In the Life: Ep. 1112, "LA Edition"

in the life is funded in part by the H van amaran Foundation additional support provided by the Ford Foundation the Gil Foundation The Pride Foundation the Collingwood Foundation Mel William J Resnik and the annual support of in the Life members like [Music] you hello I'm Mark Christopher writer director of alkal Iowa in 54 and I'd like to welcome you to our special edition in the Life In the City of Angels tonight we explore the stories people and programs making a difference in Los Angeles and the world with its Rich history and cultural diversity tinseltown's gay citizens like Alan Ball are flourishing as early as the 1950s gay angelinos began forging their own communities creating new forums to speak out and helping Foster the Gan lesbian movement across the country our feature stories include an American Beauty conquers Tinsel Town fighting AIDS fighting fires fighting for safe schools and Harvey firestein sets the record straight on who's gay in Hollywood just the tip of the iceberg for a community living in the Life In the City of [Music] Angels HBO's award-winning hit 6 feet under about a family that lives and works in a funeral home kicks off when the father dies and leaves the business to his two sons what I've done a terrible thing how's she doing she's fine I'm not fine I'm not War I was unfaithful to your father for years and now he knows he knows Ellen Ball created the show he began his professional career as an off Bradway playwright but Allen is best known for writing the Oscar winning screenplay for the hit film American Beauty he grew up in Marietta Georgia where his early sense of drama was influenced by some of the Great Southern writers like Truman capot and Tennessee Williams you know there's such a great tra tradition of of um Southern writers who were gay who write these great you know kind of Baroque Gothic um almost Greek uh dramas or novels for Allan the journey to Hollywood and the subsequent success was unexpected I had written a play called five women wearing the same dress which was a sort of Bittersweet comedy about bridesmaids at this big Society wedding in Knoxville Tennessee and a uh development executive for Cary Warner television uh had gotten a copy of the script and read it about a year later my agent called out of the blue and I um had a job offer to come out to Hollywood and be a writer on the second season of Grace Under Fire which was a sitcom about a southern woman I never intended to come out here I never wanted to come out here I loved movies and I wanted to write movies but I never was a person who was like I want to make it in that industry in 6 feet under one of Allan's complex Creations is David a 31-year-old gay Episcopalian struggling with his sexuality the guy just crued you really right in front of me like I'm not even here Ellen Drew from his early experiences growing up gay in Georgia to create a character who is faced with the fact that his religion is not compatible with his sexuality so glad to see you here it's always nice when someone comes back to the fold oh I've been going to church I was just going to a different Church really which one St Stevens in the Palisades uh no St Stevens in West Hollywood well I hope you always feel as welcome here as you did there there's a big part of me and David you know I grew up we didn't go to church very much and then there was a tragedy in my family and all of a sudden we started going to church all the time my mom especially got into that really sort of of Gothic end of the world religion and you know and it's it's all very judgmental and it's like we're Sinners we're Sinners you know God forgive us God forgive us who we are and that's a very sort of victim centered way of thinking about things I think which also was very interesting to me because I think as as um being gay it's also very easy to get into a victim centered way of thinking you know it's like oh it's so unfair the world is unfair to me you know I'm the victim of all this oppression and yada yada yada yada yada yes there are a lot of people in the world who hate us but I'm not going to be a victim I'm not going to buy into that let me never be ashamed there's a concept I've been ashamed my entire life I grew up thinking I was unworthy in the eyes of God instead of trusting God not to be an ignorant frightened bigot because of this I've made myself crazy I've put myself in danger I've made a lot of mistakes big mistakes which all could have been avoided if I just had faith faith that maybe God really is love like we say how am I supposed to spread God's love throughout the world when I deny it to myself I made David religious is because it's very interesting to me what's going on politically within the world of organized religion I read that you know some Council of ministers has you know come together and put out this decree saying you know that homosexual behavior is incompatible with scripture you people do not have the right to deny me access to God if I want a relationship with God I'm going to have a relationship with God because God made me and the God that I believe in is not cruel enough to to say you know just because of the luck of the draw or whatever I'm going to make you this thing that I hate I don't believe in in that God a Hallmark of alen's work is his willingness to explore his own anger in fact his frustration resulted in the Oscar winning screenplay of the Academy Awards best film of 1999 American Beauty I have a lot of anger and uh and you know my work is is a big conduit for that I think and I think that's probably you know it's a lot healthier than like driving down the freeway and shooting at people um but I had three years working on uh a sitcom uh Cil which was a very unpleasant experience for me I would come home and I would be furious Furious more at myself than anybody because I felt like I've become a I'm a huge I'm I'm doing this stuff that I don't believe in that I think there are serious