August 9, 2002 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11

on the airoff the press

Rose Troche to direct new Showtime drama series

by John Graves

Showtime announced July 22 that production has started on a dramatic series, tentatively titled Earthlings, about the lives and loves of a group of lesbian friends living in Los Angeles.

The series will be directed by Rose Troche (Go Fish), with a cast featuring Jennifer Beals, Mia Kirshner, Scott Bairstow, Erin Daniels, Leisha Hailey, Laurel Hollomon, Karina Lombard, Kate Moennig and Pam Grier.

In Earthlings, Jenny, a recent college graduate played by Mia Kirshner, moves to Los Angeles to be with her boyfriend Tim and begin her professional writing career. However, a chance encounter at a party thrown by Bette (Jennifer Beals) and Tina (Laurel Hollomon), Tim's lesbian neighbors who are planning for parenthood after seven years together, leads Jenny to realize she, too, is lesbian.

Loving Grace

Although Will still has not had a romantic interlude with another man in the four years the show has been on, three-time Grammy winner Harry Connick Jr. will play Grace's new love interest on NBC's Will & Grace next season.

Connick will be returning as the doctor who came to Grace's rescue when she slammed into a lamppost in Central Park during last season's cliffhanger finale, and will appear in 12 episodes in the upcoming season, says the Hollywood Reporter.

Actor Kevin Bacon, who was stalked by Jack last season, will guest star as himself in the series' second episode this season. Bacon hires Jack as his personal assistant and gives him his first assignment: find the guy who is stalking him.

Was Fire Island too ordinary?

HBO has abandoned production of Fire Island after only two weekends of filming. The documentary, by the Emmy-winning directors of The Celluloid Closet, centered on five gay men sharing a summer house in Fire Island's Pines community.

Sheila Nevins, HBO executive vice president of original programming, halted production because she felt that negative community reaction to the project had prevented

Best

the filmmakers from getting access to Fire Island's "real" gay social scene.

the Oscar-winning AIDS documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt. Epstein and Friedman also directed The Times of Harvey Milk and The Celluloid Closet.

The men in the summer-house residences said they had also been told that Nevins had received a disconcerting letter from Gary Clinton, dean of students at the University of Pat Sajak: Rosie's not so rosy

Pennsylvania Law School, and his partner Don Millinger, special counsel for the Guggenheim Museum, who vacation on Fire Island. Although the men noted they hadn't seen the letter, they said were told Clinton had expressed concern that the documentary might accidentally out gay residents.

Several of the subjects said they were told the letter had threatened to sue the network and its parent company, AOL Time Warner. The New York Oberserver's Rebecca Traister says Clinton and Millinger wrote, "Showing up in this project could result in an 'outing' which in turn could lead to job termination, family rejection, loss of child custody or other serious repercussions..." Traister says that the letter did not include any threats of legal action, and that both Clinton and Millinger say that by the second weekend of filming, the situation had been rectified. Signs were posted in the areas where the cameras were filming, and tall parties were satisfied.

A spokeswoman for HBO confirmed that the documentary had been canceled out of respect for the privacy of the community, and said Clinton and Millinger's letter was part of the community response that led to the network's decision.

The decision to abandon the estimated $1 million project in the middle of filming is unusual, and residents suspect that one of the reasons for the cancellation was a lack of sensational material. They believe that Nevins, whose other credits include the sexual issues magazine shows Real Sex and Taxicab Confessions, found their lives too ordinary.

One of the summer home residents, Robert Kushner, said, "There's a question about whether they wanted something less wholesome than what we were giving them. HBO is saying 'not enough access,' but that might be a thinly veiled way of saying that they didn't get the red meat they wanted, that it wasn't sensational enough to justify a million dollars. So much for the thinking man's channel."

Fire Island was directed and produced by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman who had worked with HBO and Nevins in the past on

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Former game show host Pat Sajak doesn't think Rosie O'Donnell's coming out should be considered an act of bravery.

Speaking at Hillsdale College in Michigan, Sajak said, "Rosie O'Donnell, a daytime talk show host, goes public with her sexual preference, and she is lauded as brave. What exactly is brave about that? First of all, who cares? And what's brave about getting the chance to be interviewed by ABC, and landing on magazine covers? I characterize it as bravery-as-a-career-move."

His comments appeared in Imprimis, the school's student newspaper.

"It's just another example of the selfimportance that show business bestows on you," Sajak added, "the idea that your sexual preference matters to anyone other than your immediate family and your partner or partners, seems silly to me."

Meanwhile, USA Today reports O'Donnell is working on a musical version of her recently released autobiography, Find Me, and may soon star in a two-woman play on Broadway. O'Donnell is also scheduled to appear for one night only as one of a series of Fanny Brices in the Amsterdam Theater production of Funny Girl September 23.

The joy of 'Gay Weddings'

New York Post TV critic Adam Buckman has high praise for Gay Weddings, a new eight-part, four-night reality series that follows two lesbian and two gay male couples as they prepare to commit their lives to each

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other. The series is set to air on Bravo next month.

"My own reaction was to let out a cynical groan when a preview tape landed on my desk last week," Buckman wrote in his July 23 column. "Here we go again, another TV series on the joys of gay life. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for more 'queer' TV that day.

"If memory serves, the tape containing the first two half-hours of Gay Weddings was delivered on the same day a press release came announcing something or other about Queer Duck, an animated series on Showtime about a homosexual waterfowl. Showtime's other 'queer' show is, of course, Queer as Folk, whose title is baffling to me."

"But Gay Weddings is not Queer Duck. It's a reality show, and while some people will assume the aim of Gay Weddings is to promote acceptance for the idea of homosexual unions, the reality is that Gay Weddings comes across as anything but political. Boiled down to its essence, it's really about eight people who want nothing more than to publicly declare their commitment to each other before friends and family. I actually enjoyed the first two episodes--they were both funny and touching—and am willing to sit through the next six if Bravo cares to send them to me.'

Starting at 10 pm on Monday, September 2, Bravo will air two episodes of Gay Weddings a night through Thursday, September 5.

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, a lesbian-gay public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7:30 pm, and at www.wruw.org. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contributed to this column.

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