It’s Politics as Unusual at Benefit

In what was heralded as an unprecedented and historic event, key players in the entertainment community and leaders of the gay community joined to support the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force at a fund-raising dinner Saturday night.

The low-key garden-party setting at a Westside home underscored the fact that this was the first time so many prime industry movers had supported an organization that focuses on gay and lesbian civil rights. Although Hollywood has backed many AIDS-related causes, the 18-year-old task force has a more political agenda.

“I think this is unprecedented because of the level of support from the heterosexual community and from the mainstream industry community in this city,” said Urvashi Vaid, executive director of the Washington-based task force. “It’s a wonderful, ground-breaking event.”

“I had an opportunity, because I work in the business, to ask a lot of my friends to support an organization that I really believe in, and they were nice enough to support it,” said Alan Hergott, a partner in the entertainment law firm Bloom, Dekom & Hergott, who co-hosted the party along with his companion, Curt Shepard, a member of the task force’s board; personal manager Barry Krost, and producer John Deshane. Hergott said he hopes the fund-raiser will become an annual event.

Among the 300-plus guests at the $250-a-person event were Fox Inc. chairman Barry Diller; agent Bill Block; producer Bernie Brillstein; Disney’s Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Hoberman; producer Lorne Michaels; director Joel Schumacher; agent David Gersh; actors Bruce Davison, Alfre Woodard, Anjelica Huston with artist Robert Graham, Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson, Carol Kane, Jimmy Smits and Judith Light; singer Belinda Carlisle; Torie Osborn, Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center executive director; Advocate Editor-in-Chief Richard Rouilard; AIDS Project Los Angeles Board Chairman David Wexler, and City Councilman Michael Woo. About $80,000 was raised Saturday night, with other donations still to be counted.

Although the benefit had a wait list of participants, it came at a time when prejudice and hatred are still evident. Two industry executives refused interviews and photographs, saying they had received hate mail and threats.

Jim Wiatt, president of International Creative Management agency, said he also received a “couple of threatening phone calls this week from people. That’s why it’s important to really step forward and be accountable for the things we believe in.”

And just how influential are motion pictures in affecting the values of society?

“I think that when the film industry can capture (an idea) and make it glamorous and gorgeous, so that the audience isn’t even aware that they’re embracing something they never would have embraced before--then, yes, the film as a social motor can inaugurate some kind of change,” said Hanks.

“But I think the very fact that everyone comes out (to this event) is almost more depressing than it is a good thing, because we have to say that here we are, and we don’t care if anybody is gay or lesbian or heterosexual.”

Dinner was followed by performances by comedians Kate Clinton and Kevin Pollak and singer Sarah Brightman.