Gregg Araki: Trump Trying To Send Everyone Back Into The Closet
- By
- On Top Magazine Staff
- | March 08, 2019
In a recent interview, out filmmaker Gregg Araki said that President Donald Trump was trying to send everyone back into the closet.
Araki, whose film Kaboom won the inaugural Cannes Film Festival Queer Palm in 2010, is currently promoting his latest project, the Starz comedy series Now Apocalypse, which premieres on March 10.
In the show, Ulysses (played by Avan Jogia), a sexually fluid young man, becomes increasingly concerned that either some kind of dark conspiracy is happening or he's just smoking too much weed.
Speaking with UK glossy Attitude, Araki, 59, said that he's been wanting to make a show like Now Apocalypse for about 20 years.
“I’ve made a lot of films with thematic obsessions and motifs and stuff that runs through all my movies and Now Apocalypse was very much, me sitting down a few years ago and thinking, ‘If I could make the ultimate show, that is my ultimate dream show, what would it be?’ and that’s where the show came from,” Araki said.
Araki said that such shows are important in light of Trump's efforts to send everyone back into the closet.
“I’m very much like Ulysses, I’m mainly gay but I have been with women and had a long-time relationship with a woman in the 90s and I feel, and I think that’s what’s great about the show, people of Avan’s generation, there’s no judgment and everybody should do their thing and live their life and I think the world has come so far since the time that I started making movies,” Araki said.
“Back in 1992, when The Living End had two gay characters kissing. This was before Will & Grace, before Brokeback Mountain, it was such a big deal but now it is everywhere and I think that is incredible we have come that far and I think it’s so important these days, you know, with Trump and the terrible ‘Make America Gross Again’ and trying to set everyone back into the dark ages and back into the closet, I think it’s so important for a show like NA to be out and beamed out into the world like a ray of light saying we cannot go backwards, we need to keep evolving and letting people be who they are,” he continued.