DAVID
MANAGING
Brian
Josh
Josh@davidatlanta.com
Russ Bowen-Youngblood
SOCIAL
DISTRIBUTION
Russ Bowen-Youngblood
Chris Azzopardi
Jamie Booth
George Elkind
NATIONAL
Photos by: Russ Bowen-Youngblood
Gay Dads, Powerful Princesses
By Chris Azzopardi
Photos:
Netflix
Snow White? I don’t know her. These days, the delicate, demure princesses from the earliest days of Disney films are history, replaced by a more socially progressive kind of young lady royalty that puts leadership and skills first, frilly dresses a distant second. In fact, in “Princess Power,” a new Netflix kids show from executive producers Drew Barrymore and “Today” coanchor Savannah Guthrie, the show’s theme song says it all — “no matter what we wear, we’re gonna be right there.”
Based on Guthrie’s bestselling book series, “Princesses Wear Pants,” co-written by parent educator and psychologist Allison Oppenheim, the show is full of girl-power positivity for every kind of kid seeking aspirational get-’er-done determination and the power of friend-family. Those messages, along with a valuable one on self-expression, are a part of the queer-inclusive, pro-feminist fabric of the 14-episode series, which follows princesses of four major fruit kingdoms: Kira Kiwi, Beatrice “Bea” Blueberry, Rita Raspberry and Penelope “Penny” Pineapple. They all love and accept each other as they do their part to change the world by helping their fellow “fruitizens.”
And then, of course, there are the gay dads. Voicing Beatrice’s fathers are actor Andrew Rannells (King Barton) and “Queer Eye” style expert Tan France (Sir Benedict). According to their character descriptions, “While King Barton isn’t as much of a daredevil as his husband and daughter, he’s a brilliant pilot and feels as much at home in a biplane as he does in the kitchen, where he’s a master of bold and surprising
concoctions. … Princess Bea gets her playful streak from Sir Benedict — he has a similar gleam in his eye and an equal love of adventure.”
“I just think that once we went from book to the show, we were trying to expand the world in every way you can imagine,” Guthrie said on Zoom about the decision to make Bea’s parents a same-sex couple.
The show, she says, is designed for any kid looking to find versions of themselves, or who they want to be, on screen. “You don’t have to see a carbon copy of yourself,” she said. “You just have to see an aspect that you can connect with and that tells you you’re accepted. I think that’s really in the DNA of the books and now the shows, and it’s so meaningful to us to be able to do that.”
A show where powerful princesses can change the world and break down gender norms fits right within the motivating force behind some of Barrymore’s most popular work, like “Charlie’s Angels” and “Boys on the Side.” It’s something the actress, who is openly bisexual, is keenly aware of.
“I did grow up on things and characters and humans and themes that made me believe as a young girl that I didn’t have to become a boy, or as a young woman trying to make films like ‘Charlie’s Angels,’ you don’t have to try to be a man or take men down,” she said. “For me, it’s like, ‘How do we love everyone and how do we make everybody feel?’”
For Barrymore, she connected to Guthrie’s books just like she has some of her past characters, including her streetwise fighter character Dylan Sanders in “Charlie’s Angels.”
“There can be things in the creative world and the human realm that just make you feel like you can do it,” she said. “These books seem like that to me. This show, I hope, is that for people. Because that is exactly what happened to me in my life through other characters or roles I got to play or stories that I was told. It is who I am today because of it.”
Guthrie, who’s been the co-anchor of the NBC morning news show “Today” since 2012, felt inspired to become the journalist she is today after watching Katie Couric as a kid, so she gets it. “I didn’t have perfect hair, I didn’t look a certain way,” she says. “I didn’t know that I could make it into this business the way I was. When I saw how Katie did it, I knew that I could. There was a place for me. So even in that little narrow sense, I can’t make a comparison, but I do understand the power of example and the power of seeing yourself and believing that if that person can be there, if they can be accepted, then maybe I could be accepted as well.”
