There has been lots of rumors and inuendos the last couple of weeks that Ellen and Anne Hache are an item, but gossip happens a lot in Hollywood. Ellen was quoted in Time as saying she had met a woman she would like to spend her life with. Seen with Anne at the recent VH1 awards and at the latest premiere of Anne's new movie "Volcano" sparked the sudden array of rumors that Anne was the one. When questioned about going with Ellen to the premiere of her new movie Anne joked "I wanted someone who was on the cover of Time Magazine, so I called her up and she said she would go with me". Heche (pron. Haytsh) who dated Steve Martin a couple of years back is said to be in her first lesbian romance with Ellen....
So let's wish the two all the best of luck with whatever lies ahead of them. They sure have been hitting the town together in a BIG way lately.
Latest reports has Anne moving in with Ellen...and they have exchanged rings. They went Hawaii together while Anne filmed her latest flick with Harrison Ford. Before leaving were spotted in San Francisco househunting...although Ellen has just recently purchased a new house in LA, which they both share. Go Girlz, April 97.Read the PEOPLE ARTICLE here.
Ellen DeGeneres' character Ellen Morgan came out on the history making episode of the sitcom "Ellen" on April 30th. Now because of it Ellen herself decided to tell the world that she is a lesbian. Below are my links to information to do with Ellen DeGeneres and her character Ellen Morgan coming out.
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ELLEN STEPS OUT
* Here comes TV's first leading lesbian. Ellen DeGeneres will soon find
out if America still loves her. Can a risky stunt like this save a sinking
show?
And what took her so long?
By Rick Marin and Sue Miller
Fade in to a crowded gate in the Los Angeles airport. Ellen DeGeneres,
or
Ellen Morgan, as she's known on her ABC sitcom, "Ellen," shows up at LAX
in
hot pursuit of Susan, a lesbian she met and flirted awkwardly with the
previous night. Ellen has come to tell Susan something she's never told
anyone before. In the script for the show's April 30 episode, her
long-awaited confession goes like this:
"Okay. You were right. Susan, I'm... I can't. I can't even say the
word.
What's wrong with me? There's nothing to be ashamed of. Why am I so
afraid to
tell people... I'm 35 years old. Why can't I just come out and say... I'm
gay. You hear that? I'm gay. And, it sounds pretty darn good. And it
sounds
pretty darn loud. Oh my God." The gag is that Ellen has accidentally tripped a microphone that
broadcast
her announcement over the PA system. People are staring. Susan (played by
Laura Dern) offers a hug and says, "I'm so proud of you. I remember how
hard
it was when I told my first airport full of people."
Finally. The closet door opens and out comes the gayest heterosexual
character on television. After a season of coy double entendres, this is
hardly a news flash. But there's bigger news in store. It isn't just the sitcom Ellen who's coming out. On April 23, the real-life Ellen will
appear
on "PrimeTime Live" and is expected to announce that she, too, is gay.
The timing is no accident. Like the fictional sitcom confession,
DeGeneres's own announcement has been carefully orchestrated. Her PR firm
has
been shopping interviews with DeGeneres, promising she'll talk about
being a
lesbian. In addition to "PrimeTime," the 39-year-old comedian will also
do
"Oprah," a predictable trade-off for Oprah Winfrey's cameo as Ellen's therapist on the coming-out episode. Like her character in the airport,
DeGeneres is advertising her sexuality over the PA system of national TV,
only not by accident, proving that even the most intimate revelations can
be
transformed into a media event.
As revelations go, this one isn't a huge surprise. At an awards
ceremony
last month sponsored by the gay group GLAAD, DeGeneres got a standing
ovation, then joked about having to do "research" for her character.
"There
were so many people to consult," she told her enthusiastic audience. At
another gay event in March, she kissed lesbian singer k. d. lang.
Vigorously.
