Charlotte's Very Own Gay Soap Opera 

Unremarked by the boss, the young exec's gray flannel slacks metamorphose into a frilly pink tutu, showing his boxer briefs and bare legs.

"That nickname they call you," the boss continues, "Steele? Lose it! You sound like an XFL football player. I'm sure it served you well with the ladies, but you're not a kid anymore." The boss pauses and jabs his pipe in Steele's face. "Now, get out there and make me some money!"

Steele nods. They clasp hands in a manly fashion.

As they shake hands, the boss turns into a policeman in dark shades. He roughly shoves the tutu'd Steele and handcuffs him as Steele freezes in fear.

A phone begins to ring. Steele wakes and picks it up.

Mitchell "Steele" Whitman, a closeted gay corporate exec and one of the characters in Charlotte's first gay soap opera, Southern Disclosure, has just had a very strange dream.

Spam consumption and banking aren't the only areas where Charlotte outdoes the rest of the US -- it seems the Queen City also leads the nation in gay soap operas. Our city has football, baseball, basketball and hockey teams, the headquarters of several banking empires, and a couple of outstanding annual literary festivals. Of course, we also harbor the kind of people who tried to stop a production of Angels In America because of the play's homosexual content. Charlotte seems to specialize in this sort of Old South/New South paradox, and here's another one: the city that took until 2001 to organize its first large-scale, city-centered "Pride" event is home to what is, as far as we can tell, America's first televised gay soap. You might expect a gay soap in a city like LA, where gay Angelenos can take lesbian yoga classes, go to gay traffic school, and choose from a variety of gay-centered places of worship. But Charlotte? Apparently, the city's gay community has enough clout, sass, and solidarity to create a homegrown gay-affirmative soap opera, premiere it at the Mint Museum, air it on local access cable, and show it in gay bars around town. New Orleans may have our Hornets, but do they have their own gay soap? I don't think so.

Southern Disclosure, Charlotte's homegrown answer to All My Children, is the brainchild of OutMedia, a privately funded media outreach branch of OutCharlotte, a nonprofit dedicated to giving "positive voice and visibility" to Charlotte's LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community. OutCharlotte sponsors gay-themed arts, entertainment, and learning opportunities like the yearly OutCharlotte cultural festival in October, the annual Gay & Lesbian Film Series, and an annual garden tour formerly called Better Homos and Gardens (really), and now known as Out In the Garden.

In the late 90s, longtime OutCharlotte member/local activist Pam Pompey helped convince the organization to purchase video equipment that would let OutMedia produce a weekly cable-access news show aimed at an LGBT audience. The show, OutMedia Presents: Tales of the Queen City, focused on LGBT issues like gay marriage, gay parenting, gay weddings, and the like. But the show was hobbled by limited resources and staffed solely by volunteers and, slowly, interest in continuing it began to fizzle.

Facing the show's decline, Pompey and OutMedia appealed to Charlotte's gay community, asking what they wanted OutMedia to do with the expensive video equipment and the slot on local cable. In August 2000, a dozen or so people responded to notices in local papers and gathered to help OutMedia decide its next step.

They were unhappy with the way the LGBT community is represented on television. Relationships were too sexualized. Shows were produced on the West Coast or in New York, and distinctly Southern issues were thin on the ground. The small committee decided to discard the news format and create something more fun, something that would reveal the unique identity of Southern gays. Interest grew, and at a workshop a couple of months later, Southern Disclosure was born.

The group decided to create a show that would address race, class, economics, and being gay as uniquely played out in the Bible Belt. Mainstream TV showed "male couples having sex in clubs and female couples having babies," says Pompey, "and that was it." Tired of stereotypical depictions of gay life, the group wanted OutMedia's next project to offer alternatives to enduring TV stereotypes (the nutty gay friend, the flaming hairdresser, the hustler, the drag queen, etc.).

"I think [TV] skews things," says Southern Disclosure's current producer, OutMedia's David Lari. "It certainly doesn't represent the everyday, typical gay person. It doesn't do a good job of showing the diversity of gay and lesbian people. Queer As Folk [a Showtime series focusing mostly on white, gay party boys in Pittsburgh] focuses on a very narrow segment of the gay community, and not a very flattering one at that. We wanted to show a mixture, to show diversity."

