Tim Curry honored at otherwise useless Tony Awards fag-fest

Tim Curry is alive, and, well...that's it. He's alive.

So thank you "Tony Awards" for getting him into some frightful motorized wheelchair and giving gawkers a look. If it's lifted his spirits, and it speeds his recovery, it'll have been worthwhile.

IF I'M BEING HONEST, the Tony Awards is just a preening clique of hen-party faggotry. "The stage" has become an insular world of petty egotism. It promotes the continued haughtiness of "upper class and rich" people vs the great unwashed. After all, my dear, if you can't afford the $100 or $200 to sit in a thehhhh-tehhh to watch drag queens and hear brassy music and tell everyone how great "Kinky Boots" or "Hairspray" was you ahh nothing, dahhhhhlling.

One reason the Tony Awards is the least-watched awards program is few have seen the shows. Aside from some freak casting (specifically, movie star pretty boy in "The Elephant Man") most people have no idea who these Broadway stars are. Put it this way, Nathan Lane had NO line at his recent book signing. Great as she is, most people have no idea who Chita Rivera is. Or Mary Louise Wilson.

Broadway has tried, limp-wristedly, to help the poor via the notorious TKTS line. This is where students and cheapskates line up in order to snag leftover seating. Very few Broadway shows are 100% filled, so these people get a "break" by filling, at half price, bad seats otherwise going unsold. Big deal.

I've seen great moments in theater. I caught a flying gladdy from Dame Edna! I was moved by a revival of "Man of La Mancha." I probably shouldn't admit it, but I kind of liked the spectacle of the horrible gnome's "Phantom of the Opera," even if it did have only one decent song in it. I even saw "Lennon: The Musical" and the Twyla Tharp nonsense adaptation of Billy Joel songs. And I've seen great actors do great things, including the few surviving elders such as Rip Torn and Christopher Plummer. But...a lot of theater is just a lot of hooey.

Theaters are so unpleasant in these post 9/11 days, that everyone's visually searched at the door and it's no longer easy to sneak in, or if one has a bad seat, use intermission to go scurry to a good empty one. The matrons are on the prowl.

Back to Tim. No, I didn't see "Spamalot" when he was in it on Broadway. I had more than enough of the fucking "Holy Grail" without witnessing a fucked up musical stage version of it. I did interview him years ago, and I found him an intelligent, interesting guy, and not at all poofy. His rock albums were pretty fucking campy, but he wasn't. In fact, he was trying to distance himself from "Rocky Horror" by, at least, not doing any drag-type songs. "Allan" was pretty gay, and "I Do the Rock" was absurd.

Anyway...I did enjoy those albums and it was a shame they didn't really do much business. A "best of" CD was almost instantly in the bargain bin. It was nice to see him maintain a long career, and it was terrible to know that health problems had gotten in the way.

Since he was at a "presenters" function, not the actual Tony Awards broadcast, most people have no idea how "compromised" his speech is, to say nothing of his mobility. Hopefully he'll continue to improve, as Kirk Douglas and Patricia Neal and others did. Hopefully, like Neal, his speech will fully return or return enough for him to land ordinary roles that don't have people wondering what's wrong.

Getting a look at Curry (as opposed to ordering curry) was the only good thing about the hype-o-hoopla of a night saluting mostly pretentious plays and revivals of tired musicals.

Theodore Bikel, Alfred Molina and some guy named Joe Morton were also given lifetime achievement awards at a private "function" and not at the televised event. After all, by definition, you have to be OLD to get a "lifetime" honor. So the TV broadcast spotlight was for all the fine young men who don't need Viagra. Stuck up buncha pricks!