Comeback kid Mickey Rourke — who is not the same person as Mickey Rooney, I just learned — is generating all kinds of bad press for slamming Sean Penn as a “homophobe,” just ahead of the Academy’s release of the Oscar nominations. Sean Penn is likely to get a nod for his turn as openly gay politician Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant’s new period flick Milk, while Mickey Rourke is eyeing the prize for his starring role in The Wrestler.
The dish:
After his December 23 appearance on David Letterman, Rourke told someone backstage that he was surprised that so many people seemed to think that Penn was his Oscar competition since “I’m not even sure he’ll get a nomination.”
On December 28, a Los Angeles entertainment honcho shared a text message with me that Rourke had sent him: “Look seans an old friend of mine and i didnt buy his performance at all—thought he did an average pretend acting like he was gay besides hes one of the most homophobic people i kno” [sic]
Now if he’s trying to make himself look better in comparison to his “old friend,” it ain’t working. But if he wants to sling homophobic mud, maybe he ought to explain this quote from last month (with video):
When pressed about his rumored romance with Marilyn Manson’s ex-Evan Rachel Wood (who incidentally plays Rourke’s lesbian daughter in the film), Rourke esoterically shoots back, “She’s a good friend, that’s it. And tell that f*ggot who wrote all that sh*t in the paper I’d like to break his f*cking legs.”
So eloquent, that one. I’m sure since the Academy is 100% straight, he’ll do fine.
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Maybe he meant a bundle of dry wood used for kindling.
I just can’t get past what Mickey Rourke has done to himself with plastic surgery. He looks like he’s been melted like candlewax.
I don’t hate gays, but I have been known to toss the Fag*** card a time or 2 at my buddies and/or enemies…
No one likes that word, so it is a great insult!
Is that his normal expression? Looks to me like he needs to take a 5-pound sh*t.
Rourke has learned that plastic surgery and boxing don’t mix.
Simon hit it on the head (do I rock the bad puns or what?) I think. I competed in Golden Gloves when I was younger, and kept it up off and on in the service and with the fire dept. until my wife made me give it up. Had the schnoz flattened more than a half dozen times during that period – ironically the worst time had nothing to do with boxing, it was a hockey injury.
A seriously deviated septum (gee, ya think?) was causing me to get frequent and severe sinus infections, but doctors and plastic surgeons always advised me to avoid having the work done until after I was sure I was finished for good. A lot of those procedures involve shaving down bone, and once it’s gone, it’s gone. If you continue to mess it up and need ‘touch-ups’, they have less and less to work with every time. I would also imagine that it would make the area more prone to injury in the future, but I’m no M.D.
My guess is that’s why his face looks like it’s been pumped full of filler.
Rourke looks like he is trying to be the male version of the N.Y. Cat woman.
He was in a serious motorcycle accident wasn’t he? Isn’t that why he had all the plastic surgery?
I hope he’s wrong though. I hope Sean Penn gets nominated for a movie I won’t see, so he can sit out there during that Oscar broadcast I won’t be watching with that ever present scowl on his face.
Has anyone seen Diner? It’s tragic what’s happened to his face, boxing or not. I wouldn’t “hit” that now. *rim shot*
Come on, using a cuss word and then equating the person using it to be against that is ridiculous. So if I call my friend a Bastard or a I am against single parent families and fornication???
Actually it looks like Mickey Rourke has a face sculpted by Botox.
Skeletor with Mick Jagger lips. Somebody quick, get the Bat signal going!
Tame example, the f-word is worse on the scale of obscenities than bastard. (Observe: no stars in the previous.) It’s like if you called your friend a n*gger, you’re probably a racist.
True statement Holly except if you’re black calling another black the N word, chances are you will get away with it. In the great social experiment, know as the military, I saw that all the time, but if a white said it, you are a racist and about to get an ass wuppin’ of epic porportions.
I am not entirely convinced that using the word faggot makes you homophobic, but if you are famous, or were famous enough at one time that people will quote you, then it’s just not a word you want to throw around because people will take it that way. In most contexts, faggot is not a nice word, simple as that. Even among gays, it’s not very nice, as a gay relative of mine pointed out when he came out of the closet with this memorable line, “Look, I’m gay and I like men, but I am not a faggot drag queen.”
So yeah, Mickey, right or wrong probably not entirely wise.
I’m with Aleric. My first response to this was, “But calling someone a fag isn’t the same as hating gays.” And his choice of example doesn’t matter. Vocabulary, offensive vocabulary in particular, is 95% context, 5% definition. Make that like 2% definition. Unless the person who wrote the stuff actually was gay, and Rourke knew it, it’s pretty hard to make a case that he was venting his homophobic spleen all over the place.
I’ve seen both “the Wrestler” and “Harvey Milk”, and I agree with Rourke.
“The Wrestler” has the potential to be a modern classic, whereas Harvey Milk is just a routine made for PBS docudrama. It is one of Penn’s lesser roles.
Of course, Wrestler is a thinly disguised allegory of Rourke’s life, but he’s back, better than ever, John Travolta style.
Penn hasn’t been relevant in Hollywood for five years.
I haven’t seen “Milk,” but Sean Penn’s portrayal of a retarded man in “I Am Sam” was barely a notch above a typical junior-high boy’s “hilarious” retard voice.
That’s immediately what I thought of when I read Rourke’s comment.
I’m not a pitchfork sheep like too many others, so unless either rourke or Penn speak out on this, unless SOME kind of evidence rises aside from heresay, then I’m not going to take this seriously.
Why did you post a photo of Walter Mercado on this post? Isn’t this supposed to be about Mickey Rourke? ;P
I agree, FWIW, ‘faggot’ never used to mean anything (except kindling and cigarettes, in other countries) much more than a slang insult, until the PC Police dubbed it one of their “seven things you can’t say on TV”. :-p
Poor Rourke, he used to be a hunk.
LOL, Vlad, he does look like Walter Mercado!
one thing is for sure: poor Mickey WAS ONCE so beautiful it almost hurt to look at him and Sean HAS ALWAYS BEEN really, truly ugly and it has always hurt to look at him.
Guess what, he never said he wasn’t a homophobe. Neither did he say that he was in some way a better friends of the gays than Penn.
THUS HE IS NO A HYPOCRITE YOU SMALL BRAINED LIBERAL.
If he said, I’m not homophobic…that would be hypocrisy.
EX: If I say you make fun of black people, and I too make fun of black people, I’m not a hypocrite unless I condemn making fun of black people. If i said racism is bad, and then called someone else bad for being racist, when I myself was racist; that would be hypocrisy.
Why do liberals have so little intelligence?