FRIENDS INDEED.(Jason Bateman and Danny Nucci, television stars)(Interview)

Publication: The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine)

Publication Date: 13-MAR-01

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COPYRIGHT 2001 Liberation Publications, Inc.

Melding Will & Grace with The Odd Couple, CBS has crafted a new sitcom from the gay indie film Kiss Me, Guido. As Some of My Best Friends gears up for its late-February debut, stars Jason Bateman and Danny Nucci reveal their own gay secrets, talk about stereotypes, and share fashion do's and don'ts.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," Shakespeare's Juliet gushes about her Romeo.

Juliet wouldn't last five minutes in network television.

For more than a year the folks behind the new CBS sitcom based on the 1997 gay indie film Kiss Me, Guido have been wracking their collective brain to come up with the perfect must-see moniker for their show, about a gay urbane magazine writer named Warren Fairbanks who shares a Greenwich Village apartment with a straight, hunky, unsophisticated wanna-be actor from the Bronx named Frankie Zito.

Their final inspiration? Some of My Best Friends.

"Kiss Me, Guido made no sense, because Warren's not trying to get Frankie to kiss him," explains executive producer Jonathan Axelrod, who was turned on to the movie's series potential by his wife, actress and gay-guy magnet Illeana Douglas. "And guido, it turns out, was offensive to Italians. So we settled on Some of My Best Friends."

The producers have had quite some time to mull over different titles: Filming of the first seven episodes ended in November, and while CBS was apparently high on the show, it was waiting for the perfect time slot, Axelrod says. Now that it's got a debut date--February 28 at 8 P.M. Eastern time--the Best Friends folk couldn't care less what you call their show as long as you're laughing when you say it.

"What we're trying to do, ultimately, is make episodes of television that are hysterically funny," says Axelrod, whose previous credits include the 1995 Nancy McKeon sitcom Can't Hurry Love and 1998's single-dad series Brother's Keeper. "Whether that breeds some more tolerance, well, that's all the good stuff that you hope comes with the laughter."

Serving up that good stuff--and the laughs--will largely be the job...

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