Reap What You Sow

Review of The Reaping, Irish Independent, April 20

There’s a theory in movie circles that for every bad movie an Oscar winner makes, a layer of gold strips away from their statuette. Hence, Meryl Streep’s two prizes stand relatively untainted, while Cuba Gooding Junior’s award has been reduced to a mere nub. Hilary Swank’s two (deserved) Oscars have taken a lot of hits in their time, but, after The Reaping, one of the gongs should be melted down so the gold can be used to fund a money-back-guarantee for moviegoers who buy a ticket for this staggeringly hokey thriller.



Swank plays Dr Katherine Winter, a former minister and missionary, who lost her faith in God following the death of her husband and child. She now devotes her time to investigating so-called miracles and using scientific procedures to debunk religious arguments.



When a teacher (David Morrissey) from a tiny hick town deep in Bible Belt Louisiana calls on her to examine why their river has turned to blood, Katherine’s scepticism is tested as more and more biblical plagues beset the town. As the frogs fall from the sky and livestock start acting like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park, Katherine comes to suspect that a creepy little girl, whose family are suspected by the God-fearin’ locals on being in a satanic cult, is being used as the vessel to bring Lucifer back to earth.



Director Stephen Hopkins, who helmed many episodes of the nerve-shredding TV thriller 24, certainly fails to replicate any of that show’s suspense in The Reaping. Every single genre cliché – from lights going out to doors blowing open to wind chimes to creepy ‘40s music on the gramophone – is wheeled out as the increasingly preposterous plot hurtles towards its apocalyptic finale. Swank, to her credit, tries to keep it all afloat, but she’s plagued by a witless script that, amazingly, took three people to write.



It just might be possible that The Reaping is actually a clever, metaphorical take on how puberty turns your little angel into a demon or even on the rapid Christian fundamentalism of George W. Bush’s America. I doubt it though, and the best that can be said of this tired, possibly offensive horror, is that its location shoot must have given a much-needed boost to Louisiana’s devastated post-Katrina economy. An unholy mess.
Rating 1/5

Reign Man

Review of Reign Over Me, Irish Independent, April 20

Film-makers have only very recently begun to examine the ripple waves that the 9/11 terrorist attacks sent into the wider American culture and psyche. Whereas Oliver Stone's sentimental World Trade Centre and Paul Greengrass' astounding United 93 were based on the actual events of that day, Reign Over Me focuses on one man who lost everything in the atrocity and the long term effect it had on him.


Don Cheadle plays Alan Johnston, a successful dentist who is becoming increasingly suffocated by the reasonable but persistant demands of his wife (Jada Pinkett Smith) and children. One day, Alan randomly bumps into his old college roommate Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler), whose wife and three daughters were on one of the planes that hit the Twin Towers.



Since then, Bob Dylan-lookalike Charlie, once a dentist also, has suffered a total mental breakdown due to post traumatic stress disorder, and spends his days drowning out the world with (admittedly excellent) music, playing videogames and spinning around Manhattan on his scooter. Charlie's regression into man-boy anaesthesia offers the buttoned-down Alan a chance to relive his frat days, before he sets about trying to get his disturbed friend to see a caring shrink (Liv Tyler) to deal with his grief.



Sandler demonstrated in Punch Drunk Love that he can ‘do’ serious and his patented infantile demeanour proves to be an effective entry point into Charlie’s profound trauma. In the pivotal scene where Charlie finally discusses what happened to his family, the actor is nothing short of extraordinary. Sandler and the always dependable Cheadle work well together, even when their chemistry is often forced to compensate for director Mike Binder's (The Upside of Anger) lack of pacing.



The real problem with Reign Over Me is that it’s as preoccupied with the modern masculinity crisis as it is 9/11. This would be fine if the two issues didn't mutate into a situation where Alan seems envious of Charlie's ‘freedom’. But Charlie's not free - his family were murdered in a terrorist attack! Does that mean Alan would be happier if he lost his wife and kids?





This tasteless dichotomy is just one of several off-key notes in an over-long film that, much like its central character, constantly finds ways of distracting itself from the fundamental issues.
Rating: 3/5
Declan Cashin

Disappointing Date

Review of Speed Dating from Day and Night in the Irish Independent, April 20

James Van Der Bexton (Hugh O'Conor) is the sensitive heir to a family fortune who is still depressed about his devastating break-up with his girlfriend (Flora Montgomery) three years after the event.




