HOW GAY IS OSCAR?

I guess we wll know the answer to that, but this year’s nominees are almost a hetero-shut-out. An unusually well-informed movie buff friend sent me the following email:

Today’s Oscar nominations must set a record of sorts for gays in Hollywood. Best Picture nominee “Chicago” was produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, both openly gay, while another Best Picture nominee, “The Hours,” had openly-gay Scott Rudin as producer. (The Pulitzer Prize winning book on which it is based was, of course, written by openly gay Michael Cunningham.) Two of the nominees for Best Director, Rob Marshall of “Chicago” and Pedro Almodovar of “Talk To Me”, are openly gay. Nicole Kidman is nominated as Best Actress for her portrayal of bisexual Virginia Woolf in “The Hours,” Ed Harris is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of a gay man with AIDS in the same film, while Meryl Streep is nominated for Best Supporting Actress as his lesbian best friend. Selma Hayek is up for Best Actress for her portrayal of bisexual painter Frida Kahlo in “Frida”. Pedro Almodovar is also nominated for Best Original Screenplay, where he is joined by openly gay Todd Haynes, who wrote and directed “Far From Heaven.” Juliette Moore is nominated as Best Actress for that film, in which she plays the wife of a closeted gay man (played by Dennis Quaid, whose omission from the list of nominees will be noted as one of this year’s Oscar gaffes). Another original screenplay nomination went to “Y Tu Mam Tambien,” in which two young straight men end up having sex with each other. “Lilo & Stitch,” whose co-director Dean DeBlois is openly gay, is up for Best Animated Feature. Kander and Ebb are up for Best Song (as is Eminem). And the Dutch film nominated for Best Foreign Film, “Zus & Zo,” is a comedy about how a family deals with the news that the brother they all thought was gay decides to marry a woman. Stephen Daldry did not direct it.

Note that this is all related to people who are openly gay. The closet is crumbling – even in that most privately homophobic enclave, Hollywood.
UPDATE: My friend got one detail wrong: Meryl Streep was nominated for her performance in “Adaptation,” not “The Hours.” But one more addition: openly gay writer, Bill Condon, for his screenplay adaptation of “Chicago.”