The promotional tour for The A-Team is starting to gear up, so expect to see some interviews with Bradley Cooper, Liam Neeson, Jessica Biel and this new star, Ultimate Fighter-turned-actor Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, who took on the role of Baracus made famous by Mr. T. The Los Angeles Times has an interview with Mr. Rampage (I don’t know what to call him), and as it turns out, the guy thinks his new profession is a little bit… “gay”. His words. Mr. Rampage is on such a hardcore Gay Watch that he even declares that Vancouver is a “San Francisco kind of place”. He’s like two seconds away from declaring a whole country gay, I swear. Here are the homoerotic outtakes (full LAT piece here):

A movie crew member had wandered in on this final day of principal photography and — whether jokingly or not — called the muscle-bound movie star a homophobic epithet. Jackson had responded with barely contained fury. He threw the guy out, shouting him down with every conceivable gay slur. “You’re a punk!” Jackson finally bellowed.

He claimed the crew member’s intent had been to provoke a physical assault. “That … wanted me to punch him so he could sue me,” the professional body-slammer explained.

“Acting is kind of gay,” Jackson said. “It makes you soft. You got all these people combing your hair and putting a coat over your shoulders when you’re cold. I don’t want a coat over my shoulders! I’m a tough-ass [individual]! Vancouver [where A-Team was filmed] strikes me as a San Francisco-kind of place. And I don’t want [individuals] getting ideas about me. I feel in my heart I’m the toughest [individual] on the planet. And I don’t want nothing changing my train of thought. If you don’t believe that when we step inside the octagon, it shows.”

“I’ve had the chance to do other movie roles before but I took the fights instead,” he said. “I was supposed to do ‘Transporter 2,’ ‘Wolverine.’ But I couldn’t do it because UFC was in the way.”

That all changed, though, when Jackson caught wind that writer-director John Singleton (“Boyz N the Hood”) was moving an “A-Team” adaptation toward production. “It was the whole reason I wanted to act,” Jackson said. The two took a meeting about 2 1/2 years ago but the project stalled. Enter writer-director Joe Carnahan (“Narc,” “Smokin’ Aces”) with a revamped “A-Team” screenplay. And on the heels of casting call No. 2, the Ultimate Fighter bested a Who’s Who of pop cultural heavyweights — rappers Common and Ice Cube and celebrated street brawler Kimbo Slice among them — to nab the role. “I was destined to play this part!” Jackson exclaimed.

Back in his trailer, with his UFC future still in doubt, Jackson left little mystery about the downside of movie stardom. He blamed the film’s assistant directors for keeping him on-set needlessly and railed against what he calls moviemaking’s hierarchy system.

“Here, there’s a thing called ‘pecking order,’ ” Jackson said. “I’m not used to that. People can be really inconsiderate of people’s feelings. I wasted three weekends in a row waiting in my trailer when they didn’t use me at all. To be honest, my experience in this movie industry hasn’t always been good.”

“I always thought from the beginning, if this movie is going to work, it’s going to rise and fall on the person playing B.A.,” Bradley Cooper said in Vancouver. “Mr. T was so iconic and so much a part of ‘The A-Team’ TV show — so much of what I think of when I think of ‘The A-Team’ — that whoever plays that, if you get it right, 80% of the movie’s already a success.”

So how’d Jackson do?

“In my opinion, he’s the best B.A. there could be,” Cooper said. “It feels like a real coming out moment for Rampage.”

[From The Los Angeles Times]

You know what I thought when I saw they quoted Bradley Cooper? “Oohh, I bet Bradley and Rampage did not get along AT ALL.” If Mr. Rampage is prepared to declare a whole city is gay (“Vancouver… the gayest city in all of Gay Canada” is a tagline I keep hearing), what’s stopping him from saying that about Bradley Cooper, a man who beeps on many people’s gaydars? For that matter, what’s stopping Mr. Rampage from declaring that Liam Neeson is a “little fruity” or something like that?

Here’s the latest trailer from The A-Team, by the way. Patrick Wilson is in it! I didn’t know that. Totally gay.

Header: Mr. Rampage on December 8, 2007. Credit: WENN.