I first saw David Pevsner in Howard Crabtree’s When Pigs Fly Off-Broadway. It was a smash hit and David was a stand-out in the show. In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “…an exceptionally cheerful, militantly gay new musical revue that comes close to living up to its own billing, ‘the side-splitting musical extravaganza.’ No sides are ever in serious danger of splitting. Yet there’s enough hilarity, wit and outré humor here to evoke that era, more than 40 years ago, when bright, irreverent revues were as commonplace on Broadway as today’s stately Cameron Mackintosh spectacles.”
Readers may have also caught this LA-based actor in roles on TV and the Web which include Silicon Valley, NCIS, I’m Dying Up Here, Modern Family, Grey’s Anatomy, Liz and Dick, Law and Order LA, Desperate Housewives, Las Vegas and The LXD. His numerous film appearances include: Scrooge and Marley (as Ebenezer Scrooge), Spa Night, Joshua Tree 1951: A Portrait of James Dean, and 300: Rise of an Empire.
On the stage, David has been seen in the LA Premieres of Michael Kearns’ Bang Bang, Joe DiPietro’s F*cking Men, and Kenny Solms’ It Must Be Him, as well as the international production of Terrence McNally’s, Corpus Christi. New York audiences caught him in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway with Topol and in the original NY cast of Party.
Photo by Steven Richards, Illustration by John Pirman, design by Tim Gleason.
In addition to your other work, you have also accomplished an amazing amount of varied writing.
I’ve definitely had a pretty schizzy career as a writer. I started [writing] because of When Pigs Fly. It was so funny, smart, political, and gay, and I thought, I think like that only dirtier. I started writing songs and my first ones found their way into the long running hit show Naked Boys Singing (20 years in NYC and all over the world!). Over the years, I’ve contributed songs/sketches to Playboy TV, Primetime with Diane Sawyer, the film Adam and Steve, the musical revue The Fancy Boys Follies, and my one-man musicals To Bitter and Back and Musical Comedy Whore. Many of those tunes turn up on Most Versatile, my first collection of original songs that I sing along with special guest pals like Jim J. Bullock and Maxwell Caulfield.
Musical Comedy Whore Film Illustrator Treskidoos Photo by John Mar
Currently, you seem most passionate about Musical Comedy Whore. Please tell us more about it.
Musical Comedy Whore is my all original one man show that I perform wherever they’ll have me: so far Chicago, LA, Palm Springs, Ft. Lauderdale, and looking to do NY, London, everywhere when this pandemic is done. We also filmed it and the movie releases on September 1, 2020 on the following Video On Demand platforms: Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, Fandango & Vimeo. It’s a very personal yet universal story, and my audiences, gay and straight, seem really touched and amused by it. It’s pretty honest and raw about the choices I’ve made in my life about sex and love, including a stint as a male escort while I was performing Off-Broadway, thus the double entendre of the title, but it’s also pretty goddamn funny and emotional. I love doing it.
You have a blog featuring erotic photo shoots called Shameless, which is anti-shame, anti-ageism, and pro-nudity and sexuality. This sounds titillating and very important simultaneously.
I’ve been an erotic model for many years. I started by posing nude for the photographer Tom Bianchi on Fire Island and a couple of others when I was in NYC, but when I moved to LA, I found more and more artists who encouraged me to really be bold and put it out there in these arty and erotic photos, most of which I shot when I was over 40 years old. The pics mostly stayed between myself and the photographers, with the odd appearance in a photo book or exhibit. However, I started to feel I was holding back out of shame and fear of how the pics might affect my acting career. Finally, I thought it was too important to be the authentic me and make a statement about body shame and ageism and the negative attitudes toward nudity and sexuality. I started to post the photos on a Tumblr blog where I could really curate the posts and add humor and ironic context to the eroticism. I did all kinds of photo shoots from arty to erotic to explicit, from portraits to storytelling, and I had a pretty big audience and a lot of support. However Tumblr, damn them, purged adult content last year, claiming they wanted “a more positive Tumblr,” which means that the erotic stuff is, well…negative. Nope. Fuck ‘em.
