Hollywood Mulls Protest of Colorado

Hollywood’s concern over the passage of a Colorado law some view as offensive to gays and lesbians appeared to be sputtering into an organized protest on Thursday.

Actress Whoopi Goldberg and “Silence of the Lambs” director Jonathan Demme signed a petition calling for a boycott of the state, and a production company making a TV miniseries announced it will shoot in Utah instead of Colorado.

The amendment stated that no Colorado community could pass a law giving protected status to gays and lesbians, effectively overturning laws in communities like Denver and Aspen that banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Amid much debate, news coverage and talk-show conversations that have occurred since Coloradans narrowly approved Amendment 2 on Nov. 3, the actions were among the first concrete efforts.

Because many actors, producers and studio executives own property or simply vacation in the state, the Colorado amendment’s approval has drawn widespread attention in Hollywood. But until this week, reaction had been diffused, and even confused.

Goldberg and Demme this week added their names to a small list of individuals who are urging an economic boycott of the state, as organized by the Los Angeles chapter of the media watchdog group, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

But Laurel Entertainment Inc. said its decision not to shoot its ABC miniseries “Stephen King’s the Stand” in Colorado was not a part of any organized boycott.

“This was just a chance to register a protest against something I disapprove of,” said Laurel president Richard Rubinstein on Thursday. “My purpose has been served. This was a specific instance where I had a choice. We will go to Utah.”

One estimate by Michael Klein, director of the Colorado Motion Picture and Television Commission, placed the loss to the state’s economy by the production’s move in the range of $6 million.

Klein said the entertainment community “has traditionally been receptive to human rights. So the protest reaction is not a surprise. But what we are trying to do as a film commission is to send out a clear signal that though this amendment may have passed, we are not interpreting it as any right to violate anyone’s civil rights.”

Klein said no feature film projects are currently shooting in the state and he has received no indication of how future projects will go, one way or the other. An NBC “Ironside” movie with Raymond Burr is currently in production in Denver.

Confusion over how the show-business community was going to react to the Colorado law began immediately after its approval Nov. 3. In a widely reported speech before the Nov. 18 AIDS Project Los Angeles “Commitment to Life” event, actress-director Barbra Streisand told the audience that if called upon, the entertainment community should “refuse to play where they discriminate.”

She later clarified her statement, saying she did not necessarily suggest a boycott, nor that she was against one.

But many of the community’s powerbrokers did not come forward on the issue, or were apparently unwilling to give up ski holidays in Colorado. The ski resort town of Aspen on Thursday took out ads in the Hollywood trade papers reminding that it has long prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Aspen Mayor John Bennett said Thursday if Hollywood wants to fight Amendment 2, “boycotting Aspen is not the way to do it. It’s kind of unfair to punish us. Basically, you should not hurt your friends.”

“The boycott is gaining considerable momentum,” said GLAAD executive director David Smith Thursday. “We believe a boycott will hasten a change. But there are other ways to fight this. There is an awareness campaign that Hollywood could support . . . the bottom line is that Amendment 2 must fall.”