The real-life Lesbian du Jour, Ellen DeGeneres, took in the show at the Creative Artists Agency screening room in Los Angeles. The 39-year-old former stand-up watched from the middle of the next-to-last row of the tiny theater, holding hands with her girlfriend, “Volcano” actress Anne Heche. At the private party, they were joined by 175 well-wishers, including DeGeneres’s mother and a host of celebrities, who had to dodge paparazzi to nibble risotto balls with the Gay Couple of the Moment. DeGeneres and Heche, 27, have been working toward that title since the Oscars. They appeared together last week on “Oprah,” discussed their romance in People and hung all over each other at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C.
Encouraging other gays and lesbians to follow in the couple’s footsteps, GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) hosted “Come Out With Ellen” viewing parties in seven major cities. At the Love Lounge in West Hollywood, Calif., almost 1,000 paid from $15 to $125 to attend one hosted by GLAAD media director Chastity Bono. There, Patrick Bristow, the openly gay actor who plays Ellen Morgan’s queeny pal, Peter, called the episode “the kind of important symbol that I wish happened when I was 12.”
Some viewers did in fact come out. At the Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham, Ala.–where a crowd of 2,500 defied the local affiliate’s blackout with a satellite feed–a 16-year-old brought her female friends and announced she was bisexual. “The show really helped them understand,” she said. “At least now we can discuss it openly.”
In New York’s Greenwich Village, a neighborhood as gay as the rents are high, the show was cheered. But there was a downside. “The real shame is, we had to miss Joan Collins’s debut on “Pacific Palisades’ because of this,” complained potter Jonathan Adler at his own party. “My gay heart died a little death over that.”
