This week's LA Weekly is a must read.
The Secret Lives of Queer Leading Men, penned by Patrick Range McDonald, tackles the subject of coming out gay in Hollywood.
The story centers around Howard Bragman, a noted publicist, and his experiences of helping some gay actors and athletes come out of the closet, think Mitchell Anderson and John Amaechi.
McDonald composes that Bragman is not merely helping gay actors to form sensible plans for going public. The gay guru of Hollywood, Bragman is in fact facing down the U.S. film industry on its insistence that gay actors remain in the closet.
The publicist hasn’t brought out an A-list, gay male actor — yet. But Bragman says that day is coming, and after the first superstar decides to reveal himself, a fundamental shift in American acceptance of gay leading men may not be far behind. He’s currently working with a famous musician who’s still closeted from the public, but who will come out next year. And the manager of one major movie star approached Bragman a year ago and asked about his client’s possibly going public, but the actor still refuses to pull the trigger.
Having read many times that people are more likely to accept gays and lesbians if they know one, “that always stuck with me,” Bragman says. After he helped [Bewitched star Dick] Sargent to go public, he realized something else: “What I learned in Dick’s case was that it really made a difference in his career. He started getting movie offers and big magazine stories. Coming out can be used as a marketing tool.”
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