May 10, 2002

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

on the airoff the press

Depart with a web-cast funeral and a personal biopic

by John Graves

The Young and the Dead, a documentary about gay Hollywood undertaker Tyler Cassity and his Hollywood Forever cemetery, will air May 19 after being postponed from May 12. Cassity took a famous but rundown graveyard and transformed it into a high-tech, hip and stylish burial ground.

Founded in 1899 as the Hollywood Memorial Park, Cassity's cemetery sits adjacent to Paramount Studios. It attracts visitors who still come to see the graves of Rudolph Valentino, Cecil B. DeMille, Douglas Fairbanks, Tyrone Power, Janet Gaynor and other Hollywood stars.

Under Cassity's leadership, Hollywood Forever has revolutionized the death care industry by exploiting modern technology, with offerings ranging from digital memorials to web-cast funeral services.

In keeping with the celluloid-inspired lives of the cemetery's eternal residents, an inhouse mini-film studio. Forever Studios. serves as the nerve center of Hollywood Forever. This allows the cemetery to produce slick, multimedia biographies of its clients. which can feature oral histories, DNA records, family trees, genealogies, family photos, home videos and more. To date, more than 10,000 biographies have been created.

Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. The Young and the Dead takes a witty look at our culture's relationship with celebrity, mortality and the preservative power of the moving image through interviews with Cassity, his staff and a colorful collection of neighbors, journalists and devotees to the Hollywood landmark.

The Young and the Dead debuts 10 pm on Sunday, May 19. as the season finale of HBO's America Undercover. HBO will reair the show Wednesday, May 22 at 10:30 am and 11 pm and Saturday, May 25 at 2 pm.

A strategic outing

"It's so funny," says openly gay Survivor: Marquesas cast member John Carroll. “I'm getting marriage proposals and people sending me naked pictures. It's either because of being on TV or what I look like, whatever perception they have of me."

Carroll, a 36-year-old registered nurse from Omaha, Nebraska, lasted 24 days on the island before he was voted off. He told PlanetOut.com's Christine Champagne about his experiences with prospective dates since returning.

"I'm at a disadvantage there with the balance of power-if you will--where they've got a lot of information about me, and I know nothing about them. A number of people have come up to me, and there have been maybe one or two that made me think these people might be serious and normal. But I'm still a little leery."

Carroll said of fellow castaway Rob outing him, "I think that he was using it strate-

gically. I think he was throwing it out there thinking that someone like Neleh or Paschal or Shawn or V would take umbrage to that, and then maybe find a way to vote me out simply because of my sexual orientation."

How did he feel about that? "Disgusted. I was disgusted, and I was angry, and the first thought in my head was how cheap is that? I knew he had been slandering me with homophobic comments prior to that, and I just thought this kind of sucks because now I know what it feels like to be outed and it doesn't feel good."

Before then, only one person on the island knew he is gay.

"I only told one person, and that was Tammy. I did that on day two or three, and I used it strategically to find out if I could trust her. So I told her, waited to see if it would make the rounds, and it never did. That's how I knew I could trust her."

After he was outed, Carroll spoke with Rob off-camera. "I was over by the fire, and Rob had come to speak to me, and I think he had some remorse about doing it. He never really came out and said he was sorry, but he pretty much acquiesced and said, 'Hey, good game. You've got me.' Then, we talked about it, and I told him it wasn't cool and saying the things that he said about me was not cool, and that's what leads to hate, and it leads to hate crimes and bashings and everything else. It starts right there. Especially when he called me a big-time queer. I told him. You really put a face to homophobia.`

When asked if he had developed longterm friendships with his castmates, Carroll replied, "Yes. Probably the closest people that I have from the island would be Tammy, the General, Neleh and Gabriel. I will be bonded with them forever. And then Paschal and Kathy and Zoe I definitely talk to. But I'm really connected with the other four as far as wanting to make sure I keep in touch with them socially."

Rosie will be a mom, again

The entertainment media was abuzz last week with news that Rosie O'Donnell's partner, Kelli Carpenter, was pregnant with the couple's fourth child. Although neither O'Donnell nor Carpenter confirmed the report themselves, the story ran in USA Today, People and Us Weekly and was aired on Access Hollywood and E! Entertainment News.

Regis Philbin told the Regis and Kelly audience that Rosie had come up to him backstage and announced the happy news. Comic Caroline Rhea, who will take over O'Donnell's show in the next few weeks, Isaid she was thrilled by the news and exclaimed that O'Donnell and Carpenter were great moms.

Rainbow over the hill

Hank's friend Dale found out his father was gay a few weeks ago on Fox's King of the

Hill, an animated sitcom about life in the Stone cold cash for AIDS services

small town of Arlen, Texas.

The episode, which aired April 28, begins with Dale deciding to renew his vows with his wife Nancy. (He is oblivious to an affair she has been having for many years.)

Dale balks, however, when Nancy wants to invite his father. He thinks Dad put the moves on Nancy on their wedding day.

Sensing Nancy's distress at Dale's refusal, Hank and his friends Bill and Boomhauer set off to deliver Nancy's invitation personally to Dale's father, who is on tour with a rodeo. When they catch up with him, they discover that it is a gay rodeo. They figure it out right away, but it takes a while before Dale's father can convince them that he is gay also.

Even though there was the usual core of "mistaken sexual identity” jokes with Bill and Boomhauer giggling incessantly, the episode deals with the reunion of a son and his estranged gay father rather sensitively.

Dale is more upset, it seems, by his mistaken belief that his father had not only made a pass at his wife but that he is also a "secret government agent." He is overjoyed to find out that neither is true, but his dad is gay.

In the end, Dale's father came to the rewedding with his lover Juan Pedro. The next day when the gang hangs out to drink beer at their usual spot in the alley. Bill is still wearing the rainbow T-shirt he bought at the rodeo.

King of the Hill airs on Fox Sundays at 7:30 pm.

Actress Sharon Stone was awarded the Global Conference Institute's 2002 Health Care Humanitarian Award for her volunteer work in the fight against AIDS.

"At first I said to my husband (Phil Bronstein, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle) if I'm being honored, no one's doing enough here," Stone told USA Today. However, he pointed out to her that she "had raised tens of millions of dollars" for the

cause.

Realizing

Sharon Stone

this. Stone said, "I designed this vanity case for Louis Vuitton a year and a half ago, and 15% of the money it makes in my lifetime goes to AIDS research. In the last year and a half, the 15% has come to $1,644,081. I couldn't believe 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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