Bad Man Inc. David Ross…NOW

Most men I know had rock star dreams growing up. Usually it involved some hot-shot producer discovering you, so impressed with your talent and looks they signed you on the spot. No sooner had you kissed your teenage life goodbye, than you’d be performing for fans all over the world, dodging flashbulbs, tearing up the radio charts, and living the glamorous life of a superstar sex symbol. The music world would be your oyster, and those girls camping out on your doorstep could only mean you’d never starve for pleasures of the flesh.

Girls?

Most gay men I know had the same dream, but in a parallel universe where gorgeous men swooned at your feet. In the 1990s, 19-year-old David Ross lived out that fantasy—except the alternate reality part—in a fairy tale story right out of Hollywood. As a member of the British boy band called Bad Boys Inc. (“We were like ’NSYNC but with bad teeth and bad songs”), he auditioned on a Wednesday and signed that Sunday.

“I was plucked from obscurity,” says Ross, who, all grown up and gay in 2011, still speaks with a slightly bad-boy British drawl. “I was doing extra work and a producer saw my picture on a wall. It was my nineteenth birthday.” After Ross signed, “I taught myself how to dance by watching Janet Jackson.”

Just like Cinderella, Ross got it all, except his handsome prince. “I had to be careful how I dressed,” Ross says, adding that everyone he worked for “knew I was gay, and I couldn’t walk down certain streets. I wasn’t allowed to go to gay bars, and I was told once that the ‘the way your flick your hair is really gay.’ It’s not like I open my mouth and a purse falls out, but we were part of a massive PR blitz.”

Even though Ross was living with a man at one point, the press never outed him. “I did amazing verbal yoga,” he says. “I got asked once what type of girls I fancy, and I said the Little Mermaid—ding a ling.”

The group’s self-titled debut album hit number one in the UK and unleashed five hit singles. Like most Hollywood stories, the downfall came soon after. Bad Boys Inc. weren’t picked up for a second album, and to get out of the clutches of their producer, the band members had to give him the same amount of money (go figure) that their record label had given them. (In a nutshell: Purchase a Bad Boys Inc. song and Ross doesn’t get a cent.)

While the rest of the band moved on to more “normal” lives, Ross’s path turned back to entertainment, but in a different form. His mom’s death from cancer when he was 17 led to a passion for writing music, and later on, prose. “About nine years ago I had an artistic nervous breakdown. I stopped singing altogether and started writing screenplays.”

He also started acting in films, most notably the award-winning 2006 drama “Quinceanera,” in which he played a gay man for the first time. “I struggled with it,” Ross says. “And then I thought, ‘Fuck it.’” And fuck it, he does, portraying one half of an Echo Park gay couple who seduce their much younger male neighbor into three-ways. Ross, who now gleams with an adult bad-boy demeanor (there’s a resemblance to Kyan Douglas, if Douglas ever did anything “badder” than skip his daily manicure), sheds his shirt and kisses his co-star and finally gets that handsome prince.

If Ross’s reluctance to play gay on film seems unusual in our post-”Brokeback” days, you should know that he spent much of his twenties dating women, an extension of his closeted boy band days. Besides, as he’s the first to tell you, gay-for-real is, ironically, more of a risk than faking it for the camera.

Now Ross has a grown-up dream. For the past seven years he’s been writing and promoting “I Do,” his film about the importance of legalizing same-sex marriage. “If I don’t have a leading-man career, if I can write a move that really helps, it’s more important. I’ve been famous before.”

To help get the film off the ground, Ross has turned to Kickstarter.com, which allows filmmakers to get financial pledges while not losing control of their material. The cut-off is May 14, 2011, and if $50,000 isn’t raised, the money goes back to the donators. Either way, Ross isn’t turning back. “If I only raise $50,000, it will be me and an iPhone,” Ross says, adding, “I want to tell the story.”

The “story” of “I Do” involves a British man living in the United States who wants to remain in the country so he can marry his gay lover and raise his niece’s child. Says Ross:  “It’s a gay-themed film; I’m working with big names, but they want the money first.” Ross has been in the business long enough to know how hard the process is, and throws out the ten-year-plus struggles of “Black Swan” and “The Kids Are All Right,” as examples.

Everyone has an opinion on same-sex marriage, and Ross points out that some gay men, especially, the younger ones, aren’t particularly interested. He says: “For me, as an activist, it’s not about the word ‘marriage’. It’s not about holding hands and walking down the aisle. It’s about the rights of marriage. If you want to suck your cocktails at a gay bar, that’s fine; I’m not fighting for those people. I’m fighting for the ones who have kids and need protection.” 

Ross, who’d like to get married himself, doesn’t rule out recording a song for the “I Do” soundtrack. He even gets sentimental for certain blasts from his past. “I miss the travel, the first class. I miss performing, being on TV, the shoots; it was all really fun.” I didn’t ask him if he’d ever thought about documenting his own life story, but if he did, I’m sure it would make for a wonderful film.

…and then.

For more information on the film, go to Kickstarter, featuring an interview with David Ross. You can also visit David‘s web site and follow him on Twitter. Current photographs of David Ross: www.zelkophoto.com.