Subject: Gay Activists Direct Anger At Hollywood 
Date: Published: 3/16/92 (162 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Movies:
    Gay Activists
    Direct Anger
    At Hollywood
    ----
    By David J. Jefferson
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    HOLLYWOOD -- The movie industry is under siege for screen
 portrayals of homosexuals.
    Outraged over best-picture nominations for "JFK" and "The
 Silence of the Lambs," and the release this coming Friday of
 "Basic Instinct" -- all of which feature homosexual villains
 -- gay-rights groups are demanding that Hollywood change its
 ways.  They are forcing the industry to listen by using
 deliberately strident tactics, with huge demonstrations
 planned for the "Basic Instinct" opening and the Academy
 Awards ceremony March 30.
    "I don't understand why they continue to make us out as
 monsters, maniacs and psychopaths," says Pam Bates, a lesbian
 activist in San Francisco who is part of a group plotting
 ways to ruin the box-office prospects of "Basic Instinct," a
 $40 million thriller from Carolco Pictures Inc. featuring an
 ice-pick-wielding bisexual woman as its villain.
    Since the movie is a murder-mystery, the group figures the
 best way to keep filmgoers away is to tell them whodunit.  "I
 don't want them to make any money on this film," says Ms. 
 Bates, who, like hundreds of other protesters in New York and
 Los Angeles will be distributing leaflets outside movie
 theaters this weekend, giving away the ending.  Protesters in
 Los Angeles already have pasted stickers across movie posters
 for "Basic Instinct," proclaiming it "another homophobic
 film."  Not since William Friedkin's 1980 movie "Cruising,"
 about homosexual murders in Greenwich Village, has the gay
 community been so outraged over a film.
    There is doubt whether the spoiler campaign will keep many
 viewers away, especially since the film ends on an ambiguous
 note.  And the publicity doubtless will attract curious
 moviegoers who might not otherwise see the film.  Mike
 Medavoy, chairman of Sony Corp. 's TriStar Pictures unit,
 which is distributing the movie, says, "This is a terrific
 thriller, and I hope a lot of people will see it in the light
 in which it was intended, not in the narrow light in which
 it's cast by others."
    The "Basic Instinct" furor, which grew as demonstrators
 tried to disrupt filming last year in San Francisco, is the
 focal point of much wider unrest.  The gay-activist group
 Queer Nation has been staging demonstrations at recent
 Hollywood awards ceremonies, handing out fliers demanding "No
 Awards for Homo-Hatred."  The group says it will cap its
 efforts with a "Queer Caravan" to the Oscars that it hopes
 will draw a few thousand protesters from around the country
 -- as well as a TV audience of a billion world-wide.
    In addition to the best-picture nominations, gay groups
 are annoyed that the academy overlooked films with positive
 gay characters, particularly the critically acclaimed
 documentary "Paris Is Burning," about black transvestites in
 Harlem.  "The fact that the subject matter was deemed `less
 important' than other subject matters makes it crystal clear
 that the {nominating} committee's homophobia was a leading
 reason" the documentary wasn't tapped, insists Spence
 Halperin, a producer and member of Out in Film, a group of
 about 500 openly gay and lesbian workers in the entertainment
 industry.
    "We're upset about the negative representation of queers
 on-screen, the failure of Hollywood to address the reality of
 the AIDS crisis on-screen, and the fact that the industry is
 so homophobic that people can't be out" of the closet, adds
 Judy Sisneros of Queer Nation, who is helping to organize the
 Oscar demonstration, which she says will likely include "an
 action" during the awards show itself.
    The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, denying
 any homophobia on its part, "certainly respects their right
 to protest -- so long as they don't come into our venue and
 cause a disturbance," a spokesman says.
