'd seen a beautiful woman walk by and was trying to point her out to a friend. The kiss that was supposedly caught on camera? Flores says that the music was too loud and that he had to get very close to his friend's ear in order to be understood and that, while he had a number of gay friends and partied at gay bars, he was only sorry to say that he was not gay (there is also a great interview with Jaime Bayly also from Sep. 16th to which I have linked at the bottom of this post).

"Chiquito faggot! Chiquito faggot!" - Denials notwithstanding, the damage to his career seems irreversible, even if it's been days since the video aired.

On September 16th, on the eve of the first match in which Flores played after the images were aired, his teammates were already telling sports publication El Bocon that they would defend Flores from any gay taunts by members of their opposing team or their fans.

Correo reports that Flores' team went on to lose 4-1 and that it was uncharacteristic of the goalie to let so many soccer balls fly past him in a single game. They also said that fans of the winning team, Melgar, filled the air with chants of “Chiquito maricón, Chiquito maricón” ("Chiquito faggot! Chiquito faggot!") which the paper says had a visible effect on Flores.

On the 18th, Libero reported that Flores admitted that insinuations by the gossip show host Magaly Medina had "affected the entire team's performance" and added "if I am seen with a woman, I'm a womanizer; if I'm seen with a man, I'm a maricón."

Things got much worse at Cienciano's next game on September 19th and not only because the team lost again 1-0. At least they couldn't blame Flores for allowing the score: By the time the score came, he had already been removed from the game for attacking a ball-handler (no pun intended).

"He's gone crazy" - That's the Sept. 20th Correo headline in an article that describes how after 28 minutes of play Flores simply walked over to the sidelines and kicked a soccer ball-handler in the shin.

The paper says that from the start of the match every single person in the stadium kept screaming 'maricón, maricón' at Flores and that the goalie lost it when he looked over and saw the ball-handler smile at him. The ball handler, Freddy Caoquira Ccalla, was taken to a hospital to make sure he did not have any fractures but first requested a police inquiry upon which Flores was led off the field by the police and released later after giving his declaration on the incident (there was no fracture but Flores has been ordered to pay the medical costs).

He tells Correo that the ball boy had been throwing insults at him and calling him a fag from the start of the game and that he was overcome by anger and by the discomfort that the chants ricocheting around the stadium walls had caused in him.

Cienciano, Flores team, is said to be seriously considering letting go of Flores early (his current contract with the team ends in December) and told the paper that it could not deal any longer with the 'scandals' surrounding the goalie.

El Bocon says that, as Flores came out of the police station, several people waiting for his release shouted 'maricón' at him and told him he should go to jail.

Bayly probably is right to say Flores is not gay: Back on the 16th Flores also did an telephone interview with popular Peruvian talk show host Jaime Bayly (for those of you who understand Spanish, Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here).

Bayly, who is bisexual, says that it's obvious from the images shown on the tape that there is no romantic link between the men and that the producers of the gossip show edited it with malice and with the sole purpose of damaging Flores' reputation.

Bayly addresses issues related to homophobia, masculinity and male bonding with humor and calls the scandal unjust. And I tend to share his assumption that Flores not gay.

Nevertheless it seems Flores' career might be coming to an end. Perhaps proof that we do need international gay and lesbian soccer tournaments to combat homophobia in soccer while a new reality takes shape.

Previously:

• Oscar De La Hoya in Fishnet Stockings and High Heels (Sept. 20, 2007)

Jaime Bayly interviews in Spanish:

1st interview, parts 1 and 2 - Sept. 16, 2007


2nd interview, parts 1 and 2 - Sept. 23, 2007