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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

Pride Guide 96 Section B

Lea Delaria will take

Columbus Pride by storm

by Doreen Cudnik

Look out Columbus, because Lea Delaria's coming to Pride, and she'll be bringing her brand of brash, butch, no-holds-barred humor with her. An internationally known comic, jazz singer, and actor, Delaria makes no apologies for being a waaay-out dyke. Her bold style, in fact, led to her being the first openly gay comic on national television when she appeared on the Arsenio Hall Show in 1992.

Today, Delaria keeps herself plenty busy with recurring roles on The John Larroquette Show and Matlock, touring with her comedy act, making a name for herself as a jazz singer, and most recently, winwoning the coveted job of writing the screenplay (along with writing partner Maggie Cassella) of Leslie Feinberg's award-winning book Stone Butch Blues. In her spare time, she continues her quest for the ultimate all-dyke party (who doesn't?) and cruises lucky femme girls everywhere she travels.

Doreen Cudnik: I know that Columbus is really looking forward to you being the emcee at the Pride Rally this year. How did that come about?

Lea Delaria: I think I'm the grand marshal and that I'm performing, I don't believe that I'm the emcee. They just called and asked, and I said yes!

So, you're looking forward to coming to "America's heartland?"

Oh yeah! I was just hanging out with Candace Gingrich this weekend, and she's the grand marshal at Long Beach Pride, and she gets to pick the winning float! Which, I'm totally bummed about, because whenever I'm grand marshal all I ever do is wave-you just ride in a car and wave. So we need to lobby Columbus Pride to let me pick the winning float!

What do you know about the Columbus queer community or Columbus in general?

Not a whole lot. I just did a show at a college nearby [Denison University in Granville], and we went into Columbus. We drove into Columbus and went to a bar called Wall Street, and then we went to this after-hours party at a place called, I think, the Bank. It was some lesbian thing-there were a lot of people there-and somebody was getting spanked. So we partied away and I had a really good time. I really liked Columbus.

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Cleveland was the same way, had this bad rep, and then you go there and it's just a real party, it's a real interesting place.

So you remember Cleveland as being a fun place when you were here in 1992?

Oh, God yes... I had a ball when I was there, a real good time.

You're in Toronto now, are you working there?

I'm performing, yeah. I did their Pride last year huge.

You get a chance with you job to do a lot of traveling, not only in the United States but abroad. What are some of your favorite places to hang out?

Oh, god... Jodie Foster's bedroom, that would be my most favorite place to hang out. But other than that, I like Sydney, Australia a lot. I liked Auckland, New Zealand. Montreal is one of my total favorite places, and London and Amsterdam. Those are probably the best places for good queer and dyke fun those places are really a party.

I have to say though, I liked New Zealand better that I liked Australia. Everybody goes to the Mardi Gras in Sydney, but just in terms of interesting gay life, New Zealand is. much more interesting than Sydney. Why is that?

The Native people in New Zealand are called "Maris" and instead of adopting a western civilization in New Zealand, there's sort of this mix that happened. They really adopted a lot of the native culture down there as well, and in the Mari culture, there's nothing wrong with being gay. So you can walk around New Zealand and be openly gay. We're not as oppressed down there as we are in other places.

They have this thing down there called the dragon boat races, which is essentially the Fourth of July. Everybody's having a picnic and there's huge fireworks and stufflike we have in the States. And I walked around with the girl I was dating down there holding hands and kissing, and no one even looked at us. Imagine doing that at a Fourth of July celebration in Cleveland!

Gay and lesbian people have really experienced an increase in visibility recently. When you started in the business, did you foresee that you would be doing things like prime-time television?

No... no, I never thought it would happen. You didn't walk out on stage and talk about being queer in 1982, which is when I started, thinking that it was going to get you on the Tonight Show. I obviously have always had another agenda. When I did [talk openly about being queer], I said goodbye to the Tonight Show, I said goodbye to prime time television. So, that this is happening is really unique and unusual, and I'm surprised and thrilled.

What do you see as having changed that, so that an out dyke could achieve the level of success that you have?

Oh, about 25, 30 years of queer people screaming for their rights. We've effected some change.

Speaking of change, where were you when you heard the Supreme Court's ruling on Amendment 2?

Where was I? Actually, I was at the gay and lesbian community center in Los Angeles when it came down. So we all whooped it up pretty big. And I was in Toronto when it came down for Canada, they have their gay rights bill that just passed, and I was here when it happened. So that was pretty exciting too.

What was it like for you being the surprise guest on the infamous Friends lesbian wedding episode?

(Laughs) Nice little piece of cameo work, wasn't it? Candace [Gingrich] and I had a really, really fun time on that show. We were the cameo surprises and we were having a good time with it.

Did you all have a sense that you were making television history?

Well, I really don't get that we were making television history because in my mind, there's been other things. Roseanne had a gay wedding just a few weeks before that, and there's been many openly gay and lesbian characters, so I really didn't get a sense that we were making television history at all.

I remember when I was there and we were getting ready to shoot, and the director said, “Are we all ready?” and I said, “Well, if yóu really want this to look like a lesbian wedding we need maybe thirty or forty more fat dykes in tuxedos. And then we all laughed. But the fact is, that was Hollywood's version of what a lesbian wedding is, it wasn't a lesbian wedding. It's the male fantasy version of what lesbians are all about. Don't get me wrong, because I love feminine women that's who I date--but where is our actual culture coming in? That to me will be television history, when I actually see the way we are portrayed on television. The closest I've seen is Sandra Bernhardt on the Roseanne show. But every other lesbian character that I've ever seen has always been some kind of high femme who isn't really a lesbian, like Nora Dunne on Sisters. Now, I love Nora,

she's a friend, her politics are as clean as politics can be, and she's smart and she's funny, but she's a straight woman... period, but at least she apologizes for it all the time!

It seems that even with the increased visibility of gay and lesbian characters on television and in the movies, so much of it is straight actors playing gay roles.

Well, that's because if you do come out, you don't get work. There are very few actors who are out. I always say, "In Hollywood it's okay to be gay as long as you're straight." That's my line. I've lost many more parts than I have gotten because I am gay-purely because I'm a lesbian.

Do you think it's because you're a lesbian, or because you're not the "right kind” of lesbian by Hollywood standards?

No, it's because I'm a lesbian. It has nothing to do with the right kind of lesbian, because I wouldn't be going up for parts that weren't for that type of person. They don't send me in to read for parts that Winona Ryder reads for. I read for the "little tough chick" parts and I don't get them. And it's not because I'm not

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