Even More Openly Gay Directors Claim Actors Should Stay Closeted

There's something about Outfest this year that has participants kinda sorta ignoring the "Out" part. First, openly gay director Todd Holland recommended that "young, gay male actors" ought to stay in the closet (oldies, fatties, and ladies need not listen, we're guessing), an assertion he had to walk back days later. Now, The Opposite of Sex director Don Roos is throwing his hat in the ring.

"I don't think actors should be out at the level of press, radio, TV and film," he said on the last day of the festival at a special program entitled, "A Conversation with Don Roos." Roos then explained:

"I can't cast Mel Gibson in a movie," he said. "Who could put Tom Cruise in a movie right now? When I see Tom Cruise, I think of Scientology, jumping on a sofa and getting into a fight with Brooke Shields...I prefer more mystery. I don't want to know about [the actor's] political views, whether they're gay or straight."

Audience members immediately challenged his comments. However, Roos, who was honored 10 days earlier during the opening ceremonies of Outfest with the 2009 Outfest Achievement Award, stood his ground by saying that he feels the fear of homosexuality that exists in American society is firmly ingrained. "I have a deep respect for homophobia [in American society] and I don't think it will ever go away. I don't think actors coming out is going to help end homophobia. I think doctors, teachers and lawyers coming out will end homophobia."

He added that he also feels racism is still deeply ingrained in the fabric of America, "We're a country of bigots." Then he quipped, " I don't want that to go away entirely. We wouldn't be interesting anymore." Program moderator Paris Barclay, an openly gay TV director, joked, "Then we'd be like Canada."

Of course, Roos has no problem tapping into his actors' offscreen lives when it suits him, as he did when he cast real-life ex-lovers Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow in his romantic drama Bounce. While I get what he's saying, the simple fact is that no actor is terribly mysterious in this day and age, and certainly, straight actors' love lives don't function as automatic DQs as he's implying gay ones' would.

Ah well -- I still love The Opposite of Sex (though I'm completely willing to ditch his followup Happy Endings, which saddled its gay characters with weirdly self-loathing, peremptory gay jokes that look like uncomfortable foreshadowing in retrospect).

· 'Gay director Don Roos says gay actors shouldn't come out publically [Notes from Hollywood]