Just Trying to Find His Footing

Temperatures in the Valley have fallen to the “chilling” 60s--arctic by L.A. standards. On the CBS Studio Center lot, production assistants battle pesky winds as they hurry script revisions down Gilligan’s Island Road and up Mary Tyler Moore Avenue. On Stage 14, the new home of Fox’s “Normal, Ohio,” the AC forces the crew to congregate around the coffee machine as if it were Buddha himself. Veteran actor Orson Bean has come to work for today’s run-through dressed in a frayed sweater--the preferred wardrobe choice for much of the notably young crew. There’s no mistaking that autumn has come to the Valley.

So why is John Goodman sweating? Not lightly glistening mind you, but dripping, repeatedly wiping fresh sweat from that endearingly familiar mug we fell for during his nine, mostly unforgettable, seasons on “Roseanne.” It is just two days before the studio audience will be ushered in for the taping of episode five, and Goodman is the sole cast member still clenching his script--his lines yet to be committed to memory.

During a break, Goodman offers to make a cup of coffee. While he brews a fresh pot in his dressing room, he downs a Diet Pepsi and asks if it would be all right if he smoked. The sweating has subsided now, but the actor is clearly miles away from relaxed. Perhaps it’s something as simple as St. Louis’ loss in the baseball playoffs the night before that’s left this Missouri native looking seconds away from a massive coronary.

More likely what is troubling Goodman is that, with a couple of months’ worth of episodes already in the can and his show set to premiere this Wednesday, the actor as yet does not have a firm grasp on his character, Butch Gamble--a divorced gay father who returns to his family home in rural Ohio after spending the past four years “finding himself” in “La-La Land.”

Squeezing his sizable body into a very regal wooden antique throne, Goodman finally lights his cigarette. “I don’t know what I’m doing yet . . . and I may not know,” he says. “I’m really trying to find him--week by week.”

In the gym on the studio lot, also home to NBC’s “Will & Grace,” Will’s portrayer, Eric McCormack, recently delivered a “gay pep talk” to Goodman, who began working out last month.

“I told him, ‘Good luck with the show--gay’s been good for me,’ ” McCormack says. “I never went out of my way to play gay. There are moments of freedom that every guy has--to sing a song, to hug a friend, to kiss a friend on the mouth. Just doing those without any fear will read as gay as John Goodman needs to be.”

When he accepted the role, Goodman’s chief concern--aside from being perceived as offensive--was any effect if might have on Molly, the 10-year-old daughter he has with Anna Beth, his wife of 11 years. “It was the same concern I had about playing Fred Flint- stone,” says Goodman of his role in the 1994 Universal blockbuster.

The star of a steady string of films including “The Babe,” “Blues Brothers 2000” and “Bringing Out the Dead,” Goodman is never without work. This summer he appeared as Piper Perabo’s disapproving father in “Coyote Ugly.” Next up--a grief-stricken cop in “One Night at McCool’s” and a traveling salesman/Klan leader in the Coen brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” both set for releases early next year. Why then, at age 48, financially set for life (after a nine-year run in a hit sitcom that lives on in worldwide syndication and made him a millionaire many times over) and with film roles continuing to come his way, would Goodman leave his family in New Orleans to return to the grind of a weekly L.A.-based series?

“I got to missing ‘Rose,’ ” he says of the hit sitcom. “It was showing up everyday doing your job--better than sitting on a couch flipping channels. When [the producers] called, it seemed like a good idea--gimmicky, but a good gimmick. Then the more I thought about it, the more afraid I got. I’m afraid of my own shadow, and I can see the walls coming down from the hills after this one.”

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It was “Roseanne’s” executive producers, Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner (now exec-producing Goodman’s new show), who suggested the actor’s name to Bonnie and Terry Turner, the husband-wife creative team behind “Normal, Ohio,” “3rd Rock From the Sun” and “That ‘70s Show.”

“We adore John,” says Carsey. “Just the thought of him playing a gay character made us smile.” The Turners originally conceived of a gay “Odd Couple.” Terry Turner remembers, “It all started with Bonnie saying, ‘If you did ‘Kate & Allie’ today, one of those women would be gay.”

Up until now, gay characters on television (“Ellen,” “Will & Grace’s” Will and Jack, “Spin City’s” Carter) have all looked a certain way--young and slim, with trendy haircuts, dressed in colorful, wrinkle-free threads and living in hip urban settings such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami or Manhattan. Butch possesses none of these characteristics, though in the original pilot--at various times known as “Don’t Ask,” “The John Goodman Project” and “Butch”--Goodman’s character was living the West Hollywood life with straight roommate Anthony LaPaglia.

“It made for a good pilot,” says Goodman of the abandoned premise, “but not for a good series. Butch was too wise and hip.”

