Channing Tatum
Photo: Helga Esteb/Shutterstock.com
By: Romeo San Vicente*/Special to TRT—
Guinevere Turner Creeps up on you
Guinever Turner, star and co-writer of the ’90s lesbian indie classic Go Fish, has never stopped working. Or working it. She wrote the screenplay for American Psycho and died on screen, glamorously, at the hands of Christian Bale, she’s produced projects, written even more and stayed true to the indie film world throughout. Now she’s going to direct. The movie is called Creeps and it’s a dark-ish comedy about a pair of best friends, a lesbian and a gay man, who, according to the sassy Turner, “decide to quit drinking and doing drugs for a week so they can have great skin for a party.” Stop and read that again, because it’s the single greatest plot synopsis for a movie in the history of cinema. When will you get to watch it? When the money comes in, that’s when. The entire project is being crowdsourced by an IndieGoGo campaign – trans porn action hero Buck Angel even volunteered to run naked down Hollywood Boulevard if the price was right, how’s that for a perk? – and we can’t think of a better, sillier, weirder idea to toss cash at. Link now: www.indiegogo.com/projects/creeps-a-darkly-comedic-feature-by-guinevere-turner.
Ellen DeGeneres keeps making new TV shows happen
There’s nothing like being successful to make you even more successful. So along with having the most popular talk show on daytime TV, Ellen DeGeneres is producing up a storm. There’s an untitled sitcom pilot set up at NBC, written by DeGeneres’ longtime colleague Liz Feldman (2 Broke Girls), that will center on a lesbian and her gay male friend who decide to have a baby together just as he marries the love of his life. Then there’s the one-hour drama over at CW. It’s called Players and it’s ambitious. Set in Hollywood in the 1930s, it involves a young woman who moves to Los Angeles to get revenge for the death of her sister caused by a studio boss. But when she arrives she finds herself manipulated into becoming the fake romance for a closeted movie star and also pawn in a mob deal. Nowadays you just work at Jamba Juice until you get frustrated and move back to Des Moines, but in the ’30s the movie biz was a lot wilder, apparently. Anyway, we can’t wait for both of these shows to become real things to binge-watch on our iPad.
Zachary Quinto accepts Invitation with possible regrets
Frankly, we thought filmmaker Karyn Kusama was a lesbian. Turns out she’s not, but can you blame us for assuming the woman who directed Girlfight, Aeon Flux, Jennifer’s Body and an episode of The L Word might play for the lady team? An honest mistake if ever there was one. And, more honestly, her gender-role defying work has kept her on our radar all this time. Well, now she’s got a new project, The Invitation, starring Zachary Quinto, Big Bang Theory’s Johnny Galecki, Luke Wilson and Topher Grace. Co-written by Kusama’s husband Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, the story revolves around a man (Wilson) invited to his estranged ex-wife’s dinner party. Once there, he realizes that something very strange has come over his ex and that she and her guests may have something fairly ugly planned for him. Due in 2014, we dare this thriller to be disturbing enough to make us fear eating. Won’t happen, but we still dare.
Casting call: Tom Hardy and Channing Tatum. Maybe.
At this point we won’t believe anyone is playing Elton John in Rocketman, the biopic of the rock ’n’ roll legend’s life, until the day the film opens and we see that actor wearing some oversized glasses and/or those gigantic “Pinball Wizard” platform shoes. But just in case you’re more trusting, they say it’s going to be Tom Hardy. We can get with this. Hardy is hot, he’s idiosyncratic, he’s played gay before and he’s one of the more dynamic young actors working today. Now let’s wait and see if it all falls apart. And while we wait, somebody go put a homosexual bug in Channing Tatum’s ear, please, and get him to say yes to Paul Feig (director of The Heat and Bridesmaids), who wants the Magic Mike star to play gay in his new romantic comedy. John Milhiser (one of the new batch of SNL regulars) is already set to play an Average Joe gay guy whose life gets turned upside down when he starts dating his dream man. Feig threw Tatum’s name around and it started rumors that the actor was already cast as the dreamy one, and that turned out be wishful thinking. But if the director of The Heat and Bridesmaids can’t wish out loud for Channing Tatum to become gay, then none of us can. It’s not like Tatum didn’t already get S&M crazy with Danny McBride in his cameo appearance in This Is The End, and whatever Feig has in store for the actor eventually cast will be much less provocative. So come on, Channing Tatum, we’re all counting on you to make out with a guy on the big screen.
*Romeo San Vicente personally volunteers to teach Tatum how to convincingly kiss a man. He can be reached care of this publication or at DeepInsideHollywood@qsyndicate.com.
