Trashy Tell All Never Should Have Been Published

Jonathan Plummer’s ‘Novel’ Courts Scandal

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Like a bizarro version of ex-wife Terry McMillan’s How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Jonathan Plummer’s Balancing Act follows the story of a young Jamaican seduced by a powerful American woman. And, as in Jamaica-born Plummer’s real life, the young lover breaks the wealthy woman’s heart by coming out and scandal ensues.

Despite the admitted parallels to his life – one passage explicitly refers to Stella’s titular groove – Plummer calls his book fiction. Simon & Schuster’s legal department even made sure to include a disclaimer saying as much. Still, we’ve got our doubts.

One thing’s for sure: the book’s opened an entirely new chapter of drama for Plummer, McMillan and a slew of new characters.

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33-year old Plummer first popped into popular culture in 1995, when Waiting To Exhale novelist Terry McMillan jetted to Jamaica for a mid-life sabbatical. It’s on the island that McMillan met and wooed Plummer, a Jamaican national who moved to America for her, thus providing a neat ending for what would become How Stella Got Her Groove Back. They married in 1998.

The seemingly storybook romance would come crashing down six years later, when Plummer came out of the closet. McMillan filed for divorce one month later. At the time, McMillan said:

It was devastating to discover that a relationship I had publicized to the world as life-affirming and built on mutual love was actually based on deceit. I was humiliated.

And then she got angry. McMillan accused Plummer of knowingly deceiving her and Plummer called the novelist a homophobe. The drama continued this year, when McMillan filed a $40 million lawsuit against Plummer.

Now, over six months later, Plummer’s released his own book, Balancing Act. Sold as a coming out novel, this waste of paper’s nothing more than Plummer’s vain – and vapid – attempt to tell his side of the story. Yes, he told us the book’s “total fiction,” but breaks down in knowing giggles when the issue’s pressed.

Balancing Act tells the tale of a man named Jonathan who’s plucked from Jamaica by a powerful American woman, Tasha. As the predictable story unfolds, nascent supermodel Justin comes into his latent homosexuality, thus throwing a wrench in his sumptuous, money soaked relationship with Tasha. A true “hero”, as Plummer calls him, Justin comes out to Tasha, who flies off the handle and unleashes a series of vengeful events. Sound familiar? It should. Sound trite? Definitely.

Plummer says wrote this fluff with the most altruistic intentions: “I wanted to explore my coming out process and I wanted to write something that would encourage compassion and understanding.” Growing up in Jamaica, Plummer says, he didn’t have any gay role models. Or any gays at all, for Jamaica’s one of the most homophobic places on earth. Plummer hopes that his book will open the door for gays just like him:

For my generation, this is definitely what we need, because there’s not much things out there that you can really explore about their sexual identity. People who are struggling with their curiosity, basically…We definitely need to bring more awareness and compassion to the whole situation, the lifestyle.

Plummer also describes Balancing Act as “fiction with purpose”. Perhaps he meant “purposes”.
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There’s no doubt in our collective mind that Plummer wrote this book to extend his already spent fifteen minutes. Wait – we take that back. Ghost writer Karen Hunter wrote this book to extend Plummer’s already spent fifteen minutes.

According to Plummer, he and Hunter came up with the idea and pitched it to Simon and Schuster, who are apparently desperate for a high profile book. No doubt it sounded like a stellar idea: Plummer had the scandal, Hunter can string words together. The girl even won a Pulitzer for collaborative news work in 1999! That prize should be taken away, because even Hunter’s journalistic background couldn’t save this book.

For example, the reader’s told about how a youthful Tasha admired Alek Wek. That would mean Aek Wek walked the runways in the 1970s, which makes no sense because the stunning model didn’t emerge until the 1990s. When asked to explain this discrepancy, Plummer laughed,

You know, it’s fiction, that’s why things are, you know, embellished just a little bit and exaggerated. With Alek, we decided to just come forth and be more creative with it… It’s fiction, so a lot of things are made up.

The absurdity doesn’t stop there. The book name drops with distracting ease and spends a bulk of text describing Jonathan – oh, we mean, Justin’s – ridiculously large penis and taste for semen.

One particularly juicy scene laughably reads,

The taste of another’s penis filled Justin with insatiable hunger… Justin tasted the strange come or the first time and it was sweet, like nectar. He lapped up every bit and wanted more.

