Jackie Chan: Pornstar?
John Travolta: Homo?

The headline here seems to oversell the "pornstar" thing. It's not clear if this movie-- All in the Family -- is actually what we think of as "porn" or just Cinemax-style bump-and-grinding, or even less than that.

John Travolta, meanwhile, dogged by gay rumors all his life, decides to kiss a man on the lips while the papparazzi snaps pictures.

Could just be one of those European things. It's not a tongue kiss or anything.

Either way, hey, I'm a fan. Never got the whole "sexy" thing about him, but I've always found him very likable.

The whispers about Travolta’s sexuality which have plagued his movie career almost from the outset are now reaching a crescendo.

Indeed, one Los Angeles casting director described the photograph as 'an absolute disaster' for the actor.

No wonder the Pulp Fiction and Grease star is said to be seething — not least because the rumours are threatening his position as one of Hollywood’s leading men.

Could the pictures really be proof that one of the movie world’s biggest heart-throbs of the past 30 years has been living a double life strikingly at odds with his family man image?

Suffice to say this is not the most opportune time for the 52-year-old Travolta to be filming his latest role — in which he dresses in drag to play a woman in the oh-so-camp musical Hairspray.

Equally ill-timed for him were reports this week that Jennifer Lopez — his would-be leading lady in the upcoming big-screen version of Dallas — turned down the role of his wife Sue Ellen because she decided Travolta is not 'macho' enough to be the double-dealing JR Ewing.

And if that were not enough to darken his mood, there continue to be wild and fanciful claims that his marriage to actress Kelly Preston was arranged by the shadowy cult-like religion of Scientology, of which he is a leading disciple.

Hardly surprising, then, that Travolta’s PR team at the influential William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills has been holding crisis meetings in an attempt to limit the fall-out.

If you're going to have a beard-wife, might as well make it Kelly Preston. Don't settle for half-measures. Get yourself a full-on bodacious piece of ass.

It may be a "crisis," but I, for one, am just reading about this ten days after the story broke.

Gayness seems to be a dealbreaker for leading men in romantic roles, but I think Travolta could actually break that taboo. After all, gay or not, he's definitely strange, and his strangeness hasn't really held him back all that much.

Has he really played a lot of classic "romantic lead" roles, anyway? I can't think of any off the top of my head. Usually he's in genre pictures in which the romantic plot is definitely of the sub variety.

Thanks to RLW and The Daily Gut.

posted by Ace at 01:02 PM

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