April 26, 2002
GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
11
on the airoff the press
'Will & Grace' wins a fourth consecutive GLAAD award
by John Graves
"This is an incredible honor," said Eric McCormack as he and co-star Sean Hayes accepted Will & Grace's fourth consecutive award for outstanding comedy series at the 13th annual Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Media Awards ceremony in Los Angeles April 13.
McCormack added, "When a straight person comes up to me and says, 'I love the show,' I say thank you, but when a gay man comes up to me and says, 'I love the show,' I know that he's coming on to me. I say thank you and I-make out with him."
"But only for a minute,” the married actor added. "No longer, because I'm straight." Other winners included HBO's Six Feet Under (outstanding drama series) and Showtime's Resurrection Boulevard (outstanding individual episode in a series without a regular gay character).
Laughter abounded at the ceremony. "It's the nicest reception I've received in 3,000 years," quipped veteran actress Elizabeth Taylor. She won GLAAD's Vanguard award for her work for equal rights.
Presenter Peri Gilpin (Frasier) exclaimed onstage, "I was having the best time backstage. At one point I was surrounded by all these really sweet, gorgeous gay men and I thought, 'This must be what Liza feels like on all her wedding nights.”
Playing it straight
"I like the show so I called them," actor Michael Douglas told TV Guide's Hilary De Vries, explaining how he wound up playing his first gay character, a closeted gay cop who falls for Will on Will & Grace.
Eric McCormack, who plays Will, said "I love that he's playing this straight, like any of the hard-boiled detectives he's played before-except he's gay."
"I'd never played a gay character before, and I thought if I was going to do this I might
as well go all the way," Douglas said.
Ellen asks, 'Can we talk?'
Warner Bros. Domestic Television, expecting to make the most of Ellen DeGeneres's genius at stand-up comedy, has signed the lesbian comic to do a syndicated talk and variety show.
Whether or not Ellen will be able to do her new show, tentatively scheduled to debut in the fall 2003 season, depends on CBS' plans for the future of her low-rated sitcom, The Ellen Show.
CBS is expected to make a decision on whether or not to renew the sitcom, on hiatus since March, within the next few weeks.
Stuart takes over television
Openly gay actor Jason Stuart was such a hit in his guest appearance as psychiatrist Dr. Steven Michael Thomas on the ABC sitcom My Wife and Kids this past January that the studio has decided to make the role recurring.
The show stars Damon Wayans (In Living Color, Major Payne) and Tisha CampbellMartin (Martin) as a heterosexual AfricanAmerican couple, Michael and Janet Kyle. In the January show, Stuart's gay psychiatrist helped solve the problems the Kyles were having. In his second episode, which aired April 2, Dr. Thomas got into bed to help Michael with a psychosomatic back injury.
Look for Stuart's character again on a special double episode set to air on May 22.
Stuart has also just completed work on an upcoming Will & Grace episode guest-starring Glenn Close, where he makes a second appearance as the high-strung manager of the Duplex cabaret where Jack (Sean Hayes) does his new show, Jack 2002: That Old Jack Magic.
Stuart and his partner Bonny Dore (Jill Ireland Story) have also picked up an option to produce a film based on Wisecracker, William J. Mann's biography of Billy Haines, the first openly gay silent film star. The story includes Haines' lover and their best friend, film legend Joan Crawford. In addition to
,
Jason Stuart
producing the film, Stuart plans to have an on-screen role.
Look for Stuart in his first starring role in the soon-to-be-released film 10 Attitudes, a romantic comedy about how difficult it is for a regular gay guy to find love in Los Angeles directed by Emmy-winner Michael Gallant. The film, featuring performances by Judy Tenuta, David Faustino and Jim J. Bullock, premiered at the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
Sir Elton testifies before Congress
British pop singer Sir Elton John testified in Washington a few weeks ago as Congress considered a proposal to add $500 million to fight AIDS overseas to an emergency spending package aimed at helping pay for the war on terrorism.
Wearing dark glasses and a conservative black suit, Elton was greeted by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. Later, she said, “I asked Chairman Kennedy if we couldn't just get a piano in and he could sing his testimony."
The openly gay singer thold the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by Sen. Edward Kennedy, DMass., that America has an obligation to use its vast resources to stop the spread of AIDS around the world.
"No nation, corporation, foundation or individual has the money you have," he said. "No one even comes close. This is the government of the richest nation in history, and I'm here asking you for more money to stop the worst epidemic in history."
Noting 8,000 people are dying every day from AIDS, the founder and chairman of the Elton John AIDS Foundation said. "You have the power to end this epidemic. Please end it. Please end it."
The AIDS spending bill has the backing of conservative North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Helms, keeping true to form, says he supports fighting AIDS overseas but not in America, because AIDS here is due to the immoral behavior of gays.
Sho Too goes gay
Showtime Networks Inc. will create a weekly gay-themed programming block on its Showtime-2 multiplex channel as a possible precursor to the launch of a 24-hour gay-oriented network.
Stephanie Gibbons, Showtime's senior vice president of advertising and promotion told TVInsite.com reporter R. Thomas Umstead that Night Out on Sho Too Wednesdays will begin airing May 22. It will feature gay-targeted movies and shows, as well as
episodes from Showtime's Queer as Folk and the Queer Duck animated cartoons.
The lesbigay programming block will also include rotating hosts that will introduce the shows and appear in comedy sketches and other programming between shows.
"We want to make this a platform for talented but relatively unknown performers to gain national exposure," Gibbons said.
Gibbons emphasized that the lesbigay programming block is not tied to the proposed Viacom Inc.-produced gay channel, nor does it represent a potential makeover of the Sho Too service toward a more niche-targeted service. The network isn't considering a similar niche-targeted programming block for its African-American or Hispanic viewers, she said.
Those cameras have night vision
Aneesa and some of her Real World housemates reflected on the weeks they lived together in Chicago and what has happened to them since for a feature article in the April 13 issue of TV Guide.
Aneesa, the African-American lesbian who was prone to running around the house with no clothes on, told the magazine's Rochelle
D. Thomas that she was out to her mother before the show. She soon discovered that her mother supported her freedom to go without clothes more than her being out of the closet. When the two talked on the phone during the show, Aneesa's mother said she had hoped Aneesa would fall for a man on the show, and was upset when Aneesa told her of her tumultuous relationship with Veronica, a woman she met and fell for in Chicago.
Unbeknownst to Aneesa and her housemates, the producers had rigged the wall-mounted cameras in the bedroom with night vision capability to record their more intimate moments.
"When I saw all those bedroom shots, I was like, 'Holy crap! My mom is going to be seeing me in bed with some woman and she's going to freak out," Aneesa told Thomas. "We thought those cameras were just so [directors] could see what was going on and they could run in and tape us."
Since the show began airing (it was taped last year) Aneesa said, "I watch with her and try and convince her that it's not about her, it's about me. She was like, 'Oh no, Aneesa, Why'd you have to do that?' Then she'd ask me 900 questions. I'd get mad at her, and that's it. That's our weekly ritual."
Aneesa did not come out to her father until after the show debuted on the air, but unlike her mother, "Surprisingly, he was fine with it."
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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