James unsuccessfully turns to speed dating to mend his broken heart, where he tends to scare the girls more than anything with his intensity and lame attempts at seduction.


A girl in his local pub soon catches his eye and he begins following her ("it's not stalking, it's research" goes the movie's blurb), in the course of which he's involved in an accident and develops amnesia.



The target of his affections then disappears and is presumed dead, and through a series of unfortunate coincidences, James becomes the chief suspect. With the help of an Australian nurse (Emma Choy), James tries to rediscover who he was before the accident, clear his name and maybe even find love.


As you can tell from that brief synopsis, debut director Tony Herbert dips his toes into a number of different genres with Speed Dating, but this does little more than destabilise the whole movie with its increasingly bizarre and incongruous shifts in tone.


What's more, the over-packed plot fails to hit the mark either as a thriller or a romantic comedy, and all too often tries to spice things up by injecting relentless bouts of self-conscious quirkiness into proceedings. Hence there are minor subplots revolving around James' oddball family (including Goth sister Nora Jane Noone), eccentric friends and an aggressive detective (played by a scenery-annihilating Don Wycherley).


O'Conor, forever etched in our memories for his extraordinary turn as the young Christy Brown in My Left Foot, is an appealing and charming lead - no easy feat considering how creepy his character is often called upon to behave. Newcomer Choy makes a sparkling debut, while Charlotte Bradley has a great cameo as James' sozzled aristocratic mother.


Speed Dating does have moments when it seems on the verge of providing some insight into the quest for love in modern Ireland. It's just a pity that, like a speed dater, it hastily skips over and flirts with so many different tones and styles, never settling on one long enough to really make a connection.
Rating 2/5
Declan Cashin

Close Shave

This is the Alternatively column for April 20 from Day and Night in the Irish Independent

This week's topic is really just one for the boys I'm afraid, as I wouldn't expect you lady readers to understand anything about punishing beauty regimes or excruciating hair removal procedures. Yes, I'm talking about the bane of every man's — or at the very least my — life: shaving.


I bring it up because I've gone the longest ever without shaving over the past 10 days. What began as shear laziness (pun intended) soon developed into a plan to cultivate male model-esque designer stubble, the kind that looks as if every follicle has been individually stylised and genetically modified (or photoshopped) to achieve perfect growth and texture. Hey, if Matthew Fox can do it on a desert island in Lost, why couldn't I?



Alas, as the days went by, I ended up with facial hair that looked more like I had spilt a pot of jam all over my mug and then fell face down onto a busy barber's messy floor. So I returned to being a slave of the 5 o'clock shadow tyrant and dug out the Mach 3.



Now, you might not know this, but the shaving product industry is the perpetrator of some of the most deceptive, misleading and just plain false advertising campaigns in the history of capitalism. Watch as David Beckham balletically and painlessly glides the razor over his face like the Mikhail Baryshnikov of shaving! Try to replicate that exact style at home and, instead of the Swan Lake of shaves, you end up with a face resembling the pepperoni house special from Dominos Pizza.



Being so manly, I started shaving at 13, and so over the past 12 years, I can honestly say I have tried every shaving product and regime ever devised. 95 percent of the time, it still ends up hurting and nearly always results in razor burn and even acne, all of which, psychologically, can render you a self-conscious, inferiority complex-ridden teenager all over again.



Luckily, my suffering has diminished somewhat as I have stumbled upon my best regime yet that works well, up to a point. Shaving is still an absolute drag though. You ladies don't know how lucky you are.
declan.cashin@gmail.com

Three weeks and counting...

Hog Wash

Review of Wild Hogs from Day and Night magazine in today's Irish Independent

Leaving the screening of Wild Hogs, I had to ask myself just how this movie became Disney’s biggest March opening ever, raking in almost $40m in its opening weekend. It’s certainly not down to its wit and charm so the only explanation left is that the baby boomer audience is crying out for stories that reflect their middle aged experiences. Lord help them if this hackneyed biker comedy is the only outlet they have.

