Ellen DeGeneres & Sharon Stone Interview
Ellen DeGeneres & Sharon Stone Interview
Ellen DeGeneres & Sharon Stone Interview
Couple
0f fire Year
like
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,,."
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,
;ebNirr;iuED oN
23
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 /
[ru
Itrh
IG
'n." o = 'n !, o
o
t
team!"
-t