The rumor mill started churning back in September of last year, when
word
leaked that Ellen was going to "out" her character on the show. Rampant
speculation followed about whether she'd out herself, too. The joke going around Hollywood was that the sequel to DeGeneres's best seller, "My
Point... and I Do Have One," would be titled "My Sexual Orientation... and I Do
Have
One." When nothing happened, the whole thing started to look like a
shameless
publicity stunt designed to boost the show's sagging ratings. The truth
was
less sinister. ABC and Disney, the studio that produces "Ellen," were
reserving the right to reject the coming-out script if they didn't like
how it was handled.
We really needed to sit down with people [at ABC and Disney] and
convince
them there was a future for this show with Ellen as a lesbian," says Dava
Savel, one of the series's executive producers. The meetings started last
July and August. DeGeneres went to Dean Valentine, president of Disney Television, and Jamie Tarses, the recently installed head of ABC
Entertainment. (In her previous job at NBC, Tarses had championed the
lesbian
wedding on "Friends.") The producers loved the idea of an out Ellen. For
one
thing, Savel admits, they were "running out of ideas." Going into its
fourth
season, the show was getting stale.. Ellen's romantic life was
notoriously
disastrous. For reasons that now seem obvious, she never clicked with
guys.
Marriage, or even a relationship, was out of the question. The situation
was
so desperate that the producers suggested to the network that Ellen get a
puppy. "They said, 'Yeah. That's good'," recalls exec producer Mark
Driscoll.
"It was an indication of just how lost the show was that they would be
excited by Ellen buying a puppy." As an inside joke, the writers titled
the
Ellen-comes-out show "The Puppy Episode."
Disney was in favor but cautious. "I said it was only worth doing if
it
| was a great episode," says Valentine. "I told Ellen, I'm not interested
in
standing on political soapboxes. First and foremost, it has to be great
TV."
He rejected the first draft of the script because it didn't "dig deep
enough
into the character." The focus was on how Ellen's friends reacted to her
being gay. The rewritten version deals more with Ellen's own feelings.
Oprah's therapist scene was added, and a dream sequence cast with cameos
by
Demi Moore and "Sling Blade" Oscar winner Billy Bob Thornton. (Her gay
pals
Melissa Etheridge and k. d. lang also make supportive appearances.) And
true to her character, Ellen doesn't get the girl in the end. "It's not going
to
be easy," says Savel. "We want people to see the struggle."
For DeGeneres, coming out may be less of a struggle than a relief.
Unlike
Ellen Morgan, she has never made a secret of her sexual orientation to
the
people around her. Either she told them or they already knew. (Through
her publicist, DeGeneres refused repeated requests by NEWSWEEK for an
interview
on this subject.) At Charlene's, a lesbian bar in DeGeneres's native New Orleans, a few of the regulars say they met her in the early '80s. They
remember Ellen's being in love with a beautiful young woman who was
killed in
| a car crash. Her death may have been the inspiration for DeGeneres's
| signature "Phone Call to God" routine, in which (distraught over her
friend's
death) one of the questions she puts to him is why fleas are allowed to
live.
The routine won her a contest sponsored by Showtime to be named Funniest
Person in America. She used it again for her 1986 debut on "The Tonight
Show." Johnny invited her over to the couch afterward--his ultimate
compliment. "All of Ellen's comedy is from her life experience," says the
bar's proprietor, Charlene. "It wasn't gay or straight. It related to
everybody."
From New Orleans, DeGeneres moved to San Francisco in 1984. Bob
Fisher,
who managed comedians like Paula Poundstone and Dana Carvey, took her on
as a
client. He recalls her coming to him, seeming nervous, and saying, "I
want
you to know something. I'm gay." Fisher replied, "Yeah? And?" He was
hardly
shocked. "She was very relieved it wasn't an issue," he says. "I already
knew Ellen was gay. It was sort of taken for granted. It didn't play a part in
her
act. She would neither confirm nor deny it to the press." Occasionally
she got flack from some male comedians for being gay. "Several guys had
crushes
on her," Fisher says. She'd date, but sooner or later the men would
figure
out she wasn't interested. Eventually, he says, they'd clue in to the
fact
that the woman she lived with was her girlfriend.