With recent rhetoric from anti-queer conservatives aimed at LGBTQ+ kids, from “Don’t Say Gay” laws to a troubling movement to ban queer-centric books from American libraries, the show — even if it is just a kids show about princesses — conveys a strong, necessary message to those who need to hear it.
“It’s simple: You belong. You’re here too. We see you,” Guthrie said. “I hope that it’s empowering,” she continued. “I hope that it feels embracing. I hope that anybody who watches it feels like
they’re seen, even if it’s just one aspect of themselves that they recognize. Even in the silliest way.”
“I love a platform like Netflix,” Barrymore added. “I love the world you created in the books. There are worlds for everyone that include everyone and trying to speak and reach everyone. [Those are] the things I want to be a part of.”
Certainly, when it comes to queer-inclusive kids content on TV, there are more options than ever — options that better reflect people who live in our real world. Those include two other animated Netflix series: “Ridley Scott,” featuring Rannells as one of Ridley’s dads, and “She-Ra and the Princess of Power,” which also casts queer characters as heroes.
Elsewhere, the animated comedy-horror show “The Owl House” on Disney+ stars a bisexual character named Luz Noceda and features a twodad household and a non-binary character, while Hulu’s “Steven Universe” has been celebrated as one of the queerest kids shows on TV. “I feel like there’s always more work to be done,” Guthrie said regarding LGBTQ+ representation in kids programming. “You can never rest on your laurels. But I think you also have to acknowledge progress and be grateful for that and keep it going.”
Chris Azzopardi is the Editorial Director of Pride Source Media Group and Q Syndicate, the national LGBTQ+ wire service. He has interviewed a multitude of superstars, including Cher, Meryl Streep, Mariah Carey and Beyoncé. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, GQ and Billboard. Reach him via Twitter @ chrisazzopardi.
Love and Marriage
By Jamie Booth
Jason T. Gaffney is lucky to have the best partners in life and work. His life partner is his husband, Matt. His work partner is his real-life father, Ed Gaffney.
“Dad and I started writing together years ago, back with 2012’s The Perfect Wedding, and discovered it was a good fit,” Jason T. explains. In addition to The Perfect Wedding, they have collaborated on the 2019 romantic comedy Analysis Paralysis, and 2020’s Out of Body.
Their latest project, Marriage of Inconvenience, is a series that follows two strangers who enter a witness protection program and must pretend to be happily married in order to hide their identities from the dangerous people who want them dead.
It stars Jason T. Gaffney as Owen, a slacker with anger issues, and David Allen Singletary as Franklin, an obnoxiously rigid English professor who prides himself on his attention to detail. About the only thing the two men have in common is that they’re gay, and people want to kill them. When forced to live together in a very small house as Mr. and Mr. Fulton, they quickly find they share something else in common: they can’t stand each other.
At its core, Marriage of Inconvenience is a story of love and how it can come from the most unexpected of places. We spoke with the series’ writer, director, and star, Jason T. Gaffney, to learn more.
Could Marriage of Inconvenience have been told twenty years ago?
The world is definitely more accepting of a show like Marriage of Inconvenience nowadays, for sure! It really is wonderful to see how far we’ve come. I am optimistic that the younger generation, and the older generation who fought for the rights we have today, are more than ready for a rom-com series like Marriage of Inconvenience. We’ve earned the right for our happily ever after!
What would you say is the funniest moment in the series?
This might be the hardest question I’ve ever been asked in an interview! It’s impossible for me to pick just one moment. I’m a fan of physical comedy, so the slapstick scene where Owen and Franklin attempt to sleep in the same bed for the first time always makes me laugh.
Photo: My Pet Hippo Productions, Dekkoo
You play Owen, a slob with anger problems. Was it a challenge to make his character loveable?