Four fifty-something friends decide to cast off the shackles of their humdrum, suburban lives and take to the road on their motorbikes to recapture some of their youth. There’s the sensible one (Tim Allen), the hectored one (Martin Lawrence), the too-cool-for-school one (John Travolta, naturally) and the nerdy one (William H.Macy). While resting in New Mexico, the ‘Wild Hogs’, as their gang name goes, run afoul of the nasty nikers, the Del Fuegos (led by the effortlessly menacing Ray Liotta), who they are later forced to confront in a climactic display of slapstick violence and corny life-lessons.

It’s strange that Wild Hogs flounders so much given the comedic talent of (most) of the main stars, as well as of the writer Brad Copeland, one of the head scribes on the brilliant TV sit-com Arrested Development. A major problem lies in the script’s over-reliance on pratfalls and achingly predictable gags, where no gross-out, nude or homophobic stone is left unturned.

Even more detrimental is the at-times embarrassingly strained camaraderie between the four leads. Were these guys ever in the same room together before shooting began? Of them all, William H. Macy has most fun and if this were a just universe, he’d be the biggest star on the planet. Liotta also adds some spark, as does the eternally under-used Marisa Tomei in a late supporting role.

Despite everything, Wild Hogs does provoke a few laughs and I guess it can be forgiven for not pretending to be anything other than it is. But considering its above-average comedic pedigree, it’s a pity that such a sow’s ear was made of a potential silk purse.
Rating: 2/5
Declan Cashin

Alternatively column April 13

This week's column from Day and Night magazine in the Irish Independent

OK I know it’s April, but if you happen to run into someone now that you haven’t seen since December, is it still acceptable to wish them a Happy New Year? If this is literally the first time you have seen them this year, are you not technically still entitled to invoke that January spirit?

I ask because this is the kind of logic I've been applying to my plans to join the gym. I haven't 'run into' one yet, but I intend to soon, so technically - there's that word again - when I do find one, it will be New Year's in spirit. Hence that will mean I haven't squandered the last four months living as a lazy, Jabba the Hut-esque slob, right?

I do feel bad because I swore last Christmas that the gym was the only resolution I was going to make for 2007. But I purposefully didn't join right away. No, my masterplan was to allow all the guilt-plagued, crash-dieting, well-intentioned gym newbies have the month of January to burn themselves out, and then I'd smugly swoop in at the start of February with a more realistic, honest and committed attitude to getting fit.

But, like a politician at election time, I lied to myself and others by making promises I knew I wouldn't and/or couldn't keep.

However, now that spring is in the air, I have renewed vigour to take on the challenges of January. It has nothing at all to do with the fact that I've recently taken the term 'tight-fitting shirt' to literal, almost ironic extremes, and that my hitherto perfectly-fitting favourite jeans now look as if I was uncomfortably sown into them a la Olivia Newton John and those leather pants at the end of Grease.

So this is it. I have the budget, I have an end goal and I even know the gym I'm joining. So if you see me on a treadmill, flailing about, gasping and wailing like a rhinoceros that's just been shot with a tranquilizer gun, don't point and laugh. Come over and wish me Happy New Year instead.

Alternatively April 6, 2007

This week's 'Alternatively' column in Day and Night magazine in today's the Irish Independent

I've been all about the man-love this week. Oh stop your sniggering down the back — I'm talking about male friendship, a topic that’s been on my mind due to my latest TV obsession, Entourage.

For all you squares out there, Entourage is an American comedy about a New York pretty boy actor who moves to LA with his brother and two of his childhood friends to indulge in a Bacchanalian lifestyle of parties, girls and assorted Hollywood adventures.

It's complete boys own entertainment and while it may be macho, priapic, and testosterone-fuelled, there is a deep, albeit, obliquely articulated affection running through all four guys’ banter and slagging.

In that regard, it’s a quite canny representation of male friendship. Men, by their nature, seem to find it difficult to express emotion, particularly when it comes to their friends. It’s complicated but, for many men, their male friendships are one of the most important things in their lives.

Of course, you’d find that hard to believe if you were to accept the findings of research published last week that found female friendships are superior to men’s and that women tend to form ‘deep and lasting’ friendships with each other, while men are calculating, fickle and only choose friendships that they can ‘get something out of’.

The findings from surveys like this seem to conform to the worst sexist stereotypes we have of both men and women. Men, for their part, yet again come out as callous, unfeeling Neanderthals, whose friendships are meaningless essentially because they’re not carbon copies of women’s.

And that’s where this survey renders itself pointless: it ignores the fundamental fact that men and women are different and so often need and seek different things from their friendships.

