Maupin’s ‘City’ Still a Hot Spot in TV Land

Armistead Maupin, whose zesty, provocative and highly acclaimed PBS series “Tales of the City” is being honored tonight by the Museum of Television & Radio, sums up his feelings with an equal measure of bite and delight:

“I’m extremely flattered that a show that’s 3 years old seems to be lingering in everyone’s consciousness so long,” he says from his home office in San Francisco, “and that there’s so much excitement over doing the second series.”

Altogether, 11 programs, chosen for artistic merit, cultural impact or historic significance, are being feted as part of the Beverly Hills’ museum’s William S. Paley Television Festival. The event is being held at the Directors Guild of America in Hollywood.

Maupin’s sequel, called “More Tales of the City”--which, he notes, is “lifted directly” from his second novel of the same title--will air on Showtime in the spring of 1998. Like the original, it tracks a group of offbeat characters living in a San Francisco apartment house in the pre-AIDS era.

Set in 1977, the story line of “More Tales” in part deals with the character of Michael “Mouse” Tolliver who “comes out of the closet when he finds out that his parents--Florida orange growers--have joined Anita Bryant’s ‘Save Our Children’ campaign.

“It has several heterosexual story lines in it as well,” Maupin adds. “Some people think because I’m gay my stories are only about gay people.”

PBS rejected the sequel--although the original “Tales” had been its highest-rated dramatic series in more than a decade--on grounds that it cost too much. Neither Maupin nor a host of others believe that, claiming instead that PBS knuckled under to pressures from the religious right, who opposed “Tales’ ” uncritical portrayals of casual drug use and homosexuality. PBS has consistently denied that the content had anything to do with its decision.

While a director for the six-episode, six-hour “More Tales”--to be shot this summer in Montreal--is as yet unnamed, Maupin reports that “the majority of the cast are making every effort to return. Laura Linney, Olympia [Dukakis] and Chloe Webb have said they want to be part of the show.”

Dukakis portrayed Anna Madrigal, the exotic landlady who welcomed newcomers to her boarding house by taping home-grown joints to their doors. Linney was Mary Ann Singleton, the naive career girl from Cleveland, while Webb played Mona Ramsey, the resident free spirit, stifled by her job at the Halcyon Ad Agency.

The sequel, Maupin says, “goes all over the place--a cruise to Mexico, a whorehouse in Winnemucca, Nev., an amnesia victim with a fear of roses and an elegant sex resort for women over 60.”

“Tales” and “More Tales” deals with only the first two of six novels, whose arc of story runs from 1975 to 1988. So, suggests Maupin, there could be sequels to the sequel.