The REAL Steve Gray

therealstevegray.com

FIRSTLY, IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED ‘OLD DOGS AND NEW TRICKS’ YET, GODS YOU ARE NOT EVEN A SLOW ADAPTER, LET ALONE A DOUBLE ADAPTER. WATCH IT HERE RIGHT NOW, AND WILL MEET UP FOR THE INTERVIEW IN 5 MINUTES. IF YOU HAVE SEEN IT, FUCK, ISN’T IT GOOD?

JUST BRILLIANT. FUNNY, REAL, GAY, NOT PANDERING, THEY ARE NOT ALL AIR BRUSHED AND ‘WANNA BE HETEROS’, BUT ARE ALL REALLY WELL WRITTEN AND RESONATE ARE REAL MEN. AND DID I MENTION FUNNY AS A FIT? SO BEFORE THE FIRST SEASON STARTS ON JAN 8, I HAD TO TALK TO THE MIND BEHIND THE PROJECT, WHO I AM SURE WILL HAVE HATED THAT I CALLED HIM THE STAR, LEON ACORD…….

FIRSTLY, HOW ARE YOU DOING LEON? AND WHAT IS YOUR ‘BACKSTORY’?

I’m great!
I was born and grew up in Indiana, but escaped to California pretty quickly. I lived in San Francisco for about 20 years, working constantly as an actor, averaging about three plays a year and almost as many films. But when I moved to LA in 2007, the work really slowed down for me, and I thought, “Oh, god, I really have to take action here!” And that’s what prompted me to write the show.

HOW LONG HAS ‘OLD DOGS’ BEEN SIMMERING IN YOUR MIND?

I had always wanted to do a show about gay men who actually spoke and behaved like gay men, but I didn’t have a specific show in mind until I sat down and created these characters. Once I did, the show began to write itself very quickly.
Plus I’m a huge fan of traditional, three-camera sitcoms so it took a while to let that go and move into the future.

SO, WHAT HAPPENED THAT FINALLY MADE YOU WRITE THE PIECE?

By the summer of 2009, Los Angeles had really worn me down, and I went back home to Indiana for two months. It was to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, that maybe it was time to give up acting and have a real life. I found myself without internet access and cell phone reception, so I had a lot time on my hands. I started sketching out the characters and the whole show kind of exploded in my head, and I pounded out 12 episodes in two months. Before I knew it, I had created this series. I came back to Los Angeles with a renewed mission in life.

therealstevegray.com

Well, the show is, in a way, a response to the way gay men have been portrayed on network television. They are homogenized, watered down. I hear the gay characters on Brothers and Sisters could be wicked, but for the most part, gay men are always heroic and long-suffering and a bit bland and tragic. If they are sexual, then they have to be funny. If, god forbid, they are ‘of a certain age,’ then they are noble beyond belief. And they almost always only exist in relation to the lead characters—the brother, the co-worker, the neighbor. I wanted to do a show where gay men were the leads, where they spoke like gay men, and found themselves in the type of situations that they would talk about with their gay friends. I wanted characters that made mistakes, who didn’t ‘act their age,’ who weren’t always noble, who had sex and didn’t have to pay a price or seek redemption

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Besides, I’ve always felt the more specific something is, the more universal it becomes as a result. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how many women have embraced the show.

therealstevegray.com

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO TO WRITE AN EPISODE?

Initially, each episode took about two to three days to draft. But the writing never stops. I never stop tinkering to streamline, to condense the show as much as possible, to mine the humor, to incorporate ideas the actors bring – usually right up until we start shooting. We cram a lot into five minutes. We’re like the Moonlighting of web TV, and a lot of dialogue ends up on the cutting room floor simply due to time constraints. So I try to be as concise as possible. And our director, Arvin Bautista, has been really helpful in helping me do that.

WERE YOU WRITING THE ‘REAL FAB FOUR’ WITH FRIENDS IN MIND, OR JUST WRITING THE CHARACTER?