The Entourage boys might appear to be superficial liggers, but fans will have seen that they are extremely sensitive about one another’s feelings and fortunes and are each one’s first port of call whenever they get into trouble. Maybe us blokes are really just - horror of horrors - the more fascinating of the species? What are the chances of research ever being commissioned to back that claim up?

declan.cashin@gmail.com

'Reluctant Hero'

Interview from Day and Night magazine in today's Irish Independent

Declan Cashin

Cillian Murphy is often referred to as a ‘reluctant superstar’, which could be just media code for ‘reluctant interviewee’. He’s certainly cautious when speaking to journalists, but, then again, it is a Monday morning, it’s the first interview of the day and the Cork-born actor has just spent the previous week just hanging out in the homestead of Ballintemple. We’ll forgive him if it takes a little while to warm up.

Murphy is in Dublin’s Merrion Hotel to talk about Sunshine, an intense, effects-laden science-fiction thriller that reunites him with his 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle. In the movie, Murphy plays one of an eight-person crew who is sent on a mission to save the dying sun. In order to do so, Murphy’s physicist Capa and the other astronauts must drop a nuclear ‘payload’ the size of Manhattan into the fading star in order to reignite it and, you know, save humanity and stuff.

Sunshine makes for a nerve-wracking two hours and it’s very much a sci-fi lover’s movie, with more than a passing reference made to a range of genre classics, such as The Abyss and Alien. For a CGI-freshman like Murphy, the movie provided him with the chance to engage with a style of film-making that had long held him in awe.

“I loved Star Wars as a kid, but that didn’t qualify as ‘proper’ sci-fi I guess,” he explains, his Cork-lilt still as prominent as ever. “I love those masterpieces of the genre like Solaris, 2001, and Alien and they are inspiration for this. To be mentioned in the same breath as those would be quite an achievement and you can see that Danny is tipping his hat to them throughout the movie.

“This was the first time I made a film where there was that much of a green screen element to it,” he continues. “But Danny made sure the effects were always secondary to the performance. It never involved acting to a dot or anything.

“So, for instance, when we were acting to the sun, Danny would rig up this ginormous 20 foot curtain of gold and sparkly material that they shone a load of lights off so there was something there to tangibly react to, which makes it easier.”

It’s just one more impressive experience that the talented 30-year-old has clocked up during his steady rise up the A-list. Born in Cork, Murphy was educated in the Presentation Brothers and partially completed a law degree in UCC. It was during college that he began acting and landed the role of the disturbed Pig in Enda Walsh’s multi-award winning stage play Disco Pigs, with which he toured in Canada, Britain and Australia.

His extraordinary performance in Kirsten Sheridan’s film adaptation of the play in 2001 led to roles in short films, plays and movies like On The Edge (2001) and the smash hit Intermission (2003). However, it was when Danny Boyle cast him as the leading man in the post-apocalyptic zombie flick 28 Days Later (2003) that Murphy’s international career really took off into orbit. That movie was released in the US just after the invasion of Iraq and, by tapping into deeply engrained cultural anxieties about chemical warfare and terrorism, it became a huge hit and put Murphy firmly on the map (he refers it as his “watershed role”).

Supporting roles in the Hollywood blockbusters Girl With a Pearl Earring and Cold Mountain followed suit, before delivering the villainous double whammy of Red Eye and Batman Begins in 2005. Last year, he received a Golden Globe nomination for playing transsexual Kitten Braden in Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto and also assayed the lead role in Ken Loach’s civil war drama The Wind that Shakes the Barley, which won the Palme D’or at the Cannes Film Festival.

The immense intensity that Murphy often brings to roles – aided, in no small part, by those famous blue eyes that you could cut diamonds off – was called upon yet again to ratchet up the tension in the claustrophobic spaceship setting of Sunshine. But director Boyle had another trick up his sleeve in order to affect that level of familiarity and sense of constriction amongst the cast.

“Danny put us all up in student digs in east London,” he reveals. “We all lived together for two weeks. The idea behind it was for the opening scene of the film where you’re introduced to all of the characters individually at the dinner table. You can act that stuff, but when you’ve lived with someone, it brings a whole different energy to the dynamic and the interaction. There’s a familiarity and an irritability that develops. You can’t put your finger on the essence of what we achieved, but we certainly had lived very much within each other’s personal space. And I think you can see that on screen.”

