HHH: Hunky Hustler Shocks Cannes; Scouts/Mormons Split; Austin Bomber’s Grindr Secret

Was the Austin bomber gay? An actor talks onscreen nudity at Cannes; and the LDS and Boy Scouts call their bromance off forever.

Closeted Bomber

He was on Grindr.

Investigators are still parsing through the life of 23 year-old Mark Conditt, the self-confessed Austin bomber whose explosive devices killed two in March. Conditt’s spree of terror ended when he blew himself up in his car as police were closing in.

Now comes the news that the bomber who police have called “a very challenged young man” was actually on Grindr chatting with men. No one knows yet whether he was calling them out for their “unnatural” predilections as he had written previously in public forums. The possibility does exist that he was flirting with them, although there’s not yet any evidence that he’s met any.

There’s still much to piece together. All that’s known right now is that Conditt lost his manufacturing business job last summer and withdrew, sometimes spending weeks at a time in his room. Since his roommates thought he was gay and declined to interact with his family, investigators are now trying to ascertain whether he might have been gay as well.

Getting Naked

Sauvage director Camille Vidal-Naquet knows what his audiences want at the Cannes Film Festival: skin, and plenty of it.

Vidal-Naquet’s latest effort premiered at the French fest this week and features flesh in abundance — courtesy of a plotline that revolves around a 22 year-old male prostitute. And, as he tells Vulture reporter Kyle Buchanan, “I have always admired the way Paul Verhoeven directs the actors and leads them to this shamelessness with their bodies.” In the director’s words, “Bbodies are just a uniform they wear, and they don’t care.”

Such sentiments were not lost on BPM alumnus Félix Maritaud, the lead at the center of Sauvage. Buchanan describes his performance as exposed “in every way, as Maritaud is astonishingly vulnerable or unclothed in just about every scene of this sexually frank film. Whether he is navigating a threesome with a disabled client, collapsing on a street corner, or literally throwing himself at the man he carries a torch for.”

Maritaud told Buchanan: “I had to give my whole body to make this guy live.”

No Boy Scouting

The Mormon church and the Boy Scouts of America are ending a partnership that goes back more than a century.

The Scouts and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have issued a joint statement stating that because the church’s membership is expanding beyond US borders, the LDS faithful is feeling “the need to create and implement a uniform youth leadership and development program that serves its members globally. In so doing, it will be necessary for the Church to discontinue its role as a chartered partner.”

In its place, the church plans to launch a new youth development program for boys and girls in 2020. Until such time, they say, “the intention of the Church is to remain a fully engaged partner in Scouting for boys and young men ages 8-13 and encourages all youth, families and leaders to continue their active participation and financial support.”

While the release doesn’t specify what caused the rift, the Scouts and the LDS church have clashed over values in recent years — particularly after the Scouts decided to include openly gay troop leaders. The announcement also comes less than a week after the Boy Scouts announced it would be changing its name to Scouts BSA, promoting its decision last year to welcome girls into the program for the first time.

At the moment, Mormons make up a disproportionately large part of the Boy Scouts membership and as such the church has also been Scouts biggest domestic sponsor. According to the Associated Press, “Mormon boys who will be leaving represent about 18.5 percent of the 2.3 million youth in the organization.”

Meanwhile the Scouts are keeping a stiff upper lip and remains “confident that many LDS Scouting families will go on to enjoy Scouting for years to come. … For LDS families who want to continue the tradition of Scouting beyond 2019, the BSA will ensure a smooth transition to community-sponsored units that will welcome youth previously served by LDS-sponsored units.”