So if everybody already knows, or suspected, that Ellen is gay, what's
the
big deal? There are at least two dozen gay characters in prime time, on
shows
like "Mad About You," "NYPD Blue" and "Cybill." There's a lesbian wedding
practically every other week. But until now they've only had supporting
roles. "Ellen" would be the first show built around a lesbian--and
starring
one. How big a difference will that make? Most of the sponsors haven't
flinched. Chrysler pulled an ad off the April 30 episode, saying it
didn't
want to advertise in such a "polarized" environment. But a company
spokeswoman says its ads will be back on ensuing episodes. Viewers in New
York, Los Angeles and San Francisco might not be fazed by a same-sex
sitcom,
but folks are a little more conservative in the part of America Hollywood
types call "fly-over country." And Jerry Falwell is already fulminating
against "Ellen Degenerate." Donna Miller, a 39-year-old mother of three
who
works at the Hamilton, Ohio, chamber of commerce, has always been a big
fan
of "Ellen." Now she's not sure. "That was a totally funny show," she
says. Her 8-year-old daughter liked to watch because she's also named Ellen.
"But I
wouldn't let Ellen watch 'Ellen' after she comes out of the closet,"
Miller
says. Her co-worker Jennifer Klus, who's 26 and single, is less ruffled
by
the prospect of a gay "Ellen," but says, "If the show is going to turn
into
'let's explore what lesbian relationships really mean,' I wouldn't want
to
watch that." ABC's Jamie Tarses promises that won't happen. "This is not a 'date of
the
week' show," she says. "It never has been. It will be another aspect of
her
character. This is not going to be a day in the life of Ellen DeGeneres,
lesbian." The producers say they're a long way from Ellen's kissing
another
woman, even though that taboo has been broken on "Roseanne" and
"Relativity"--both ABC shows. The network is sending out mixed signals, refusing to run a pro-gay ad from the Human Rights Campaign, although 31
ABC
affiliates will run the spots locally.
Naturally, the Internet has been buzzing with "Ellen" mania for
months.
Around the country, gay organizations are planning "Come Out With Ellen"
parties. One ABC staffer already has. Jill Lessard, the show's publicist,
asked to appear as an extra in a scene set in a gay coffeehouse, then
decided
to come out herself as well. "I just got swept up in the moment," she
says.
The moment, when it comes, may well seem a little anticlimactic after
all
the hype. In subsequent episodes, Ellen will come out to her parents,
then
her boss. Viewers might start wondering, Who's she gonna tell this week?
Enough already! "I hope it does what Ellen intends, and that's to send a
positive message about lesbians and gays in general to the American
public,"
says Vance DeGeneres, Ellen's brother and a writer on the show. As a
career move, coming out personally is risky and courageous. She has more at
stake
than ABC--which has watched this former top-10 show drop to No. 30 in the last two years--and Disney, which has already sold the reruns into
syndication. There isn't exactly a big call for lesbian leading ladies in
Hollywood. Vance DeGeneres is worried about "the danger of Ellen being
typecast." Not to mention the danger of some nut trying to physically
harm
her.
The media hoopla aside, there is something refreshingly honest about
DeGeneres's decision to emerge from the closet. Her one attempt at a
bigscreen romantic comedy, "Mr. Wrong," bombed, maybe for the same reason
Ellen's hetero love life has always fizzled on the show. Now, at least,
she's
playing herself, or someone a lot closer to herself than before. "She
feels
|on top of the world," Savel says of DeGeneres. "She's so happy the show
was
done right. It was everything she wanted it to be. So in that sense,
she's
free."
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Anne Heche [left] with Joan Chen in a scene
from the movie "The Wild Side"
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