What would Plummer’s mother say!? “It’s a definitely an eye opener for her to read, especially because it’s fiction, she can definitely just have fun with it, basically.” Plummer must be speaking in code, because that makes no sense to us. Nor do his pleas that he just wants to educate people. Plummer’s already faced one scandal, surely he knew to expect another one – or more.

Balancing Act courted trouble from the very beginning, when Oakland based, black-owned Marcus Books refused to carry this trashy title. Plummer and his publicity team raised homophobic doubts. When asked this week whether he thought the owners banned the book because of his homosexuality or his history with McMillan, Plummer stayed vaguely political:

They’re both affiliated. They both are. I know the owner of the bookstore personally – throughout the years, I was with Terry. A very nice lady. It’s interesting that she doesn’t want to carry the book.

Interesting, but not surprising. McMillan’s never been a wallflower. Remember when she reamed Plummer on Oprah? The nastiness doesn’t end there – in fact, it seems to be getting worse.
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Responding to a post on AOL’s Black Voices blog, McMillan – or someone pretending to be McMillan – described Balancing Act as “opportunistic, exploitative, trash that’s being referred to as a novel”. She then turned her eye on the publisher, Simon & Schuster:

Simon & Schuster is as much to blame for insulting me and hoping to cash in by capitalizing on my good name for their own corporate gain.

They have promised fame-mongers something they shouldn’t want or need, which is yet another display of black-on-black crime… I am grateful to all of the intelligent people who are smart enough to know the underlying racist reasons for publishing this book — which is to capitalize on my good name so that they make out like bandits.

We can’t say racism motivated the publishers, but they certainly wanted a bawdy tell-all, which they think translates to “best-seller”.
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According to Plummer’s cousin publicist, Mark Plummer, McMillan’s been lurking in other shadows, as well:

Every single place Jonathan and I go in support of Balancing Act, the organizers have received mail or letters from Terry about why we should not be able to speak about this novel. It’s embarrassing. You’re not supposed to be able to interfere with someone’s right to make a living in this country. We have encountered resistance that does stem from her and I’m being honest – I know for a fact that that’s the case.

Mark’s also become a contentious presence in Plummer’s publicity campaign.

Earlier this week Vanessa Lake penned a piece called “A Diva Before His Time: The Mismanagement of Jonathan Plummer” in which she scathingly writes,

Adding [to the] acid mix of personal and public destruction for Jonathan Plummer is Mark Hilton Plummer, who’s own reputation as a fragile, volatile, egomaniacal, with an extreme lack of business savvy cripple his effectiveness . In a nutshell, a manager of unproven grandeur which equals his client’s. Dust is clearly in their eyes and it’s definitely not stardust derived from their own talents. The Plummer’s perception of themselves is indeed bigger than their reality.

Lake explains that the boys canceled a visit with non-profit People of Color in Crisis so that Plummer could walk in a since-scrapped fashion show. Mark Plummer denies the charges, sort of: “The trip hasn’t been canceled. It’s merely been postponed”. As tensions build, Mark’s been pointing the finger at his former business partner, Terrance Russ.

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It’s Russ who originally contacted Queerty about interviewing Plummer. He seemed excited about the project. He’s not feeling so sunny these days and makes clear that he’s not longer working with the Plummer men. So, what happened? A lot of cross talk and smoke blowing.

Mark Plummer intimated that Russ, who once headed publicity at Uptown Records lied about his credentials. He even alleges Russ isn’t Russ at all, but an impostor:

I found out that this person’s references were inaccurate, to say the least, and I immediately became uncomfortable in doing anything arranged by this person. I should say I don’t even know who this person is and I’m trying to find out who’s on the other end of the phone. I don’t know this person at all.

Russ sees things differently, painting Mark Plummer as a demanding manager who simply doesn’t know what he’s doing. Not only did Mark mysteriously cancel the POCC meeting and trip to New York, he’s intentionally stirring up scandal:

I was emphatic that Jonathan take the high road on Terry McMillan and keep it on the book. It’s really silly because, first of all, there were people who knew that they were coming to New York. The thing that really troubles me is that they put this on themselves.

In all his years working with celebrities, says Russ, he’s never experienced such a scandal. When we spoke this morning, Russ seemed regretful for ever getting involved with Plummer at all. And, we imagine, so are a lot of other people.

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