An upcoming half-hour HBO Max show titled Drama Queen should be a meta viewing experience for gay TV buffs: According to its logline, the in-development project is a “semi-autobiographical comedy set in the 1980s” centering on “a closeted, TV-obsessed teenager who copes with the harsh realities — and relative mundaneness — of life in small-town New Jersey by escaping to an alternate soap opera universe of his own creation.”
Related: Meet the gay teen couple making TV history
The story is based on the childhood of entertainment journalist Michael Ausiello, who wrote for TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly before founding the website TVLine in 2011. He’s also executive-producing the show and penning the pilot script himself.
“A born couch potato, Michael Ausiello’s earliest memories are rectangular in shape, and, in fact, when he gets bored with one recollection, he reaches for the remote control and switches to another,” his bio reads. “Papa Smurf, J.R. Ewing, Flame Beaufort … these are the personalities that shaped his young mind into what it is today: a steel trap, slightly rusty, but overflowing with knowledge of the tube.”
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Related: Dan Levy is ushering in a new era of queer representation on TV
Meanwhile, Ausiello is also working with Jim Parsons to adapt his memoir, Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies in the End, for the big screen, per Deadline. The bestselling book chronicles his relationship with husband Kit Cowan, who died of neuroendocrine cancer in 2015.
Invader7
I don’t binge watch ( a stupid concept ) and the story line does NOT hold my interest for one second. I’d rather look at the clouds roll by…
Cam
It certainly seemed to hold your attention for the entire article.
justgeo
TV is as TV does when will it get better?
queerbec
“Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies in the End” was quite an enjoyable, moving read. I hope they do it justice with the TV version.
nitejonboy
Sounds good, I’m reading his book right now. I’m a kid of the 80’s and when I wasn’t building forts in the woods with my friends, I was usually planted square in front of the tv. I remember meeting Sorrell Boothe, the actor who played Boss Hogg on THE DUKES OF HAZZARD, at a festival in a nearby town and thinking I’d just met god, he was the biggest star I’d met at the time and he was a huge star of tv in the early 80’s. Little did I know I’d end up working in the movie business and go on to meeting some of the biggest movie stars of all time and working with them. Try telling that to a closeted little meek boy. My head would have exploded.