September 14, 2001 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
15
eveningsout
After 17 years, Wigstock hangs up its curlers
by Anthony Glassman
Lady Bunny, one of the founders of Wigstock, the most glamorous drag extravaganza and festival in the world, announced that this year's event was the last.
First appearing in 1984, Wigstock was put on for under $1,000. Now, the New York City event costs around $120,000 to put on, and must have massive attendance to turn a profit. Proceeds are donated to the Gay Men's Health Crisis.
The last two years, it rained on Lady Bunny's parade, literally. Attendance plummeted because of the weather, and Lady Bunny and painter Scott Lifschutz, the other organizer of the event, lost $8,000 each year.
But the event went out with a bang. Deborah Harry of the punk band Blondie and '80s dance music group Book of Love were both at the September 2 bash, along with drag performers Joey Arias and Richard Move.
Wigstock spawned a movie, a book, a soundtrack and a sister event in Chicago.
While, as an annual event, Wigstock is dead, Lady Bunny might put on similar events in the future, but that's just that, the future. "I know it's an institution," Lady Bunny told the New York Post, "but it's about to institutionalize us."
Rhys Miller
A little coffee with your cabaret
•
Rhys Miller will close out the Cleveland Lesbian-Gay Center's Music Happenings series with a soulful evening of cabaret on September 14 at Civilizations coffeehouse.
The event, called the Art of Pride, is a bookend to June's Touch of Pride, and will feature Miller's humor and warmth, as well as a large helping of song.
The event will be from 7 to 10 pm at Civilizations, 2366 West 11th St, Cleveland. Tickets, available at the door, are $15 for the general public, $5 for holders of the center's Pride Card, and free for Pride Card holders who bring a paid non-member. Admission includes a year's membership to the Cleveland Lesbian-Gay Center. For more information, call 216-651-5428.
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I want to be left alone... with her
Screen legend Greta Garbo, whose infamous line "I want to be left alone" in Grand Hotel has been mangled in innumerable ways, had an affair with a woman, according to a new American Movie Classics documentary.
Greta Garbo: a Lone Star, which debuted September 4 on the cable classic-film network, delves into the life and loves of the screen goddess, whose androgynous mystique and sultry good looks, along with her European charm and desire for solitude offcamera, made the country crazy for her.
At one point, a woman named Mercedes de Acosta, referred to by one person in the film as the first stalker, aimed to steal Garbo ́s heart, only to discover, as Garbo's heterosexual paramours had, that her career was the great love of her life.
Heche says her father abused her
Anne Heche says her father sexually abused her as a child, which caused her years of mental illness.
The actress told Barbara Walters in an interview that she also feared she would die of AIDS, the disease that killed her father in 1983.
"I had a fantasy world that I escaped to. I called my other personality Celestia," Heche said. "I called the other world that I created for myself 'The Fourth Dimension.' I believed I was from that world. I believed I was from another planet. I think I was insane."
The 32-year-old also discussed meeting Ellen DeGeneres at the Vanity Fair Oscar party in 1997. The two had a serious relationship before their high-profile breakup last August, and now they're not even friends.
"I saw the most ravishing woman I had ever seen in my life standing across the room. Her name was Ellen DeGeneres. She was radiating," Heche said. "I think at certain times in people's lives, you just radiate an energy and a glow of fabulousness. And that was her! I had never seen anybody so lit up. And when we started talking, and I asked her for her number . . . she said, 'What are you doin'? There's a reporter right here. Do you have any idea who I am?"
Heche, who recently married a cameraman from a documentary on DeGeneres, has also said that she was under the effects of
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MDMA, commonly known as Ecstasy, when she banged on the door of a house in California following her break-up with DeGeneres last year.
She also confirmed that she is three months pregnant.
Sapphic romances in Shakespeare
Dr. Theodora Jankowski, a former English literature professor at the University of Washington, has uncovered what she believes to be a number of lesbian romances in the world of Shakespearean drama. Shakespeare's works were believed, until now, to be almost completely free of Sapphic representation.
Jankowski points to Hermione's relationship with her servant Paulina in The Winter's Tale. Hermione was accused of having an affair by her husband and disappears for 16 years, when her servant cared for her. Paulina also is willing to defend her lady's honor in combat with Hermione's husband, something Jankowski points to as more proof that the adultery was with Paulina.
Other relationships Jankowski notes are between Portia and Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice, Beatrice and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing, and Cleopatra and her servants Iras and Charmian in Antony and Cleopatra.
That's not counting the female characters who dress like men, such as Viola in Twelfth Night.
Lawrence returns, for better or worse
Lynn Johnston's comic strip For Better or Worse returned its ground-breaking gay character Lawrence to the funny pages last week.
Lawrence came out in 1993 in Johnston's slice-of-life comic, making him one of the first syndicated comic characters to do so.
Johnston received hate mail and death threats and over 100 papers either canceled the strip or ran replacement episodes.
Lawrence returned Sept. 6-9 as the best man in a wedding in the strip. The mother of the bride is upset that a gay man is in the ceremony. "This is a church," she complains to the groom.
According to a vice president at the syndicate that markets For Better or Worse, this time around only about two dozen papers have requested alternate strips that replace the gay angle with a discussion of flowers. It's a zoo in Zoolander
The September 11 issue of the Advocate features an interview with Ben Stiller. star of the new comedy Zoolander.
In the film. Stiller plays an "ambisexual" supermodel who gets brainwashed into killing the prime minister of Malaysia so that evil designers can still exploit cheap overseas labor.
The villains hypnotize Stiller's character, Derek Zoolander, by playing Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax." He also reminds a bouncer at the VIP room of a club that they've been in multiple orgies together.
"It doesn't matter who's doing anything to Derek, he's gonna get aroused," Stiller says of his character, referring specifically to a scene in which bisexual comedian Andy Dick plays a 300-pound Slovakian masseuse with a unibrow.
Will Ferrell, of Saturday Night Live fame, is also in the film playing an evil, very effeminate fashion designer, and Milla Jovovich plays his dominatrix sidekick. According to Stiller. Jovovich's "subtext" for playing the character
was as a man.
John Graves is on vacation. His "On the Air, Off the Press" column will return September 28.
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