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GAY PEOPLE's ChronicLE JUNE 26, 1998

EVENINGS OUT

Heche sizzles with Ford in summer action romance

Six Days, Seven Nights Directed by Ivan Reitman Touchstone Pictures

Reviewed by Doreen Cudnik

During a recent trip to a family vacation spot in an Atlantic coast resort town, I got into a fascinating conversation with my mom's husband Pete.

With genuine anguish in his voice, Pete shared with me all the reasons why he was definitely not going to see the recently released Six Days Seven Nights, an action adventure/romantic comedy starring Harrison Ford and Anne Heche.

Who can forget the hoopla that surrounded Ellen DeGeneres' coming out last year and later, the media circus that took place when Heche came out as DeGeneres' lover. Some people, including Heche's own agents (whom she fired as a result), predicted that coming out publicly would be a big mistake, that she would never be believed in a "straight" role, and that she had basically just flushed her entire career down the toilet. Pete agreed wholeheartedly with those sentiments.

"I can't believe they cast her opposite Harrison Ford!" he said. "No one is going to see that movie."

I pressed him about why he felt that way, and he offered up the "believability factor"

as an excuse.

"Nobody is going to believe her in a heterosexual love story," he said adamantly, adding that Heche had been one of his favorite actresses before she decided to "shack up" with Ellen "Degenerate."

"The less I know about her personal life, the better," he added.

Well, lord knows, Pete is hardly alone in his beliefs. But Six Days Seven Nights has earned $10.5 million at the box office in

only its second weekend, ranking it number four at the box office behind The Truman Show, Disney's Mulan, and The X-Files, which opened up at number one. Not bad company for a movie that nobody was supposed to see.

The box office returns seem to be proof positive that not only can Harrison Ford still carry a picture, but maybe, just maybe, the ticket-buying public doesn't really care who Anne Heche is kissing in real life, as long as her on-screen kisses sizzle.

And they do. In Six Days Seven Nights, Heche plays Robin Monroe, a stylish, impeccably organized New York fashion magazine editor. Quinn Harris (Ford) is a disheveled rogue of a cargo plane pilot who flies Robin and her and fiancé Frank Martin (played by famous Friend David Schwimmer-and believe me, this guy is the anti-Ross) to the remote tropical island of Makatea.

The crotchety old DeHavilland Beaver airplane Quinn transports them in is not exactly the first-class accommodations that Frank and Robin are accustomed to, but their cares are washed away as soon as they catch sight of the beautiful island with its swaying palm trees and turquoise beaches. Romance is definitely is the warm, tropical air, and Frank has some serious plans for Robin.

But romance is interrupted when Robin's boss back in New York calls her and begs her to fly from Makatea to Tahiti to oversee a photo shoot that is mired in problems. Robin reluctantly agrees, and convinces Frank that it will only be for one day. She then has to find Quinn, and basically bribe him in order to get him to leave Anjelica, a sexy hotel entertainer, and take Robin on the unscheduled flight.

Once Robin and Quinn are in the air, bad weather forces them to turn back. Forced

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TOUCHSTONE

Harrison Ford and Anne Heche struggle onto a beach after their plane is forced down in a storm.

down by the storm, Quinn and Robin find themselves stranded on a deserted island. Danger and romance ensue as the two castaways are thrown into a series of adventures not found in any vacation brochure.

"I thought it would be fun to take two very opposite people, put them into a difficult but humorous situation together and see what happens between them," director Ivan Reitman said.

Despite the controversy over casting Heche in the role of Robin, Reitman and producer Roger Birnbaum never had any doubts after they saw her audition with Ford.

"At this reading with Harrison, Anne knocked us out," Birnbaum recalled. "She was funny, she was real, she's very beautiful, and coupled with the fact that she had an immediate chemistry with Harrison, made us believers."

"I'm always looking for those magical on-screen combinations," Reitman added, "and Harrison and Anne have certainly got it."

Ford had nothing but praise for his leading lady, saying, "She is both emotionally engaging and funny as hell. I loved working with her." And like Reitman, Ford never wavered about Heche being cast as his opposite.

In a recent Parade magazine interview, Heche said, "He [Harrison Ford] called me about these stories that he didn't want to play opposite me anymore [after I came out as Ellen DeGeneres' girlfriend] and said 'That's all malarkey.' He was wonderful about it."

Heche said her character Robin "finds herself' as a result of all of the adversity she is faced with, much in the same way that Heche herself has grown from recent events in her life.

"What happens when she meets Quinn is

that her entire life opens up-and she gets down to the bare bones of herself in being with this man," Heche said. “And I think that's kind of how we all are we kind of live our lives and everything seems fine until we meet the love of our life and go, 'Oh, this is what life's all about.'"

Ever the romantic, as you know if you saw her recounting the details of how she met DeGeneres on the Oprah Winfrey show last year, Heche concluded, “I think everyone is trying to find the love of their life. This movie tells about that fantasy, of just being given the person you're supposed to fall in love with-and it hits you so hard, the force of it explodes in front of you. It's the bang-on collision with the love of your life, the person we're meant to be with forever. Maybe or maybe not on a deserted island like in this movie-but it shows that it can happen. And that's why the fantasy stays alive."

Maybe that's why heterosexual men like Pete are more than a little reluctant to see this movie-it takes their Penthouse inspired image of "lesbians", where all the women are silicone-enhanced and have cherry red fingernails, and turns it upside down. It's one thing when a woman who looks like, say, Martina Navratilova, comes out as a lesbian. But when someone like Heche, who looks so yummy and so darned comfortable cozying up to Han Solo, Indiana Jones and the President of the United States all rolled into one, well, that stretches the imagination. And knowing that she's going home to her wife when the director yells "cut!" is almost too much to bear.

But as for Pete, and anyone else who decides to skip this movie-whatever the reason you'll be missing out on a lot of good, light-hearted summer fun. After all it's a fantasy... use your imagination! ▼

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