Out Spotlight

Today's Out Spotlight was a singer, songwriter, composer, author, and AIDS activist. He was a significant architect of the response to the AIDS crisis in the United States. Today's Out Spotlight is Michael Callen.

Michael Callen was born April 11, 1955 in Rising Sun, Indiana.

First diagnosed with "Gay related immune deficiency" (GRID) in 1982, Callen quickly became a leader in the response to the epidemic. He was a founding member of the People With AIDS Self-Empowerment Movement among other organizations, and he testified before the President's Commission on AIDS and both houses of the United States Congress.

In 1983, he co-authored the book How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach, which outlined the tenets of safe sex, developed in collaboration with Richard Berkowitz and Dr. Joseph Sonnabend. In 1990, he wrote Surviving AIDS, which received an Honorable Mention from the American Medical Writers Association.

He was frequently seen on television talking about AIDS with appearances included Nightline, Good Morning America, 20/20, and The Phil Donahue Show. He alsp wrote for several newspapers and magazines, including the Village Voice, The New York Native, and Outweek. Some of his articles were included in the collection "Surviving and Thriving with AIDS" published by the People with AIDS Coalition in 1988. He also appeared in German filmmaker Rosa Von Praunheim's 1990 film Positiv - Die Antwort schwuler Männer in New York auf AIDS.

Callen openly questioned the HIV theory of AIDS and was especially critical of AZT monotherapy when it was first introduced: "The HIV paradigm has produced nothing of value for my life and I actually believe that treatments based on the arrogant belief that HIV has proven to be the sole and sufficient cause of AIDS has hastened the deaths of many of my friends."

In the early 1980s, Callen was in a gay and lesbian four-piece band called "Lowlife", playing piano and keyboards, singing, yodeling, and twirling a baton.

He was a founding member of the gay male a cappella singing group The Flirtations, with whom he recorded two albums. He also had a solo album, Purple Heart, which a review in The Advocate called "the most remarkable gay independent release of the past decade." During the last year of his life, he recorded over 40 songs; Legacy, a 2-CD album of 29 of them, was posthumously released by Significant Other Records in 1996.

In partnership with Oscar winner Peter Allen and Marsha Melamet, he wrote his most famous song, "Love Don't Need a Reason", which he sang frequently at gay pride and AIDS-related events around the country.

In 1993, he appeared in the films Philadelphia (as part of The Flirtations) and Zero Patience (appearing in drag as "Miss HIV", a singing virus)

Callen died of AIDS-related complications, December 27, 1993, in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 38.

Expressway

Following Jake all these years, one of the best part of film festivals could be the press conferences, and what makes them so good are all the expressions shots they capture of the dimpled dude.

 I have no idea what point you are trying to make.

 Moi?

My hairstyles do I have names for  them? 

 Long  - there's "my little pony"

 Short - Right now this is the Gyllentickle.

 I guess you could go with cerulean to describe my eyes.  I would go with  azure.

 I have no idea what you are talking about, is that aboot?

 You, yeah you,  you want to bring that note you're trying to pass up here, mister.

 I might do my hands like The Donald, but I will not do the hair for Demolition

 Well it's like a plane it go



All good.  But what about a grin?  He gives those too.

Talk about turning  back TIFF time

Canadian Goose

Grey Goose was excited to party with Jake at TIFF

Jake at a party with Grey Goose ....

Whoda' thunk?

 

 

 

Even Grey Goose knows it's Austin Friday

In A Flash

Jake was spotted hopping into a cab into a couple of days ago,

And it's kind of familiar

Check out that flash of leg

Not sure if there is much of chance of him flashing ankles now that he's  in Toronto at TIFF. 

But then you never know.  Things could get crazy at one of EW.com party that Jake is one of the special guests.  Or at the movie's after party at Soho House.

Remember this is Toronto.

Nightcrawler premieres Friday night.

Also in Toronto this week will be Jake's future director and castmate for Demolition.  Deadline is confirming that Naomi Watts will star opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in Demolition.

 The movie is the story is of a "young investment banker struggling to understand his emotional unraveling after the tragic death of his wife. Suddenly a woman he meets in a chance encounter changes his life forever."   Filming begins September 15 in New York City.

Naomi will be in TIFF promoting her new movie and Demolition's director Jean-Marc Vallee is also at TIFF with his new film, Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon.  

Hellou

Aka... Getting to know Lou

In an piece in the NY Times we are finding out more about Lou Bloom in Nightcrawler.