Shameless blog (Photo by Ryan Stanford)
So I have been using other platforms to post on. Right now I have Twitter, OnlyFans, and New Tumbl, as well as censored versions on Instagram. The anti-body shame and anti-ageism themes seem to really resonate with my audience. I get messages from guys and ladies all over the world that tell me they have been inspired to be a little more “shameless” themselves, to feel better about their bodies, to celebrate what their bodies can do. I think because I’m someone that’s older, has a career in mainstream media, and is not a typical model that they see me as maybe more bold and somewhat accessible and relatable. America is so fucked up about nudity and sex and I want to keep the conversation going as to why. It’s become my mission. More recently along with the photos, I’m been filming videos that help me express a whole other side to my erotic art (although one man’s art is another man’s porn and that’s cool). I post these on OnlyFans and it’s been amazing. As I say on my blog: “Why am I posting these pictures? I posed for them, I’m proud of them, and they are no longer my “dirty little secret.” I want all of us to feel good about our physicality and our sexuality, and not ashamed or embarrassed the way society dictates. Over it. So over it.” I really am. Grow up, America!
You are also passionate about helping people unclutter their lives with your business Address the Mess. Can you tell us more?
Address the Mess is my personal organization business. My mom was the most organized person in the world, so I come by it honestly, and I really love the work. I know I’ve changed lives because clutter and stuff can really stifle and smother people and relationships, so I help them see the light and the possibilities in their spaces, making their surroundings more efficient, cleaner, and just nicer to live and work in. I call myself the “Anti Marie Kondo.” I love her to death and lord knows, she’s doing great things for the biz, but I’m a little more hands-on and pragmatic about the way I work. Nuts and bolts and down and dirty and I just jump right in and attack, as one of my clients says. I love my clients and we do great work together, but it’s on hold for now during the pandemic. However, I’ve been playing with having more of an internet presence with it, to share on video all the tricks and techniques that I’ve accrued over the years that are kind of cool and effective to, well, address the mess. And folks have the time to do that now. I’m pretty passionate about it, and I can walk into any situation and have a remedy for it. It feels good.
Photo by John Mar
How is your memoir, Shame on Me: The Memoir of a Musical Comedy Whore coming along?
Really great. I have very poor sleep habits. I’d get four hours of sleep and then wake up with my brain awash in angst and ideas, and jerking off wasn’t helping me get back to sleep, so…I put on my pants, my tank top, my beanie cap and flip flops, and for eight months, I went to the Starbucks or the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and put down my story. It includes a lot of material from my shows, but also stories and situations that came rushing back to me as I delved deeper and deeper. The book became my memoir, but told through the lens of body shame and sexuality. That has been a constant presence throughout most of my adult life, and my struggle with it I think has produced a very funny, very sweet, and very human portrait of this guy just trying to love himself after spending years hating his body and screwed up about sex and love. Pretty relatable stuff. I’m looking for a publisher as I write this.
And for all those fans out there who have been loving you as Ross Stein in OLD Dogs & NEW Tricks…is there a final season scheduled? And am I correct, I’ve heard rumors of a feature film version?
We recently did a Zoom reading of the finale of the show and it was a ball to get together with those guys and play out our stories. I know they want to do a feature version of the show, but like everything else, those plans have to be put off. But the finale reading is available to watch on line. https://www.odnt.tv/
Do you have more projects in the pipeline?
I have MY GFF (My Gay Film Festival) which is ten short films to be directed by ten different directors, starring all the wonderful out and gay-friendly actors we love in comedy, drama, musical, documentary, animated, porn…you’ll feel like you’ve been to an entire gay film festival in 90 minutes. Then there’s a stage show called Bawdeville. The idea for this came after I was asked to take part in a live presentation of one of my erotic videos and it was a revelation to me. The audience was rapt by our blatant sexuality and I wondered if it was possible to do a whole evening of songs, sketches, dances, all having some element of explicit sexuality but also elevated language, engrossing characters and stories, and quality acting/singing/dancing; a kind of bawdy vaudeville show. I put the word out to various playwrights, composers, and choreographers, and it became Bawdeville. We were all set to do it at Highways Performance Space in LA, but then Covid-19 kicked in. Here’s hopin’ we “get it up” sometime in the future. And finally, there’s Schwingin’ My Songs, a cabaret evening of my music and stories. So, I’m ready to hit the ground running in any direction when we can. Meanwhile, I keep creating.
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