One of my favorite parts about Marriage of Inconvenience is that we flashback to Owen and Franklin’s past to before they are brought into witness protection. Learning where Owen’s anger comes from and the fact that he is actively trying to manage it certainly helps make him more relatable. It’s also really funny to watch someone with a short fuse attempt to control his anger when everything is exploding all around him.
Then there’s Franklin. He, too, is difficult to like with that stick up his butt. Franklin has had a difficult life. He was not handed anything on a silver spoon. He worked hard to get his education and become an English professor. I think that a lot of marginalized people, whether LGBTQ, BIPOC, or disabled, can relate to the idea that Franklin has to be better than everyone else to be viewed as an equal to those with systemic privilege. As the series progresses, Franklin learns to let his guard down a little, and spending time with Owen helps him to enjoy life a bit more.
You and David Allen Singletary, the actor who plays Franklin, have great chemistry. I’ve been best friends with David for about two decades! I’ve wanted to work with him for the longest time, and when I started writing Marriage of Inconvenience, I quickly realized this was the perfect vehicle for him.
In real life, you’re married to Matt, an executive producer on Marriage of Inconvenience
Yes! I’ve been with Matt for over ten years and married to him for just shy of seven years.
Is Matt a Franklin or an Owen?
If I had to pick the character that Matt is most like, it is Franklin, but way less intense! I’m definitely more of the Owen in the relationship, although I have a bit of each character in me. Really, I think there’s a little bit of Owen and Franklin in all of us.
Is it always perfect bliss to live and work with your husband?
Absolutely not! We do a really great job of communicating with each other and finding common ground when there is conflict. In
addition to that, we are both each other’s biggest supporters, and we do what we can to help each other realize our dreams. We are, after all, a team. But perfection is boring, and I’m a huge fan of things that are perfectly imperfect.
What can Marriage of Inconvenience teach us about love and marriage? It’s important to be yourself in a relationship. Also, embrace love and laughter. We all need it in our lives!
Marriage of Inconvenience premieres on Dekkoo on April 6, 2023.
For more information, visit Dekkoo.com.
A Rare and Affecting Depiction of Queer Parents
By George Elkind
In the opening minutes of M. Night Shyamalan’s new thriller “Knock at the Cabin,” a little girl named Wen (played by Kristen Cui) is approached by Leonard, a hulking stranger (Dave Bautista), who offers to help her catch grasshoppers while asking about her life at home and school. Before we meet them, she announces that she has two parents over at the cabin nearby: Daddy Eric and Daddy Andrew — information Leonard, a second-grade teacher, receives with a studied, careful politeness. Her school counselor tells her it’s a good thing, she goes on, but the counselor’s overly enthusiastic tone conveys the opposite impression: that the performance of open-mindedness isn’t sincere.
Minutes later, we meet Wen’s parents: Andrew (Ben Aldridge), a wary, adamant human rights attorney, and Eric (Jonathan Groff), a more temperate but quite protective dad who spends much of the film concussed. It’s not the legitimacy of their queer-led family that’s under threat here – it’s the continued existence of the family itself.
Within minutes of its opening, the family’s woodland cabin is invaded by Leonard and his three companions, who explain that it’s important they find their way inside. After forcing their way through doors and windows, then subduing and tying the couple up, Leonard offers an aggrieved apology as his colleagues tidy up the space, explaining that they didn’t know what kind of family they would meet but that they needed to talk to them nonetheless. The motive for the invasion isn’t hate, they insist, but a revelation: a shared vision that told them, in quasi-religious terms, that an apocalypse would come if the family refuses to sacrifice one of their own by the following morning.
This collision, of one group bound by possible fanaticism with a family whose ties are cemented by deep love, echoes contemporary politics without lending credence to those skeptical of queer parents. The cohesion of the family, joined by stillscrutinized processes of same-sex marriage and adoption, never comes under question, running counter to most depictions of queer couples who choose to raise children, especially young ones.
