Advertisement

Deep Inside Hollywood

By Romeo San Vicente

Jane Lynch, out of the tracksuit

Admit it, as much as you appreciate her evil one-liners on "Glee," part of you misses the days when Jane Lynch felt more like your own little comedy secret, when she would show up as a surprise supporting character in films like "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and "Julie & Julia." But with the track suit taking up so much of her time lately, we've seen less and less of her in feature films, so it's nice news to report that she's recently signed on for the indie feature "A.C.O.D." Starring alongside Richard Jenkins ("Eat Pray Love") and Adam Scott ("Parks and Recreation"), Lynch will play "Dr. Judith," a therapist and author – we're imagining Suze Orman meets Dr. Phil – who's experiencing a career downturn and takes on Scott as a patient.
Of course, if you can't wait for that one's eventual release to see her on the big screen again, you can always bite the bullet and catch her in this spring's sure-to-be bizarre Farrelly Brothers reboot of "The Three Stooges." And no, Lynch doesn't play Moe.

Matthew Bomer: gay and 'Normal'

Welcome to the 137th update on the decades-long gestating movie adaptation of Larry Kramer's '80s stage classic "The Normal Heart." Now a period piece, the AIDS drama about gay men caught in the wide net of the disease's first, devastating wave has, as reported earlier, found a director in Ryan Murphy and a cast including the now-officially-publicly-gay (as opposed to everybody-on-the-Internet-knew-he-was-already) "White Collar" star Matthew Bomer. Joining him for the angry, sorrowful story is "Big Bang Theory" star (and, for the purposes of this discussion, right now classified as merely probably-maybe-gay because he won't talk about it) Jim Parsons. And joining them? A powerhouse supporting cast including Julia Roberts, Mark Ruffalo and Alec Baldwin, none of whom have to stumble around the new media glass-closet scenario. Lucky them. And lucky you, the movie will, we hear, finally hit theaters in 2014.

Cherry Jones and B.D. Wong are wide 'Awake'

It's always good news when cool, gay character actors – people whose faces you know because they've been in a million different things on stage, TV and film, the queer version of "Oh hey, it's That Guy" – keep on succeeding. And on NBC's new series "Awake" (premiering March 1) both Cherry Jones ("24") and BD Wong ("Law and Order: Special Victims Unit") get theirs. They both play therapists to Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy in those little-seen "Harry Potter" films), each one determined to convince him that their version of his reality is the truth. Confused? That's because Isaacs plays a man who, depending on whether he's awake or asleep, is living in a reality in which either his wife "or" his son has been killed in a car accident. Which no-win situation should he accept as true? And how does this play out over the course of a series? Who knows right now, but "In Treatment" meets "The Twilight Zone" is just original and weird enough that it ought to meet your DVR's programming queue.

Gay(ish) pilot season casting news: the roundup

Recently, on the hilarious "Happy Endings" (which you should be watching, as it boldly allows its gay male character to be both a layabout slob and to make out with guys with no crazy special-episode build up) "Max" (Adam Pally) kissed Jimmy Wolk. Wolk's name will only be familiar to fans of the cancelled-quickly "Lone Star," but the handsome young actor has also just been cast on Greg Berlanti's ("Brothers and Sisters") drama pilot "Political Animals." So here's hoping it doesn't get "Lone Star"'d… Meanwhile, Ellen Barkin has joined the cast of Ryan Murphy and Ali Adler's comedy pilot "The New Normal." She'll play the mother of a woman who becomes involved as a surrogate for a gay male couple trying to have a baby… Kevin Bacon will take on the lead role in Kevin Williamson's still-unnamed pilot about a serial killer using the internet to build a serial-killing cult… And the outcome of a network bidding war sees Portia DeRossi starring in "The Smart One" for ABC. Produced by DeRossi and Ellen DeGeneres, it's a comedy concerning an intelligent, successful woman who goes to work for her sister, a former beauty queen who's now a big-city mayor (and, presumably, not so smart). Start building your scorecards now; pilot season is a tricky beast to keep track of.

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement