March 15, 2002 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11
on the airoff the press
Ian McKellen can't go back in the closet, it's too crowded
by John Graves
"I've had enough of being a gay icon!" Ian McKellen joked as guest host of the March 8 Saturday Night Live. “I've had enough of all this hard work, because, since I came out, I keep getting all these parts, and
my career's taken off. I want a quiet life. I'm going back into the closet. But I
I had a very gay flight attendant. He turned the entire transcontinental flight into a cabaret for himself, and it hit me that Queer Duck would get a crush on a guy like this. At the end of the flight, the guy was handing out résumés. I took one, and I went home and I wrote an episode with a flight attendant in it. And I thought, 'Well, I'll give this guy the part.' So I called him. We brought him in, and he did the part—and a few other voices-and he got into the Screen Actors Guild. His name is Terry Nani."
can't get back Douglas and Janney play gay
into the closet, because it's absolutely jam-packed full of other actors!"
McKellen,
Michael Douglas will play a gay cop on an episode of Will and Grace that will air in May, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer (March 8). And look for West Wing's Allison Janney to play Meryl Streep's lover in The Hours, due to open in theaters in October.
who says he Hoffman plays straight
enjoyed Ellen DeGeneres'
Ian McKellen monologue last December
in which she proclaimed that she's really not gay, told the New York Daily News (March 7), "Perhaps I should get married to Ellen. Or Rosie, now."
McKellen said he enjoys corresponding with his fans on his web site, www.mckellen.com saying, "I know, particularly for young gays and their families, to be able to just make a little contact with someone whose life seems to be carrying on normally is an encouragement.
But, he added, “my rule is I'll only write back once. I'm not going to start a lonelyhearts club."
Queer Duck's creator isn't
Planet Out's Christine Champagne talked to Queer Duck creator Mike Reiss February 15 about how he came up with the idea for the animated series now airing on the web at Showtime.com.
"A couple years ago, I read in New York magazine what a huge gay audience Sex and the City had," Reiss told Champagne. “Gay people would look at these women and know they're really gay men, and the show has mostly gay writers and a gay show runner. So I said, 'Why can't gay people see gay people on TV? Or in my case, gay cartoon animals.'"
"This was pre-Will & Grace and preQueer as Folk. It sort of got me mad," he explained, "so that's how I came at it. It's Queer Duck only because that's a saying. I think a lot of younger people don't recognize the term, 'Oh, he's a real queer duck.'"
What many people don't know is that the creator of "the shortest, gayest show on television" is himself straight. When Champagne asked Reiss if people are disappointed when they find out he is not gay, he responded, "I tell you, there is this funny dynamic now where I try to keep it secret. I love the fact that it's sort of turnabout on a straight guy for a change. He's got to hide his sexuality, and if it winds up ever hurting the show, and I wind up getting driven out because of my heterosexuality, I'll go. Score one for the gay people. But I don't like to talk about it, because I feel it would color people's viewing of the cartoon.'
"I have to say, it is done with the purist motives" he continued. "It is so pro-gay. In fact, when I first presented the cartoon to Icebox.com, I said, if you want a gay writer, I know lots of people I can recommend. And if this comes off as gay-bashing, I want to pull the plug immediately."
Asked if a Queer Duck series was in the offing, Reiss told Champagne, "I've been working on a Queer Duck movie. I know there's a movie in it. If somebody wanted to do a series, I'm all for it. But I won't do it because I can't take that [kind of schedule]. I worked in series animation for years, and it nearly killed me.
Reiss also told Champagne how a chance encounter led to a new character.
"I was on a plane flight, Reiss said, “and
"I play a womanizing, corrupt lawyer who falls in love with a lesbian," Tootsie star Dustin Hoffman told Entertainment Weekly's Rebecca Ascher-Walsh (February 22).
He was talking about his starring role in Personal Injuries, a film adaptation of the 1999 Scott Turow novel which he will also cowrite and direct.
It's not over for David and Keith
Even though they broke up last season, executive producer Alan Ball is not through with the romance between David and Keith on the HBO series Six Feet Under.
"I thought it was a very interesting relationship on so many levels," the openly gay Ball told Soap Opera Weekly's Mark McGarry (March 9), "because on the one hand, these two are the most traditional of all the characters. And yet, for them to be a same-sex, interracial couple, in a lot of people's eyes, would be to make them the least traditional. The dichotomy between that is what I was interested in. You have all these various passageways you can go down to explore stories. In the second season, especially, we get more into different aspects of the David-Keith relationship, and that's been really fun for us to work on."
A kiss is just a kiss
Jessie Sammler and her best friend Katie shared a kiss as the two teenage girls explored their feelings for each other after Katie was outed as a lesbian on the March 11 episode of the critically-acclaimed ABC series Once and Again.
"It's a little scary for her," 14-year old actress Evan Rachel Wood, who plays Jessie, told TV Guide's Ileane Rudolph (March 9). "Jessie is starting to question her sexuality. She met this girl at school, Katie (Mischa Barton) and they just feel this connection."
About that kiss, Wood said, "Half the people I told that I have an on-screen kiss with a girl asked, 'Was it weird, really different?' The only difference was we were both wearing lip gloss."
"I think most teenage boys tune in to see
He misses a concierge
Gay Cuban-American best friends Danny Jiminez and Oswald Mendez compose one of the teams competing in Amazing Race 2, the second season of CBS' round-the-world reality game show. Back in their home town of Miami, Florida, Jiminez is a real-estate investor and Mendez is an advertising agency consultant.
Jiminez told TV Guide's Mark Lasswell (March 9) that the primitive travel and lodging the contestants have to put up with are a strain for Mendez.
"He flies first class, and there's always a car waiting to go to the nicest hotel," Jiminez said.
The Amazing Race contestants left Las Vegas on March 11 on their 28-day, 53,000 mile race for the $1 million grand prize.
Chastity got burned on her album
Cher talked to USA Today's Edna Gunderson (March 6) about her facelift, her new album Living Proof and her lesbian daughter Chastity's problematic first foray into pop music with her band, Ceremony.
"Chas made this fabulous album," Cher said, "She just wasn't tough enough, and she was still a baby. I was trying to counsel her, but she got in with the three roughest, harshest, tear-your-throat-out guys. She got so burned. That was hard for me, because I thought she had a lot to give. But it's not enough to have talent."
Her daughter's memoir, The End of Innocence, is due out in June. Cher told Gunderson, "I was going to give it a cursory run-through, but I could not put it down. She really can write. Still, I wish she'd get back into [lesbigay] activism. She's a strong speaker and very compassionate. Writing can be so isolating, and my whole family has a problem with that."
'Do the right thing'
A high school teacher was charged with forcing a star football player to have sex with her in order to pass her course on the March 5 episode of the ABC legal drama Philly.
Things looked bleak for the teacher after the nervous player described their alleged sex act in detail. But, during a break just before testimony wrapped up, another young man told the defense lawyer, "Tell him to do the right thing or I will."
When the lawyer relayed the comments to the football player, the player broke down and sobbed.
It seems he was gay and in the closet, and made up the story so a teammate wouldn't figure him out. But the other boy told a coach who had a grudge against the teacher, and the gay player found himself caught in his own lie and unable to back out without coming out.
The judge talked to the young football star in chambers, dropped the charges against the teacher and advised the gay boy to start living his life in truth.
Philly airs on ABC Tuesdays at 10 pm.
two girls kissing," Wood added, "but it's just Cruising for Bond really beautiful and innocent. If people don't see it that way, that's their problem."
Wood told Rudolph she doesn't know where ABC is going with the relationship but said she hopes it will open people's eyes a bit.
"I don't understand why there has to be so much hate about things we don't understand," Wood added.
Talking about the same-sex teenage kiss between Willow and Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, executive producer Josh Wheadon told Rudolph he was sure "nobody would mind. It's not controversial for someone to realize they're a lesbian."
But when WB executives heard about the kiss, Wheadon said the reaction was, “Excuse me, you're doing what?”
"I was like, Oh my God, people still care about this!" Wheadon said.
Once and Again airs on ABC Mondays at 10 pm
Former James Bond star Roger Moore will play "a flamboyant gay" man in Boat Trip, a comedy co-starring Cuba Gooding Jr. due to open this summer.
According to the New York Post (March 8), Gooding's character goes on a cruise to meet women after breaking up with his girlfriend, but ends up on a gay cruise being hit on by Moore.
"He plays an old queen taking a trip on a cruise ship," said Moore's publicist. "It was such a complete switch for him, but he kind of liked it."
Nathan Lane plays a politician
Nathan Lane will play Charlie Lawrence,
a TV-star-turned-congressman who happens to be gay in Life of the Party, a CBS sitcom pilot created by ex-Frasier writes Jeffrey Richman.
Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation media director Scott Seomin praised
Lane's new role saying, “Charlie's sexual orientation is presented matter-of-factly. There's no dramatic 'coming-out' scene. Both Nathan and the script are extremely ́ funny—and I love the idea of a gay congressman. Nathan's candor about his life as a gay man, both on and off screen, has played a crucial role in increasing visibility and understanding of our community."
New York Post columnist Michael Starr notes that Lane will receive the Vito Russo Award at the 2002 GLAAD Media Awards, to be held April 1 in Manhattan.
Loud and clear
Finally, I'm pleased to report that on March 6, WRUW 91.1 FM, home of my Gaywaves radio show, increased its power to 15,000 watts, making it the most powerful college radio station in Ohio. I stopped by the station that night and was told that a listener had called in and reported he picked up our signal "loud and clear" in Sandusky.
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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