One of the things we pride ourselves on at Metro Weekly is taking a long-form approach with our feature interviews. Sure, anyone can be cut down to a couple of bite-sized comments, but you can really learn a lot about someone when you just give them the freedom to talk.
But, even with our long-form philosophy, you can be assured that when you read 3,500 words of an interview, there are probably just as many words left hanging out on my hard drive, victims of the merciless process of editing. Sometimes those cuts aren't interesting because, well, frankly, when I ask a stupid question it doesn't always prompt a scintillating answer. But there generally are lots of interesting moments that I would keep it if it weren't for the constraints of space.Â
So, this week is the first of a very occasional Editor's Cut posts featuring some of the good stuff that didn't make it into the print version of the story. Obviously, these might be even more interesting if you take a few minutes to check out our full interview with
Ted Allen -- "
Ted Ahead" -- and then come back for the extras. Or, just dive right in. We're kind of anarchic that way.
Ted Allen: The Director's Cut
On role models and
growing up gay
MW: Thinking of role models and television, do you
remember the first gay character you saw on TV?
TED ALLEN: During that era it was people like Jack Tripper on Three's
Company. Who was not an unsympathetic
character, actually, we liked him. Of course, that was the '70s, when it was
starting to look like the country might accept us after all -- then along came
AIDS and Reagan. Before that, I really had the hots for Kristy McNichol. That's
the last girl I can remember lusting after, and she was always a tomboy. [Laugh.]
MW: Yeah, I had it so bad for Shaun Cassidy back then.
ALLEN: When you don't have role models and when you don't
have somebody telling you that if you turn out to be gay that it's okay, you can
have these bizarre [denials]. I thought Shaun Cassidy was hot, too. My sister
had a life-sized poster of him. I remember ogling it and still not
understanding what that meant. I can name off 10 boys from junior high school
who I thought were cute, but I think I told myself that I was looking at him
because I wanted to have the same hair, or I like the way those jeans looked
and I wanted mine to look like that.
It
sounds like I'm telling a war story from the Civil War. It just seems so
ridiculous now. It's great, because kids are coming out younger and younger and
more and more of them are being accepted. [But] then there's sort of the
dangerous side of kids coming out in rural Oklahoma -- watching all these shows
and thinking that it's perfectly okay now, and still getting the crap beat out
of them.
On the gaying of
television
MW: One of the things that's really striking over the
past few years is just how gay a lot of television has gotten, particularly
with things like Top Chef, where you have a lot of openly lesbian contestants,
and gay men and bisexuals. It seems very matter-of-fact in a way that probably
wouldn't have been matter-of-fact 10 years ago. What do you think has changed
to make that happen, particularly on the cable networks?
ALLEN: That trail was blazed by a lot of people and a lot
of cultural forces over a lot of years, whether they're obvious ones like Ellen
Degeneres or even fictional ones like Will & Grace. I have to really hand it to Bravo for, on the one
hand, being so open to the idea, and on the other hand capitalizing so
enormously on the success that the use of gays brought to them.
At
the same time that much of the country has become more comfortable with gays
and lesbians, the sort of "gay sensibility" still represents something slightly
naughty and very wickedly funny and cutting edge. All of those stereotypes
about us being interested in style and knowing our way around the kitchen and
knowing how to make a room look pretty definitely have some roots in truth, and
we have a lot to offer. We also, in order to pursue those hobbies, tend to buy
a lot of stuff, and that's one of the things Bravo figured out.
I
think it's really great and really admirable that Bravo had the guts to put a
show on the air in the first place called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I still remember how funny it was the first couple
of times we were on the Today
show watching Matt Lauer try to say the word "queer" on television. At first I
hated the name of the show, I thought it was needlessly provocative -- and I
was wrong. We really did get to a point, back when people were talking about Queer
Eye, it became really easy for
everybody to say "queer" on television. Which was great, it was really cool. So
I think Queer Eye played a little
role in that, too.
On the best way to learn
to cook
MW: Do you think watching chefs employ some of the
complicated techniques on shows like Top Chef -- like cooking sous-vide or molecular gastronomy -- scare people when it
comes to cooking?
ALLEN: Well, I certainly don't think that's where you ought
to start. I'm all for molecular gastronomy, I think it's really cool, but I
think there are chefs who lean on it without appreciating the basics. It's like
anything else, you can't expect to walk right into a craft. You shouldn't
expect you're going to be a good arc welder the first time you do it either, or
a helicopter pilot. You've gotta start somewhere with some learning.
But
a lot of cooking is not that hard, and it's not something you need to be that
afraid of. You just need to try it. You can learn a lot from reading magazines
and watching tv shows, but really I think the best way to learn is to cook
alongside somebody who knows how to do it. Maybe you're talking about a younger
reader who hasn't done that yet. When you get into your late twenties and your
partying slacks off a little bit -- maybe you start families or have more
responsibilities at your job, so you're probably spending less time out in bars
every night and you're getting together with friends and starting to cook
together. That's what happened with us. I was cooking with my friend Amy
Sullivan, who's a fabulous cook. I learned a lot from her, got inspired by the
things she would try. Doing it with friends is really the way to do it.
Recent Comments