| THESE WALLS - The Advocate Stars on their Walls HBO�s second If These Walls Could Talk attracted stars like Sharon Stone and Vanessa Redgrave and Anne Heche and Michelle Williams, all to tell tales of lesbian lives By Gregg Kilday From The Advocate , March 14, 2000 Four years ago, when HBO aired its original movie If These Walls Could Talk�a triptych of tales set in the same house but separated by decades�Anne Heche was just another name in the cast: An up-and-coming actress, she was featured in the third of three stories about unwanted pregnancy as a young woman forced to confront antiabortion protesters to make her way to a clinic. Back then the spotlight was on Cher, Demi Moore, and Sissy Spacek, the three big-name actresses who headlined the cast. Flash-forward to the present, and Heche has become a headliner herself. Her whirlwind romance with Ellen DeGeneres shoved her into the tabloid limelight, while on her own she�s amassed an impressive list of credits, moving from acclaimed supporting roles in Donnie Brasco and Wag the Dog to star turns in Volcano, Return to Paradise, and Six Days, Seven Nights. When Heche mentioned to executive producers Suzanne and Jennifer Todd, the sisters who�d assembled the original Walls, that she was also moving into writing and directing, the Todds asked her to pitch them ideas for their planned Walls sequel focused on gay story lines. �Yeah, baby,� Heche recalls saying enthusiastically, and she returned days later with several ideas. One was a lighthearted look at two women, longtime lovers who set out to find a sperm donor. That DeGeneres would play one of the leads was a given. �I wanted to write Ellen a role that was more expansive and fuller than anything audiences have seen her do,� Heche says of the project, which quickly became a family affair. �It kind of started off as a love letter about our relationship, all the struggles that we went through, how we were able to keep together and blossom in a relationship that is so joyous for us. One of the things that confused everyone about me was that it was so easy for me to �become� a lesbian. I just wanted to explain the joy that I felt.� Heche�s enthusiasm proved contagious: After reading her screenplay, titled �2000,� Sharon Stone immediately agreed to play DeGeneres�s lover. �How often do I get to play a happy woman who isn�t punished at the end?� Stone says of her upbeat role. �If I can lend a familiar face so that the middle-American parents of an adolescent gay person can say, �OK, I don�t have to be freaked out by this,� then I�ve done my job. I want their hearts to be touched. And even if the only way someone can justify watching it is to say to their friends, �I just tuned in to see two naked chicks,� that�s also fine by me.� With Stone providing marquee insurance, HBO quickly moved the project onto its fast track. The Todds had also been developing a gay-male variation on Walls, but, as HBO Films president Colin Callender explains, �Although there haven�t been an extensive amount of stories about gay men, the stories we�d come up with still felt familiar. The women�s stories seemed more individual and unique. They hadn�t really been seen before.� Jane Anderson�the lesbian writer-director behind the hit cable TV movie The Baby Dance and screenwriter of How to Make an American Quilt�was enlisted to helm the haunting opening episode, titled �1961.� The segment stars Vanessa Redgrave as a woman facing the loss of her home to uncomprehending relatives after her longtime companion (Marian Seldes) dies of a stroke. �My mother used to tell me evil-lesbian stories, like one about a French teacher who tried to seduce her,� Anderson remembers with a wry laugh. Determined to set the record straight, she chose to tell a story about �two ladies who are innocents. When they would have met, they wouldn�t even have had a word for a lesbian,� she says. �But there were romantic friendships, so-called Boston marriages. The episode is about a lifelong relationship that isn�t recognized.� By contrast, �1972,� the film�s second episode, is set right in the noisy center of the politically charged days of the women�s movement, when everything was discussed. Michelle Williams (of Dick and TV�s Dawson�s Creek) dons tie-dyes and bell-bottoms as a college-age dyke who finds herself ostracized on one side by straight feminists and on the other by her lesbian pals, who don�t understand her infatuation with a working-class butch girl, played by Chlo� Sevigny (Boys Don�t Cry). Martha Coolidge stepped in at the last moment to direct the episode, originally to have been filmed by lesbian director Alex Sichel (All Over Me) from a screenplay she cowrote with her straight sister, Sylvia. �It�s exactly like [my earlier film] Valley Girl,� jokes Coolidge, �except with Chlo� in the Nick Cage role. To me, it�s a classic story about first love, set amid all the anger and arguments of the feminist and lesbian movements of the early �70s.� As much by accident as by design, when the three episodes were finally stitched together, Walls 2 proved remarkably cohesive, moving from a widow to a budding romance to a pending birth. �Individually, each story is great. But all together, they have a real emotional impact,� Heche attests. �I get the blessing of having two stories before mine that build a consciousness and awareness and emotion that I get to take to the next level. The last segment of the first Walls, which Cher directed me in, ended in such a horrifying way, which was true to what was going on then [in the fight for abortion rights]. But I wanted to end on a feeling of the future, of what lesbian and gay couples should have the right to feel all the time, just a normal, happy couple.� |
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