August 25, 2000 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE ... 11

on the airoff the press

'Laramie Project' cast pauses to make cable TV version

by John Graves

HBO will produce an original movie based on The Laramie Project, an off-Broadway play about the impact of the murder of gay student Matthew Shepard on the 27,000 citizens of Laramie, Wyoming, where the 1998 killing took place.

New York Daily News feature writer Robert Dominguez reports that the successful stage production of Laramie will shut down on September 2 so that the entire cast can work on the cable version, which HBO is expected to begin filming in November.

Roy Gabay is co-producing and writing the HBO version of the play with director Moises Kaufman, who wrote the stage play with members of his Tectonic Theater Project troupe after interviewing more than 200 citizens of Laramie.

The script, based on those interviews, is delivered by the cast of four men and four women who assume the roles, express the feelings and confront the prejudices of more than 30 real-life citizens of Laramie.

Gabay told Variety he took the play to HBO because of the respectful way the cable network treated his production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit by out lesbian playwright and teacher Margaret Edson. The cable version of Wit will feature actress Emma Thompson in the starring role.

"The possibility for many, many people to see [Laramie on television] is very exciting," Kaufman told Dominguez. “It's a story that needs to be told."

Kaufman, whose previous projects include the long-running Off-Broadway hit Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, is writing the screenplay with Gabay, and will direct the film.

The stage play will be broadened for the cable film version.

"It will be its own animal," Kaufman told Dominguez. "It's too early to tell exactly what happens, but the focus will stay in the town of Laramie and what happened over the course of that year."

Danny's the hottie

TV Guide Online recently conducted an Internet poll in which they asked, "Who's the Hottie" among all the real-life characters on the so-called "reality shows" which have become so prolific of late.

Of all the shows and all the men, Real World's openly gay Danny was chosen as the hottest of the hot.

On the women's side, Jordan, the exotic dancer and triathelete on Big Brother, beat out Real World's Kelly.

P.S.: As this column goes to press, openly gay Richard is still surviving on Survivor. 'Will & Grace' meets 'My Three Sons'

Say Uncle, a new CBS sitcom, will revolve around a successful gay man who is

forced to become a family man when he inherits his teenage niece and nephew.

Jeffrey Richman, the openly gay producer of NBC's popular sitcom Frasier, came up with the idea after his own sister made him the guardian of her children in the event of her death.

"I'm a gay man (and) I started thinking about what I would do if I had to step up to that responsibility," Richman told Variety.

He presented his idea to an old friend, Just Shoot Me creator Steve Levitan, who added, "The show addresses some of those feelings straight people have when they walk into a gay friend's perfect living room

and think, 'It wouldn't be so perfect if he had

kids'."

Say Uncle is being scripted by Richman and Levitan, who will also serve as executive producers of the show. Variety also reports other networks had showed interest in the show, but CBS won out.

"When we pitched it to Les [CBS Television president Les Moonves], he called to say he wanted it before we were out of the parking lot," Levitan told Variety. "He got it. And all we cared about was who was most excited about the show and would be willing to support it when it got on the air."

Say Uncle is expected for the 2001 fall season, but may air as early as next spring. Unfinished Wilde play found

University of California student Neil Kidd recently discovered an unfinished 1892 play by Oscar Wilde, the gay playwright who was persecuted, prosecuted and sent to prison in Victorian England because of his sexual orientation.

According to the BBC, the unfinished, hand-written play, A Wife's Tragedy, is autobiographical in nature.

to our family and friends and live our lives in celebration of the truth of our creation. Perabo to star in 'Lost and Delirious'

Actress Piper Perabo, costar of the just released film Coyote Ugly, told USA Today she will next star in Lost and Delirious, in which she plays what she describes as an "obsessive, bookish girl who's in love with another girl and shunned by her schoolmates."

It was not clear from the USA Today report whether Lost and Delirious is a play or a film.

Catering to the Kennedy voyeur

One of the Kennedys displayed an ugly bit of homophobia recently. Robert Kennedy Jr., publisher of Muscle magazine, complained to the Globe supermarket tabloid that other men's fitness magazines catered too much to what he called "the gay voyeur."

Kennedy said his upcoming new magazine, American Health & Fitness, will not feature hunky guys on the cover.

"You see traces of it in all these magazines," Kennedy told the Globe. “They go for the look in a man's eye. If a guy looks like he can be seduced, he goes on the cover. They put debauched, wet-lipped men on the cover. That's something I will not do."

Scott Seomin of GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, reportedly told Kennedy, "Your implied message is that all gay men fit a stereotype as sexual voyeurs. This sets us up for discrimination."

A stripper with a master's degree

Look for Chrissy, a lesbian with a master's degree in psychology who works as a stripper, in HBO's new behind-the-scenes docu-

'Jane' gets Lifetime's highest ratings mentary series G-String Divas.

Lifetime's première of The Truth About Jane last month got the highest ratings of any original film the cable channel has aired in five years.

The heartwarming tale of a young teen's coming out and struggle for her parents' acceptance garnered a 4.7 rating (3.625 million households), making it the thirdhighest rated TV movie on basic cable so far this year, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The film, starring Ellen Muth as the lesbian teen and Stockard Channing as the mother who rejects her, than learns to accept her, was produced with the guidance of PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

Just goes to show you what can happen when our parents decide not just to tolerate us, but to accept and affirm us and back us in our struggle for justice and basic American civil rights. This can only happen when we, as more and more of our young people are doing, gather up the courage to come out

Us Weekly reports that in one of the episodes, Chrissy's lover, the editor of an unnamed feminist newspaper, appears in the series when she drops by Chrissy's club and gets a lap dance from one of Chrissy's colleagues.

G-String Divas" normally airs at 11 pm Thursdays on HBO.

Free Initial Consultation

What lesbian daughter?

Republican spin doctors must have really gone to work on the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

While USA Today and many other daily papers ran extensive stories on GOP VP nominee Dick Cheney's openly lesbian daughter Mary, the disrespect shown to openly gay Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe during his convention speech, and the antigay planks in the Republican platform, the Plain Dealer was conspicuously silent on all three.

C'mon, Will, kiss him!

Actor Eric McCormack recently revealed that Will, the openly gay character he plays on NBC's hit gay-straight sitcom Will and Grace, will at last share a romantic same-sex kiss on the show next season.

"We've had two years of building, so I feel we've earned it," McCormack, who is straight, told the Toronto Star. “If we can prove that we're loveable people whose lives you can care about, then . . . that kiss will have meaning. It won't be just a stunt.'

"I want straight people sitting in their houses going, ‘C'mon Will, kiss him',” McCormack added.

My question: Why do media pundits find it acceptable for a straight actor to play a gay character, but overly "preachy" when a gay actor like Ellen DeGeneres plays a gay role?

No queer stars

Finally, while it was important for the E! channel to focus on the many straight celebrities who attended this year's GLAAD Media Awards ceremonies in its coverage of what has become a true Hollywood event, weren't you just a bit disappointed there wasn't any coverage of LGBT stars coming out at the gala?

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.

Maria L. Shinn

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