In fact, depictions of such families in U.S. media, both on TV and in film, still seem quite rare. While watching Shyamalan’s thriller — which has been argued by some to be a conservative work for its sympathetic treatment of doomsaying extremists — I still struggled to think of films that treated queer family structures as matter-of-factly as this
film does. While a movie like “Beginners,” released in 2010, may show a queer parent (and in this case a widower) coming out late in life, and something like 1996’s “The Birdcage” shows familial relations structured by absenteeism, these films pit queerness — in the classic sense of running against the norm — as destabilizing traditional structures of family life.
Far more common is the figure of the queer homewrecker, a character who, in honoring their own needs, threatens or upends longstanding family ties. (In this, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” “Transamerica” and “Transparent” all stand out, suggesting that trans characters remain disproportionately burdened with these associations). Alternatively, there’s the affirmative structure of something like Lisa Cholodenko’s 2010 film “The Kids Are All Right,” which expels an interloper who threatens its key family’s stability, thus affirming its queer family structure with a bill of ultimately good health.
For “Knock,” though, the queerness of the family, the presence of gay parents, is not the issue — but the response to those around them is. Frictions of queer life are acknowledged in both present-tense moments and in flashback, bolstering Andrew’s already justified skepticism of Leonard’s homeinvading troupe.
In this and other ways, “Knock” accounts for social frictions accompanying queer life without letting them take hold of the film’s center. But when they are dealt with, it’s often with an unexpected sense of grace. For Shyamalan, a director not known for subtlety, small notes of truth ring out through shorthand gestures, especially in flashbacks.
In one scene of the couple first meeting Wen abroad, for instance, the couple claim to be in-laws instead of partners; in another, they endure a strained meeting with visiting parents. While these kinds of depictions — of white, cis and gay, financially stable couples in otherwise traditional family structures — could be considered assimilationist in their rhetoric, “Knock” makes clear that they’re not only rare but welcome, particularly when not presented as some ideal, preferred queer path. Instead, the film’s family life is normalized in spite of what they face. In offering a depiction that’s far from tokenistic while hardly being radical, “Knock” provides a testament to what we lack — and proof this should happen more often
Photos by: Russ Bowen-Youngblood
BARS
2 Blake's 227 10 th S t NE
3 Bulldo g s 893 Peachtree S t NE
4 Fr iend s 736 Ponce De Leon Ave NE
6 My Sister’s Room66 12 th S t NE
Dining
9 10th& P iedmon t 991 Piedmont Ave NE
10 Camp ag nolo 980 Piedmont Ave NE
16 G’s M id t o w n 219 10 th S t NE
17 Henr y ’s 132 10 th S t NE
19 L a H acienda 900 Monroe Dr NE
20 Guac y Margys 502 Amsterdam Ave NE
7 X Midtown 990 Piedmont Ave NE fitness
BARS not on map
1 FUTURE ATLANTA 50 Lower Alabama St. SW Suite 180
14 Urban Body Fitness 500 Amsterdam Ave NE spa /bath
15 F lex S p a 76 4th S t N W
BARS
Photos by: Russ Bowen-Youngblood
BARS & CLUBS
MIDTOWN
BLAKE’S ON THE PARK blakesontheparkatlanta.com 227 10th St NE
BULLDOGS 893 Peachtree St NE
FRIENDS NEIGHBORHOOD BAR friendsonponce-atl. com 736 Ponce De Leon Ave NE
MY SISTER’S ROOM mysistersroom.com 66 12th St NE
X MIDTOWN xmidtown.com 990 Piedmont Ave NE
THE T modeltatlanta.com 465 Boulevard SE
CHESHIRE
HERETIC hereticatlanta.com 2069 Cheshire Bridge Road
BJ ROOSTERS bjroosters.com 2043 Cheshire Bridge Road NE
868 Joseph E. Boone Blvd NW
