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

Hedwig and the Angry Inch writer-slash-director-slash-star John Cameron Mitchell thinks porn shouldn't be so soulless. Mitchell's next turn behind the camera will be The Sex Film Project, which will examine gay, bisexual, and straight romantic and sexual relationships in New York City and feature a lot of hardcore action, with the actors actually doing it during sex scenes. Mitchell has hired Hedwig casting director Susan Shopmaker to head up a nationwide search for charismatic actors willing to go all the way on the big screen. There are also bisexual, lesbian, and straight roles to be cast. See www.thesexfilmproject.com .

All About Bette

Move over Joan Crawford and Faye Dunaway —the complicated life of another Hollywood legend is making its way to the screen, or at least to TV network A& E. Tony, Oscar, and Pulitzer Prize winner Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy) is writing a two-hour movie about the life of double Academy Award winner (and 11-time nominee) Bette Davis. The film takes place over the course of a decade in the life of the Divine Miss D, after she was nominated for an Oscar for her 1950 comeback, All About Eve, and was married to her fourth husband, actor Gary Merrill. Word is that another Oscar winner, Susan Sarandon, is interested in the role.

Homo Hitler Hits HBO

The queer creative team behind The Eyes of Tammy Faye has sealed a deal with HBO to air their sure-to-be-controversial documentary based on the much-criticized 2001 book The Hidden Hitler, which suggests that Der Fuhrer persecuted gays to hide his own true (presumably pink) colors. An abridged 49-minute version of Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato's documentary aired in the U.K. in November with the title Is Hitler Gay?; a full-length, 75-minute version is expected to air this fall on either HBO or Cinemax with the new title The Pink Fuhrer. The documentary, which took 10 months to make, visits Hitler's hometown of Linz, Austria, features interviews with noted historians, and looks at eyewitness testimony regarding the young Hitler's same-sex escapades during and after World War I.

Homo-coming

MTV's True Life series has an episode in the works from the prolific pop culture-centric filmmaking team of Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato called Homo High. The one-hour documentary will center on the lives of teenagers who attend a private gay high school in Dallas. Bailey and Barbato have a longstanding relationship with MTV. The duo created and produced all 100 episodes of The RuPaul Show, as well as a previous True Life episode called Plushies and Furries, a hip yet informative look at the fetish world of fur-suiters. Look for Homo High to air this spring.