Notes in NOLA

Donald Trump!Just as we were starting to recover from his salivating over the 77-year-old criminal defendant’s mugshot, the obsequious Fox News anchor is once again extolling Trump’s convict lewks. Watters mused Monday about the shredded bod that Trump could develop while incarcerated. Stay woke with our briefing while staying informed on all things LGBTQ+ entertainment, life, and more!“Trump is going to come out with a prison body,” he said.

The Mike Douglas Show for a week. During his stint with Douglas, rock’n’roller Little Richard was a guest.Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.The clip is fascinating now to see how gay men in the entertainment industry often hid in plain sight.Watch below.A post shared by Peter Morley (@petermorley_sle)In the clip, Little Richard says he’d looked up to Liberace since he was a little kid.

After Forever, an indie “micro series” about love, grief, and new beginnings.Co-created by Days Of Our Lives writer Michael Slade and star Kevin Spirtas, After Forever builds off their shared soaps experience to create a drama more grounded and human—and distinctly gay.Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.The first season, which premiered back in 2018, introduced us to successful, fifty-something gay man Brian (Spirtas) whose seemingly picture-perfect New York City life crumbles after the sudden loss of his husband Jason (Party Of Five‘s Mitchell Anderson) to cancer.As the narrative jumped back and forth between time, we watched two parallel narratives unfold: both the couple’s final days together and Brian’s attempt to pick up the pieces, surrounding himself with friends and family and throwing himself into his work.Is there life after true love? In the second season, set six months later, we saw Brian make attempts to start fresh, both with a new job and opening himself up to a new chance at love—even as his grief continued to manifest itself in unexpected ways.And now we arrive at After Forever‘s final chapter where Brian comes to the difficult revelation that getting closure means accepting the truth. As he finds himself carrying on conversations with Jason in his head and lashing out at those closest to him, Brian finally decides to seek professional help in the form of therapist Dr.

Annika Pham In its second collaboration with the Marché du Film’s Goes to Cannes showcase strand, Australia’s Queer Screen Mardi Gras Film Festival will unveil four projects and a finished film, all looking for global sales, distribution, top-up financing and festival selection. The five projects to be pitched May 18, will vie for the first €10,000 ($10,700) Goes to Cannes Award.“We set out to curate a selection that embraces a rich tapestry of stories and identities, while also giving prominence to Australian talent,” says festival director Lisa Rose about her program, which “showcases narratives spanning the spectrum of gay, lesbian, pansexual, bisexual, and transgender experience.” For instance, “From All Sides” fearlessly tackles queer sexuality, “a rarity in cinema originating from Western Sydney, says Rose, who also cites “Strange Creatures” and its story about two brothers, one of whom identifies as pansexual, as “a perspective rarely centered in film.”As fresh in its take, the third Australian pic, “Heart of the Man,” “delves into the intersection of First Nations and queer identities, a theme seldom explored in Australian narrative cinema,” says the festival honcho.In a fine example of a queer perspective from another part of the world, the ambitious Indian-U.K./French co-production “Arms of a Man” (“Sabar Bonda”) tells of a city-dweller who falls for a young farmer while grieving his father in rural India.

From Janelle Monáe to Maneskin, here’s our round-up of outstanding LGBTQIA+ talent hitting the stage at Madrid’s Mad Cool Festival this year.