San Francisco's 28 Barbary Lane is home to slutty florist Michael Tolliver (Paul Hopkins), aspiring TV anchorwoman Mary Ann Singleton (Laura Linney), her boyfriend Brian Hawkins (Whip Hubley), and landlord/de facto house mother Anna Madrigal (Olympia Dukakis).
It's an extended family and address we're already familiar with from Armistead Maupin's Tales of The City novels and their two miniseries adaptations: Tales of the City and More Tales of the City. Yet this time around, in Showtime's Further Tales of the City, which takes place in 1981, a few shocks, mysteries, and surprises are in store. Take Luke (Henry Czerny), a homeless man who could be a dangerous, well-known psychotic. The returns of Madrigal's zingy whorehouse madam mother, Mother Mucca (Jackie Burroughs) and lesbian DeDe Halcyon Day (Barbara Garrick), the latter previously thought murdered during the Jonestown Massacre three years ago. And then there's a whole lot of pickle—just check out the opening credits.
"We're very proud of that [credit sequence] pickle, yes," Maupin laughs. "We wanted to let people know they're in for a wild ride rather early on."
And it is, a breezier, more saucy, and more suspenseful ride than last time around. "It took me a while to discover my storytelling muscles," says Maupin. "The first couple of books had more to do with linked vignettes than overall plot. Writing Further Tales was the first time I realized I could really dovetail all these storylines and make them serve a single story. And there's a lot more varied terrain in this one. We go from Golden Gate Park to a movie star's mansion to a remote island in Alaska, so there's a lot of territory covered."
Rounding out Tales' cast are many other colorful characters, both new and old, notably DeDe's socialite WASP mother Francine Halcyon (Diana LeBlanc), closeted movie star Cage Tyler (John Robinson), Tyler's housekeeping pal Guido (Joel Grey), society columnist Prue Girous (Mary Kay Place), her flaming televangelist confidant Father Paddy (Bruce McCulloch), Michael's lovelorn ex, Dr. Jon Fielding (Billy Campbell), and the elderly Royal Reichenbach (John McMartin), whom Madrigal and momma seem to fight over. Born in D.C. and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, Maupin moved to California in 1971 as a reporter for the Associated Press. Twenty-five years ago this month, Maupin's Tales of the City debuted as a series in the San Francisco Chronicle. So far six novels comprise the Tales series, beginning with Tales of the City and ending with 1989's Sure of You. For Maupin, returning to the City set for another adaptation was like returning to his second home.
"I feel the same affection towards these people as I feel towards the characters themselves," he admits. Yet in this case at least, it was also a return to events and people from his own life, as much of Further Tales was inspired by them. For instance, the character of closeted Hollywood icon Cage Tyler, who throws pool parties for the young and buff in between visits from Nancy Reagan, was inspired by the late Rock Hudson, whom he met in 1976.
"I met him the way a lot of gay people meet famous people—through an ex-lover of his, a romantic sexual connection," Maupin recalls. "As irony would have it, the first time I spent any significant time with Rock was the eve of the publication of Tales, and Rock had invited a bunch of us back to his suite at Fairmont Hotel. He bought an early edition of the Chronicle and when we got up to the room he stood up very grandly—and rather drunkenly—and said 'I have a special reading to do.' And he read the first chapter of Tales of the City to the assembled men." Saucier still, Maupin adds that the sexual scenes between Michael and Cage were also culled from his liaisons with Hudson.
"That scene in which Michael fails to get it up was very much my own experience because it was just too hard to deal with the mythology," he admits. "And Rock, I must say, was just as generous about it as Cage is in the film—he had an extremely charming, avuncular quality. My strongest memory of us was watching him in his enormous nightshirt scrambling eggs for six guys sitting around the kitchen table at breakfast." As for scenes in which Michael and Cage engage in conversations on being closeted versus out, Maupin says those were also drawn from experience. And Hudson wasn't the only one to talk closetry with him—Maupin says he's served as sounding board for a number of closeted celebrities ("It seems to be my lot in life") who have debated opening their closet door.
"I met Mark Christian recently, Rock's last lover," Maupin says, "and he told me Rock used to talk about how I had come closer than anyone to getting him out of the closet, so it saddens me a little to think I had that much of a near miss! Far beyond its news value, it would have made a huge difference to the world if he'd been able to tell the truth before he was sick. And it would also have lifted a terrible weight from his own shoulders. He used to talk about 'the book,' by which he meant the place he would finally tell the truth. And he did that, to his credit, at the very end."
Other characters and events drawn from life include homeless Luke, who was inspired by a hermit Maupin struck up a friendship with. "He was a former merchant seaman who claimed to be doing earthquake research in this little lean-to on the side of the hill," Maupin notes. And the gossipy, rambles-cruising Father Paddy sprouts from a fellow named Father Miles Riley, "who had a television show on the local station and was also the PR man for the archdiocese of San Francisco," Maupin laughs. "He had some of Father Paddy's flamboyant qualities, shall we say. He was actually assigned to be the liaison between the Pope and the [nun-outfitted drag activist group] Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence when the Pope came to town. As such he had to be in regular communication with the PR person for the Sisters, whose name was 'Sister Power Hungry Bitch.' I always wanted to be able to overhear those conversations."
For Maupin, returning to the City for another adaptation also presented several challenges. For one thing, the novel featured little of Anna Madrigal, who is played by Olympia Dukakis. So they added a plotline which also involved Mother Mucca, a beloved character who failed to reappear in the novels after More Tales.
"My business partner, Terry Anderson, was the one who led us off in the direction we took," Maupin says, "because by asking a very pertinent question about Anna's history—I don't want to say any more about that because it'll reveal the mystery for those who haven't watched the show yet—we've got one of our more Byzantine storylines involving Anna, her mother and a mysterious man."
However, like the last two productions, Maupin was present for the actual shooting, making a cameo ("I'm coming out of the Glory Holes as Michael's going in") and, he gleefully reveals, remaining even for closed set scenes.
"I wouldn't take anything for the moment I was on the closed set with Billy and Paul during their love scene and Billy looked up at me and said 'Armistead, does my ass look big in this shot?'" he recalls. "All I could think was 'this is my job!! This is what I do for a living! How did I luck into this???'"
Speaking of luck, depending on how ratings and responses go this time 'round, the fourth City novel, Babycakes, in which AIDS begins to wreak its havoc, may or may not see a miniseries adaptation. Regardless, Maupin happily relays the fact he's in negotiations with a Chicago's Goodman Theatre Company to bring Tales of The City to the Broadway stage next.
"It's completely thrilling to think this mythology can invade another art form," he says. "It started out as a newspaper serial, turned into a novel, which turned into a television miniseries. So this latest step in some ways feels like where it's been headed all along."
Airs on Showtime, Sundays in May.
The cast of the next installments of Tales of the City, by gay author Armistead Maupin. This new series is on Showtime, Sundays during May.
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