No one is sure who came up with the idea, but somehow at that meeting it was decided -- OutMedia would produce a soap opera. An exaggerated and campy, but still recognizable, "television version" of living gay in the heart of the South, meant to challenge Old South beliefs and jumpstart New South pride -- and feature jewel thieves, evil twins, and demented exes bent on revenge.

"One of the overriding themes is the clash between the Old South and the New South," says Lari. "I don't think that's a subject Hollywood or the cable channels have explored. A lot of [Southern] culture is centered around the church, and a lot of our churches are Baptist, which are traditionally anti-gay."

While the New South is hardly the KKK-loving, gay-hating, psycho-social nightmare many non-Southerners imagine it to be, "It's a lot different being a gay person in the South than it is anywhere else in the world," says Pompey.So, under Pompey's guidance, the fictional Charlotte suburb of Wexton was born, along with a cast of characters to slink, steal, sob, and sleep around within its limits.

Steele: A promiscuous, closeted gay man making a mint in the corporate world that rejects his sexual identity, Steele is a sexy, blue-eyed, BMW-driving player pressured by his boss to marry and settle down, but nightly cruising local parks for a dose of anonymous sex -- the only sex his closeted lifestyle allows. Can he cling to his corporate identity when a former park sex partner threatens to invade his daytime life?

Lisa: A recovering alcoholic, Lisa was created to illuminate what the group saw as LGBT substance abusers' real drug of choice for medicating societally induced agonies: alcohol. In a bow to a hackneyed if genuine concern of many gay women, Lisa desperately wants a child, although her jealous ex, Flea, has sworn to keep Lisa all to herself -- at any cost.

Flea: Where were TV's blue-collar redneck lesbians? The introverted, tough-talking women in ripped jeans, with mullet haircuts, bad tattoos, baseball caps, and grease under their nails? Flea, Lisa's psycho former lover, is a rough, grimy, chain-smoking, working-class mechanic in ratty flannel and a permanent grimace, radiating enough demented, lovesick desire for Lisa to power the show's next 10 episodes.

Dr. Keva: Pursued by a smitten woman with a yappy Chihuahua and confronted by old neighborhood friends who reject her choice in love, Keva is a successful black woman with a thriving veterinary practice and a long-term partner. Keva gets flak from her friends and her clueless suitor -- not for being gay, but for daring to commit to a white partner.

Ben: Ben is a loving single parent and successful African-American business owner of the soap's community hangout, The Bean Queen coffee shop ("For a cup of truly fabulous coffee"). But nothing's perfect in the life of a soap character -- Ben's former wife (a movie star with a hidden life as a jewel smuggler) is out to get custody of their children, and is ready and willing to use his sexual orientation as a weapon against him in court.

The new team of writers created plotlines around these characters, producing enough material for Pompey to synthesize into a rough script of the first episode. With the script ready, auditions were held in late January 2001. Aside from empowering Charlotte's gay community, OutMedia was also fulfilling a secret wish of citizens, straight and gay -- to be on television.

Charlotte native Julie Henry and her best friend Kim Cobb both had dreams of acting and being on TV or film. "Lottery fantasy, movie-actress fantasy -- both seem totally unrealistic, and that's why they're my favorite fantasies," says Cobb. Though her last experience as a performer was in a ninth-grade school play, and Henry had no acting experience whatsoever, Cobb saw the ad and went for it, Henry in tow.

The pair of self-described "nervous idiots" arrived at the audition to find a diverse mix of other aspiring actors drawn by the lure of acting, creativity, and gay activism -- gay and straight, black and white, people with acting experience and people "who had no experience whatsoever, who thought this was a terrific idea, that this was gonna be fun, and that they wanted to be a part of it," as Pompey puts it.

Cobb and Henry read from the script, were duly intimidated by having their audition videotaped, and went home to wait for a callback. Henry was cast as Phoebe, a minor character based on Sex and the City's man-eating Samantha (researching her character, Henry watched 30 Sex and the City episodes in one week). Henry was also asked to come on board as a writer -- it was she who named the soap.

Cobb was also cast, becoming half of Southern Disclosure's dysfunctional gay Luke and Laura, the star-crossed ex-lovers Lisa and Flea. Neither woman could believe they'd gotten speaking roles -- and the openly gay Henry as a straight character, no less. "I was the straight girl! Good god! Why? Because I'm the only one with long hair?"

