Monica Bellucci, Image courtesy of New Line Cinema.
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Bellucci Finds Centricity with Schumacher
You know it’s true—gorgeous women love to hang out with gay men. Just check out the filmography of openly gay director Joel Schumacher. From Julia Roberts (Dying Young) to Nicole Kidman (Batman Forever) to Isabella Rossellini (Cousins) to Cate Blanchett (Veronica Guerin), many of the screen’s loveliest ladies have lined up for the opportunity to work with this filmmaker. Now Schumacher will keep his streak going with the radiant Monica Bellucci, whose work ranges from the glossy (The Matrix Reloaded) to the gritty (Irreversible) to the gory (The Passion of the Christ). The two will collaborate on Centricity, a drama whose plot is being kept very hush-hush. Look for the film to hit theaters—and for Bellucci to look like a million bucks—before the end of 2007.
Gilmore Girls Creator Brings Parker Posey to the Small Screen
In what promises to be the most fortuitous pairing since peanut butter and chocolate, hilarious and banter-friendly writer and Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino is collaborating with hilarious and banter-friendly actress Parker Posey for a new TV series. Posey will star in The Return of Jezebel James, about a newly single, infertile children’s book editor who seeks out her estranged younger sister to carry a child for her. The luminously witty Posey has reportedly resisted previous overtures to star in a series, but Jezebel (which Sherman-Palladino will co-executive produce with her husband, Daniel Palladino) apparently struck her fancy. With any luck, the show will sail through pilot season and make it onto one of the networks’ fall schedules.
YSL Documentary Cause for Celebration
While many celebrities often seem all too eager to sign up for reality shows that make them look insane or worse—anyone watching VH1’s Shooting Sizemore?—there are still some famous folk whose images are ferociously guarded. Take gay French fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent, whose business partner has fought for years to keep acclaimed filmmaker Oliver Meyrou’s documentary about YSL, Celebration, out of circulation. The film finally had its long-awaited debut at the Berlin Film Festival, where critics noted that the doc portrays the legendary couturier as being out of it, relying on his staff to get his collections finished. With this kind of dishy heat behind it, Romeo is hoping some brave U.S. distributor will step up and bring Celebration to theaters.
Logo Makes Great Gay Escape
Put 12 LGBT strangers under one roof for two months and the drama will just flow naturally, right? That’s what the producers of a new reality series for Logo are hoping. The Great Gay Escape, currently casting about for its cast members, will send a dozen queer folk to an as-yet-unnamed gay travel destination to work and live together for two months, while filming every argument about doing the dishes, every secret hook-up, every everything for eight weeks. There should be intrigue aplenty, since the show is from Stiletto Television, the folks that gave us Nemesis Rising—remember, the twin gay rockers who got expelled from the Jehovah’s Witnesses? This all-queer Real World—featuring a greater variety of ages and sexualities—debuts in the fall.
Romeo San Vicente got cast on The Real World, but turned it down when he realized he wasn’t allowed to choose his own camera angles. He can be reached care of this publication or at DeepInsideHollywood@qsyndicate.com.