Louis Bloom was based on the real life independent journalists who cover the dark side of the night in LA,  but Lou has a touch of New York to him.  Gilroy told the times  that "he had become fascinated years ago with Arthur Fellig, the New York news photographer, known as Weegee, who in the mid-20th century perfected the art of chasing emergency calls in pursuit of stark and timely images."

Gilroy went on to say that Fellig's LA contemporaries would  "range nightly through hundreds of square miles in the Los Angeles area, shooting video for television outlets."

"Howard Raishbrook, whose RMG News was once featured on the reality television show “Stringers: LA,” is one of those; and he eventually became Mr. Gilroy’s guide and technical adviser."

 Gilroy told the paper that he chose not to judge Lou but  treat him "like a creature in “an animal documentary, where animals are struggling in the wilderness to survive.”

Some of the descriptions of Lou include, intense, driven, off-kiltered, odd, hungry even feral,  for many the word sociopath might come to mind. But not to Jake.

“People could call him a sociopath, but I wouldn’t at all. I would call it the birth of an artist. It’s poetry to him.”

That poetry is how Lou "works his way into the heart of television news and crime journalism with little worry about the rights and wrongs of his hunt."

 “If you see me, you’re having the worst day of your life.” 

Nightcrawler premieres this Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The Hunger Games

Before the premiere of Nightcrawler at TIFF this Friday, Jake has spoken to the Bible of the entertainment industry,  Variety, about the movie and about the journey of becoming Lou Bloom, "a fast-talking sleazeball who chases ambulances to catch footage of accident victims on his camcorder. Like Michael Douglas in “Wall Street,” he’s a self-starter who will do anything to succeed."

As OMG has seen over the years there has been a new direction for Jake, and the new narrative is that he made a "professional U-turn",  leaving "behind popcorn movies like “Prince of Persia” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” and decided he wanted to work only with directors who pushed him out of his comfort zone".
Tom Ortenberg, CEO of Open Road Films comment that “one of the interesting things about these roles that Jake has taken is that they are darker, but still commercial”.

Nightcrawler fits right into this new imaging,  the dark thriller of the seedy world of after dark journalism in LA found Jake taking on Lou Bloom and dropping the pounds to do so.   When interviewed on the red carpet last year while promoting Prisoners Jake mentioned he dropped about 20 lbs to but this year it's 30.  (Who knew those last 10 were that easy! Just change the 2 to the 3, thanks Jake!)

 Whatever the number Jake did whatever it took  to make himself capture the lean hunger. “I would try to eat as few calories as possible,” he says. “I knew if I was hungry that I was in the right spot. Physically, it showed itself, but chemically and mentally, I think it was even a more fascinating journey. It became a struggle for me.”

On some nights, he wouldn’t eat at all, or he’d only nibble on small pieces of meat, crackers or kale salad."  Jake  "would run 15 miles from his house to the set in the evenings to stay lanky. The inspiration for the fast-talking character came from the animal world. “There was a general sense that he was a coyote, I just wanted to live that way.”

 What is even more interest is that during this Nightcrawler process,  Austin tweeted he found his spirit animal too.  

I found my spirit animal. - 27 August 2013

Wonder how a leopard and coyote would work.  Maybe it would be call a pack. A brood, a bunch, a gaggle.

It could work with the semantics that Jake plays in his interviews.

In a comment about Jake returning to his indie roots with his latest roles, "even if it means taking smaller paychecks."  “I don’t have my own family right now, I have an opportunity to make those choices.”  (Yet he does have his own family, the one pops up in interviews, is said to have relocated for, the family that he chooses to talk about - his mom and his sister's.  You don't think Jake wouldn't play the difference of  "family of my own" and "own family" )

Jake goes on to speak more about creating the creepy photojournalist, working with writer/director Gilroy and his off screen wife Rene Russo and his current work with Antoine Fuqua on Southpaw. 

You can read the whole interview at Variety

North x Northeast?

Jake spotted in Canada!

Wait that's him on a magazine hitting the stands in all across Canada, Wednesday, Sept 3

Jake will be in Canada, for the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday. for the world premiere of Nightcrawler at the Elgin/Winter Theatres on Friday at 9:00 pm.

Where Jake was on this Labor Day is a mystery, although guesses from recent chatter and all the bubbling hubbub point to at least part of the long holiday weekend was in Massachusetts with someone who perhaps likes ice cream.

TIFF begins September 4th and runs through the 14th.