January 16, 2004
GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11
on the airoff the press
Was the latest 'All My Children' kiss unscripted?
by John Graves
Bianca and Lena finally shared a second kiss on the December 31 episode of All My Children.
The two lesbian characters, dressed in evening gowns, shared a passionate kiss at midnight at a posh New Year's Eve party at the Pine Valley Inn.
Although the kiss was shown only briefly, this was not the chaste kiss at the airport that gained such notoriety. This time, the two women shared an intense, open-mouth kiss in front of the entire town.
The kiss happened without the media hype of the first kiss and went completely unnoticed by both the mainstream press and the soap fan magazines, including Soap Opera Weekly, which has done such an outstanding job of covering the show's lesbian storyline.
It makes one wonder if the kiss was unscripted and the actresses, Eden Riegel (Bianca) and Olga Sosnovska (Lena) suddenly decide to improvise it during the shoot.
Meanwhile, Maggie has been looking more and more jealous of the fact that Bianca and Lena seem to be getting back together again and others are beginning to notice her preoccupation with Bianca:
In a preview of what's in store for 2004 on All My Children, head writer Megan McTavish confirmed the developing romantic triangle when she told Soap Opera Digest, “Bianca, Lena and Maggie's triangle continues with the addition of a fourth person, a member of Ryan's family who adds complications."
"I wouldn't count either woman out for Bianca," McTavish told Soap Opera Weekly. Could this be a sign that Pine Valley is finally developing a LGBT community?
In what may have been a precursor to a similar scene that could happen on the show this year, Soap Opera Digest snapped a photo Elizabeth Hendrickson (Maggie) and Eden Riegel sharing a kiss at a Manhattan comedy club in a spoof of the Britney Spears/Madonna MTV Video Awards lip-lock.
Trying not to be obvious
The addition of an art student played by Mena Suvari who "gets very close to Claire" may indicate another member of Six Feet Under's Fisher family is set to come out as gay.
"That's the obvious place to go," series creator Alan Ball told TV Guide, "but we try and steer away from the obvious."
TV site has first lesbian drama
OutOfTheCloset.tv, an online TV service, announced the launch of The Complex, which they bill as "the world's first lesbian soap opera."
OutOfTheCloset.tv also airs a number of LGBT shows including The Born-a-Gayns, which appears to be another gay soap opera, Out on the Streets, an interview show hosted by Momma, The Agenda, a topical show on LGBT issues, Return to Disco, a music show
devoted to the genre so many of us came out to, and Profiles, an in-depth interview show set to debut next month.
Upcoming guests on Out on the Streets include Will and Grace's Megan Mullally and Kathy Najimy of King of the Hill, Allison Ingram, who played Nellie on Little House on the Prairie and Jillian Barberie of Fox's Good Day Live. Out comedians Karen Ripley and Paul J Williams are in the lineup for Profiles. Transgendered author, playwright and performance artist Kate Bornstein will be featured February 2 through February 8 on Profiles.
'The L Word' starts Sunday
The L Word, Showtime's much-anticipated new lesbian-themed dramatic series joins Queer as Folk on the cable network's lineup on Sunday, January 18 at 10 pm.
Mia Kirshner, who plays Jenny Schecter, an about-to-be-married heterosexual woman who falls in love with another woman on the show, told New York Daily News TV Editor Richard Huff she wanted to give a realistic portrayal of her character's struggle with her sexual identity.
Kirshner, who will appear in the nude in steamy love scenes with both her fiancé and her newfound female lover, told Huff, "I was always pushing and encouraging for more truth, which would mean that the sex would be darker, painful, and sometimes not so pretty to watch. Often, what you see with Jenny is not pretty. She's in love with two people at the same time. She's one of those people who will just grab experiences because of the holes inside her, and with that, she will leave the casualties in the wake behind her."
Ilene Chaiken, producer and creator of The L World, noted, "Mia is the bravest and boldest of actors. The only concern Mia ever has is that she's not being challenged enough, and that her character is not going deep enough. She is utterly fearless."