Considering that Sunshine is a movie that is quite trippy and psychedelic, it’s fitting that the scientific adviser on set also has his own surreal background story. Murphy’s go-to man for ‘the science part’ was Dr Brian Cox, who was once the keyboard player with ‘90s pop group D:REAM.

“It’s an obvious progression: keyboard player in D:REAM to particle physicist,” Murphy laughs. He may joke about it, but it’s clear from talking to him that the science element involved in preparing for the movie did get under his skin. In fact, it’s fair to say that Sunshine has, dare I say it, turned Murphy into a bit of a nerd.

“Dr Brian Cox is just a brilliant man,” he says. “I spent a lot of time with him and he was my sounding board for everything to do with that world because I had no reference for it or no understanding or grasp on it.

“He’s not your stereotypical physicist, which I think is an image that has been manufactured by films of the eccentric elder gentleman with hygiene issues. Someone like Cox, through him being such an accessible individual, makes it kind of sexy.

“It is pretty incredible what they’re doing at the moment. I went over to visit CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, where Cox and others are building this particle accelerator which is 27km in circumference and 100ft underneath the ground.

“They’re smashing together protons in there, basically recreating the conditions of the Big Bang. It’s remarkable to talk to Dr Cox because he’s every day grappling with the most profound of questions, whereas we’re discussing the kind of milk we should buy. It does change your perspective when you spend time with these people.”

One of the over-arching themes that drives Sunshine is a recurring tension between science and faith. As the movie progresses to its knuckle-whitening finale, certain characters become increasingly involved in a literal and metaphorical clash of ideologies and beliefs. Does Murphy think there’s a religious element to the movie?

“I think this definitely touches on that science versus faith/religion argument,” he replies. “Certainly, one character we meet at the end does represent a more fanatical and a more fundamentalist viewpoint. This is someone who believes they’re in direct communion with God.

“My character Capa represents the other side. He’s all about logic, empirical evidence and science and so these two characters clash. Without giving too much away, there’s one scene where my character seems to be entering a more metaphysical realm. It is like him having this connection with the universe. Personally, I tend to think that it’s not a quasi-religious thing because I’m not religious, but there is something about Capa recognising his unimportance in the large scheme of things and the awesomeness of this thing he’s involved in.”

Murphy actually filmed Sunshine 18 months ago and in the meantime has made his next movie Watching the Detectives, a comedy co-starring Lucy Liu. While it appears to us that he hasn’t stopped working in years, Murphy has actually had a lot of time off recently at home in London. The timing was perfect as he has a 15-month old son, Malachy, with his wife of two years, Yvonne.

“I was doing a play in London [Love Songs] which allowed me to be at home during the day with the little man, so that was great,” he explains.

He’s also signed on to participate in another project even closer to home. Sitting in a hotel across the road from Government Buildings, Murphy, the son-in-law of an elected TD, tells me he’s supporting the new Irish Rock the Vote initiative, which aims to get people – particularly young people – out to vote in this year’s General Election.

“I’m just going to do a little piece for Rock the Vote to try get people motivated,” he says. “I think apathy is dangerous nowadays. People feel that politics has no relevance to their lives. But if you feel there isn’t any relevance, you have the ability to change it and make it relevant.”

As for his future movie projects, Murphy is remaining tight-lipped, but there is one that everyone keeps pestering him about: will he reprise his role as The Scarecrow in the next Batman?

He sighs and smiles. “I know nothing. As far as I know, there’s a script. It’s a film about Batman versus Joker and Two Face and we know Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart have been cast in those roles. But I’ll just wait for the call.

“Batman Begins was a brilliant experience. It was my first time working on that scale of a project. It was overwhelming.”

Was he at his co-star Katie Holmes’ famous Italian wedding to Tom Cruise last year? Murphy arches an eye-brow and stares at me. “What do you think?,” comes the reply.

Non-invite to the Tom-Kat wedding notwithstanding, there is no doubt that Cillian Murphy is a bona-fide star. It might not be a mantle he wears comfortably, but he is smart enough to realise how lucky he has been.

“Every now and again, you have to go, ‘F***ing hell, what the hell am I doing in space saving the world?!’ he says. “That doesn’t compute easily in my mind! But then you have to be aware of how lucky you are and not ever take it for granted. It’s a tough business and just to be working is an achievement.

