By Romeo San Vicente
Johnny Depp is so 400 years ago
The way Johnny Depp has bucked conventional career wisdom should be an inspiration (or rebuke) to every actor who ever took a role in a big, dumb Hollywood movie just to get a paycheck. This man has beaten his own weird path every step of the way and succeeded, and that path is currently taking him back to the 1600s in "The Libertine." The debut film by director Laurence Dunmore and playwright Stephen Jeffreys features Depp as 17th-century bisexual poet John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, a pleasure-seeker whose death from syphilis at age 33 led to posthumous fame for his work. At the moment, the movie is only rumored to contain some same-sex liplocks, but is guaranteed to feature costars like Samantha Morton, John Malkovich, and snaggle-toothed, Irish punk-rock legend Shane MacGowan. And as cool as that casting is, Romeo is happy to report that Depp will most likely be kissing newcomer Rupert Friend rather than MacG.
HBO cruises Rosie
Rosie's getting cozy with HBO again. Her latest project with the Emmy-laden cable channel is a documentary about a gay family cruise. Executive-produced by HBO's Sheila Nevins with Rosie and wife Kelli O'Donnell, the as-yet-untitled doc will showcase a weeklong cruise to Key West and the Bahamas on O'Donnell's R Family Vacations, which took place in July. Rosie's previous HBO stand-up special, as well as the "Rosie O'Donnell's Kids Are Punny" family special, led to this renewed partnership, one that will give a needed public face to gay parents and their kids. That's a side of gay life that most media outlets don't find "sexy" enough to point their cameras at, so HBO is to be applauded. The special will hit the water sometime in 2005.
Kushner and Spielberg try terrorism
The 1972 Munich Olympics became a permanent scar in the memories of millions of people when Palestinian terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage, resulting in a botched rescue effort and death. A documentary feature about the incident, "One Day In September," was released in 2000, and now Steven Spielberg is working on a feature film about the traumatic event's mournful aftermath. Spielberg has enlisted the help of Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning gay playwright Tony Kushner, who is currently working on a new draft of the screenplay. With the visionary "Angels in America" scribe on board, the finished product will in all likelihood not only search the past but explore the fear of terrorism that afflicts the world today. Still without a title, the movie is slated to star Eric Bana, with a shooting date of June 2005.
When the feminist met the porn star
In a fantasy dictionary, next to the word "heterosexual," there's a picture of Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi. The star of countless straight adult films, he's internationally famous to a very specific audience. And in the same dictionary, the phrase "provocative feminist filmmaker" is accompanied by the image of French director Catherine Breillat. Sound like oil and water? Then you didn't see Breillat's shocking art-house hit, "Romance," an explicit study of female sexuality that featured Siffredi. Now the dynamic duo are at it again, in Breillat's soon-to-be-released dissection of sexual mores, "Anatomy of Hell," based on her own novel, "Pornocratie." This time Siffredi plays a gay man, the unwilling object of a straight woman's affections, who somehow develops a relationship with her anyway. If Breillat's track record is any indication, expect unconventional insights, very few laughs, and plenty of full frontal.
