Oscar-winning screenwriter comes out as straight

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February 24, 2015 | Arts / Entertainment

Oscar-winning screenwriter comes out as straight

Graham Moore not gay

On Sunday night, Graham Moore took away the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. He won for penning the biopic The Imitation Game.

The movie is the true life story of Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science and a necessarily closeted gay man. During World War II, Turing played a pivotal role in defeating the Nazis as the lead mathematician in the British project to decipher the highly complex Enigma codes used by the German armed forces. Following the war, however, he was prosecuted for and convicted of homosexual acts. He later committed suicide.

Moore has stated that Turning was a kindred spirit. And when he gave his Oscar acceptance speech, it sounded like he, too, was gay.

"I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels like she’s weird or she’s different or she doesn’t fit in anywhere," he said, after telling the crowd that he had contemplated suicide when he was 16. "Yes, you do. I promise you do. Stay weird, stay different."

Then backstage, he added: "“I’ve been obsessed with Alan’s story since I was a teenager. ... He was a tremendous hero of mine. Alan always seemed like the outsider’s outsider in his own time for so many reasons. Because he was the smartest man in every room that he entered. Because he was a gay man at a time when that was not simply frowned upon, but also illegal. And then, because he was keeping all these secrets for the government.

"He was a guy who was apart from society for so many different reasons, but because he was apart from society he was able to see the world in a way that no one else had, and I found that incredibly inspirational.”

But no, that doesn't mean Moore is gay.

"I'm not gay, but I've never talked publicly about depression before or any of that and that was so much of what the movie was about and it was one of the things that drew me to Alan Turing so much," he later told Buzzfeed. "I think we all feel like weirdos for different reasons. Alan had his share of them and I had my own and that's what always moved me so much about his story."

If you still haven't seen the movie, you really should. It is an important piece of queer history, and an amazing film.

February 24, 2015 | Arts / Entertainment

Oscar-winning screenwriter comes out as straight

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