For character. I did sort of hear actor Patrick Bristow’s voice in my head initially for Brad. But while he loved the scripts, he was a little leery of playing such a sexual sportsman—and instead is coming aboard as Nathan’s shrink, Dr. Keebler. It’s funny, I thought Brad would be the toughest part to cast, but several actors, including some friends, really lobbied for the part. In the end, I think it is perfectly cast—David Pevsner, Curt Bonnem and Jeffrey Patrick Olson are amazing actors. Oh, I did create the part of Lydia Lasker, Nathan’s girl Friday, specifically for my friend, cabaret star Amanda Abel. Early on, I felt we needed a female presence on the show occasionally, and created Lydia with Amanda in mind. And another friend, Ryland Shelton, was cast as Damian, a 25-year-old aspiring actor and Nathan’s love interest, long after it was written. We had trouble casting that role when, suddenly, it occurred to me that I’d worked with an actor who’d be perfect. And he is.

DO YOU THINK THE ‘TIME’ OF INTERNET ENTERTAINMENT HAS ARRIVED?

I think it’s still in its infancy, its ‘time’ is still ahead. It kind of reminds me of how people must have thought of TV in the late 1940s. You had all these people from film and radio curious about its power, but not quite sure how to utilize it to its fullest. It took time to find working models, just like now with internet. But it’s great to work in a medium where, unlike elsewhere, the numbers are consistently going up. And the idea of artists creating their work without needing the approval of studios or networks—it’s democracy in action. And you can explore subject matter the networks won’t touch. Our show would never exist, in its present state, on network TV.

IS WEST HOLLYWOOD REALLY ‘THAT GAY’? OR HAVE YOU ‘GAYED’ IT UP FOR THE SHOW.

Hahaha!! Well, parts of it are even much more gay than our show! There’s a one-mile strip down Santa Monica Boulevard, where we shot the last sequence of the pilot, which reminds me a lot of the Castro District in San Francisco. Bars, underwear shops, gay, gay, gay. The most luxurious Starbucks you’ll ever see. But even the parts that aren’t as gay are still pretty flashy. The Sunset Strip is in WeHo. There’s a lot of show business in WeHo, and a lot of families. It has its own government, separate from LA, and is progressive and politically correct to the point of absurdity. Fur was recently outlawed, as is smoking anywhere in public. We have a running gag in the show that Nathan can never actually light a cigarette anywhere.

WHY HAVE GAY RIGHTS BECOME SUCH AN ISSUE RIGHT NOW IN THE STATES?

It’s the last accepted form of bigotry, the last grasp of the old guard, the one last thing that make many people feel superior. I think it’s also a social/class thing. So many of these older straight folks have a “have”/”have not” attitude. Marriage is the one last thing that keeps them out of the “have not” category. If you give that right to everyone, there’s nothing left to make them feel ‘superior’ or entitled. Does that make sense? The idea of true equality is truly terrifying to a lot of people, I think. They don’t want to be equal, they want to be superior.

DO YOU THINK THEIR IS A REASON RIGHT WING RELIGIONS ARE USING HOMOS AS A FOCUS OF SO MUCH OF THEIR HATE AT THE MOMENT?

Well, fear is a classic technique of control. There’s no better way to rally a group than with a common enemy. But the thing we have to remember, Steve, is that the ‘Christians’ who espouse these beliefs aren’t really Christians at all. The basic cornerstone of Christianity is love and compassion without judgment. These people forget that. They’re quick to quote scriptures that support their bigotry, but they forget all the scriptures that talk about love, about acceptance.
My grandmother was a true Christian, a wonderful woman who lived her life as an example. If you asked her, she’d talk about it but she never preached or judged. She loved me, never tried to ‘save’ me. She even met one of my boyfriends and couldn’t have been nicer to him. It really kind of infuriates me when people use ‘Christianity’ as a reason to exclude. As they say, even the Devil can quote scripture. Those people are the antithesis of Christianity and are killing this country.

OK, I TOTALLY FUCKING LOVE THE MAN. LOTS. AND JUST CANNOT WAIT FOR THE FIRST SEASON OF ‘OLD DOGS AND NEW TRICKS’. STARTS JAN 8, AND YES, I SHALL BE POSTING EVERY EPISODE. AFTER THE HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT OF ‘HUSBANDS’ BEING SO SIMPLISTIC AND MADE FAR MORE FOR STRAIGHT WOMAN WHO HAVE NEVER FISTED THAN US, ARE SO READY AND EXCITED ABOUT A GAY SHOW I CAN ACTUALLY RELATE TO.

therealstevegray.com

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