“To get to work with people who’s DVDs you own in your collection is quite another thing altogether. It’s surreal, which is always why I love going home to Cork to hang out with my buddies. We never even talk about that, it’s not a big deal. It’s not relevant, not with friends you’ve known since you were 10 years of age.”

As we get up to leave, I ask Murphy if he still plays with his band, Sons of Mr Greengenes. “No I just play for fun with my buddies and on my own for recreation,” he says.

“In college, we were much more serious about it. We had great ambitions to take over the world - or at least release an EP,” he laughs. Settling for a humble EP over world domination? Maybe Cillian Murphy is the reluctant superstar afterall.

Ellen + 10

This is my article on the 1oth anniversary of Ellen DeGeneres' coming out on screen and off, published in this month's Gay Community News

In our ‘post-gay’ era of Will and Grace, The L Word and Queer as Folk, when audiences have grown largely desensitised to seeing homosexuality on TV and in movies, it can be easy to forget just how momentous a decision it was for comedienne Ellen DeGeneres to come out as a lesbian, both on screen and off.

This month marks the tenth anniversary of Ellen’s famous coming out episode, which proved to be a milestone in American culture, despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that it provoked a socio-political controversy not seen since Murphy Brown (but, crucially, not Candice Bergan, the actress who played her) was condemned for becoming a single mother by then Vice President Dan Quayle in 1992.

Throughout the early 1990s, British television saw an explosion of gay storylines in soaps and dramas, but gay characters had only begun to creep into American television series like My So-Called Life, Melrose Place and thirtysomething and into reality shows like the popular MTV Real World series.

Stand-up comedienne Ellen DeGeneres landed a sit-com based around her own witty, self-deprecating stage personality in 1994, the same year that Roseanne Barr shared a lesbian kiss with Mariel Hemingway in Roseanne and where David Schwimmer’s character Ross discovered his wife was gay on the new sit-com behemoth Friends.

The show, Ellen, was well-received, but, as San Francisco Examiner journalist Joyce Millman perceptively observed in a 1995 column, there was an ambivalence encoded in the show towards dating and romance that marked it out from other comedies. Ellen the character, Millman wrote, was really a closet lesbian.

Rumours about DeGeneres’ sexuality were common in showbiz circles, and in March 1996, the then 39-year-old made the decision for her and the character to come out during the show’s fourth season.

DeGeneres spent the summer of 1996 in secret meetings with Disney, the owners of the show and ABC, the network that aired it. Michael Eisner, the CEO of Disney, was reluctant and expressed concerns that the broad American public was not ready for “a weekly show about lesbianism”.

At the same time as these secret discussions were going on, network executives told the writers that they needed to make the character Ellen Morgan care about something in the next season, and that if she wasn’t going to have a boyfriend, she should at least have a puppy. From August 1996, the planned coming out episode was code-named ‘The Puppy Episode’ to preserve its secrecy, and the name stuck.

But in September, somebody leaked the plans to The Hollywood Reporter and the American media “went crazy with it”, as DeGeneres later recalled. From then until March 1997, Disney and ABC refused to comment on whether Ellen’s character would come out.

Evangelists and right-wing family rights groups filled the ensuing vacuum. The notorious Pat Robertson professed that Ellen couldn’t be a lesbian because “she was such an attractive actress”. Reverend Lou Sheldon, from the Traditional Values Coalition, called for a boycott of Disney and the show, during which his supporters sold their Disney stock, and refused to purchase Disney merchandise. Protestors mounted pickets outside Disney and ABC with signs reading ‘Ellen Degenerate’ and ‘Fags worthy of death’.

Such was the impact of the boycott, that when the fourth series began in September 1996, producers were told to move the coming out episode from the scheduled sixth episode of the series to the following spring, so as to avoid it clashing with a crucial meeting of the Disney stockholders.

As the air date kept being pushed back and back, gay activists took to the internet to keep pressure on the show, led by Chastity Bono, entertainment director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), who set up an ‘Ellen Watch’ website. The show’s writers kept dropping hints into episodes to arc the season so viewers could see the revelation coming (for instance, in one episode, Ellen asks, ‘What if my life is a lie and I find I’m really, I dunno, left handed?’). DeGeneres herself kept speculation alive by creatively dodging, but not killing, the rumours (‘I’m going to discover I’m really Lebonese’, she told David Letterman).

