howtobeterrell:

Do you see this film as sort of validating – for lack of a better word – the ways in which gay men have connected historically, ways that are kind of demonized by some of the more vocal, increasingly conservative quarters of the community?

It’s such a complicated issue, isn’t it? For a long time gay men fought to be seen as different, doing our own thing: This is our lives, this is what we do, accept it. There’s a conservatism that has come into the gay community: We’re just like you, just like everyone else. And maybe some people are and they do want to get married and so on, but that doesn’t mean that other people that don’t wanna get married… [He pauses.] Sometimes, I feel like the straight world is actually hooking onto the idea that they’re quite happy for us to get married because it means, “Whew! They are like us.”

A lot of so-called progressive hetero folks support gay marriage because ultimately it validates them and an institution that validates them and their relationships. It removes the weight of respecting and valuing truly diverse ways of being.

Yeah, it validates them. And now you get this pressure. I’ve got my mum asking me when I’m gonna get married, and I’m like, “Probably never.” 

Look, of course everyone should have the right to get married. But I think people need to remember sometimes that we don’t all need to be the same. There’s thousands of different types of relationships that people can have, whether it’s completely monogamous or it’s not monogamous, or they’re married or they’re single or whatever it is. All of those are valid as long as you are doing what you want to do, and it’s your choice. Our forefathers [he laughs] fought to not be like everyone else, and to be accepted on their own terms. It’s complicated. It’s quite exhausting and there is a point where you maybe do want to be seen like everyone else. [Laughter] 

I hope the film shows that it’s a complex issue. Nobody’s usually on one side or the other. Glen may say, “I don’t want to get married,” but if you listen to him enough then you realize he does want to be in love and he does want some security, and so we’re all just flowing along on this thing of, “Do we want it? Do we not? Security? Freedom? What do I want?”

The main thing is simply to be allowed to come up with your own definitions of security and freedom, which may be in direct opposition to the notion of marriage.

Absolutely. And that’s nothing to do with being gay. A struggle that almost everybody faces is finding that balance between feeling like they’re free as an individual, and having a kind of social safety and comfort. Everyone deals with that. It’s universal.

notime4yourshit:

“I’ve been wanting to do some dramatic work for a while now,” she says, standing out at the Maritime in a purple dress and a leopard-print cardigan and with exuberant hair, “but those opportunities just aren’t available for me because people see me as, you know, a wacky comedian and they think that’s all I can do.” Kim’s agent had to beg just to get her an audition for Pariah. “They were pretty skeptical,” she says, of her playing the mother, Audrey. But “later they revealed to me that they saw one angry black woman after the other, and Dee was right at the point where she was gonna rewrite the role because she felt something must be wrong with the role if nobody is getting the fact that this woman is vulnerable. And she said I brought that to the table.”

Kim, who’s been married for nine years to actor Kevin Knotts, doesn’t have kids herself. “I’m Auntie Mame,” she says. “I think it’s because I come from a huge family that I don’t feel the need. I’ve always had kids to love and to coddle. When I get tired of them, I take them back home.”

Still, she felt immediate compassion for the mother she plays. “My heart just broke for her,” she says. “Audrey’s such a sad and isolated character. Her marriage is dissolving right before her eyes, and she wants to hold onto her little daughter with her piggy tails and her pink sweaters, and she’s got this religious mind-set, so she believes that what her daughter is doing is against God. As misguided as she is, you know, Audrey loves her child. She’s trying to save her child from what she believes is pure destruction. It’s just sad!”

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