MetroExpress: Your Happy Hour Headlines for March 6, 2018

Written by | Entertainment, Screen

Timothée Chalamet/Armie Hammer

Here’s a quick rundown of all the things you’ll be talking about over happy hour drinks today.

Call Me . . . Maybe

Director Luca Guadagnino can’t stop talking about his plans for the next installment of Call Me by Your Name, which he now says will be built around the film’s original stars, Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer.

As he sees it, the film will be set some five years later than their meeting in Italy — some of the darkest years of the AIDS crisis — and find them traveling the world.

The source material for both films is André Aciman’s novel, which takes place in 1987. Guadagino told The Hollywood Reporter that his imagined first scene in the film would take place in a cinema. “I think Elio [Chalamet] will be a cinephile, and I’d like him to be in a movie theater watching Paul Vecchiali’s Once More, a 1988 film about a man who falls in love with a man after he leaves his wife, which was the first French movie to deal with AIDS.”

Consider last fall’s instant classic to be only an introduction to the characters and their complex interactions over time. (The Aciman novel tracks the pair through 20 years of their relationship.) In Guadagnino’s estimation, “Call Me can be the first chapter of the chronicles of the life of these people that we met in this movie.”

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Who’ll Ru the Day?

The Emmy-winner RuPaul is still fending off criticism of his remarks earlier this month about prohibiting transgender drag queens who take hormones to compete on the show.

Talking to The Guardian, he confirmed he would “probably not” allow a trans woman to compete on the show, despite the fact that a trans contestant, Miss Peppermint, made it all the way to the finals of Season Nine.

Meanwhile, a handful of other competitors queens have candidly spoken about undergoing surgical procedures in order to enhance their femininity prior to competing on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Clearly RuPaul is trying to thread a very delicate needle when he says, “You can identify as a woman and say you’re transitioning, but it changes once you start changing your body. It takes on a different thing; it changes the whole concept of what we’re doing.”

Miss Peppermint was an exception to the rule according to the host, because at the time the show was being taped, she had not received gender reassignment surgery of any type.

As RuPaul explained to the press, “Peppermint didn’t get breast implants until after she left our show; she was identifying as a woman, but she hadn’t really transitioned. We’ve had some girls who’ve had some injections in the face and maybe a little bit in the butt here and there, but they haven’t transitioned.”

What’s followed since has only muddied the water. On Twitter, RuPaul unpacked a line of logic that worked well for some, but left others dismayed when he compared taking hormones as a queen to athletes who enter their events juiced on steroids.

As RuPaul sees it, “you can take performance enhancing drugs and still be an athlete, just not in the Olympics,” he said. At the same time, Ru has also apologized for the apparent insensitivity of earlier comments after being dressed down in the media by such former Drag Race participants as Monica Beverly Hillz and Courtney Act.

The Latest Gus Fuss

While Adam Rippon was making headlines with his harness tuxedo, his new buddy Gus Kenworthy was making ripples elsewhere at the Oscars. He and his squeeze Matt Wilkas were unabashedly seeking to expand their friend base — with out-and-proud singer Ricky Martin and his hunky husband Jwan Yosef.

After both couples bumped into each other at the Academy Awards Sunday, Kenworthy wasn’t completely sated. In an Instagram message, the Olympian asked if they could meet again without klieg lights and a red carpet.

The skier wrote, ‘Us: We were wearing black Ralph Lauren tuxedos, mine had little cowboys on it. You: You were also both wearing tuxedos because… well, because it was the Oscar’s and everybody does. You and your husband stood out though. Partly because you’re both gorgeous but also because you’re literally @ricky_martin & @jwanyosef.”

He furthermore added: ‘The four of us chatted and laughed but then, sadly, got separated in the chaos of the Oscars. My bf and I searched for you both for the rest of the night but never found you again. In town for a week. Let’s connect.”

This may be the most gossipy thing I’ve ever written. Sorry/Not sorry.

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Last modified: February 14, 2019

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