Other characters were added to match actors' abilities, or to explore issues the writers wanted addressed.

The character of Mindy was created as a valentine to the LGBT community's friends and allies -- Steele's best friend, Mindy is a deeply religious, stereotypical Southern belle who loves her gay friend despite her misgivings about his lifestyle. And Mindy is married to a bigot -- Jack, the show's heavy baddie, an uptight, gay-hating city council suit out to shut down Ben's business.

Franc (rhymes with bonk), the Susan Lucci of the cast, is a campy nod to the stereotypical soap schemer -- a wicked, spying, binoculars-toting man-vixen out to seduce Steele at any cost.

Cobb and Henry weren't the only ones with TV dreams. Maggie Patterson, a straight, 50-something grandmother, cancer survivor, and former regional theater actor, also had a lifelong yearning for the stage and screen. She gave up her acting dream to be a fulltime stay-at-home mother but, decades later, with her marriage ended and her children grown, she started scanning audition notices, ". . .just in case something said, Wanted: Margaret Patterson for guaranteed Tony Award. I was trying to figure out where I was as far as my life was concerned." After long years away from the stage, she had fears and uncertainties. "I thought I would be too old for the cast," she says.

At the audition, Patterson extemporized, basing her ad-libbed monologue on a workshop piece she'd seen nearly three decades ago. Patterson thinks she talked for 15 minutes into the camera, riding a wave of pure terror and hope. Of all the people who auditioned, Pompey says, "the one that really blew me out of the water was Maggie."

Patterson was cast as Flea, Lisa's jealous ex-lover.

"Flea's more like most people than most people would want to admit," says Patterson. "She's a fantasy, a fantasy of license for bad behavior."

The character mashes up birth control pills and puts them in Lisa's food, tears Lisa's pregnancy test kits apart with her teeth, and generally has Born to Steal the Show tattooed somewhere on her person. Patterson calls her portrayal of Flea "the best work I've ever done. And I'm not even getting paid to do this."

Budgetless but unbowed, the Southern Disclosure team filmed the soap in the houses and yards of the cast (a curious neighbor, drawn by the powerful halogen lights, happened onto a scene of simulated anonymous park sex in an actor's backyard). Local businesses -- Hartigan's Irish Pub, Palazzo, Carpe Diem Restaurant, and City Supply -- donated the use of their space after hours. The project was fueled solely by volunteer labor and the rare appeal to OutCharlotte for minor expenses, like food for restaurant scenes and fresh film.Clueless about technical details, Henry and producer/co-director Lari begged advice from local videographers and learned about lighting, sound, and camera angles by trial and error. They used consumer-level video equipment (think family reunions), a couple of low-end halogen lamps, and wireless mikes as likely to pick up 107.9 The Link as the actors' dialogue. This was TV boot camp.

Much of Southern Disclosure's charm derives from its lovably amateurish production values.

"It doesn't have slickness, " says Patterson. "They're not about money. They're not trying to sell you Southern Disclosure lesbian toothpaste."

Three leaders emerged from the chaos -- Pompey and Henry wrote and directed while Lari edited, buying a $1500 suite of editing software with his own money. Their mission? A dozen 30-minute episodes. On no budget. With amateurs. As if that wasn't difficult enough, Pompey was forced to leave the production in the middle of shooting the second episode, relocating to the Raleigh area where her partner had accepted a new job.

Undaunted by the loss of the show's founder, Lari and Henry, growing in technical skill, filmed two or three times a week throughout the spring and summer of 2001. They spent up to 12 hours a day on shoots, on top of demanding jobs -- Henry in sales management, Lari in information technology. Needing generic footage of the Charlotte cityscape, they bought walkie-talkies and cruised the city with camera in tow -- Lari in the back of Henry's pickup truck, sitting in a beach chair, filming. "I have no idea what people thought we were doing," says Henry. "Maybe David should have held a sign saying "HI, I'M FILMING A GAY SOAP OPERA.'"

Three months later, two episodes were in the can.

"It doesn't always take money to make a dream happen," says Pompey.

The completed episodes were to be shown in local gay bars, on local access cable channel 21, and they were publicly and formally premiered at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design downtown. Invitations and press releases went out, inviting the curious to the premiere event -- scheduled for September 13, 2001.

