May 18, 2001

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

on the airoff the press

'Dawson' has TV's first real, romantic male-to-male kiss

by John Graves

Dawson's Creek made television history last week when openly gay high school student Jack McFee gave his boyfriend Toby (David Monahan) a lengthy kiss at the school prom-the first sustained, romantic kiss between two men on network TV.

"I timed it, it's like a 51⁄2-second mouth-tomouth kiss," Scott Seomin of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation told USA Today TV columnist Peter Johnson. "We haven't seen anything like this before on network TV."

Johnson noted that Jack had planted a short kiss on another male character last May, but the guy told Jack he already had a boyfriend.

Even that was too much for the extremely homophobic Family Research Council whose spokesperson Heather Cirmo told Johnson, "The first kiss was disturbing enough." Cirmo complained to Johnson that the show is steeped in sex and said that this episode in particular would give the wrong impression to "impressionable teens who have questions about their sexuality by promoting a myth that homosexuality is something you're born with."

Greg Berlanti, the openly gay executive producer of Dawson's Creek, told Johnson, "It's certainly not a myth, and I think a lot of kids out there deserve to see positive images of who and what they are. I watched millions of teenagers kiss on TV growing up, and it didn't make me straight."

Although Jack and Toby will be going to different colleges next year Berlanti told Johnson he plans to continue to explore their relationship next season.

Seomin told Johnson that network TV has felt more comfortable having gays in sitcoms in recent years where he said the gay storyline "is tempered with humor."

"But," he went on, "this is a huge leap and a huge kiss. We might now start seeing physical affection and romance between other gay characters."

Telemundo cancels 'Los Beltran'

The Spanish-language television network Telemundo has canceled Los Beltran, a U.S.produced sitcom about a contemporary Cuban-American family featuring two openly gay male characters.

The show was canceled because it proved too expensive for Telemundo to purchase, says the Los Angeles Times, despite its respectable ratings and praise from gay groups for its realistic portrayal of the male couple. In his statement, said,

"For the amount of dollars they were spending for it, it wasn't cost-effective," said Telemundo spokesperson Steven Chapman. "The ratings were pretty decent, but I don't think they were as good as they had hoped. It got so much critical acclaim, which is why it's such a shame.”

Bridget Fonda, kissing girls for fun, not money.

Carlos Bermudez, the executive producer and co-creator of Los Beltran, told Times correspondent Dana Calvo, “We managed to target an audience that can watch something on prime-time television on ABC and then turn to us and watch us, a show with similar production values. To produce a show of that quality, domestically, for our people that live here, is going to cost you. If you want to go to South America and Mexico for programming that has nothing to do with your life here, so be it."

For fun, not money

One of shock-jock Howard Stern's henchmen caught actress Bridget Fonda in the hall and asked her if, given enough money, she would make love to a woman. Fonda replied that she definitely would not do it for money, but said she would do it for fun.

McKellen on coming out

Openly gay British actor Sir Ian McKellen talked to Philadelphia Daily News correspondent Sono Motoyama about his coming out experience recently. McKellen spoke from New Zealand, where he is playing Gandalf in director Peter Jackson's film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy.

"The actual point that I did it was during a [1988] conversation on BBC radio about an impending new law in U.K. called Section 28, which was to discourage schools from discussing homosexuality in a positive way with students. In the course of opposing the new law, I announced I was gay, which had never been a secret from any of my friends or colleagues, but I'd never said that in public nor to the media.”

"I do regret not having been honest earlier," he said, "mainly because I feel so much

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better about myself now I'm out, which I think is most people's experience. I've never come across anybody who came out and regretted it.'

"I understand people's reluctance to come out," he went on, "because they're frightened of what other people will think. Everybody's always frightened what somebody else will think."

McKellen explained to Motoyama, “When I came out to my stepmother, she said, 'Ooh, do be careful if you're going to tell your aunt.' When I told my aunt, she said, ‘Ooh, are you going to tell your sister? Do be careful.' When I told my sister, she said, 'Ooh, I don't know what your nephew is going to think about it.' When I told my nephew, he said, 'Ooh, I'm glad you didn't tell me years ago because I don't know what my school friends would have thought about it.'

"Hollywood is the last place to expect people to be coming out," McKellen added. “But it is odd that the film industry, where as far as actors are concerned homophobia is still very strong, should be sitting cheek by jowl with the very, very many people in Los Angeles who are very happy to be openly gay. Yet the film industry people are still closeted. Not the producers, not the directors, not the agents, not the screenplay writers, but the actors. Yes, the actors, because somehow they all want to be glamorous Rock Hudson as well. Hasn't somebody told them Rock Hudson was gay?"

An affair to remember

Actress Patricia Velasquez, star of the recently released remake of The Mummy,

said that she and bisexual comic Sandra Bernhard had been lovers in the early 1990s.

Velasquez, who was born in Venezuela, told the Globe supermarket tabloid, “Sandra will always be in my heart because she was a mother, a friend, everything. I adore her."

Dr. Weaver represses her feelings

Emmy-nominated actress Laura Innes, whose character Dr. Kerry Weaver began a relationship with staff psychiatrist Dr. Kimberly Legaspi (Elizabeth Mitchell) on the NBC medical drama ER this season, talked to GayHealth.com about her role recently.

Innes said that her character is indeed in love with the openly lesbian Legaspi, saying, "Her attraction to Dr. Legaspi is very strong."

"The coming out process for somebody Dr. Weaver's age is incredibly slow. There's enthusiasm, a sort of adolescent excitement, and then self-recrimination and pulling back... My gut feeling is that she's trying really hard not to be gay. She puts all this energy into pushing these feelings down and turning them into something else. But she just keeps coming back to it.'

Innes told GayHealth.com that promoting tolerance is an important function of ER.

"Tolerance toward gay people is a big one. We're saying that homosexuality is not something you need to feel afraid of. Some people happen to be gay, that's all. It really shouldn't be an issue."

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, a lesbian-gay 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 contributed to this column.

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