It’s called “acting”

OK, a bit more about the End of the Spear "controversy."

Some evangelical Christians — including the producers of the film itself — are upset to learn that a homosexual actor, Chad Allen, has been cast in a movie about evangelical missionaries.

This is a bizarre thing to get upset about. They didn't hire Allen to teach Sunday School, they hired him to act. The only question that matters, therefore, is whether or not the guy is a good actor.

To worry that an actor cannot play the part of a straight, white, evangelical missionary because that actor is not, himself, straight, evangelical and a missionary is to demonstrate that you do not understand the concept "actor." This is what actors do: They act like different people. This involves art, empathy and study — three things that are not famous for being evangelical fortes.

I've never actually seen Allen in anything he's done, but he's been at the craft long enough that I'm confident he is far better at portraying a straight evangelical missionary than any non-actor straight evangelical missionary would be. See, for example, Pride of the Yankees, in which Gary Cooper is much more believable as Lou Gehrig than Babe Ruth is as Babe Ruth. (If you want to see a good Babe Ruth, see John Goodman in The Babe. So-so movie, good performance — although his left-handed swing looks hideous. They should've done the mirror-image thing they did with Cooper … but I digress.)

It's one thing for a bunch of random religious-right rabble-rousers to be so clueless about what actors do, but it's particularly troubling that this also seems true of the producers of this movie. I have yet to see a quote from any of them that says the only thing that they should have said about this alleged controversy, namely, "We cast the best actors we could find for every role. Chad Allen's performance speaks for itself. Period."

The producers of End of the Spear don't seem to understand that, which tells me they really shouldn't be in the business of hiring actors and making movies.

I have some more news that will upset the homophobic watchdogs: Chad Allen is not the only homosexual actor in Spear.

I don't know this for certain, mind you, but there are 53 actors in this movie, so do the math. You get together a group of 53 people from any profession — accountants, doctors, lawyers, ballplayers, Southern Baptist preachers, Republican congressmen — and the odds are you'll have more than just one homosexual in the room. But a random sampling of actors that's more than 98-percent straight? Astronomically unlikely.

On a semi-related note, I've decided that Rupert Everett should play me in the loosely adapted biopic of my life story, despite the fact that he is, you know, British.

Everett doesn't necessarily look the part, but he's a very good actor and will, I'm sure, be utterly believable even in the romantic scenes with Parker Posey. (I'm taking certain liberties with the romantic plotline to make it more of an audience-pleaser.) Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else the final cut must show.

One final note: You cast a gay actor as a missionary and filming goes without incident. You cast a gentile as Jesus of Nazareth and people start getting struck by lightning. I'm just saying.