August 11, 2000 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

off the press

GLAAD awards show seen on TV for the first time

by John Graves

I guess we have come a long way, baby, because last week, the E! Entertainment Channel broadcast for the first time ever on TV, the entire Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Media Awards ceremony.

While the show aired last week, don't worry. It's cable---it'll be on again.

Two shows get Emmy nods

Both If These Walls Could Talk II and Will & Grace received multiple nominations for this year's Emmy awards.

Look for the gay and straight best friends to move back in together when Will & Grace airs at it's new time in NBC's prime slot, 9 pm on Thursdays next season.

"We've accomplished what we tried to do, which was to try to make the show mainstream, and I think we're on Thursday night because we've accomplished that," Will & Grace executive producer James Burrows told Charlie McCollum of the San Jose Mercury News. "It's the most powerful night for the network. NBC has found a way to keep Thursday night alive... and I'm hopeful the show will do well there. Still, it's quite a burden."

Sophie Ward marries Rena Brannan

England's Newcastle Journal reports that, four years after coming out and ending her marriage of eight years to husband Paul Hobson, former Vogue cover girl and actress Sophie Ward has tied the knot again, this time to her lesbian lover, American writer Rena Brannan, in a private ceremony this past June. Brooke Shields to star in 'Family'

Former Calvin Klein model Brooke Shields is set to play a lesbian mother in What Makes a Family, an upcoming cable film about LGBT family rights produced by Barbra Streisand and Whoopi Goldberg for the Lifetime channel. Out Tony Award-winning Broadway actress Cherry Jones is set to play her life partner.

In the film, Shields and Jones portray a lesbian couple with a child they produced through artificial insemination. Tragically, Jones' character, the child's biological mother, dies and Shields' character finds herself in a bitter fight with her partner's grandparents who have laid claim to the child.

Whoopi Goldberg will appear in a supporting role in the fact-based film set in Florida, a state that bars gays and lesbians from adopting.

Set to air on Lifetime in January, production got under way this month in Toronto under the direction of independent filmmaker Maggie Greenwald, who adapted the script from an original screenplay by Robert Freedman and John Pielmeier.

New doctor show has parenting story Last week on Strong Medicine, Lifetime's new medical drama about a clinic run mostly by women, a lesbian couple sought to have a child with sperm donated by the brother of one of the women. See if this story line continues the show, which airs at 9 pm Sundays.

Etheridge's reunion show is back

Also on Lifetime, Melissa Etheridge's, heartwarming show Beyond Chance will be back for a second season, and this time the lesbian rocker and mom of two will attempt to contact her late father through the help of well-known medium George Anderson.

William Keck, writing a report on the show for the Los Angeles Times, spoke to Etheridge as she prepared to tape this segment.

"I'm excited, I've tried not to expect anything--to just be open," Etheridge told Keck. She explained how she came to narrate a show on heartfelt reunions, psychic phenomena and life's strange twists. Etheridge told Keck she had been searching for career opportunities that would allow her to remain close to her home in Los Angeles with her life partner Julie Cypher and their two children.

"I came to a point in my musical career where my original dream to grow up and

become a rock star happened," Etheridge said. "It's funny when that happens in your mid-30s. You wonder, ‘Okay, what now?' I wanted to put more goals in front of me."

Keck says the Lifetime executives who chose Etheridge to host the show had been long attracted by her openness about her life and the relatability of her music.

Beyond Chance executive producer Stephen Kroopnick told Keck, "We didn't want a typical reality host. We knew we didn't want a journalist or somebody who had some spare time between sitcoms."

Hunter to play Billie Jean King

Actress Holly Hunter is reportedly negotiating to play the role of Billy Jean King in a made-for-television film based on the lesbian tennis legend's historic, 1972 "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match against male tennis pro Bobby Riggs.

Heche is Marine captain

Ellen DeGeneres' wife Anne Heche portrays a decorated Marine captain accused of

killing a fellow officer who was stalking her in the fact-based, made-for-cable film One Kill now playing on Showtime.

Not what we thought it would be

The new Fox sitcom Opposite Sex is ostensibly about the romantic entanglements of a group of heterosexual young people. But last week a lesbian won Jed, one of the straight male leads, during "slave week," while her ex-girlfriend paired with Kate, a straight female lead. The show can be seen on Fox, Mondays at 8 pm.

Andy Hardy at 'American High'

Also on Fox, follow the real-life experiences of Brad, an openly gay student, on the new cinéma vérité series American High.

The show, which follows the daily lives of a group of students at a Chicago-area high school in up close, Real World-style, airs in two back-to-back episodes every Wednesday at 9 and 9:30 pm.

Last week, Brad was chosen to be the choreographer of the school's big dance show-shades of the Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland "Andy Hardy" films of the late 1930s. Gabrielle and Xena, ‘soul mates'

Actress Renee O'Connor, speaking of the intense and loving relationship between her character Gabrielle and Xena on Xena: Warrior Princess, told TV Guide recently, "I can look back...and not be surprised that people thought [they were lovers]--I believe they are soul mates."

GLAAD and P-FLAG advised film

Ellen Muth portrays a teenage lesbian who stirs up trouble when she comes out to her heretofore liberal parents (Stockard Channing and James Naughton) in the cable drama The

Truth About Jane, which debuted on Lifetime last week.

"It's hard enough having sex for the first time with anyone," Muth's character says in a narrative voiceover during the film. “But when you do it with a girl, you're just asking for it."

That also applies to making a film about a lesbian teen, according to writer and director Lee Rose.

"Almost no public school would let us shoot there, which blew my mind” Rose told Lynn Elber of the Associated Press.

Only Caesar Chavez High School principal James McElroy had the courage to allow Rose to shoot the film at his Phoenix high school.

Even finding a teenage actress to take on the role of Jane was not an easy task.

"The famous teenage actresses, most of them wouldn't go near it out of fear, or their parents wouldn't let them do it," Rose told Elber. Then Rose found the 18-year-old Muth. "She's a smart, wonderful, talented kid. She has a gay friend and it never occurred to her to be frightened of doing this."

The Truth About Jane was made with guidance from GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian

Alliance Against Defamation and P-FLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. It costars 23-year-old actress Alicia Lagano as Jane's first romance, Taylor, and an out-ofdrag RuPaul as a family friend.

Rose told Elber that she got P-FLAG involved because, "It's too rare to have the opportunity to do a story like this and I wanted to get it right. P-FLAG has never really had a movie where they had a big part in it, so it was really important to them, and it was really important to me that kids and parents watching it knew where to get help if they were in trouble.”

John of 'NYPD Blue' may get lucky

Look for NYPD Blue's gay police assistant John Irvine to have an expanded role, and possibly a boyfriend.

"I know the art department is dying to do John's apartment," actor Bill Brochtrup told USA Today TV critic Robert Bianco about his character's expanded role.

They love us in the checkout lines

No results yet from last month's National Enquirer readers' poll on the "gay chic sweep-

ing Hollywood," but here's one I missed. At the same time the Enquirer ran its story on gay Hollywood, another supermarket tabloid, the Globe, ran a story about a gay couple adopting a child, and asked its readers if they approved.

Well, the results are in, and the Globe reports its readers voted by an overwhelming 80 percent in support of LGBT people as parents.

"There's not enough love in the world," one reader wrote. "Let's not discriminate against gays."

I think that this is a sign that the tabloids are discovering what their real demographic is. Just this past week, the Examiner ran a special photo report on "Who's In and Who's Out" (of the closet) that filled 31 full pages of a 50 page issue.

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, an LGBT public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7 pm, and at http://radio.cwru.edu. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contribute to this column.

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