Hollywood's darling funnyman Billy Crystal is backpedalling furiously after comments he made about gay sex scenes being "not to his taste" were slammed as anti-gay.
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Crystal, who played one of the first openly gay characters on television in the 1970s, said TV writers are "pushing it" when it comes to explicit gay content and that gay storylines are "too much for me".
Media outlets reported the comments and a vicious social media backlash began.
Hey Billy Crystal: when a gay couple kisses hello, they aren't "shoving it in your face"--they are greeting in a way straights do 24/7. — Selena Coppock (@SelenaCoppock)
January 21, 2015
Yep, that Billy Crystal statement was homophobic. This takedown via
@noahmichelson:
http://t.co/Liox7yO2nk — Lauren Duca (@laurenduca)
January 20, 2015
Crystal's views were aired while he was promoting his new FX TV show The Comedians on a Television Critics Association press tour in California.
Asked how he felt television had progressed in relation to gay storylines, he said: "Over the years, you'd see other different characters and so on and so forth. And I've seen some stuff recently on TV in different kinds of shows where the language or the explicit sex is really, you know, sometimes I get it, and sometimes I just feel like, ah, that's too much for me."
"Sometimes, it's just pushing it a little too far for my taste, and I'm not going to reveal to you which ones they are," The Independent reports the Analyze This star as saying.
"I hope people don't abuse it and shove it in our face to the point where it feels like an everyday kind of thing."
But the 66-year-old actor has since tried to clarify the comments, telling the Hollywood Reporter: "What I meant was that whenever sex or graphic nudity of any kind (gay or straight) is gratuitous to the plot or story it becomes a little too much for my taste."
Crystal gained popularity after playing Jodie Dallas on Soap from 1977 to 1981, one of the first openly gay characters on television.
 
In a transciption of Monday's interview with Larry Charles, Crystal goes on to describe the experience of playing Dallas at a time when homosexual characters weren't often represented in mainstream media.
"See, I did it in front of a live audience, and there were times where I would say to Bob [Seagren, Dallas' partner in the show] 'I love you,' and the audience would laugh nervously, because, you know, it's a long time ago, that I'd feel this anger," he said. "I wanted to stop the tape and go, 'What is your problem?'"
The satirical soap opera premiered in September 1977 and Crystal was praised for his genuine portrayal of a gay man and for avoiding simplistic stereotypes.
