1. t
30 ▼
—
liter Paul Rudnick remembers
the struggles and relishes the
joys of transferring his stage
comedy Jeffrey to the screen.
H is
m em ories
in clu d e
homophobic rejections, a heat wave and 25 mas
turbating leathermen.
‘‘When we opened in New York," Rudnick
says, "even people who genuinely liked the play
said, “This will never be done outside New York.’
á* ?
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1 guess they imagined gay characters wouldn’t
$(avqt~~that love, life and death weren’t universal
,'toocem v Since then it’s been done all over the
UnttodiStates, in Japan, in Tel A viv..."
Interviewing Rudnick is like dishing with an
old friend and covers many o f the same topics,
especially gay life and show business and how the
two are intersecting more and more.
“I think it’s only a matter of time until TV
wises up and recognizes the wealth of gay talent
out there," Rudnick says, "but I think it will
happen without m e.... Television consumes the
writer. If a show is a success, you abandon your
private life. Look at Absolutely Fabulous, which
i s superb. Jennifer Saunders was smart
to limit it to 18 episodes.”
Although he created Sister Act
and worked on The Addcuns Family,
among other scripts, Rudnick’s only
official screen credit prior to Jeffrey
was for writing Addcuns Family Val
ues. His thoughts about film are re
flected in the Premiere magazine col
umns o f “Libby Gelman-Waxner,”
with whom he’s making “joint" ap
pearances to promote her new collec
tion of columns, If You Ask Me
(Fawcett, $11.50).
After more than a year’s run off-
Broadway, Jeffrey was filmed last
summerduring a heat wave. Rudnick
says the budget was “somewhere be
tween $1.5 and $2 million, which is
what it costs to shoot a TV pilot. And
that included five weeks o f location
shooting in New York and’that cast ’ "
Recruiting a capital-C cast for a
gay-themed project is still not easy.
Sigourney Weaver, who loved the
script and wanted to play New Age
evangelist Debra Moorhouse, started
the bandwagon. Once she signed on,
everyone wanted to beln it. Before that there was
"apprehension,” Rudnick says. "Actors were
frightened of roles in which the gay characters
weren’t ‘noble victims’,’ but have sexuality and a
real libido. It isn’t always homophobia.... On any
project, gay or not, you get rejection."
Where homophobia most often comes into
play, he notes, is "middle-level management—
agents and managers, many of whom are gay
themselves, who don’t even show the scripts to
their actors.... I would love for someone to find
to appeal to straight audiences. “One rule I made
when writing the play and the film was never to
worry about that.”
And yet he does include a special moment for
heterosexuals in each version. “On stage I thought,
what is the audience’s worst fear about coming to
a gay play? That they’re going to see two men in
Je ffre y
bed together having sex. So I got that out o f the
▼
way in the first 10 seconds, with the whole cast in
bed.
Then they relax and say, ‘What were we
b y S te v e W a r r e n
worried about?’ "
The corresponding moment in the film is a
"reaction shot" of a movie audience the first time
two men kiss. “In most films with gay charac
ters,” Rudnick says, “a kiss, even a sympathetic
one, is treated as a ‘vampire moment,’ with dra
matic music and lots of suspense to lead up to i t
I wanted to say, ‘This is a kiss, get used to it.
You’re going to see plenty more.’ ”
Nothing was softened to pander to straight
audiences in adapting his play, the writer swears.
“The moments where the play went a little further
than people thought it might are still there.” When
things were cut it was because of “enormous
rhythmic and technical changes” between the
media.
In one scene that was filmed but later cut,
Rudnick reports, “We used 25 real leather guys in
a scene in a masturbation club. The guys were
terrific. They brought their
ow n
h arnesses
and
codpieces. It was 103 de
grees, and we couldn’t have
the air conditioning on be
cause it would interfere
with the sound. It was great
to watch, but the tone didn’t
work in the film.”
Rudnick disagrees with
those who find Jeffrey al
ready dated. “Eventually
when people look back it
will be a period piece,” he
says, “but I think the issues
of the script remain tragi
cally relevant. I wish there
had been some progress to
ward a cure and treatment,
but I’m afraid safe sex and
AIDS are with us for the
foreseeable future."
W ithout m entioning
Jeffrey, Rudnick makes
Above: Paul Rudnick; below: (from left) clear the importance of its
actors Bryan Bait, Patrick Stewart, success: “In Hollywood the
route to freedom is always
Steven Weber and M ichael T. Weiss
financial. If Wong Foo
makes a fortune, and I hope
says.
the actual actor whose career has been hurt by a
it
does,
it
will
lead
to
more
gay films. If Two Girls
On the “who’s gay 7” question, Rudnick names
gay role. Tom Hanks? W illiam Hurt?"
in
Love
does
well,
more
gay filmmakers will
only himself and director Christopher Ashley,
From the leads— Steven Weber, Michael T.
make inroads.
who also directed the play and is making his film
Weiss and Patrick Stewart, whom Rudnick calls
“Prejudice doesn’t stand a chance against fi
debut with Jeffrey, but he says “enormous num
“the nicest and most generous man alive"—to
nancial
success. That may sound crass, but that’s
bers o f the cast and crew, the producers, [were
supporting players Weaver, Olympia Dukakis,
how
it
is
in Hollywood.”
gay]. It became a situation where political cor
Kathy Najimy, Robert Klein, Christine Baranski,
A Kiss I s J ust a K iss
Writer Paul Rudnick puts straight audiences at ease without
making any compromises, in
—the movie
“In most films with gay
characters, ” Rudnick
says, “a kiss, even a
sympathetic one,
is treated as a *vampire
moment, ’ with dramatic
music and lots o f
suspense to lead up to
it. I wanted to say, This
is a kiss. Get used to it.
You ’re going to see
plenty more.’ ”
Nathan Lane (who created his role of Father Dan
at “the very first reading of Jeffrey in an off-off-
Broadway basement”) and Kevin Nealon, “ev
eryone worked for scale or well below,” Rudnick
M ORE
rectness began to seem quite silly, and we just
went for the talent."
The cast obviously enhances Jeffrey'% cross
over potential, but Rudnick insists he never set out
Jeffrey opens Friday, Sept. 15, fo r an exclu
sive run at Cinema 21,616 NW 21st Ave. Call the
theater a t 223-4515 fo r show times and prices.
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