Susan Lucci gave me her blessing and said to wear white! OK, let me explain. “You Like Me” is an occasional Joe’s Pub event, coproduced by Michael Schulman (who wrote the new book Oscar Wars) and Emmy winner Rachel Shukert (The Baby-Sitters Club), at which various performers recreate and/or interpret famed awards acceptance speeches. At the most recent edition, I was set to once again perform Susan Lucci’s emotional speech upon winning the Daytime Emmy for playing salty Erica Kane on All My Children after a whopping 19 nominations. Well, a friend of mine had run into Lucci and told her about it, and she not only said it was a great idea, but she urged that I wear white, as she had done. So I did! I looked like a gay angel!
And I got to hobnob with an amazing crew of theater folks reimagining other famous speeches. Jordan E. Cooper, who wrote and starred in the entertainingly pointed Broadway sketch show Ain’t No Mo’, was hilarious doing a dizzy Mariah Carey, accepting a Breakthrough Actress award in Palm Springs, accompanied by Ira Madison III as Precious director Lee Daniels. (“I met Helen Mirren tonight!” gurgled Cooper as the clearly tipsy pop diva. “She was everything! She was amazing! The genius Helen Mirren!”) Backstage, Cooper told me he is still working with the Public Theater, and his next play will be Alice Wonder, a nouveau take on Alice in Wonderland. As he explained it to me, “Alice is 40 and depressed. Her husband killed himself, which sends her into the rabbit hole.” And I am there!
Michael R. Jackson, who’s won a bunch of his own awards for writing A Strange Loop, did a pretty wild Fiona Apple speech at the event. (“Everybody that’s watching…this world is bullshit!”) In the green room, Jackson told me about his new off-Broadway musical, White Girl in Danger, officially described as “a fever dream mashup of classic daytime and primetime soap operas, Lifetime movies, and red-hot melodrama.” He said he’s tweaking the show — which starts previews on March 15th — and he didn’t know exactly how long it will be yet; “not until the final rehearsal.” I told him to make sure to factor in time for audience laughs and applause. “I want to entertain people!” beamed Jackson, an attitude that I found hugely infectious. We then started talking about me, me, me—and, of course, Susan Lucci — and Jackson told me he had worked as a production assistant on All My Children back in the day and, in fact, he was obsessed with soaps. Jackson said he wants to do a special soap night for White Girl and hopes Lucci will come as a special guest. If not, I’ll be happy to dig up my white outfit again.
Going down the mineshaft
Documentarian Jeffrey Schwarz (I Am Divine, The Fabulous Allan Carr) is doing a doc called Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders. It will explore the making of William Friedkin’s controversial 1980 film Cruising, which had Al Pacino as a cop who goes undercover to track down a serial killer who’s been targeting gays. The doc will also focus on Addison Verrill, a real-life murdered gay journalist who inspired Cruising, as well as the efforts of journalist Arthur Bell to lead a crusade against Cruising for its damaging suggestions about gay life. And naturally, I am being interviewed for it, having known Bell (my predecessor at the Village Voice) and having been to both Cruising protests and the Mineshaft, the raunchy ‘70s gay sex club represented in Friedkin’s opus! I still remember the tub, in which a guy would lounge as everyone gathered ’round to relieve themselves on him, and the place’s floor, which interestingly squished as you walked.
How about we take this to the next level?
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And furthermore….
A real pisser, Frankie Grande is making his film acting debut! The irrepressible Grande plays a snippy queen in Summoning Sylvia, a gay horror film about a bachelor party in a haunted house, complete with a séance. And the film was done by a virtually all-gay set of creators! It will be summoned this spring.
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