Dell Dude On The Cover Of This Week's HX

[ValleyDwellerNorth]

http://img2.uploadimages.net/291390BenCurtis.jpg

 

Dudes, I still think Ben Curtis is hot. Here is the article from HX. Enjoy.

VDN

 

Go west with Joy, a bittersweet theatrical Valentine exalting first gay love

Text by Brandon Voss

Photography by Troy Phillips for HX

 

In 1994, sappy romance saturated the media. Elton John wondered if you could feel the love tonight. All Sheryl Crow wanted to do was have some fun, but Boyz II Men kindly offered to make love to you. He wasn’t a smart man, but even Forrest Gump knew what love was. Yet while O.J. Simpson proved that love could turn ugly, sweet gay love blossomed at U.C. Berkeley, the setting for Joy, the poignant, hilarious and sexy queer romantic comedy by popular San Francisco playwright John Fisher, now making its New York premiere at The Producers Club. “In ’94, every play about gay sexuality was about AIDS,” Fisher recalls, more than 10 years after Joy’s successful West Coast run. “I thought it was important to create something that wasn’t about gay people dying - which is not to say that’s not an important subject, but a lot of gay people weren’t dying. People thought of gay sex as a weapon - like your dick was a gun. I wanted to write a love story.”

 

Told in flashbacks with characters often addressing the audience directly and expressing their emotions through gorgeously sung musical standards such as “Someone to Watch Over Me” and “I’ll Be Seeing You,” Joy focuses on Paul, a flamboyantly gay alpha male who jeopardizes his idyllic first love affair with his obnoxious homo- centric outspokenness and stubborn self- involvement. “Real gay people are bitchy and argumentative and in your face,” Fisher says. “On TV they’re so nice and clean and wholesome. That’s why gay theater still has to be outrageous.”

 

Joy’s director Ben Rimalower first caught Fisher’s celebration of gay life and love as an impressionable 18-year-old Berkeley freshman just bursting out of the closet. “It was such a seminal experience for me,” Rimalower says. “It felt so amazing to see these gay characters as the heroes, the protagonists of the story. There was nothing of that shameful tradition of how gay people had been represented. They were hip and cool and smart and funny and interesting and quirky. Watching them fall in love was so romantic and moving - unlike anything I’d seen before.”

 

In fact, Rimalower felt so sentimental toward that original production that he chose not to relocate the play’s setting to Manhattan or usher the action into the new millennium for its New York run. “This play is about nostalgia. It’s personal to me because my time of joy is San Francisco in 1994, but it’s really about that time of joy for anyone, whatever year or place it happened to be.”

 

One thing that did change was the play’s title, formerly The Joy of Gay Sex. “You can’t know the hours of discussions and anguish and hysterical fights we had over that title,” Rimalower reveals. “But we’d like a long commercial run Off-Broadway, and there are some people who would really love the play, but who would never go see something called The Joy of Gay Sex.” Fisher also hopes to reach a broader audience: “The idea is not to scare people off initially. Once they’re in the door, they’ll find out what it’s really about.”

 

Rimalower has assembled an attractive, fresh- faced cast of up-and-coming talent to spread the Joy including Becca Ayers, Harris Doran, Gavin Esham, Gregory Marcel, Brian Patacca, Christopher Sloan, Sheridan Wright and Bare’s Natalie Joy Johnson. “I was looking for people we could fall in love with,” he says. Cast member cutie Ben Curtis, who achieved pop- cultural iconic status in the late ’90s as television’s goofy-grinned “Dell Dude,” has emerged as Joy’s poster boy, making promotional appearances at local gay clubs and events such as HX Connex. Though Curtis has a girlfriend, the homosexual attention doesn’t faze the young star.

 

“My gay friends started taking me to drag shows when I was 17, really breaking me in,” Curtis recalls. “Besides, gay men have been a huge part of my following for a long time. At first I was a little freaked out by some of the fan web sites, but I’m very flattered by it.”

 

Currently a senior at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Curtis plays Christian, a somewhat ambiguous and immature boytoy still exploring his sexuality. “Christian sleeps with everybody, basically,” Curtis says. “He’s a little closeted, but really starts to come out of his shell when he’s inebriated or drugged up.” Considering both his father and sister are openly gay, the young actor had no qualms sashaying into such an unabashedly queer role. And though he’s prepared for inevitable wagging tongues, Curtis openly frowns on the term “straight.” “I know a lot of people are expecting me to come out, but I’m like, ‘We’re all out!’” Curtis says, laughing. “I think everyone’s bisexual. I prefer women, but I think everyone’s beautiful.”

 

Now 41 years old, playwright Fisher has new hope for the foolish young characters he created over a decade ago. “People always say, ‘This is gonna seem so much less dramatic when you’re older,’ or ‘You’re gonna be so embarrassed about what you did,’” he says, offering wisdom to future generations of lovesick gay college kids. “I’m like, ‘Oh, bullshit.’ You can’t live for the future; you just gotta find your way there. But, for Christ’s sake, it gets easier. I mean, it’s still a total day-to-day pain-in-the-ass, but, you know, I guess from a larger view, it’s easier.”

[Guest ReturnOfS]

Yum :9

[Skyyguy]

Yum. Must see show!

[JT Brooklyn]

Looked so Cute in his "DELL" ELF Outfit..To bad he didn't do a longer run with his Commercials. I had read that was due to his 'Grass" Bust, in Downtown NYC. Glad to see his Career is moving on. He is a Cutie... :+ :+ :+

[arthur]

The Dell Dude is going off-Broadway. Ben Curtis will appear as good-time party boy Christian in "Joy", a comedy by John Fisher about seven friends and their romantic entanglements. The play, which is set over the course of a year in San Francisco, opens August 14 at the Actors' Playhouse in Greenwich Village. http://www.joytheplay.com.

ag

[jackhammer91406]

Dude, I'm getting a Dude. Wish I was in NY.