    The rising anger comes despite Hollywood's attempt at
 fence-mending.  A fundraiser for the National Gay and Lesbian
 Task Force, with David Hoberman, president of Walt Disney
 Co. 's Touchstone Pictures as host, attracted a Hollywood
 pantheon.  And soon-to-depart Fox Inc. chief Barry Diller and
 MCA Inc. president Sidney Sheinberg recently formed Hollywood
 Supports, an industry group whose aim is to "change the image
 of AIDS and break down the barriers presented by prejudice
 against lesbians and gay men."
    "If you sit down with any studio executive, they will tell
 you they have no philosophical objection to positive
 portrayals of gays and lesbians," says entertainment lawyer
 Alan Hergott, one of the organizers of the gay task force
 fund-raiser.  None, however, was willing to say so on the
 record for this story, and it's clear they are angry about
 the protests.
    "What they would like to do, in certain circumstances, is
 do away with the First Amendment," one top executive says of
 the "Basic Instinct" flap.
    While protesters hope to force Hollywood into a new
 sensitivity, some gay people worry the demonstrations could
 cause a backlash, with studios hesitating to approve films
 with any gay characters to avoid future controversies.
    For example, even a film with a gay hero -- Warner Bros.'
 "The Mayor of Castro Street," about the assassinated San
 Francisco gay-rights champion Harvey Milk -- is drawing
 criticism from certain gay groups angry at director Oliver
 Stone's involvement in the project because of his "JFK.  "
 They've been threatening to disrupt production when it gets
 under way.  Frustrated by the criticism, Mr. Stone has backed
 out of directing the film.
    "There's that small, hysterical minority that have wrongly
 characterized him as homophobic, and he's not ready to tackle
 that controversy," says a spokeswoman for Mr. Stone, who will
 continue as producer.  "The gay activists have done no service
 by keeping Oliver from directing," adds "Mayor" author Randy
 Shilts, who waited a decade before any studio would touch his
 Milk biography.
    Studios have been reluctant to produce films with leading
 gay characters, in part because of the belief that such films
 are box-office poison.  Hollywood's two big flirtations with
 films featuring leading gay characters -- the 1982 releases
 "Making Love" and "Personal Best" -- were both flops.  (Other
 films with major gay characters that have done well include
 "Victor/Victoria" and "Midnight Cowboy.")
    Gay people don't buy the bad-box-office argument.  "They
 used to say that about black movies.  But Spike Lee came along
 and put a rest to that old chestnut," says Mr. Halperin of
 Out in Film.
    But producers angling to get Hollywood to make movies
 dealing sympathetically with homosexuality or AIDS have
 consistently hit brick walls.  Executive producer Lindsay Law
 couldn't get any studio to finance his critically acclaimed
 AIDS film "Longtime Companion."  He eventually got it produced
 himself and distributed through the independent Samuel
 Goldwyn Co. in 1990.  "But it's just as difficult to get a
 movie made with gay characters today as it was two years
 ago," Mr. Law says.
    Television producers have fared better at introducing gay
 characters, particularly on sitcoms like "Murphy Brown,"
 "Designing Women" and "The Golden Girls."  "Melrose Place," an
 upcoming spinoff of the hit Fox show "Beverly Hills 90210"
 will even have a lead character who is gay.
    Still, networks are skittish about losing advertisers.
 Ultraconservative groups like the American Family Association
 in Tupelo, Miss., have pressured sponsors to pull out of
 programs with gay themes.
    Writer-producer Richard Kramer raised the association's
 ire with his "thirtysomething" episode that featured two gay
 characters talking in bed.  "There was no protest when the
 subject was death or disease," Mr. Kramer says.  "But when it
 was about love, they protested."
    On the whole, "the films coming out of Hollywood have
 nothing to do with any gay or lesbian I have ever met," says
 Richard Rouilard, editor in chief of the Advocate, which has
 a special "Homophobia in Hollywood" cover story in its next
 issue.  "The gay community would rather have no gay characters
 in any movies if all they're going to get are vampire lesbian
 serial killers with long toenails."

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