ethical problems with and I'm doing it for the money 2:00 in the morning I would sit down at my computer and I would pour all this rage into it you know and uh and it kept me saying it's no coincidence that American Beauty is about a man who is a writer who has lost his passion for life who rediscovers it and in writing that script I rediscovered my passion for my work American Beauty was partially inspired by a story from deep within his own family history when I came out to my mom she told me that uh she thought my dad might have been gay my dad was a man who had some sort of secret tragedy that haunted him and there was something that had broken his Spirit alen was intrigued by the idea of what can happen when a man refuses to allow himself to admit his deepest most inner feelings in the first draft of American Beauty there was a flashback to Vietnam where the colonel as a younger man is in a tent with a fellow Soldier and they're in the middle of making love and they get ambushed and then they run out and he he sees his lover die and in my mind what he did was he he took that as some sort of sign from God that he had to be punished for that and he had to sit on that and then years later when he has this beautiful young son who he he Ador he thinks that he's becoming something that he couldn't allow himself to become we removed that flashback to Vietnam because it did it totally tipped where where the story was going uh I think I just needed to write it because I needed to know his backstory having earned the respect of his peers in Hollywood for his work on American Beauty and 6 feet under alen finds himself at a new Crossroads in his career being the Oscar winner now the the good thing about it is all of a sudden people pay attention to what I think you know whereas before I won the Oscar if I was a writer I'd go you know I'd get notes on the script and I'd go well I really think that you know that changes it and that like sort of defangs it and it becomes just sort of arbitrary and generic and before the Oscar they'd be like no no it doesn't do that it makes it better and now that I have the Oscar they'll go like oh okay well then don't do it you know it's like they trust you because you have this statue what do you think about that ball what do you think about him with the help of Academy award-winning actress turned director Kathy Bates Allen recently completed the second season of 6 feet under and with yet another hit project under his belt Allan ball remains one of the most sought-after writers in the industry I have gotten to a point in my life where I am very very comfortable in my own skin and I'm not living my life for anybody else uh and that uh you know and that uh that I just am who I am I didn't get lost along the way well I got lost along the way but I found myself I found my way back [Music] in 2001 in the Life helped celebrate the grand opening of the one Institute and archives which took its name came from the game magazine of the 50s and 60s correspondent David Martin was there for the ceremony there was a time when having any one of these items would put you at risk of being ostracized fired from your job even arrested the people who gathered and preserved these artifacts face just those threats and more but it still did not dissuade them from their goal of documenting the lives and memories of gay lesbian bisexual and transgendered people with numerous bookstores and hundreds of Publications now serving the gay and lesbian Community it's hard to imagine that only 50 years ago the US Post Office had to be instructed by the Supreme Court to deliver items with gay and lesbian content and while millions of people now take to the streets for Gay Pride every year it took Decades of struggle to make such celebrations possible you know in those days I used to think I was crazy because I was gay I was attracted to women and there were no books to look at there were the days of a lot of persecution and police brutality and really bad days difficult days I'm old enough I'm 53 I'm old enough to remember the bad old days before the movement and how isolated we were how without a support system we were whether it was political or personal so I read all the things about it and so I thought I was a pervert you see and I thought gee what kind of life have I got and all through that period Then the archive have kept the history kept the stories and today they're all here this is collective memory this memory is now preserved in the new home of the one Institute and international gay and lesbian archives over 50 years in the making one is now located in a building donated by the University of Southern California part Library Museum archive Research Center and an art gallery it represents the largest collection in the world of historical material documenting the life experience of gay lesbian bisexual and transgendered people there were three major collections that originally were uh separate that have a very interesting checkered history as the community evolved uh Jim kepner's collection started in the late 1940s he collected as he told me once because he went into uh some of the biggest public libraries in the US and he couldn't find anything on homosexuals now Jim I consider him one of the greatest people in the gay movement Jim lived and breathed his homosexuality he believed in Freedom he believed in gay Freedom it was his vision that the archives is the great archives it is today in addition to Jim kepner's vast collection the other two main Holdings that came together to create the current archives were the one Incorporated collection and the collection of the homosexual information center these were people who back in the 1950s decided that they simply weren't going to put up with being in the closet their political activity in publishing one magazine in organizing the mine society and organizing discussion groups that became a model for the movement which spread all across the United States most people