The Little Dog Laughed

First published on 19 Jun 2009. Updated on 17 Aug 2009.

In The Little Dog Laughed, a tough Hollywood agent, Diane (Alexandra Fowler) is trying to obtain the movie rights to a gay-themed play for her client, Hollywood actor Mitchell Green (James Millar). The role could win Mitchell an Oscar, but the problem is that the star actually is gay, and Diane wants to keep him in the closet.

This riotous, Faustian satire is by New Yorker Douglas Carter Beane, whose credits include the Xanadu Broadway musical and the screenplay to the 1995 drag queen road movie To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar - a film that had the misfortune to be released just after Priscilla. Beane spoke to Time Out Sydney about Hollywood, homosexuality and his Tony-Award winning play.

Douglas, what was the inspiration for The Little Dog Laughed? I was in a hotel in New York, going down in the elevator, and there was a famous movie star with someone who was obviously his boyfriend - they just had that vibe. And just before the elevator doors opened the movie star turned to his boyfriend and said, "We don't know each other." And they went separate directions.

At that time I had written a play called As Bees in Honey Drown, and when I sold the film rights I said to the studio, "Just so you know, this is a story about a gay man who has sex with a woman and realises that he's gay." And then as the movie started to get made, it was moving towards him being straight. So I walked off the film.

Diane, the ascerbic agent, has all the best lines, such as: "A writer with final cut? I'd rather give firearms to small children." I wanted to create a character that everything she said was awful, and everything she said was the truth. Originally she was a very dark and scary character. Then the actress who did her originally [Julie White] was such a delightful person, and of course, that's what temptation is: she's got to be charming.

Does it take a lot of time to write sparkling, spontaneous-sounding dialogue? It has to explode out quickly. But then I edit and I'll kind of play around with the lines. The writing goes very fast for me, then there's rewriting, which is really painful.

Do you think things have improved for gay actors in Hollywood? Halfway though writing, I thought, everyone's going to say "this is an old story." But I was saying this to [Tales of the City author] Armistead Maupin, and he just started listing every current, closeted movie star, the majority of whom I knew and had forgotten about. Because they're there in magazines with the 'wife' so many times, there's this weird feeling that it's over when it's not. And there are rules: for example, you could be on television now and be openly gay, but you can't do feature films.

I have to ask: as the writer of To Wong Foo, are you still bitter that Australia's Priscilla got made first? [Laughs] You know, if it was the only thing that I had done, I'd be freaked. I was a little starving boy in Hell's Kitchen writing a movie and it got sold to Steven Spielberg. And then Priscilla happened in Australia, and everyone just sort of assumed that I stole the premise of transvestites and transportation - that's the only thing they have in common - and everybody was so upset. I got through it OK. I've seen Priscilla twice and I love it. And I like To Wong Fu - parts of it.

The Little Dog Laughedplays at the Ensemble Theatre 9 Jul-15 Aug