Deep Inside Hollywood
By Romeo San Vicente
It’s entirely possible that you missed 2018’s low-key indie charmer “Skate Kitchen,” the one about a teenage girl who finds community with an all-female skateboard crew. It was a small release and had the bad luck to hit theaters at roughly the same time as Jonah Hill’s all-boy version, “Mid90s.” But it’s worth finding now, and you’ll want to, if only to prep for HBO’s upcoming series called “Betty.” Created by “Skate Kitchen” director Crystal Moselle and Lesley Arfin, the creator of the series “Love,” “Betty” will take the premise of “Skate Kitchen” and extend it for a six-episode first season. Rachelle Vinberg will reprise her “SK” role as Camille, the lonely suburban girl who finds friendship and purpose with her new friends. And other “SK” alumni — Nina Moran, Kabrina Adams, Dede Lovelace and Ajani Russell — will pick their characters back up, as well. Expect plenty of casual young lesbianism when this comedy-drama rolls by sometime in 2020.
FX and Christine Vachon bring the ‘Pride’
If you remember watching the somewhat dorky (OK, very dorky, but also fully well-meaning) miniseries “When We Rise” and thinking to yourself, “OK, where is the queer Ken Burns(es) who’ll take this historical material and make a kickass documentary that engages audiences with the same sense of urgency and intelligence that the LGBTQ+ community has expressed at every step of our civil rights movement over the past 60 years?” Well, we may have an answer to your question. “Pride,” a six-part documentary series from producer Christine Vachon’s Killer films and Refinery29, will chronicle as many of those real-life narrative strands as possible. Each section will be handled by a different acclaimed queer filmmaker and go deeper into the stories that shaped where we’ve all been. Right now we don’t know which filmmakers are attached, or even when it’s going to air, but we do know that FX is eventually going to present it as part of their upcoming slate of docs. We suggest bookending every episode of “Pose,” but that’s just us being really smart about marketing.
The ‘Love, Simon’ TV series has a cast!
Fresh faces fill the cast of the upcoming series “Love, Simon.” The TV adaptation of the sleeper hit film that was itself an adaptation of the YA novel “Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda” has found its young leading man. His name is Michael Cimino (cinephiles are now scratching their heads, but no, it’s not the late director of “The Deer Hunter”) and he was recently seen in “Annabelle Comes Home.” He’ll play a gay teen who has an entire school and family to navigate as he takes his first steps out of the closet, and who looks to Simon (Nick Robinson, from the film, who narrates here) for help with the process. And he’s got a cast signing on around him: Ana Ortiz (“Ugly Betty”) and James Martinez (“One Day At a Time”) as his parents, and a roster of up-and-coming young stars, some of whom are making their debuts. It’s a 2020 drop on Disney+ (their new streaming platform that launches later this year), so that gives all of you young people a bit of time to figure out whose password you’ll be using to watch it.
A fresh new stream of ‘Queer As Folk’
You’ve heard the rumblings about a newly rebooted “Queer As Folk,” and apparently it’s all still happening — although we’ve been denied casting news and it’s causing us a lot of stress and making us write daydreamy, speculative, “QAF”-themed fiction about Ezra Miller — but it’s going to cost you when it finally gets here. Originally planned for cable via Bravo, the updated story of a tightly knit queer community of people in shiny clothes has now been pushed over to the upcoming NBCUniversal streaming service (the one they say is launching in 2020). Fact: we “will” pay good money for this. Not as much as we paid for those see-through mesh shirts back in the year 2000, mind you, but we will pay, even if it means cutting the cord and watching “Real Housewives of New York” at a second location. Now, back to casting — can we get some more Sharon Gless time on this thing? It’s important.
Romeo San Vicente is ready for the Kristine W Renaissance.
