My Fabulous Gay Wedding

May 30, 2005. 08:24 AM

Wedding bells for same-sex reality Scott Thompson hosts tryout show ROB SALEM It is bound to be controversial. But then, Scott Thompson knows all about controversy.Fortunately, he also knows all about entertaining and amusing, which is as much or more what My Fabulous Gay Wedding is about than pushing any sort of social/political agenda.The daring six-part tryout series, debuting Wednesday night at 10 on Global, puts a same-sex spin on your basic make-a-wedding "reality" show, giving host Thompson and a crack team of planners, caterers and stylists a mere two weeks to throw together an elaborate thematic nuptial event, tailor-made to a particular male or female couple's tastes.For example, the opening show, a Scottish-themed affair that had both bridegrooms, the show host, celebrity guest Ashley McIsaac and a chorus-line of muscled dancing boys all going commando in kilts.Next week's episode, a lesbian wedding, features special guest comic/singer Lea DeLaria. "There is one part they cut out that I'm really upset about," complains Thompson. "Lea comes in, and she's wearing this beaver hat, and she tells me, `I always wear my beaver hat whenever I come to Canada.' And I go, `Well, then what's your beaver wearing?'"Anything short of that, though, seems to be fair game."I decided to take the show when I was assured that it would not be castrated," Thompson says. "I knew that if we did it right that it would be funny and entertaining. But I wanted it to be sexual. Without that, there's nothing. Not raunchy. But you need to see them in bed. You need to see them touch each other. And you need to see their families. You need to see how moral they are ... because that leaves me to be the `fabulous' part."My Fabulous Gay Wedding is, needless to say, unprecedented on Canadian broadcast television — or even American cable, where it will debut next month on the gay channel, Logo — though, inexplicably, with the word "Gay" excised from the title. "It isn't Queer Eye," Thompson insists. "You've never seen anything like this before."This show goes further than Queer Eye, because they're not neutered. They're the stars of their show. In Queer Eye, the whole idea is that they help straight people. Very much like black characters were, for a long time, help-mates and sounding boards and mirrors for women. This is different."Not nearly as different as Thompson's other recent TV venture, a series of satiric "reports" from New York Fashion Week for FT-FashionTelevision, delivered in the polyester'd guise of "Danny Husk," a fictional — and aggressively heterosexual — former war correspondent (for the Weather Channel). "I'm not supposed to be having this much fun," Thompson says. "My career is supposed to be over. I was way more comfortable being a has-been than I am as a rising star." The original idea for the FT spots, he says, was to do them as another of his Kids in the Hall characters, the more well-known, outrageously out-there Buddy Cole."But then I thought, `Hmm. That's too obvious. I'm gonna go there and what, talk to a million other Buddy Coles?' I like to be the prettiest peacock in the room. And if I'm going to be a fish out of water, who better than Danny?"I am now the voice of the straight man. They have found a champion in me."We could have done worse. Scott-as-Danny, in fact, cuts quite a lusty swath through the fashion industry's annual pretense parade — including a prolonged flirtation with Mick Jagger's model daughter, Elizabeth."She was seriously in love with me." Thompson marvels. "I got to touch her feet and everything. Every time I'd go by her she'd blush. And I'm thinking, `My God, I've got this 18-year-old girl in a lather!'"I've realized that it's really all just about wearing a cheap suit and a moustache and acting like Daddy."Well, probably not her daddy."