think that the gay movement began in 1969 with Stonewall but in fact it was here in Los Angeles in 1950 and uh so one became the leading organization in the 50s that that really propelled a lot of the um research and one magazine was a preeminent magazine of what they call the homophile community uh from 1953 up to 1967 when The Advocate was founded in 1954 one magazine brought suit against the US Postal Service for refusing to to deliver their publication four years later one's Long Court battle resulted in the first US Supreme Court decision in favor of a gay organization and laid the basis for the rise of a free gay and lesbian press so they expanded Beyond being just a publication for magazine to also do research and education so what I tell people is in the 70s I work with lesbian feminists in the 80s were lesbians of color and in the '90s and into the 21st century I'm a a lesbian history and visibility activist Yolanda rer oversees the lesbian Legacy Collection at The Archives I think it's important that every Community especially what I call Target communities oppressed communities collect their history and unlike every other community our history has more deeply buried and even with an our own LGBT community we've got a Peggy in order the history of women the history of people of color is even more deep buried in the white men's history and I'm always collecting materials pertaining to people of color in all these areas so that is very different the lesbian of color focus is very different here this particular project the collection of our history is a big enough tent that anybody can be accommodated here I don't care if I don't agree with your politics you are invited to place your records your materials your history in this collection so it's good karma it's a good Karma project many of those who have served the one Institute also have some history there including the Reverend Flo fman who founded the Manhattan Beach California chapter of the daughters of bolius you'll see a photo of me in the first apartment where I had the first meeting I brought my camera and I said please let's take a picture of all of us together they refused nobody wanted to have their picture taken because they were afraid of being arrested and going to jail and so they said 'w let's take a picture of you Flo I said yeah I'm not afraid so they took a picture of me and that's why there's only me there but they said at least we have a record of our our movement younger people walk in here and they're like they barely have heard of Stonewall they knew need to have something around which to focus their identity their Heritage and ours is has been so lost so destroyed so undervalued so under played if there isn't a repository that is dedicated to Gay and Lesbian material a lot of very well-meaning relatives and and friends even will take material like this and they'll destroy it they'll think this is private this may be an embarrassment this is something we have to get rid of so how much of our history has been erased thrown out or hidden so I'm on a mission here to collect it preserve it put it on the internet we have Scholars coming all the time from all over the world to see it and to know look here's a history of a people that really hasn't been told it leaves me stuttering and speechless when I think about exactly how many different books could be written out of this archive lesbian and gay grad students of the future are going to have a a lot of work to do in some place to do it plus they come here and they see their their history you know so it's not just about information it's about inspiration you know people people from all all different segments of the community different Generations come here and they say hi I I feel like I'm home why I'm so active in one why I've always been active in one is because I saw what its potential was to give us gays a Heritage and that is what the archives gives us I was reading the book borrowed time in AIDS Memoir I finished it and I turned to my husband and I said I have to know Paul manette I have to meet him so I called my agent and I said how can I find Paul manette he said he's dating a friend of yours so I called my friend Steven KAC who Paul was dating at the time and I said Stephen you're inviting me over for dinner and uh he did and um we got to know Paul and he became family then in 1995 he died uh February 10th the day after my birthday which I thought was very considerate of him and uh in may we did the California AIDS ride in his memory and um he's still in my heart I'm Judith Light and you're watching in the life life Partners Ru and juwel have made it their mission to make a difference for all people in South Central Los Angeles I started the club in 1972 the dream first came to me when I was working across the street at a supermarket as a checker back in the late 60s and uh it was known to all the African-Americans that they weren't welcome you know at the uh what was then called the Diana Club so I just kind of said to myself one of these days I'll own that club and everybody will be welcome you know back in the 70s when she started the Disco thing um and I was doing my disco thing uh I didn't know jel personally then so I I I had no idea of the vision that she had for our community catchment one means a lot of things to a lot of people um for me it's um like my being able to contribute to the community I think um it's been very instrumental as far as being a place where people could gather to get information about what was going on this was always a place for us to come and to to organize usually in the African-American Community the church is the Cornerstone and the catch one was kind of like the church to our Gan lesbian Community because there was a space here uh there was a freedom for us to come and meet and organize and a lot of the political organizing that came out of out of our community uh happened here in the early days of unity Fellowship we had Services here we had