Portia de Rossi pilots show about her own life in hollywood’s closet

Portia de Rossi

Portia de Rossi's life before coming out professionally was one of living openly while discussing nothing, inhabiting the Hollywood glass closet. But in post-public-disclosure interviews, the acclaimed comic actress (“Arrested Development”) discussed that complicated life and its subsequent difficulties. Now she's turning elements of that past into a sitcom. Called for now “Butch and Fay,” the pilot de Rossi is shopping around Hollywood concerns two actors, one gay and one lesbian, who marry in order to further their careers. And lesbian director and former “Married with Children” star Amanda Bearse will take the pilot's helm. No word on whether or not de Rossi will star herself, but it couldn't hurt the show's chances of making it to the networks. Here's hoping we hear more about it soon.


Rihanna enters ‘Black Widow’ web
It was inevitable that pop sensation Rihanna would wind up in movies. The question was when. Now the hip-hop princess has taken on a starring role in the cast of “Mama Black Widow,” based on the 1969 fictional memoir by acclaimed African-American writer Iceberg Slim. Brian J. White —who already played a gay man once in “The Family Stone” — will star as Otis Tilson, described in the book as a “tragic homosexual queen, whose underworld life took him into the company of other outcasts.” The film will also star Kerry Washington, Anthony Anderson, rapper-turned-actor Mos Def, and singer Macy Gray, and will be directed by Darren Grant (“Diary of a Mad Black Woman”). And if she's half as charismatic reciting dialogue as she is singing, Rihanna can expect to need an “Umbrella”to protect her from the downpour of future offers.


The return of Keith Haring's ‘Universe’
The late Keith Haring’s pop paintings of wiggly, exuberant humans and radiant crawling infants have become the most recognizable images to come out of the contemporary art world since Andy Warhol’s soup cans. Sadly, his death at a young age from AIDS only robbed the world of his brand of joyful artistry. Fortunately, a lovingly created documentary of his life now exists. “The Universe of Keith Haring” explores the baby-faced, glasses-wearing street artist’s rise from graffiti in subway stations to gallery fame to mainstream commercial juggernaut in the 1980s. The friends he made along the way — Grace Jones, Yoko Ono, Madonna, David LaChapelle, and Andy Warhol himself — are all on hand in the film, some in archival footage with Haring, to remember and praise an artist whose time ended too soon. Currently making the film-festival rounds, it should have a theatrical and DVD release in the near future.


Swelling cast roster for ‘Living Proof’
Producers Renee Zellweger, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron went to their personal e-mail address books to wrangle the rest of the cast of Lifetime’s “Living Proof,” about the man who developed the breast cancer drug. Angie Harmon, Amanda Bynes, Bernadette Peters, Swoosie Kurtz, Regina King, Jennifer Coolidge, Trudie Styler, Paula Cale and John Benjamin Hickey all have signed on to the film.




These articles appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition June 27, 2008.