Just asking. I’ve heard about Matthew Perry and Henry Cavill who got to where they were by bending over a desk in a producer’s office. I know there are plenty of bi’s, gays, and gay-for-pays in the industry, and hundreds with paid women ‘beards’ to appeal to their romantic fans. But I wonder about all of those men, we never ever hear much about how much they have to ‘play nice’ in the industry. So un-manly! :eek:
I’m sure it happens but I’d guess a lot of it is guys being gay for pay.
Never heard of either Matthew perry or Henry cavill doing that.
What about the situation with Kevin Spacey?
Brendan Fraser has discussed an act of sexual assault against him, committed by someone in the film industry:
I don’t know if there were ‘casting couch’ implications–by 2003, Fraser already did have a thriving career. But the allegations, if true, go to show that men do get victimized.
The Coen Brothers’ movie Hail Caesar depicts some fictionalized incidents of casting-couch harassment of actors. That’s not proof of anything, of course, except that the concept is not particularly outlandish.
Kevin Spacey had so many allegations come out in such a short period of time it’s hard to remember that some of them came from fellow cast and crew members.
In his biography of Vincente Minnelli, film critic Emanuel Levy relates that Minnelli’s wife (Judy Garland) walked in on him having sex with a young, small-time actor. Patrick McGilligan is just one Hollywood biographer who wrote of George Cukor’s male-only weekend parties. I don’t know if either of those directors actually “auditioned” male actors in the generally accepted meaning of the “casting couch.” But there were a lot of gay studio execs in Hollywood, and abuse of power is not strictly a heterosexual phenomenon.
Several male actors allude to their harassment/casting-couch experiences in this article.
I don’t take salacious glee in this topic. Men or women being harassed or pushed into casting couch performances is wrong.
I don’t think anyone here is arguing that.
I’ve read several books about the gay and lesbian communities in Hollywood back in the days of the Moguls. The Moguls themselves were flamboyantly heterosexual, but some craft areas like costume design and props were places that tolerated and therefore accumulated gays as long as they kept on the down low, and many actors and actresses were gay or bisexual.
I don’t recall incidents of explicit casting couch equivalences. But any small community inside a larger one will tend to favor people in their crowd and as one would expect some younger members got into favor by being sexually available. Those opportunities could have been enthusiastically embraced, cynically taken, or acts of desperation and probably were a mix of all three, given humanity. I wouldn’t say those acts were as viciously exploitative as the casting couch, though.
Uh…did anyone?
I do recall a book saying that the casting couch worked for men, too. I read it in the 70s, and it was discussing the studio system.
It makes sense. There would be gay studio executives and gay actors who might try to take advantage. Even a straight actor might decide to give in, hoping for a role.
Sounds like salacious gossiping to me.
Eye of the beholder. :rolleyes:
“Riding the casting couch” also makes it sound like fun, rather than abuse.
And yes, some men have spoken out about it. I’ve no doubt there are a lot more who haven’t. It’s unlikely to be in the same numbers as women who’ve experienced it (purely because there are a lot more men in positions of power in Hollywood and TV, and overall there are more straight men than gay men, so women have more potential abusers in that field than men do), but there will be more than have spoken out about it, and it’s equally despicable.
I’ve never heard of the rumors described by the OP, but Corey Feldman has made vague references to being abused along with Corey Haim when they were child actors.
Sounded like that to me, too. I tried to chalk it up to inadvertent bad wording in the OP.
Certainly didn’t seem to be treating this as a serious issue.
He hasn’t been vague, he just hasn’t really named names. Interestingly, other actors (like Elijah Wood) who have said things affirming his claims have walked back what they said shortly thereafter.
Here is an article from The Atlantic Monthly about allegations against the movie director Bryan Singer.
I hadn’t heard anything about Cavill and the couch but I had read the rumors (which seem possible) that most if not all of his “relationships” with women were of the PR variety. The whole Gina Carano thing especially seemed plausible.
The Bryan Singer parties with young boys stories have been around forever.