our church services here I stood on this stage with Jesse Jackson when he was running for president I've been here for AA meetings for uh C meetings uh I have taken meals to the homeless from the kitchen downstairs so we partied here but we did good work here as well for most people that would be work enough but in 1989 Ru and Jewel used profits from the catch one disco to open ruse's house a shelter for women and children with AIDS we basically wanted to do something um to help the the children and and uh the mothers uh in terms of keeping them Under One Roof no one was doing that they were separating them and the children were going to uh foster care and uh women were going into adult shelters and we felt that um it's just about impossible to keep someone clean and sober to encourage them uh to go on living and snatch their child from them had uh women to come and stay as long as 3 years we have women that will come here and clean up and then get back out on the streets and they will use again and they'll come back they'll call me and ask me if they can come back and when they come back they're just a little bit sicker just a little worse off and we help them again and I've had them come in and out and as long as they don't give me any real problems when they're here this is their home they can always come back here it makes us feel good because we know that we're doing something right you know that we are providing in uh a home for them to want to come back to R and I met at Unity Fellowship I invited her to dinner and she never went home after that in our community people simply don't um they generally don't take vows and when they do they don't have ceremony so we don't take ourselves seriously and if we don't take ourselves seriously with our relationships we can't expect Society to do so fortunately uh we're not youngsters and and so I trust her implicitly to um you know to to to be okay person and and I I believe she trusts me too that's definite um you know you get to a certain age you only have enough energy to do so much and we and ours is generally spent in the community trying to make a difference hello I'm Susan sandon I'm Dan Butler I'm elen Harris ahead hi I'm Terence mcnali this is my mother I'm Wilson Cruz hello I'm Carol I'm Martina na toova Patricia Clarkson Carol Channing yeah I'm Matthew stpatrick I'm Angela Lansbury Margaret show you're watching and you're watching America's Gay and Lesbian News Magazine G and Lesbian News Magazine in the life in the life in the life the success of catch one has allowed Ruan Jewel to launch their latest Community Endeavor The Village Health Foundation Clinic an Institute for healing and wellness across town in the Fairfax District a program called project 10 Fosters support for gay youth in the public school system the vision of project 10 is that gay lesbian bisexual transgender students will be able to go to school in a safe and respectful environment it seems like a not much to add ask it's what we ask of education for all of our young people but that's very difficult to achieve for our gay and lesbian young people I think that what fuels me is anger or a sense of Injustice I just cannot stand uh the things I see happening to these young people for no other reason other than their sexual orientation it's not like they have committed a crime when I first started the program back in 1984 even I was a little hesitant to call it the gay and lesbian program I mean I had to work through my own homophobia about that uh somebody suggested that I call the program project 10 after Kinsey's very often repeated uh statistics that 10% of the population was more or less homosexual most of their lives so I just adopted the name project 10 we started out with maybe six students and you know inside of two or three months we had 30 students that were meeting once a week the minute other people in other high schools started hearing that we were doing something uh for gay lesbian youth we started getting phone calls and so there was just sort of like a an automatic development of this program to other high schools in 1988 four years after project 10 was founded the Traditional Values Coalition launched an attack against the program attempting to withhold All State funding for the LA Los Angeles Unified School District if the district didn't agree to immediately put a stop to project 10 here we're trying to work to keep these kids in school and to keep them from killing themselves and suddenly people are attacking us for that and saying these perfectly Dreadful things like we were trying to recruit young people into a life of homosexuality and we're trying to give them all AIDS and they just the attacks didn't make any sense to me I was very naive about this I didn't really know what to do and so I just kept repeating what I thought I was trying to do which was to keep kids in school and to keep them from killing themselves and to serve a need that had not been met and they just kept saying how terrible I was the conflict resulted in a daylong hearing in Sacramento with over 80 speakers from both sides testifying in the end the school district reaffirmed its support of project 10 and the Traditional Values Coalition Was Defeated ironically the publicity generated by their campaign to defeat project 10 actually resulted in huge rewards for the program we got uh tremendous letters of support letters that were very many of them very compelling in the stories that people revealed about themselves and the other thing that happened was that people started sending us money so much money in fact that Dr yubi formed a nonprofit organization called the friends of project t to support and supplement the work of the program as time has evolved we see that there really isn't a whole lot of money that the district is going to cough up to give to this program and through the donations we're able to provide uh you know do programs and projects that the district won't pay for in 1998 Dr yibi