Christian Slater says gay porn drama
King Cobra avoids the “stereotypical nonsense” of gay
characters.
Speaking with Variety, Slater
said that he has matured in how he views such characters since
watching Brokeback Mountain.
“I remember when I saw Brokeback
Mountain and I had such a visceral reaction to that movie, and
thought, 'Oh my god, I could never do anything like that,'” Slater
said. “And as I've gotten older, I think I have gotten less
judgmental about things and hopefully a little bit more mature about
these subject matters.”
“I've never played a homosexual
before and I just didn't want to, I guess, bring any stereotypical
nonsense to it, or do any kind of caricature-y type things that I've
seen in other films,” he added. “I just wanted to be a human
being who happens to like young men.”
The film, which premiered Saturday at
the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City to positive reviews,
follows the early porn career of Sean Paul Lockhart, who worked
exclusively for Cobra Video under the name Brent Corrigan. Cobra
Video's Bryan Kocis (played by Slater) was murdered after he refused
to let Corrigan work for a rival porn studio run by Joseph Kerekes
(Franco) and gay porn star Harlow Cuadra.
“We could go pretty large with our
characters; they are pretty ridiculous,” Franco told Variety.
“[Director] Justin Kelly calls them GTL – gym, tan, laundry –
kind of guys. That's all they do, go to the gym, tan, and do their
laundry.”