US: The L Word director to make new LGBT documentary
The writer-director of a hit 10-year long, lesbian TV series, Ilene Chaiken, has announced she will be making a new documentary on LGBT individuals in Middle America.
US series The L Word centered around the lives of a group of lesbian and bisexual women in Los Angeles. It was followed by a spin-off reality show, The Real L Word in 2010.
On almost the ten-year anniversary of The L Word’s first airing, Chaiken has said she wants to create a documentary that shows the diversity of the LGBT community.
“Being gay is not a monolithic proposition. We’ve lived so many different lives in so many different communities, with so many different experiences. I want to tell stories that are specific to being gay but reflect a lot of different realities of gay life.
“We were telling one story in “The Real L Word” in LA and Brooklyn with a group of women we were following. This is a very different story, and it didn’t really belong in that story.”
The show will be “grittier” than her previous shows she told the The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s going to be quite different in tone and ambition. I have been feeling this for a while and [producers] Magical Elves and Showtime felt compelled to look in this direction.”
She said the documentary will be: “Less glamorous and a story about different facets of gayness. We all know, especially those of us who are gay, that there are challenges and hardships and that there are a lot of places in the world in this country where it isn’t easy to be a lesbian or to be gay. That part of the story gets touched upon in The L Word and in three seasons of The Real L Word in Los Angeles and New York but we’re really going to look at what that is and explore it now in a more unvarnished way.”