retired from the program in order to run the friends of project 10 full-time her replacement was her long-term partner and project 10 board member Ral who had already been deeply involved in the program for 10 years I could see that through my own teaching experience the gay kids were dropping out of school the gay kids were running away the gay kids were attempting suicide uh even when I started up my support groups the average student had already attempted suicide three times by the time they got into high school and these are kids that either identified as G lesbian or they were struggling with their sexuality I knew this was a serious problem my typical day goes like this I get to work and the phone starts ringing and the adrenaline starts going and all I can tell you is that I operate totally on adrenaline I just work straight through non-stop the phone doesn't stop emails don't stop the problems don't stop it just goes on and on and on as project 10's only paid staff person Gail is responsible for the training of all project 10 coordinators in each school and is the district's troubleshooter when problems arise involving LGBT and questioning students as simple and silly as this may sound one would think that if a teacher hears somebody call another person they would know how to respond to that but so often those comments go ignored when the teachers allow for that verbal harassment it creates a very distrustful relationship those students don't trust the teacher and ultimately the environment in the classroom becomes so uncomfortable and so unsafe that often times kids just stop coming to that class and ultimately if it's a pervasive thing that goes on throughout the school they just simply stop coming to school some of the strongest testimonials in support of the program come from Project 10 students themselves we spoke with Jesse Angie and Josh about the first time they went to a project 10 support group meeting in their respective high schools I thought what am I going to see in this room you know a group of freaks or what and it was completely the opposite it was young people that were gay lesbian bisexual and I couldn't believe it because that was the first time I had ever met young people that identified with being either gay lesbian or bisexual and it was amazing to me but it made me feel good a good friend of mine said hello my name is John and I am gay and I was so taken back by this because I had never been able to say my name immediately after say I was gay it was just unheard of it was so uncomfortable me to say hi I'm Josh and I'm gay and for me to see that was the immediate change in realizing how comfortable I could now be with being gay it was great it was empowering just to see them be themselves and be out and feel good about it because I was feeling miserable at that time we had meetings every week and it was it was emotional every time and we laughed we laughed so much and um we cried together we we had so much fun that we Laughed Until We Cried I don't think anybody enjoys you know having gum in their hair during lunchtime or having rockstone at you after you're walking you know home or to school going to my counselor and saying I'm getting harassed in school I'm getting rock on at me I'm getting all these different things and her saying you brought it upon yourself completely cut the trust that I ever had in a teacher or in a counselor or an administrator and worst of all I couldn't tell my parents all the discrimination I was experiencing at school so that made things even more difficult we gave each other advice on everything you know relationships family dealing with parents and you know helping each other out just through everything project 10 is a finally a group where a student could go and and and ask questions and receive answers and information that will link them up to other students and essentially knowledge is power the friends of project 10 continue to sponsor a number of larger events open to students from across the state at the models of Pride conference each year 500 young people come together to attend workshops and to meet others like themselves and the lesbian and gay prom seen here in the 1993 documentary Live to Tell brings 350 LGBT youth together to celebrate in a safe and affirming environment from the perspective of the kids there's just such energy such excitement and such a sense for them that they have a safe place to really Express who they are the boys come with the boyfriends the girls come with the girlfriends and many of the young people even come by themselves they feel that safe and that comfortable knowing they will be with their own kind and be accepted and not be harassed it's just a wonderful freedom of expression and a sense that they can be in a safe place and have a darn good time one of the program's leading Advocates is the president of the Los Angeles Board of Education capric young if you don't feel safe at school you're not going to learn at school because you're not going to be thinking about what you're studying you're going to be thinking about whether or not you're safe and project 10 gives kids a place to confront the questions that they have themselves about their sexuality and their personal identity in an environment that's safe and supportive and allows them to be whoever they are I've had many friends that um that started going to project 10 depressed suicidal and I mean now their their grades are all up and you find people there that you can have things in common with and it's hard to find it if you're out on your own so the project 10 has given me a connection a group of students that I can and share for the rest of my life and become friends and colleagues with and it has also linked me with other institutions such as teen line I think project 10 was the parent the teacher the mentor and also the person that you can trust in that's what project 10 meant to me that's what project 10 was to a lot of us and if it wasn't for that I think