ffi

Couple

0f fire Year

Ellen DeGeneres and Sharon Stone play lovers

Stone's. They trade comic

quips and compliments. All in all, they seem more

a "married" couple in real life than they do in

like

their segment of the film,

an anthology about lesbian relationships in three

in HBO's new
lesbian-themed

Sharon Slone and Ellen DeGeneres play a couple trying to get pregnanl in HBO's "ll These Walls Could Talk 2."

"Look at Matthew Shepard," DeGeneres says, referring to the Wyoming youth who was beaten, tied to a fencepost and left for dead, essentially for being gay. "There're so

American eras. "I'm totally against outing somebody," DeGeneres says. "As much "Oh, me, too!" Stone intedects. ". . to do it to certain people," DeGeneres continues. "I almost did it once," says Stone. 'You almost came out?" DeGeneres asks.

many people who are closeted today because isn't safe, and because you have
people like Dr. Laura

it

aslwouldlooooue,,."

antholosr. Got a problem with that?

Bv
FRANK Lovncn
LLEN DEGENERES
and Sharon Stone,

And like that. You really can't blame them fo'r being so giddy and gay, so to speak: "If These Walls Could Talk 2" is the highly touted follow-up to HBO's acclaimed 1996 ratings success about abortion in three eras. And their segment, "2000," in which Stone and DeGeneres play a lesbian couple tryrng to get pregnant, strikes a note of

lunching at a corner table in an Upper East Side hotel, are discussing their HBO movie, "If These Walls Could Talk 2" (premiering 9 p.m. Sunday, March 5).
Thdy're so effusive that if these walls could talk, too, they wouldn't get a

hope in that the casual acceptance they get from a sperm-bank head (Regina Kind) and a fertility specialist (-Kathy Najimy) goes completely

unremarkedlupon. Yet the fearful closeting of "196 1," starring Vanessa Redgrave, and the judgmen-

word in edgewise. Stone frnishes DeGeneres' sentences for her. DeGeneres finishes

i .: iendbd

tal-feminist backlash of "L972," starring Michelle Williams and Chlo Sevigny, haven't, they note,

the popular radio Schlessinger" and soon-to-be- TV talk-show host calls us biological -'\rvho and biological freaks." deviants Schlessinger, with Clintonian parsing, has said her use of the terms "deviant" and "a biological error" refers not to homosexuals, but homosexuality. "If These Walls Could Talk 2" opens with a scene from the terribly earnest 1961 movie "The Children's Hour," based on Lillian Hellman's play about a lesbian scandal at a girls'school. When Edith (Redgrave) and Abby (Marian Seldes), an old, covertly lesbian couple, exit the theater, someone asks how the movie was. "Too much high drama for my taste," a seeming signal Abby replies from segment- writer-director Jane Anderson and executive producers Suzanne and Jennifer Todd that the filmmakers don't intend "Walls 2" tobe taken as a terribly earnest,

just lessened in degree.

;ebNirr;iuED oN

23

COT]PIE OF THE YEAR

good-for-you drama itself. "So we're starting to talk about what we're Eonna No one, in any case, would mistake the dg. Now, it took me a long time to even get io stone-r)eGeneres segment as earnest drama. 'OK, I'm gonna be comfortable with this]we,re gonaa do this, it's important for the story . . "' ttEt Anne, Heche, DeGeneres' significant other, wrote and directed "2000" as a comedy it was orieinal"I think it took until the day. reallv." iavs ly titled lMiss Conception." DeGeneres joinef the Stone. ". .": but then I was firie with ii." ' pro;ect, as segment costar and executive produc" . . - Then they, Sharon and Anne, both at the gapqti4e said, You know what? Let's just go for 9g. T\e la-tter, she cracks, means, ',I helped cater. Lffi Hey, I didl't know! I had to clean up, it,' " DeGeneres says. "And the-y just eol up ;nd sw_eep they said it was part of the job." walked away! And I'm, like, foilowinfttrerir: But seriously, folks, "I think it wasbecause . 'What do you mean, 'Go for it? What does that these two straight women, Suzanne and Jen, who mean?"' are wonderful executive producers and did ail the The resulting scene, with nudity on both actors, work, wanted me to say,-as a gay woman, you're part, isn't "salacious," they and Hbche have insistdoing a gay story, this is my opinion of it, this is ed in the press. what I suggest.'-" Still, DeGeneres says she was told a group of ' As it happened, that didn't includethe nude gay_male frien4s got sexually excited watching it. lovemaking scene between herself and Stone. Neither used a body double. "It's in mv contiact .l 'lThis was my.4rst love scene," recalls DeGeneres, that th_ey can't," says Stone, with unexpected 6 dressed casually in T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. forcefulness.

o23'
"It's not a'body,'it's not a sack of flesh and boles, itiq a 6"iot. And that perbon's beingness is alive and prerent in your woik. I don't wa-nt anyone putting their intention into mv work. certainly when they're naked," she says, her voice trembling at the end. _ And besides, Stone adds, laying it on, "Ellen has no idea how beautiful she is beautiful - how her body.is,.how sexy she is. I don't knoy why. You don't have mirrors in your house? You don,t see yourselfon TV?" she asks. .t?eGeneres !on't buyrng it. "I'm fine. I'm happy with how I look. But it certainly isn't what m-osi peo-ple find attractive. It's funny though," she adds. "I'm the gay one, she's the strai[ht one, I'd wannd be in bed with her! I wouldn't go, OK, now lgmeoneelse jump in while she kisses my back." She chuckles. "That'd be weird. Like a tag /

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Frank Louece is a freelance writer.