Ask the Flying Monkey! (October 12, 2009)

Have a question about gay male entertainment? Send it to aftereltonflyingmonkey@yahoo.com! (Please include your city and state and/or country.)

Q: Can you please help us get more details on Luke Macfarlane's involvement in a Canadian movie Iron Road? He plays a straight guy who falls in love with a woman who was disguised as a boy and has a total nude scene which is gorgeous and sexy. -- Bclee

A: Who is this, the publicist for Iron Road? You’re a smart one. By getting me to publish your email on AfterElton.com, you should sell at least a few thousand extra copies of the movie.

Charlotte Sullivan and Luke Macfarlane in Iron Road

Iron Road, a $10 million Canada/Chinese production, tells the sad story of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and of the many Chinese workers who were tricked into slavery and lost their lives in the rail’s construction. A Chinese girl dresses as a boy to look for her father, one of the railroad’s workers. Along the way, she has an affair with Macfarlane’s character, the son of a railroad baron.

”I really wanted to do something that was Canadian,” Macfarlane, an Ontario native, told TV Guide (Canada). “Then this came along, and it seemed like the perfect Canadian thing to do. Also, growing up, I watched these great CBC TV-movies, and said, ‘I want to do that!’”

Now I’m sorry to disappoint you, Iron Road publicist, but I feel it’s important to inform my readers that while Luke does seem to have a very brief nude scene, he used a body double for the "good parts" — at least according to Kong Chang over at the fan site LukeMacfarlaneOnline.com, who tells me:

I've analyzed the scene, and yes, it is a body double, as Luke still retains his long underwear during the water scene (you can see the outline of the fabric when he is swimming). Plus Luke has hairier legs than the body double and although the build is very similar, Luke does not have love handles...even small amounts of them either. Though this movie was filmed in 2007 and Luke has buffed up some and lost some weight since (especially his small beer gut), I went through the scenes with a combed brush. What you see of Luke stripping to the long underwear is all Luke, what you see from the underwear scene onward is the body double.

Iron Road publicist, I’d ask you to tell me if Kong is right or not, but I’m certain you’d lie.

Q: Is John Gidding from HGTV's Designed To Sell gay? -- Thomas

A: He is. The 32-year-old TV host was born in Istanbul, Turkey, where he lived until moving to the U.S. for college, graduating with degrees in architecture from both Yale (undergraduate) and Harvard (Masters). He’s also a former model.

And no, I’m not jealous of a resume like that at all, why do you ask?

John Gidding

Q: I got to see Dream Boy (the movie based on Jim Grimsley’s novel of the same name) at QFest (in Philadelphia). The movie was simply fantastic and as good as Shelter! I understand that it has been released in Germany and the UK, but there doesn’t seem to be any information of when it will be released in the US. -- David, Stuck in Traffic on 101/405, California

A: I hope you’re not texting me while driving. You know that that’s considerably worse than driving drunk, right? And I don’t care if the traffic was momentarily at a stand-still. I’m choosing to believe you weren’t texting me.

Wait. You were texting me, weren’t you? How else could you have written me? I’m so not okay with this!

Next page! Actor Lee Pace on making out with another man onscreen.