Brokeback's Revenge

By Keith Boykin, in pop culture
Tuesday, March 28 2006, 12:25PM

One of the many highlights of last night's GLAAD Media Awards was the not so surprising selection of "Brokeback Mountain" as the 2005 film of the year. Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee received two standing ovations when he accepted the award and spoke movingly about receiving a GLAAD Award for his film "The Wedding Banquet" many years ago. Although the selection of "Brokeback" was expected, there was a palpable sense of excitement in the audience when the winner was finally announced. What didn't happen at the Academy Awards did happen at the GLAAD Awards.

The GLAAD Awards bring out celebrities, major donors and thousands of people every year to raise millions of dollars for the organization. The last time I spoke at a GLAAD Awards ceremony was years ago in the 1990s in Washington, DC. The awards have changed a lot since then, but I discovered last night that they're a lot more fun now.

On The Red Carpet

I walked the red carpet with my partner Nathan Hale Williams and my beautiful BET co-host Crystal McCrary Anthony, who bumped into the lovely Soledad O'Brien, both of whom were asked by the photographers to re-walk the red carpet together. Meanwhile I literally bumped into Erasure's Andy Bell when I accidentally stepped on his shoes on the red carpet. Oops.

GLAAD knows how to get attention, and reporters really come out to the GLAAD Awards. On the red carpet, I answered questions to everyone from The New York Times to CBS News to New York Magazine, and they all asked me why I came to the GLAAD Awards. "To show the diversity of the LGBT community," I said, or something like that.

Our group was seated at the Tylenol PM table near the front of the room and next to the table with Amanda Lepore, who is described on her own web site as "the number one transsexual in the world." The people at our table threw out some interesting theories as to why Tylenol would serve as such a major sponsor of a gay awards show. We also sat with New York Post reporter Frankie Edozien and Newsweek editor Marcus Mabry, who later accepted a journalism award for Newsweek. Along with Natalie from Tylenol, I think we had six African Americans at our table, making it probably the most colorful table at the event.

Kanye West to Phil Donahue

The event was very well-organized, and I was given a personal assistant for the night who shuttled me around, got me drinks and even checked my coat. When it came time to speak, I was ushered to the holding room for makeup and "hair" and then escorted to the other side of the stage for my entrance, where I waited with the show's host Bruce Vilanch. I had been asked originally to present the Gittings Award to the three new gay television networks, but the program script was changed the day before and I found myself introducing Kanye West instead. No complaints from me.

I love Kanye West, but I also sense that Kanye West loves Kanye West, so I made a little joke about him at the beginning of my remarks. (Note to self: Always know your audience.) I consulted with the official joke writers in the back before I went onstage and we came up with a joke that actually worked well in delivery, much better than the joke I would have told on my own.

Other highlights of the night for me included running into R.J. Cutler, the producer of the controversial new FX show "Black. White.," where black and white people trade places. I first met Cutler when I was on Showtime's 2004 television series American Candidate, which he produced. Backstage before my presentation, Phil Donahue was standing over the teleprompter computer operator watching the process in development when Academy Award-winning actor Michael Douglas walked in with a very thick beard.

But the biggest highlight for me was meeting Andrew Goldstein, the openly gay Dartmouth lacrosse player who came out to his teammates and was profiled on ESPN last year. I was backstage when he received his award so I couldn't speak to him. But I bumped into him after the event and discovered that we had been in the same fraternity (Sig Ep) in college. He and his boyfriend even told me that members of the fraternity had read my speech to the 2000 Millennium March one day in the frat house. Wow! That was a shock. I wasn't even out when I was in college and now the openly gay students in my old fraternity were quoting my words.

Perhaps that is the real significance of the fair and accurate media visibility that GLAAD seeks. It's the nature of the organization that they're going to piss off almost everyone at some point, but it's also important to have a media watchdog in our community. And it's important to have people who serve as a watchdog to the watchdogs.

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