After completing the original pilot last spring, Goodman suffered the loss of his mother in early June. The day after her burial in St. Louis, Goodman received a phone call from the Turners. “I said, ‘What’s up--am I fired?’ Bonnie goes, ‘Nooo. . . .’ And I said, ‘Oh--everybody else is.’ ”

The series has also experienced changes behind the scenes, with published reports indicating the budget ballooned to well over $1 million per episode--far higher than for an average new comedy--as the producers went about assembling a new supporting cast.

Despite the loss of his original co-stars (Greg Pitts, who plays Butch’s misguided son, Charlie, is the only other holdover from the pilot), Goodman is pleased with the changes, which he feels maximize the “fish out of water” scenario.

“The family adds a whole dynamic to the show that wasn’t there in the initial pilot,” says new Fox Entertainment Group President Gail Berman, who was influential in altering the premise.

The new format provided Terry Turner the opportunity to draw parallels to his experiences as an alcoholic who returned home in 1989 to confront his family. “After 12 years of therapy, I was able to say to my family, ‘We’re all alcoholics--it’s not just Dad, it’s all of us,’ ” he says.

Teamed with an ensemble of misfits, Butch’s homosexuality blends into the dynamic of a family who breathes new life into the increasingly stale buzz word of the ‘90s: dysfunctional. “Another dysfunctional family sitcom--with a wisecracking gay aunt,” jokes Goodman. Having to deal with Gay Aunt Butch are his slacker son, a still-scorned ex-wife, a slutty sister, a homophobic father and a mother who lives in complete denial of her son’s new lifestyle.

For Joely Fisher, “Normal, Ohio” has a lot of appeal. In August, Fisher, who played “Ellen’s” “trampy” best friend Paige, negotiated to get out of the WB’s “Grosse Pointe” to accept a role in the retooled “Normal, Ohio” as Butch’s even trampier sister Pamela. Now lounging on a sofa alongside a bubbling lava lamp in her colorful, pillow-filled dressing room (Bean calls it a “Turkish whorehouse”), Fisher exudes all the carefree abandon that Goodman lacks. And with good reason. Once again Fisher, the daughter of Hollywood legends Connie Stevens and Eddie Fisher, is a fully participating member of an ensemble sitcom, after having been shoved in the closet once Ellen jumped out.

As creatively stifling as her experience was during “Ellen’s” final season, Fisher and Ellen DeGeneres remain close pals. “I was talking to her recently and she didn’t say, ‘Oh, wow--you’re doing another gay show,’ ” says Fisher. “Gay characters are so prevalent now. The comedy of the year [‘Will & Grace’] is a show with open and out gay characters.”

On “Normal, Ohio,” next to Butch, it is the character’s father, Bill Gamble, a cranky homophobe played by Bean, who could emerge as a breakout character with his endless supply of euphemisms to express his revulsion for his son’s new life. Among the more creative: “puff pastry,” “trapeze artist” and “piccolo player.”

Scott Seomin, entertainment media director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, says the comments, albeit unfortunate, accurately represent the feelings of “many Bill Gambles in the world.” Bean sees Bill as lovable and endearing, in the same way America fell for Archie Bunker in the ‘70s and, more recently, real-life homophobic castaway Rudy Boesch on “Survivor.”

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The gay wave has only just begun to hit prime-time television. CBS has two shows with gay leads in the works: “Kiss Me, Guido,” based on the independent movie, will premiere midseason with former ‘80s heartthrob Jason Bateman playing gay. And “Say Uncle,” described as a gay “Family Affair” from the producers of “Frasier” and “Just Shoot Me,” may also debut by season’s end. Some of these shows will undoubtedly fail, according to NBC Entertainment President Garth Ancier. While “Will & Grace” struck a chord with viewers, “Ellen” lasted only one season after the character and her portrayer came storming out of the closet, declaring on the cover of Time magazine, “Yep, I’m Gay.”

Ancier feels, for a time, it triggered a backlash. “When ‘Ellen’ was on the air, the show had some advertiser rejection and seemed to have some audience rejection,” he says. “I think there was probably a moment where people in the broadcasting industry perceived that as a rejection to a gay-lead show. I give [former NBC President] Warren Littlefield credit for taking a shot at putting ‘Will & Grace’ on the air at a time when it was a much more bold political move than it is today.”

But is America prepared to open its doors to a gay man who looks like their next-door neighbor, their husband or even more unsettling--themselves? Carsey believes the answer is yes.

“America is far more accepting of gay lifestyles than it’s given credit for,” she says. “Most Americans either have someone in their family who’s gay or have a friend who’s gay. It’s their sons, their daughters, their cousins. It’s part of our lives.”

Yet even the super gay-friendly Fisher has doubts about audience reaction: “It’s either going to make people feel terribly, terribly uncomfortable, or it’s going to make them feel like, ‘Finally--someone more like who we’re looking at in our backyard.’ ”

“That’s the whole point of the show,” says Fox’s Berman. “So if people have a hard time with it, then I think we’re in big trouble.”