Chaiken hopes The L Word draws a broader audience than Queer as Folk, saying, “A lot of straight men, from what one is made to understand, don't want to see gay men in sexual situations. We know that isn't true with straight men, or with gay or straight women, watching lesbians."
It's also been reported that Melissa Etheridge's new wife, Tammy Lynn Etheridge, will appear in an upcoming episode of The L Word playing an angry former lover of one of the characters.
New dating show includes TGs
There is a new gay dating show on Canada's all-gay Pride Vision cable channel called Fairy Tale.
According to the Associated Press, each show features a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender main guest who gets less than a minute each to persuade three prospective dates to choose them for a night out. The cameras go out on a date with the couple,
French soap
Alain (Pascal Greggory) and Christophe (Cyrille Thouvenin) embrace in the French film Confusion of Genders, which will be screened at the Cleveland Museum of Art on January 16
and 21.
Bisexual Alain is pulled every which way as both Christophe and the lovely Laurence want him, but when he meets the roguish Marc, the only way he can get closer to him is to play messenger for Marc's love letters to Babette, who also entrances Alain.
Confused? You won't be, after either 7 pm showing. The Cleveland Museum of Art is located at 11150 East Boulevard. Tickets are $7, $5 for museum members, $3 for students and seniors. The museum can be reached at 216-421-7350 or online at www.clemusart.org. -Anthony Glassman
taping it for discussion in the studio afterward.
"In a nation where same-sex marriage is legal in two provinces and has been proposed in pending federal legislation," writes AP's Colin McClelland, "Fairy Tale adds to the programming for what advertisers believe is a lucrative, growing market."
Fairy Tale creator Myles Shane said, "When our government said same-sex marriage is cool, our population became a bit more accepting of a gay dating show,"
Pride Vision have signed a deal with Jonathan and Naomi Hiltz, the brother and sister who produce and direct Fairy Tale, to produce 26 episodes of the new show with an option to renew later this year.
Although Bravo aired the gay dating show Boy Meets Boy last summer, Fairy Tale producer Jonathan Hiltz said his show is the first television dating show in the world to feature transgender participants. Shane, director Naomi Hiltz's husband, said he made the show so inclusive after talking with a transgender fellow airline passenger about the challenges of dating faced by transgender people. The conversation was an eye-opener for Shane, who suddenly realized, “I had never seen a transsexual on a date."
Pride Vision now has 23,300 household subscribers which translates to around 90,000 viewers to the subscription television service.
Ellen is first 'Hollywood Story'
For the second year in a row, True Hollywood Stories kicked off its new season on cable's E! channel with an examination of the life, loves and career of a lesbian entertainer. Last year it was Rosie O'Donnell, this year Ellen DeGeneres was in the spotlight. The show, which debuted January 11, fea-
tured home movies of Ellen's early life in New Orleans and West Texas, talked about her first lesbian love and the devastation brought on by her lover's death in a tragic car accident, her quick rise through the comedy club circuit, the development of her groundbreaking sitcom in which both she and her character came out of the closet and her celebrity romance with actress Anne Heche.
Later on, the show looks at Ellen's other work in television and film, her new-found stardom as the host of her own talk show and her current long-term relationship with Alexandra Hedison.
A gay family values cruise
Rosie O'Donnell has announced plans for what she is billing as "the first gay cruise with family values."
The first offering from her R Family Vacations is a weeklong cruise on the new Norwegian Dawn cruise liner, set to depart New York for the Bahamas on July 11. According to Reuters news service, among the unusual ways lesbian passengers will be able to spend their time on the cruise will be attending discussion groups on adoption, artificial insemination, surrogacy, and other topics of particular interest to gay parents or gay parents to be.
O'Donnell, who founded the company with her partner Kelli O'Donnell and Gregg Kaminsky, formerly of gay travel agency Atlantis, says "We welcome all families however you define them to join us on this cruise.”
John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, a lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Saturdays at 9 and at www.wruw.org.
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