In January and February 1997, the first draft of ‘The Puppy Episode’ was written (on maroon paper so it couldn’t be copied) and sent to Disney, who vetoed it on the grounds that it was dancing around the issue. After a week of rewrites, Disney gave the green light. On March 5, ABC announced that Ellen would come out.

At the same time, DeGeneres came out via a TV interview with Diane Sawyer, and by appearing on the cover of Time magazine accompanied by the headline, ‘Yep, I’m gay’. Stars began lining up to appear in the episode, the most significant being America’s national therapist Oprah Winfrey, who was cast as Ellen’s own councillor. Laura Dern was cast as Ellen’s love interest, and there were scheduled cameos from Demi Moore, Billy Bob Thornton, Melissa Etheridge, k.d Lang and Gina Gershon.

The episode was taped in March (during which the set had to be cleared and the bomb squad brought in after a threatening call was made). Also that month, DeGeneres began a high-profile romance with actress Anne Heche, drawing undeserved criticism for being “too affectionate” (i.e. holding hands and hugging) in front of President Clinton at the White House Correspondents Dinner (DeGeneres and Heche split in 2000. DeGeneres has been in a relationship with Arrested Development star Portia de Rossi since 2004).

On April 30, 1997, ‘The Puppy Episode’ was broadcast on ABC. Huge parties were held on the east and west coasts for the event, and even in Birmingham, Alabama, whose ABC affiliate had refused to broadcast the episode. In the end, 42 million people tuned in to watch the poignant but extremely funny moment when Ellen accidentally announced over an airport tannoy that she was gay. As an executive told the show’s director Gil Junger, “if that episode were a feature film, you just directed a $280 million opening night”.

The episode was highly praised, and was editorialised by in The New York Times. DeGeneres won a Peabody award and Emmy for writing the episode (but egregiously lost the acting prize to Hollywood’s blandest actress Helen Hunt, for Mad About You).

But after the hoopla died down, DeGeneres and the show’s writers had to determine how they were to explore Ellen’s sexuality without scaring off viewers and, more importantly, advertisers. The network issued a statement saying they would be taking “baby steps” with the character, but when the fifth series of the show began in September 1997, the ratings flatlined at just 12 million. A parental advisory warning was slapped onto each episode, much to DeGeneres’ chagrin, as Ellen slowly began dating. But the studios were extremely nervous, and when Chastity Bono admonished the show for being “too gay”, it not only ended her career with GLAAD, it also expedited the network’s decision to axe Ellen in March 1998.

DeGeneres returned to TV in 2001 playing a lesbian (though it wasn’t forced) in the short-lived sit-com The Ellen Show, which was cancelled after one season. But later that year, DeGeneres drew rave reviews for her tasteful emceeing duties on the Emmy awards, which were held two months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks (DeGeneres also hosted the awards after the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005 to similar acclaim).

Following a critically praised voiceover job as the forgetful fish Dory in the animated film Finding Nemo (2003), DeGeneres started her own talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which is now in its fourth season and has won her seven Emmy awards, and boosted her personal wealth to an estimated $65 million. Two months ago, DeGeneres’ was elevated higher into the entertainment pantheon by landing the prestigious gig of hosting the Oscars, becoming the first gay person and only the second woman (after Whoopi Goldberg) to serve as emcee.

But DeGeneres must have been surprised when, six months after her sit-com was taken off the air in 1998 for having a gay lead that was “too gay”, a new sit-com was commissioned by NBC that would feature not just one, but two gay characters in a four-person ensemble – that show being, of course, Will and Grace, which went on for eight years and was a huge hit during its run. The politics and specifics of Will and Grace’s success – and Ellen’s ultimate failure - are complex, but it was clear from that point on that homosexuality was becoming embraced by the mainstream.

In the decade since DeGeneres’coming out, the dynamic had shifted in favour of gay characters on television, almost to the point where some believe that gay culture has been too commodified by the entertainment industry.

Yes, gay representation on screen is not perfect and gay actors still face deeply engrained prejudices. But a new discussion and sensibility about homosexuality had begun, and, for good and for bad, that change was midwifed by the historic move made by the goofy and charming sit-com star Ellen DeGeneres. Whoever said the revolution would not be televised?