840 Joseph E. Boone Blvd NW
ATLANTA EAGLE 1492 Piedmont Ave NE
FELIX’S 1510 Piedmont Ave NE
THE HIDEAWAY 1544 Piedmont Ave NE
MIXX mixxatlanta.com 1492 Piedmont Ave NE
OSCAR’S oscarsatlanta.com 1510 Piedmont Ave NE
WOOFS woofsatlanta.com 494 Plasters Ave NE
EAST ATLANTA, GRANT PARK & EDGEWOOD
MARY’S marysatlanta.com 1287 Glenwood Ave SE
SISTER LOUISA’S CHURCH sisterlouisaschurch.com 466 Edgewood Ave SE
DINING MIDTOWN
CASA ALMENARA 991 Piedmont Ave NE casa-almenara.com
HENRY’S henrysatl.com 132 10th St NE
LA HACIENDA lahaciendamidtown. com
900 Monroe Dr NE
TUK TUK THAI FOOD LOFT
TUKTUKATL.COM 1745 Peachtree Rd NW
DEKALB
LIPS ATLANTA atldragshow.com 3011 Buford Hwy NE
RETAIL
MIDTOWN
BARKING LEATHER AFTER DARK barkingleather.com 1510 Piedmont Ave NE
CHESHIRE SOUTHERN NIGHTS VIDEO 2205 Cheshire Bridge Rd NE ANSLEY
BOY NEXT DOOR MENSWEAR boynextdoormenswear.com 1000 Piedmont Ave NE, Ste A
GCB & PLEASURES brushstrokesatlanta. com 1510-D Piedmont
Ave. NE FITNESS
MIDTOWN
URBAN BODY FITNESS urbanbody tness.com 500 Amsterdam Ave N
CHESHIRE
GRAVITEE FITNESS graviteeatl.com 2201 Faulkner Rd NE
SPAS/BATHS
ADULT
FLEX SPA exspas.com 76 4th St NW
Dear DAVID
QI am dating a guy, we are totally in love, and this past weekend we took the major step of visiting his parents. We get to the house after he has prepped me about how the parental unit can be a little conservative, and we go inside to meet them – and I am faced with a man that I have definitely had sex with quite a few time when he was ‘in town on business.’
Yeah, totally hooked up with my boyfriend’s dad (before we got together, of course). So, I’m sitting on this huge bombshell, and I don’t know if I should keep quiet or tell my boyfriend because not saying anything feels like I’m betraying him. Help me, what do I do now?
ATalk about having the past come to haunt you! The unfortunate and quite sad thing is that this bombshell could have potentially devastating consequences for you – and all you did was hook up with someone unknowing that he was under the radar. Here’s the thing: You say you are very much in love, and you are taking next and important steps to deepen your connection. On one hand, you could stick your head in the sand and pretend this was all in the past.
A little white lie like this could save your relationship and potentially your boyfriend’s family a lot of conflict. On the other hand, it will be difficult for you to enter this next phase in your relationship, especially since you are taking those big committal steps. Maybe you can feel out the vibe of the family a little bit more – who knows, maybe the whole family is super sexually open-minded and in on the secret! But for now, keep this under wraps under the guise of ‘we all have a past,’ and even his father deserves the discretion he used with you. Now, if he starts approaching you again for sex, that would be your cue to come clean to your boyfriend.
We all have those moments of ‘wait, did they just say that?’
I’m officially at the age where I hate loud and unnecessary noise.
I deeply care for about 5 people in my life and about 200-500 animals on the internet that I’ve never met.
Sorry, can’t meet you after work. I have an avocado at home that’s about to go bad.
So, I was late this morning because I went drinking last night and set my calculator for $5.30.
You think you can hurt my feelings? Sweetie, I’m an overthinker, I hurt my own feelings.
Lucky for you, we compile the best of the best right here on this page. Want to join in on the b*tch session? Submit your own nuggets to info@davidatlanta.com.
You’re into pup play? Honey, we all know that’s just a fashion kink of the moment. It too shall pass.
Scientists have recently discovered a food that greatly reduces sex drive. It’s called wedding cake.
Never trust a big butt and a smile.
