THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

He played gay in the series that made him a star. She saw her career suffer after playing gay—and somewhat crazy—in real life. Now Gale Harold and Anne Heche have something new to prove with their latest projects. Harold will be doing double duty this year, first with Vanished, a high-profile pilot for Fox in the vein of 24. The brooding former Queer as Folk star will spend the season—provided the show is picked up—investigating the disappearance of a senator's wife. Harold will also take on the recurring role of Wyatt Earp on HBO's western Deadwood. Meanwhile, Heche's next acting home will be Alaska, when she stars in the ABC drama Men in Trees. The plot revolves around a psychiatrist who moves to the northernmost state to get over a divorce—think an updated Northern Exposure—and it's Heche's chance to reassert herself as one of Hollywood's most talented women, in spite of her past tabloid exposure. Let the next chapters begin.

Logo Goes LEGO

Wildly politically incorrect dialogue spews from their never-moving mouths. Their friends are mean-spirited and snarky. And their take on gay life is more bitterly funny than Will & Grace could ever hope to be. Welcome to the twisted neighborhood of Rick & Steve, The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World. Crudely animated and constructed of LEGO blocks by filmmaker Q. Allan Brocka ( Eating Out ) , Rick and Steve—a sort of all-gay South Park—first appeared online and then shocked audiences at film festivals. Now the Logo network has greenlit regular visits to the plastic couple's home, to begin airing later this year on the cable channel. Bizarre animated shows Aqua Teen Hunger Force and The Venture Brothers have already found their cult audiences via The Cartoon Network, so it could be just the right moment for Rick and Steve's close-up.

Adams Chasing a New Career

Chasing Amy, one of the most successful ( and controversial ) lesbian-themed films of the 1990s, starred up-and-comer Joey Lauren Adams as a lesbian who turns the sexual tables on a hapless Ben Affleck not once but twice in the course of the movie. Her bold performance was strong and unapologetic. But then the actress all but receded from public view. Now she's returning in a new role—writer and director of Come Early Morning. Starring Ashley Judd as an Arkansas construction contracter by day, bar-and-bed-hopper by night, it's a low-fi indie from Adams about approaching middle age and searching for love. Recently screened at the Sundance Film Festival, the comedy-drama also stars That 70s Show alum Laura Prepon, Diane Ladd, and Tim Blake Nelson. Look for it to land gently in an art-house theater near you.

The Queer Roots of Punk

'Hardcore' isn't just a word to describe porn—it was a style of music in the early 1980s that came to embody the sound and look of American punk rock. And American Hardcore, a recently completed documentary on the subject, is the first film since Penelope Spheeris' landmark The Decline of Western Civilization to document the scene. A huge number of interview subjects provide hindsight perspective, including Minor Threat founder Ian MacKaye, Black Flag's Henry Rollins, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, and hardcore-influenced metal bands like Pantera and Gwar. But what's gay about it? Some of earliest practitioners of hardcore punk—Germs vocalist Darby Crash, Big Boys singer Randy 'Biscuit' Turner, Go-Gos member Jane Wiedlin, folk singer Phranc, and Screamers vocalist Tomata du Plenty—were queer. And this Sundance-screened film preserves their legacy for the next generation of punk-rock fans.

DeepInsideHollywood@qsyndicate.com .