a lot of us would have ended up dead a lot of us would have could killed ourselves because of their sexual orientation so many of them have such an enormous struggle and I don't see the educational system doing very much for them and so I guess that anger at that at that Injustice just keeps me going cuz I really feel as long as I have a breath in me I'm going to be fighting this [Music] fight still to come on this episode of in the Life an angel and his enemy a seasoned fire captain comes out and Harvey does [Music] Hollywood Paris barklay is on the board of directors for the La Center a columnist for The Advocate and the third vice president of the Director's Guild of America making him the first African-American elected to that position this devoted activist now also directs for ER In The West Wing but Paris has had a long and fascinating career one of its Pinnacles came in 1998 when he won the first of his his two Emmys for directing NYPD Blue Paris spk I I'll tell you a secret about the Emy I was so convinced that I would win the Emy that I kind of knew and actually a piece kind of fell over me I'd seen all the shows and I saw that show and objectively I thought this show is so great I got to win this semy thank my Earthly higher power Steven botco wherever you may be you know what I'm in the greatest place a man can be right now you know I'm really loved in my work I really enjoy doing it I'm honored and uh you know if worse comes to worse I can always melt it down cuz it's supposed to be actual [Music] gold this season I've begun as the supervising producer of the show which means I am the fifth ranking producer what I basically do is make sure that the show happens every day I do want to speak to Jimmy Smiths if he calls by the way STIs feing I'm in charge of spending $2.1 million every show to make the show come alive so that means that I supervise the casting the other directors who are directing the editing process the hiring and the firing of everyone involved in the show first scene again okay and I if you could stand up it would be great sure I think you have to imagine that you're actually sort of dancing in front of him when you're doing it okay okay action on top of being the supervisor producer of the show I'm also responsible for directing five episodes a season and there're two different things the producer spends the money the director calls the shots the director directs the actors The Producers make sure the actors arrive and are there and are hired and are paid so basically are the two responsibilities while they seem to overlap actually very distinct they begin and end when shooting begins so sometimes I end up having to do both of them at the same same time but only five times a year gratefully it just looks more interesting than shooting back wow wonder if we could get someone in the DJ booth and do that shoot back out towards it too it's interesting being an open the gate producer on a show that's known for its sort of Macho sensibility I thought was going to be a predicament and difficult to navigate and a problem but from the first day I came on the show and actually I directed Two episodes just as a director for hire those are my first experiences I found it ex actly the opposite of what I thought it would be we could do this we could do this handheld if we if we had to it's really quite embracing there are quite a number of gay people and lesbians involved in the production of this show and you know what there's no differentiation in how they're treated on this series people can tune in on almost any show and there's going to be some gay person some sort of gay mix in there and they're each going to be different because they're each going to be from a unique Vision on our show Bill Brock plays John Irving who's a very unique character he's a little bit of a he's a little fastidious yet at the same time he's heartfelt and he's instantly loved he's our most popular character he gets more male than Dennis fron when he's on the show when I first started working in Hollywood as it were doing television shows I didn't think that my sexuality was really going to be relevant so I didn't feel it necessary to let people know and actually I was afraid that if they did know they would have judgments and they would make decisions about me that weren't based on my personality but what they thought a homosexual would be like so I always kept it quite quiet by not revealing who I am I'm putting myself in more and more uncomfortable situations I'm uncomfortable with people and I've got secrets and they don't really know what my life is like So eventually it came out and from the time it came out some people didn't like me and some people stopped speaking to me and some people embraced me so now I am faced with a life in which I do not have to deal with homophobic people in my career at all because they're just not involved with me and it's it's it's a lot better this way okay let's look at this I just have to look at two scenes so it won't be too tragic boom can we just go to the close up now and just skip that take the grand departure hasn't take know what I'm saying just blow away that whole wide shot so you come right off of sips and then you say take it the grand departa has well we got to get sip sitting down I still think could you got the garden spot huh James I started as a writer I was writing musicals writing plays and then writing television commercials for advertising agencies from there I went to directing television commercials and then I started a music video kind of production company let me argue for that I think the biggest turning point in my life that allowed me to actually be a director was sometime around 1989 in the summer of 1989 I had started this company it was not very successful I really got involved as heavily as I could in drinking and drugs just to sort of assuage the pain of being a director who wasn't dirting anything um and I just fell into an abyss you know I fell into