UMA'S NOT QUEER YET BUT . . .

by Brandon Judell


The religious right is correct! You can turn a gay man straight. Why ever since Uma Thurman touched my left hand, I've been memorizing baseball stats and wearing Dockers that hang loose on my ass.

This transmutation occurred when the stupefying Ms. Thurman, the wife of Ethan Hawke and mother of Maya Ray Thurman-Hawke, showed up at the Essex House to promote her part in James Ivory's adaptation of Henry James' The Golden Bowl. (Gay director! Gay author! Unreadable book!) She was attired in Jean-Paul Gaultier leather as should we all.

In this exquisite-looking costume drama with its dysfunctional family plot, Uma stars as the very unhappy Charlotte Stant. Impoverished, she is forced to marry a school friend's billionaire father so she can commit adultery with her pal's spouse who happens to be an Italian prince. Well, can you blame her? Which one of us wouldn't commit unsavory actions for a night with Prince William?


Anyway, Uma couldn't get through the dreadful book either.
Laughing radiantly, this Thinking Woman's Heather Locklear replies, "Never completely. I'd skim: Charlotte. . . Charlotte. . . Charlotte... Charlotte... Oh, here... Okay. Charlotte. . . Charlotte. . . Charlotte... My little joke is that the movie is for all those who began The Golden Bowl and would like to know how it ends."

The skimming apparently paid off. Uma was able to get into the mind of woman who has the hots for her son-in-law: "You know I suddenly realized Charlotte's behavior is a total mirror reflection of Scarlett O'Hara's. Actually the book is very similar to Gone with the Wind in its Rhett Butler/Scarlett kind of dynamic. And when I figured that out, I then understood everything the character did. It's that 'love excuse' as I like to think of it. It's that thing of a woman's simple inability to believe that she's given herself to a man who didn't love her. And it's that self-delusion. It's that one key misrepresentation of the truth to herself that allows her to fall further and further and further away from any type of moral center or any type of sense of reality really.

Moving from fantasy to reality, how does Uma feel that according to several unscientific surveys, more lesbians rather sleep with her than with Anne Heche?

Smiling blissfully, Uma laughs, "It's nice work if you can get it. I'm thrilled. I don't know what to say. I'm very happy. It's a door that I haven't yet opened in life. But you know if my marriage doesn't work out, I just don't know. But it makes me very happy."

Taking a second to focus on her lesbian adulation, she continues, "Well, I've played a lot of characters that are sort of sexually ambiguous, either lesbian or bisexual. I've played two. In Cowgirls Get the Blues and in Henry and June. In Cowgirls, I was omnisexual, and in Henry and June, I was sort of omnisexual, too. So I think that may be part of the reason.

"Also I don't have any discrimination . . . I don't have any problem embodying that. I have all but love for it."

But by taking on these roles, parts actresses might have rejected 10 or 20 years ago, Uma is definitely making it easier for young lesbians, especially those with high cheekbones, to come out. Does she understand that what she's doing has political significance?

"Yeah," Uma agrees. "Well, you do realize that when you go to do something, and people say to you, 'You shouldn't do that,' and you go, 'Really! Why not?' 'Oh, that's a good reason. That's exactly why I will do it. Thank you so much for cementing my decision.'

"So these things are very obvious. There are many actors who wouldn't play a homosexual part, and there are many actresses who wouldn't want to play a lesbian part. I needn't say any more."

And who am I to argue?