Kushner Cometh to Hollywood
If you were losing sleep wondering what happened to that guy who wrote Angels in America, your restless nights are over. Pulitzer- and Tony-winning playwright Tony Kushner is straddling all media these days.
While the miniseries version of Angels is heading to HBO, two of his plays—Homebody/Kabul and Caroline, Or Change—pop up on stages from New York to Chicago to L.A. this summer and fall. And he's also taking a jab at the big screen, writing a script about American playwright Eugene O'Neill. This isn't another stuffy-yet-dignified biopic designed to lull Oscar voters into a complacent snooze, but covers a specific (though currently undisclosed) moment in O'Neill's life. Although the film is still in its infancy, gay power-producer Scott Rudin (The Hours) has first crack at delivering it to screens, so expect that Oscar campaign anyway.
E. Lynn Is Everywhere
It's E. Lynn Harris's moment. The gay novelist's latest book, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, is a New York Times bestseller; a brand new Absolut ad features Harris-penned, gender-ambiguous, vodka-sprinkled prose; and three of his novels are in the process of being turned into feature films.
Harris has Invisible Life and Just As I Am in the script stage for Showtime, with the novels combined into one plot. Meanwhile, Not a Day Goes By is already in production, having been optioned by Pam Grier's company. Harris isn't in on the scripting end of that one (some excuse about there only being 24 hours in a day), but the original Miss Foxy Brown herself will appear in the film as Eva, the meanest mommie dearest this side of Joan Crawford. Sounds Absolut-ly delicious.
Mahoney and Harold Become Fathers
Gay faves John Mahoney (cranky Martin Crane of Frasier) and Gale Harold (slutty Brian Kinney of Queer as Folk) are taking on the new movie Fathers and Sons. The actors, along with Bradley Whitford, Samantha Mathis, and Kathy Baker, are in the independent feature about a trio of L.A. families who all live on the same street. In the film—shot in three parts by three directors—Mahoney plays dad to redheaded hottie Ron Eldard in one segment, while Harold portrays a prodigal son in another. Shooting wrapped in August, but there's no word yet on a premiere date.
Wife Crosses Broadway
After a successful off-Broadway run, the quirky play I Am My Own Wife, about a transgendered German, is headed to the Great White Way (About Face Theatre premiered the work here earlier this year). Written by Quills scribe Doug Wright, Wife tells the story of German tranny Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a defiant survivor of both the Nazis and the East German communists and an antique dealer of questionable pedigree. Wright came to know von Mahlsdorf after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when they began a correspondence that was eventually the genesis for the one-man (one-woman?) show. Actor Jefferson Mays, who plays 40 different characters in Wife (including Wright), and director Moises Kaufman (The Laramie Project) are expected to move with the production from Playwrights Horizons to the Lyceum Theater in the fall.
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