a total depression that lasted for about 6 months I think I was watching uh the 4th of July fireworks in television and a commercial came on for 1 800 cocaine they said if you have a problem with cocaine you should dial this number literally from that day on there began sort of an Ascension in my career I started to get a new Clarity I haven't had a single drink or any cocaine since that day that first day that I went to that rehab and suddenly you know I'm working like 14 hours a day and I'm not exhausted I'm exhilarated and suddenly I'm involved in different Community projects I'm doing all this sort of stuff and I'm finding all of this life that I I never had before Ken is our much sought after director of development project danger food delivers meals to people who are not in a position to cook for themselves for the most part people who are living with AIDS today they don't have the family and friends that a lot of us would have if we were in the same situation and they certainly don't have the means and so for $5 a meal we get to like just bring them a meal a volunteer they don't know a Stranger Comes and gives them a hot meal on any given day and they say thank you and it really moves me all those in favor of approving the minutes please say hi hi hi right now I think the world is aching for tolerance for lessons of Tolerance I'm trying to create a show actually a 1hour drama where that's the pivotal um crisis of the show which is trying to make the world more aware of the fact that once you get to know someone really get to know them you tend to love them cuz that's what I live by I live by the fact there only I heard this a long time ago there are only two kinds of people there are the people that I love and the people that I don't know yet 2002 isn't just the 10th anniversary of in the life it's also the 10th anniversary of my own AIDS activism it was back in 1992 when I first moved to LA that I stumbled into a group called project angel food they were serving meals for people living with h I and AIDS and I became a volunteer and eventually a board member and found that was a great way to make an amends to my own ex-lover who died in 1989 I'm Paris Barkley and you're watching in the life before Harvey firin sets us all straight a final tale of the city a firefighter who's taking estrogen and kicking butt most people today because of the way Society is will look at she's a female Captain before they'll look at her skills I've been a firefighter for 20 27 years it's been my uh life for a long time I've been a captain since 1978 first line supervisor on a engine company fighting fire with my crew I'm the uh captain on engine 63 being in a fire inside of a building on fire or at a brush fire with a lot of exciting fire and activity it's it's adrenaline producing and it's great and i' you know I've paid the price too I have a permanent long damage I have a uh herniated disc I've had I've been burned I've had ceilings fall on me I've broken my wrist um it's a dangerous job we are looked at many times in the public uh basically male uh big strong and um masculine I think is our image well women in the fire service is a fairly new phenomena and um the fire service just as the fire service resist you know afroamerican people they've really resisted women in the fire service they don't have trouble working with her um they have difficulties in understanding her there wasn't a letter that came in that said you know hey Michelle CER is a lesbian on the fire department or anything like that being a gay or lesbian has been such a um closeted thing for so many years uh it's such an unknown and queer and weird thing that U there's a lot of fear around that if she had come to me and basically tried to shove her lesbianism down my throat or or demand some type of different treatment because she is a lesbian then I'd have probably had a problem with it does is it threatening because their own uh masculinity or their own femininity is is threatened is it because people in Super Macho occupations have very fragile masculinities in the first place the the men feel and women here feel very stressed out having gay and lesbian um Captain and gay lesbian living you have to realize this is not just a job we live sleep shower eat together change together so it's not just a job we live together 10 days a month our whole lives they're forced to live with a lesbian yes and it doesn't rub off that was part of part of the reaction you know it seems to me some of the fear about being around gay and lesbian people but they respect her as a good firefighter and a great Captain so there's tolerance and respect but there's definitely no support for her here it's hard for her there was people that refused to work overtime uh on my shift because I was there and weird or whatever so the women's locker room is a fairly new thing here we have three women working here my myself and two other paramedic women so we have a temporary sign saying women's locker room and then somebody put up this sign that says female and male occupied unoccupied but I hate this sign cuz if it's redundant then somebody put a screw in here so you can't change it so it's always female occupied or unoccupied it's so bizarre have a nice day I used to work with Tom's brother Tom's brother was a paramedic here when I was a male fire captain so this is my second time here as a captain uh and uh first time is a male second time as a woman it it's kind of shocking and confusing for people that you know here um I was a heterosexual man man and now I'm a woman and still chasing women that you know huh where's that come from so that's confusing to people they can't separate sexual orientation from sexual identity it's they're two separate things so my sexual orientation really didn't change it's my sex that changed so my interest in my and my and my attraction is to women and always has been they do not understand how she could be a lesbian having changed her her uh physical being into