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It's the decade of Jacqueline Susann, author of Valley of the Dolls -- the best-selling novel of all time and the bible of a many a drag queen. There's already been a Lifetime biopic starring Michele Lee and an hour-long A&E biography. Now, arriving with much fanfare, comes Isn't She Great, an outrageous light comedy that comes equipped with Bette Midler, but no question mark -- or mention of Jackie's bisexuality. Jackie, the celebrity of self-made celebrities, had a yen for Jewish male comics, and more than a few dames. In fact, the woman Truman Capote said looked like "a truck driver in drag" (he later apologized to truck drivers) is presented here as a fame-obsessed, cancer-ridden, kooky broad who would copulate with the entire national membership of the Teamsters if she thought it would increase book sales. But then this film strives for veracity about as vigorously as Gary Bauer is seeking out the gay vote. For an honest portrayal of the woman who thought she'd always be as famous as the Beatles, look to Barbara Seaman's Lovely Me (Seven Stories Press). This bio includes such tidbits as a friend recalling a party where "Jackie and Ethel [Merman] were very drunk, and they lay down on a couch and they just made out in front of everyone." At a later date, after Merman said, "I don't ever want to see you again! You're as crazy as your son!" (Susann's son was autistic), Jackie followed the star of Gypsy home and stood outside her apartment, banging on the door and yelling, "Ethel, I love you!" The film was based on a Michael Korda article in The New Yorker. To find out the whys and the wherefores of the filmmakers' choices, I sat down with Isn't She Great's creators and several of its stars in New York's Regency Hotel. Included was screenwriter Paul Rudnick, the openly gay scribe responsible for In & Out and Jeffrey. "I was always a fan," Paul shares, "so I thrust myself on this project. I remember growing up seeing Jackie on talk shows and thinking, 'My God! That woman wants to be on those shows very badly.'" Laughing, he adds, "I guess I responded to her the way the world responded, which was that there seemed something very honest about her. There was something gutsy and earthy and fun about her that you could not help but respond to. You thought: who could turn off the TV when Jackie Susann was on? She promised a good time and delivered." "Right," pipes in director Andrew Bergman (Honeymoon in Vegas). "But please note I didn't want to do a biopic. We wanted something about a period as much as anything. About a phenomenon. I mean, there are true events such as her book tour for Valley of the Dolls. Jackie invented that type of tour. In a way, she was responsible for the decline of all of publishing." Laughing, he notes, "She was the first one who did that, selling her book out of her trunk. People like Erica Jong wouldn't have existed without Jackie. Erica did the same thing with Fear of Flying." But why no Ethel Merman make-out scene? "When I was having trouble with Bette," Bergman replies, "I'd threaten her with a new scene, one with her and Ethel. She'd shape up real fast." But he explains the real reason the film doesn't address Susann's philandering: "I didn't want to go there because she's not the most sympathetic character to begin with, and the studio was hounding me to tone it down even more than we did. To have her cheating on Irving [her spouse] was not good." "But also," Rudnick adds, "I think the main period we focus on is Valley of the Dolls, when she was already diagnosed with breast cancer, and they had had the autistic child. A lot of her wild days were over. Truly, Jackie and Irving's mutual devotion became very important to both of them then. Their bizarre romance was really the center of their lives. They were both passionately in love with Jackie's career." As for gays falling for Jackie and her books over the past decade, Rudnick explains, "A lot of that comes with the territory. Those outfits in the film are not exaggerated. That design is authentic. You don't have to push Jackie Susann very far to get to that level of theatricality. She was also one of the first writers who dealt with gay characters in her books, sometimes in a mean way. But Valley of the Dolls had the widest crossover appeal possible. Maybe the gay audience, certainly the female audience as well, sensed an honesty there. She would talk about anything and everything. She was the first person to do it and really know what she was talking about as far as show business went. I think people felt they were being let in on something, the sex lives and the secrets of the biggest possible stars, and Jackie was happy to provide the dirt." "She was also kind of a ballsy broad," Bergman interrupts, "in terms of whatever the gay sensibility has to do with that. I mean she's not Katherine Anne Porter. She was really a sort of tough cookie. And Capote wasn't far off. I remember seeing her in New York and she did look a bit like a female impersonator. She wore a lot of makeup. She was enormous. She was a strapping woman." Nathan Lane, who portrays Irving Mansfield, agrees about Jackie's appeal: "She was a larger-than-life kind of person and her books were sort of sexy for the time. Kind of shocking. She was an incredibly colorful woman." Laughing, he analyzes, "And gay men seem to be drawn to that. Plus, anyone who makes out with Ethel Merman is very popular in the gay community. But don't forget, Irving was obsessed with Jackie. His love was genuine. He was touched by her need to make it. Maybe he felt, not being a performer, that he could sort of live through her vicariously." Stockard Channing, who plays Jackie's bitchy best friend, agrees. "But you know what I especially loved about the movie was that it takes place in a whole other kind of time for women. The dressing up, the facade, the self-involvement, the layers of vanity. What it meant to be a woman then was that you never walked out of the house unless you were done, done, done, done, done. That's so much a part of Jackie." What about her bisexual past? "Now they tell me about it," Stockard jokes. Did you ever think that your character's relationship with Jackie had any Sapphic touches? Did you ever imagine a make-out moment? "Me and Bette necking! Can you see that scene? Oh, God! I wish we had. ... Can you imagine Bette and I sitting there, whispering to each other, 'All right. Do you want to make the first move?' That would have been a pretty great movie." It would have. 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