November 17, 2000

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11

on the airoff the press

Grab your partner, and make a run for a million dollars

by John Graves

CBS is searching for eight diverse couples to compete in its new summer series, the Summer Global Adventure. The network says it looking for a “diverse group of men and women representing a broad cross-section of American society to take part in a monthlong, international race spanning 25,000 miles in which participants will have to thread their way through city-wide mazes and traps at each foreign stop to find clues to their next destinations."

The first couple to complete the race will win $1 million. CBS says is it is looking for all types of couples; spouses, life partners, lovers, relatives, fraternity or sorority members, roommates, etc. The only requirement is that they be in "long-standing relationships."

Applications and details are available at the network's web site, CBS.com. CBS says

applicants must submit all applications and a 3-minute videotape by December 1 to be eligible for first-round interviews in January, where 400 couples will be selected for the second-round interviews in February.

Shepard story to be a TV movie

Cherry Alley Productions and Canadian producer Alliance Atlantis are developing The Matthew Shepard Story, a two-hour, made-for-TV film for NBC based on the events surrounding the brutal 1998 murder of the gay college student who was tied to a fence, beaten and left for dead by two men in Wyoming.

The movie will be told through the eyes of his mother, Judy Shepard, who has become an outspoken advocate of LGBT rights and has given her official blessing to the project.

If it gets final approval by NBC, The Matthew Shepard Story could air by next spring, reports Variety's Josef Adalian.

Adalian says that MTV and HBO are also developing films based on Shepard's murder which have not, as yet, been officially endorsed by the Shepard family.

Actress Goldie Hawn, who owns Cherry Alley, told Adalian, "Cherry Alley's first goal is to entertain, but at the same time, we want to have a positive impact on the viewers we reach."

Adalian says that Cherry Alley and Alliance Atlantis are also producing When Billie Beat Bobby, an ABC TV movie about lesbian tennis ace Billie Jean King's famous 1973 "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match with Bobby Riggs, starring Holly Hunter and Ron Silver. Laura moved to the wee hours

CBS-owned stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco have moved Paramount's controversial and low-rated Dr. Laura talk show from its prime afternoon air time to the television boneyard of 2 am.

"Shifting a show to a late-night, or in this case overnight, time period in the two top major markets-New York and Los Angeles-has been the death knell for struggling shows in the past," says Variety's Melissa Grego in her report on the move.

All four Canadian stations that carried the show dropped it last month, and it has been getting dismal ratings-a Nielson national average of 1.4 for the week ending Oct. 22. But Paramount Domestic Television, which produces and distributes Dr. Laura, is standing by the show and its infamous and homophobic host.

Frasier parody disappeared

NBC seems to have caved in to pressure from Dr. Laura host Laura Schlessinger and pulled from syndication an episode of Frasier that parodied her.

GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, says that the "Dr. Nora" episode featuring Christine Baranski has not been seen since December 2, 1999, although other shows from last season have appeared in syndicated reruns several times.

GLAAD has long protested Schlessinger's

comments calling homosexuality (and lesDanny's life after 'Real World'

bian and gay people--you cannot separate the two) "deviant” and a “biological error."

According to a transcript released by GLAAD, Schlessinger voiced her objections on her show last March, saying she was not upset with her own portrayal, but with the way her mother was shown.

"Since Paramount began producing Dr. Laura, there has been a suspicious absence of Dr. Nora in the Paramount-produced Frasier syndication lineup," said GLAAD's media director Scott Seomin. "Perhaps Schlessinger and Paramount believe there can be only one doctor in the Paramount house."

USA Today's Peter Johnson, who reported the story in his "Inside FV" column, went on to say Paramount had no immediate comment to the GLAAD charges by the time his column went to press.

Schlessinger on 'Dateline'

Laura Schlessinger will be interviewed by Maria Shriver for a November sweeps episode of Dateline NBC.

Entertainment Weekly says that Schlessinger reportedly demanded that no one else be interviewed on camera for her Dateline segment. However, an unnamed NBC spokeswoman denies the network made the alleged concession, saying simply, “NBC News has a policy against cutting deals for interviews."

Fox likes 'Normal' numbers

Fox was pleased with the first episode of its new gay sitcom Normal, Ohio. The show, starring John Goodman as a gay man who returns to the hometown and family he left when he came out several years earlier, attracted 12.2 million viewers and retained most of the audience from The Simpsons which aired before it.

'American High' moves to PBS

PBS has picked up American High, a Real World-type reality show about a group of students in a Chicago high school that featured the coming-out of a real-life gay student. The show which was canceled by Fox after a short run last summer. TV Guide, which gave a "Cheer" to PBS, says the network will air the old episodes of American High next April with unaired new ones.

'Seinfeld' writer signs on with Ellen

Comedian and former Seinfeld writer Carol Leifer has been hired as executive director for Ellen DeGeneres' upcoming CBS sitcom.

According to USA Today, Leifer has reworked the as yet unnamed show, changing Ellen's character from a TV variety show host to that of a big-city woman who moves to a small town. The show could air as early as next spring.

He just doesn't get it

Actor Dean Cain, who plays a gay man in the upcoming film The Broken Hearts Club told the National Enquirer that he had to ask the film's gay screenwriter to explain the gay inside jokes in the film script.

"He was the best person to ask, but lots of the cast and crew were gay, too, so we had lots of information," Cain said.

He added that he really likes his character in the film exclaiming, "He's so much fun! I love him!"

Silent stars have silent tell-all

Actress Ione Skye, who came out as a lesbian (or bisexual) on the Howard Stern show, will portray Virginia Rappe, Fatty Arbuckle's alleged rape victim in Return to Babylon, an indie film about silent screen stars. Babylon, being produced by actress Maria Conchita Alonso, will be shot in silence just like the old films.

Alonso, who played a lesbian in last year's cable film Best Actress, will herself portray Mexican actress Lupe Velez, who was reportedly been found face-down in a toilet, where she had run after the pills she took to commit suicide made her sick.

Mormon-raised Julie says the experience

of living with openly gay Danny "opened her eyes" about homosexuality, as all of the cast members recount their experiences on the Real World 9 Reunion Special now airing on MTV.

On the same reunion show, Danny says that he and his boyfriend in the military have to walk apart on the street and go to shows through separate entrances since Danny's face is well known now. (His boyfriend's face was always pixellated on the show.)

Danny was given a tour of author Anne Rice's stately New Orleans home by Rice's openly gay son Christopher when he and his mother invited the Real World cast to a Mardi Gras dinner.

Since leaving Real World, which ended it's ninth season a couple of weeks ago, Danny has gone on to guest star in a heterosexual role on a recent episode of Dawson's Creek.

'Gaywaves' will be back

Finally, I want o offer an apology to my faithful Gaywaves listeners. An unprecedented number of technical problems have kept the show off the air for the last four weeks. WRUW itself was knocked off the air for two of those weeks and a technical problem in the production studio accounted for the other two weeks.

Stay tuned however. I produce a show every week, rain or shine, and hope to be on the air again on Friday, November 17.

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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