Lance Bass on the Gay Grammys and More

January 31, 2014

Lance Bass on the Gay Grammys and More

We don’t have to worry about how gays will be treated during the Winter Olympics, because apparently there are no gay people in Sochi. At least that’s what mayor Anatoly Pakhomovthinks: Speaking with the BBC, Pakhomov declared “We do not have them [gays] in our city,” he said. He later downgraded his proclamation to “I am not sure, but I don’t bloody know them.”

We guess Pakhomov hasn’t been to Sochi’s two gay bars.

Don’t take his comment as some kind of anti-gay sentiment, though: Pakhomov says gays are welcome at the Olympics, so long as they “respect the laws of the Russian Federation and [don't] impose their habits on others.”

Acclaimed actor Robert De Niro doesn’t discuss his personal life much, but it’ll be front and center in Remembering the Artist Robert De Niro Sr, a new documentary about theRaging Bull actor’s artist father finding its way to HBO this summer.

De Niro Sr., who left his family after coming out as gay, was part of the post-WWII New York art scene that included Jackson Pollack and Lee Krasner—but he never achieved their level of acclaim. De Niro the younger reads aloud from his father’s intimate journals in the doc, and discusses watching him paint when he was a child. “I did this for him,” De Niro said at the film’s recent Sundance screening. “I wanted my younger kids—who were born after he died—to know what their grandfather did. I even kept his painting studio intact so they could see it.”

Initially the project was never intended for public consumption. “Bob wanted to make the film just for his family,” revealed director Perri Peltz. “But then we realized it tells the story not just of Robert De Niro’s Sr.’s work — which is amazing — but the entire art world of the time.”

A major show of Robert De Niro Sr’s work is being planned in New York.

Lance Bass says that last night’s performance of “Same Love,” complete with mass wedding, was historic.

“I thought it was amazing, history was definitely made. The Grammys are one of the biggest stages in the world, and to make such a statement, it was incredible,” Bass told MTV News. “Everyone around the world was watching, and it was exactly the message people needed to see: that love is love.”

The operatic version of Brokeback Mountain officially opens at Madrid’s Teatro Real tomorrow night, with Canadian Daniel Okulitch as taciturn Ennis de Mar and American Tom Randle as lovestruck Jack Twist.

“The whole opera is about a typical kind of impossible situation, a tragic situation,” composer Charles Wuorinen told AFP about the English-language production.”In this case, it’s two people who in some way want to have a relationship which in their time is forbidden by society. That’s a very traditional operatic problem to deal with.”

Wuorigen tapped Anne Proulx, who penned the original “Brokeback” short story, to write the opera’s libretto.

Check out press images from Brokeback Mountain below.

Canadian bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch (right) as Ennis de Mar and American tenor Tom Randle as Jack Twist during a press preview of the “Brokeback Mountain” opera.