It’s probably a good thing that the “Dubledore is gay” story is old news. If J.K. Rowling dropped that bomb yesterday, it would be hard to resist writing a bunch of obvious jokes about this entry-level comedy-delivery premise. I mean, a gay wizard? Who could say no to that? It writes itself. I.E. it’s easy. Too easy. But the pull of easy comedy is hard to resist.
When the gay Dumbledore story broke (back in the pre-writers strike era), we all knew it was too easy. I tormented the younger, cooler writers at work with a mock-hacky/genuinely hacky gay wizard run, now happily forgotten. (All I remember about it is an unmentionable romance between twin Gryffindors Padma and Pavarti Patel.) Being part of a writing staff is great because you can quickly and painlessly get the easy comedy out of your system, and more on to… hard comedy (whatever that is).
Of course, Saturday Night Live did a gay wizard sketch, theirs starring Bill Hader as the out-of-the-closet Albus Percival Wulfric Brian. I enjoyed this sketch A) because I like gay Harry Potter jokes, and B) because I savor the humiliation of the sexy, shaved warlock extras. (This is the part of the post where I switch topics because I have run out of things to say about what I started writing about. Good thing blogs are not actual journalism, or writing, or anything. Good thing blogs are nothing.)
When watching SNL, It’s always fun to think about the production headaches of a live comedy show. Imagine, the behind-the-scenes suckiness for the poor producer who had to hire a bunch of non-speaking hunks, dress them up as magical rough trade, then direct them to dance in a homosexual fashion — while not screwing up LIVE TELEVISION. Delicious.
In a show with such a rich history of crazily-dressed, humiliated extras, it’s amazing that no fame-crazed “background artist” has ever made a break for the foreground. It would be so, so, so easy for a gay background wizard to go nuts in some actor-y way on live TV, and achieve YouTube glory for at least a week. (If this has happened, please stop reading now.) SNL must have some hardcore clause in the extras’ contracts that scares the hell out of anyone thinking of putting on their own comedy show in middle of any scene set in a busy restaurant, crowded party or wizarding bathhouse.
(NOTE: If blogs were actual journalism, instead of what they are, which is nothing, I could find out the answer to the questions raised in the above paragraph by doing something called reporting. But I don’t do that. That’s for reporters. Reporters have to be accountable. That’s why I became the kind of writer that only makes things up. Or takes real things and changes them enough so I can say I made them up.)