Uncertain how gay he should play it, Goodman so far has just been playing himself.

“I knew I couldn’t get away with trying to play, what you call, ‘swisher’ or ‘Nancy boy,’ ” says the actor. “I couldn’t go too effeminate and, by the same token, I didn’t want to insult gay people by trying to do that stereotype.”

That stereotype is the first exposure most American audiences had to gay characters when Billy Crystal debuted Jodie Dallas, television’s first series regular homosexual, on the 1977-81 ABC sitcom “Soap.” GLAAD’s Seomin does not give Crystal’s character high marks: “Jodie was a suicidal, cross-dressing gay man who fell in love with his lesbian friends, got straight women pregnant and wanted to have a sex change so he could be with his football player boyfriend.”

The closest equivalent to Jodie Dallas on TV today is Sean Hayes’ Jack McFarland (“Just Jack!”) on NBC’s “Will & Grace,” whom Seomin describes as “a flighty, effeminate, fabulous stereotype,” a label Hayes vehemently challenges.

“It’s easier for the press to say he’s stereotypical, because they’re too lazy to figure it out otherwise,” argues Hayes, who in September accepted the Emmy for best supporting actor in a comedy series. “There are little stereotypical aspects here and there that I throw in--like I’ll toss my hair, but Jack on the whole is more eccentric than stereotypical.”

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Becoming comfortable with even discussing homosexuals was a long “coming out” process says Goodman, who was raised in an ultra-conservative family in St. Louis, where homosexuality was a topic never discussed. “We were brought up to believe they were child molesters, that it was a choice,” remembers Goodman.

In 1970, Goodman pursued theater at Southwest Missouri State, exposing him for the first time to out gay peers. “When I got into the musical theater department, it was, ‘Hello!’ ” Goodman recalls. “At that age, you’re real defensive. . . .”

As a challenge, Goodman accepted the role of a gay man in a sophomore production of Langford Wilson’s “The Madness of Lady Bride,” though he says he failed miserably in the role.

Graduating with a bachelor of fine arts in theater, Goodman moved to New York, where he roomed with a gay Puerto Rican costume designer whom he now describes as one of the funniest men he’s known.

During this time, Goodman was involved in a gay-bashing incident. Having been struck ill, the actor was on his way to the hospital emergency room, supported along the way by a male companion. “We were walking arm in arm,” he remembers. “A carload of kids shouted [expletives]. I can only imagine what [homosexuals] go through on a regular basis.”

Working with Roseanne, an actress-comedian who has two gay siblings and devoted much of her 1988-97 sitcom to the positive portrayal of gays, further enhanced Goodman’s comfort level. The actor garnered a Golden Globe and seven Emmy nominations for his role as Dan Conner, who during the run of the show, interacted with several gay characters, including Roseanne’s boss, Leon (Martin Mull), family friend Nancy (Sandra Bernhardt), and mother-in-law, Bev (Estelle Parsons).

But all the blue-collar gays on “Roseanne” were merely recurring sidekicks--not the focal point.

Butch is the first of his kind, making “Gamble” not only the last name of the “Normal, Ohio” family, but also representative of the risk both Fox and the cast are taking by stepping into untested waters.

Still, in early episodes, Butch’s life is presented as more asexual than homosexual--an intentional decision by producers that Bean says might be for the best. “Butch is basically sexless,” notes Bean, “and my hunch is it would be better to leave him that way.”

A fan of “Will & Grace,” Bean suspects the NBC sitcom, with its younger, sexier gays, may be able to pull off something “Normal, Ohio” cannot.

“When Will kissed Jack, it was adorable, it was cute, maybe even a little sexy,” says Bean. “But I don’t know if America’s ready to watch. . . . As the constable used to say at the end of the werewolf pictures, ‘There are certain things we are better off not knowing.’ ”

Like it or not, the show’s producers have every intention of exploring all aspects of Butch’s life--including sex and dating.

“You can’t just ignore it,” says Turner. “We’re thinking around the 12th show, we’ll see a boyfriend for a couple of episodes.”

Turner also plans to add a gay bartender to the cast to provide Butch a sounding board, and on the Nov. 29 episode, a flashback will show how Butch first came out to his family four years before. As the man who kissed co-star Hayes on his series and then again at this year’s Emmy Awards, McCormack is uncertain how audiences would react to seeing Goodman in a same-sex smooch.

“I guess it depends if people have hang-ups about gay men,” muses McCormack. “If people take to ‘Normal, Ohio,’ it will be because they love John Goodman, and if they don’t, maybe it’s because they love John Goodman so much they can’t see him in this.”

Goodman claims it doesn’t matter if his great experiment turns off viewers.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen yet with this show, and to be honest I really don’t care,” says the actor. “I know who I am. I’m 48. I made a pile, I got my money. I’m doing what I love to do, taking care of myself a little bit better than I used to, and having a ball working.”

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* “Normal, Ohio” premieres Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. on Fox.