GLAAD (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) tends to monitor the alternative lifestyle with such severity that it just about sucks all the gaiety out of being gay. It’s becoming the PETA of homosexuality. Here, WOW’s supervising producer, Gabriel Rotello, reports on the backstage brouhaha at this year’s GLAAD Awards at the Kodak Theater:
Apparently, you can only go so far at the GLAAD Awards these days. This year‘s glitzy LA event honored–among other people–irascible cineaste John Waters. As part of the ceremonies, Tony-winners Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (composers of the smash Broadway hit Hairspray, based on the John Waters film) hooked up with Tracey Ullman for a musical tribute to the mustachioed auteur.
“The gag,” says Wittman, “was, Why shouldn’t other John Waters movies be made into musicals?” So the team took quotes from past Waters masterpieces, like Pink Flamingoes and Female Trouble, and worked them into a little Ullmanesque act. As Waters fanatics, they were careful to include classic lines like Mink Stole’s immortal, “I wouldn’t suck your lousy dick if I was suffocating and there was oxygen in your balls.” And Queen Carlotta’s memorable: “Fuck me, daddy, fuck me!”
Alas, all this Watersonian dissing and cussing proved too fucking much for GLAAD. “During sound check, the director came over and said, It’s too offensive, you have to cut it,” says Wittman. “He said our audience will be offended by it.”
At first, the stunned duo thought this must be fallout from the Janet Jackson pop-out. Until they realized the Awards were not even being televised–and a lot of other gross shit was cutting the mustard. “It was okay to say things about cannibalism and murder,” Shaiman says with a rueful laugh. “But they were offended by anything sexual.”