a female and still um having a desire sexually towards female the drawer reminds me of my life it's it's quite cluttered so tell us about your life my life oh wow my life my life had a very problematic childhood because my gender identity from as early as I can remember has been girl woman female and I was uh born uh with male genitalia and I was a normal male uh baby and child and so I was extremely confused um fearing uh embarrassment shame and being beaten I didn't to you know I couldn't express myself or ask as my parents or my mother to dress me up as a girl because that's what I thought I should be or who I was so I kept it all inside for many years and and I secretly cross dressed I felt certain as I as I grew up that it was uh a woman as a woman I am a woman [Music] in the meantime I got on I was in the Navy and I married a sweetheart from high school we had two kids and then I decided to keep exploring myself and growing and trying to figure out who I am when I came out of the closet and became a woman fulltime I was in a little fire station not far from here with a crew of three people underneath me it was very difficult for them and and it's very difficult for a lot of people to make that switch has been hard no it hasn't been hard at all she's just you know it's just another person to work with as far as I'm concerned um comfortable it's just um like something I've that most people don't come across in their day-to-day life you know so it's a little different we had a person the other day that could not work with her had some real psychological Hang-Ups in just being around her uh just because he knew her when she was a man and he couldn't handle it so he had to go home and I've had to deal with those old feelings of sharing a locker room with a man I've known for 15 years that changed into a woman and now she has feelings for a woman and yet I'm changing into a locker with her I had to deal with those feelings I think being a lesbian was in my favor because I was far less threatening than if I had transitioned and become a woman then suddenly was interested in dating men I think the firefighters would be would have been a lot more uncomfortable because of the homophobia and the fact that they may have thought that you know I would you know be scamming and trying to pick up men often I've tried to be as accommodating as possible and uh sometimes I will get my bedding and I will put it on the floor in like the workout room or the wait room and sleep in there anyway that's what I've done and that's an alarm coming [Music] in seems to me I was very successful in my transition uh from male to female because I had such a good um reputation you know as a as a strong worker and a productive firefighter she sheds a good light on gay and lesbian in the workplace because she's positive energetic very professional hardworking devoted and so it makes it a heck of a lot easier than to somebody who might have been um not the caliber that Captain C is [Music] and finally in the life's resident commentator Harvey firin raids the closet I appear at lots of colleges Community groups political events and such when I'm done speaking on the selected subject I open the floor to questions from the audience what do they want to know well after the obligatory what was it like to kiss Matthew brck I'm asked is so and so gay I could have just spoken for an hour on this state of AIDS in Africa the influence of lesbian writers on tabloid journalism or the effect of bearback sex on our communal psyche and still a hand will rise up a voice will call out is so so gang is this one gang is that one gay who's really gay is that R gay I would like to take this opportunity for once and for all to end this entire line of questioning here now and forever more are you listening cuz I'm only going to say this once and then I'm done ready here goes Sean Hayes is straight David Hyde Pierce is straight Kevin spacy straight John Travolta Johnny Depp Tom Cruz Tom celic Richard Chamberlain Richard Gear straight all straight every last Lady lover and one of them is a full-time girl watching Dame Dayton heterosexual straight as a number two taond deroga pencil right out of the box got it as for the ladies Rosie o Jody Foster Whitney Houston sander burnhard Whoopi Melissa KD and Barbara Walters straight all truly straight that whole thing with Ellen degenerous was just a ratings Ploy plus she thought she'd help her mother sell a book well David Letterman does it for his mom but Ellen is actually straight in fact Ellen is so straight she makes anash look like a lesbian which let me be clear she is not now for the bisexual crowd the Elton John's MC Jaggers David Bowie madas and the like let me just say they too are all actually heterosexual that's right every one of them full-time sex mixers and the ones you've heard about in HST class The Da Vinci Michelangelo gerstein James Baldwin Shakespeare chovsky Eleanor Roosevelt and Liberace crowd they too are were and will always be straight and finally me I'm heterosexual too you heard me buster I'm as straight as col and Powell inspecting the troops so for those of you at home keeping score on the homosexual side we have char Char Nelson Riley and you on the straight side the rest of us Charles Nelson Riley and you are the only two homosexuals in the world the rest of us were just being nice trying to keep you company and not make you feel like the outcast you are you're gay we're not sorry have a nice day I trust all queries have now been answered yes good oh by the way about that kissing Matthew brck thing the answer is obviously delicious I'm Mark Christopher for all of us at in the life thank you for watching and we'll see you next month [Music] [Music] in the life is funded in part by the H van amaran Foundation additional support provided by the Ford Foundation the Gil Foundation The Pride Foundation the Collingwood Foundation Mel hitz William J Resnik and the annual support of in the Life members like you