On September 11, Pompey, Lari, and Henry knew they might need to cancel the premiere, but phones rang off the hook with inquiries as to whether or not the episodes would be shown.

"People kept saying, we can't let terrorists stop us from living our lives," says Lari. So they went forward with the premiere, expecting about 50 people. Over 300 people gathered on the Mint's swanky rooftop reception area for Southern Disclosure's debut. Under the sheltering but eerie post-9/11 presence of our city's tallest buildings, life went on.

A diverse group of newly converted Southern Disclosure fans -- straight and gay, black and white, parents and neighbors, friends and allies -- mixed, mingled, and ate cookies on the terrace overlooking Tryon Street. They got the jokes, howling at the introduction of Miss Sharon Amity, the show's resident drag queen, and erupting in laughter over the in-jokes about the movie Boys Don't Cry. And a star was born -- the hit of the evening was Patterson, who ducked around the screening room with an ill-concealed smile of wonder, playfully cadging drinks and enjoying a spotlight shining decades later than hoped for, but focused on her nonetheless.

The character of Flea, and Patterson's over-the-top scene of ripping apart Lisa's pregnancy test kit with her teeth, had really hit a nerve. With the hangdog, butch, rail-thin lesbian auto mechanic, Southern Disclosure had dared to flaunt PC paranoia and create a gay character who was inwardly unattractive. Yet Flea's skanky charisma is undeniable. It's hard to take your eyes off Patterson when she's onscreen -- she steals scenes by simply stalking across the room, hunched and hurting, a cigarette dangling from her lips, her gaze burning into her lost and distant angel, Lisa.

Southern Disclosure has changed since that September 13 premiere. In March, a reluctant Julie Henry transferred to Spokane after the call center where she worked was dismantled, regretfully leaving six unfinished episodes behind. A new director, Shonne Henry (no relation), will helm upcoming episodes, and Pompey may return to direct some episodes this fall. Plans for local access cable, and the original 12-episode arc, have been scrapped now that Lari has given lengthy consideration to the reality of his show's freewheeling volunteer production schedule, the loss of Pompey and Henry, the show's gigantic cast, and sprawling storylines. New installments, possibly focusing on a single storyline rather than the soapy jumble of the first episodes, are planned for showing in Charlotte-area gay bars after being premiered at the Mint. Lari also hopes that someday OutCharlotte can sell videos of the show. "Fans ask for tapes," he says. The idea of a local gay soap is catching on elsewhere in the country, even in areas without our Old South/New South tangle of issues to supply such ample fodder. An LA friend of Pompey's contacted her about starting his own version. Lari has also received inquiries. "I think it will expand beyond Charlotte," he says.

Patterson is now recognized in her apartment complex as villainness Flea, and, energized and empowered by her soap experience, has renewed her commitment to acting and plans to audition for shows in town.

"We were all in love with the project," says Henry. "It's one of the best experiences I've ever had. It was worth every bead of sweat. . .To write something and see it filmed, and see people laugh, and to connect that way and make something out of nothing. . .It's the most incredible thing I've ever done."

Filming will resume this fall. Lari is still in Charlotte, and still committed to making new episodes. The Flea/Lisa episode may be ready for its Mint Museum premiere by late 2002. Lari hopes that Southern Disclosure will become "a source of pride. I'm hoping it'll be a way for us to tell our unique stories."

"Watch and learn. Enjoy. Be touched by it. Be proud that it is your hometown," says Patterson. "Laugh with us."

Pompey says the show offers "a terrific opportunity to explore your creative side, have fun doing it, and be part of something unique."

With a nudge from Southern Disclosure, Charlotte may be reaching, at last, for the knob of the closet door.

OutMedia is holding an open audition for Southern Disclosure on Saturday, August 17, at the Neighborhood Theatre in NoDa from 11:30am to 4pm. Actors are needed for new episodes -- particularly Asians, Latins, and other people of color. Volunteer technicians in lighting and sound are welcome, as well as musicians to score upcoming episodes, and a singer to perform a sappy love song to accompany a Wexton romance. Actors and singers may perform a short (one minute) prepared monologue or song, but may also read from the script. Volunteers for behind-the-scenes work in administration, props, and continuity are also needed.

For more information, contact OutCharlotte at 704-563-2699, or email David Lari at dl@davidlari.com.