Mr. McDonald...

I guess you guy live and die by web hits, and that's why the endless flogging of this "story." Still it's starting to come off more as self-promotion and opportunism than a genuine attempt to shed light on an issue.

Have you asked Mr. Holland for clarification? My guess is that would let the air out of this "scandal" altogether. Either way, he is not one of the bad guys. He is a man who has done endless work for gay causes who said one unfortunate thing while helping yet another gay cause by speaking on an Outfest panel.

There are plenty of real ones out there; we don't all need to form a circular firing squad over nothing. Us lefty types are notorious for allowing petty infighting to render us less effective. So are you out to help gay actors here, or just yourself?

I know what I'm starting to think.

Hi Matt...or is it Richard Day?

The closet in Hollywood is an important, gay rights issue. That's why I've been covering this every day--I didn't want it to die a quick death in the blogosphere. And if you know anything about me and my work, you'd know that "self-promotion" or "view hits" never enters my mind. That gave me a good laugh when I read that, but I want it to be known for the record. As evidence, read my work on gay issues for LA Weekly over the past two years. As a gay man working for a "straight" publication, I've been trying to bring these issues to a wider audience than just the gay community.

Lastly, you obviously haven't noticed, but there's a certain arc to the posts that expands out and, by today, goes into the bigger questions of homophobia in Hollywood and what actions can be taken to stop it. If you put all of those posts together, it would almost resemble a long article.

All my best,
Patrick Range McDonald

It is Richard and I will take laughs however I can get them, but I do apologize for questioning your motives. Obviously you would not be writing this blog if you did not care about gay causes.

But you are being a little shrill. With every reiteration of the story your editorial asides gin up the supposed outrage rather than give Holland any benefit of the doubt.

The gay establishment “appeared hesitant to say anything critical of the director.” It couldn’t be that they don’t believe anything critical of him.

Holland “does NOT say he will stop advising gay male actors to ‘stay in the closet.’” You seriously believe he spends his days running around telling actors that?

Kristen Schaffer correctly noting that coming out is still a challenge means she’s “wishy-washy?” She could also simply have more nuanced views than what I gather to be your own.

Holland’s notorious sentence must be his idea of “how things should be fixed in Hollywood” because minutes earlier on a wide-ranging panel that was the question posed.

You seem this past week in your many posts to be either deliberately avoiding or simply oblivious to his most likely meaning: If you want to be a successful actor in Hollywood (which is to say a star), you are better off in the closet than not. I would suggest that you are also deaf to his likely subtext: That state of affairs is messed up. Why else state it so intentionally provocative a way?

What I would ask of you moving forward on this story is that you extend to Holland the same consideration you have just asked me to extend to you: Look at who the man has been to the gay community outside this one instance and draw your conclusions about him -- and his likely meaning -- from the larger picture that emerges.

I think you will come to see that many of the toxic ideas you have extrapolated from his sentence and ascribed to him are laughable too, or would be if in doing so you weren't tarring a good man's name.

If you are as you say concerned with the bigger question of homophobia in Hollywood then move on to THAT. Holland might even be a good interview on the subject.

Have you, throughout all of this, tried to contact him?

Hi Richard,

I think we have a fundamental disagreement about a few things, but I always read critiques of my work with an open mind, consider what's being said, and see if I can improve in one area or another. So I'll think about everything you wrote. Thanks for the input, and thanks for reading all of those posts. There will be a longer article on this issue in LA Weekly next Thursday.

Take care,
Patrick

It is certainly interesting for me to read that post. Thanks for it. I like such themes and anything that is connected to this matter. I would like to read more soon.