L-Word Co-Creator Plans Middle-America LGBT Documentary

It’s undoubtedly true that most LGBT documentaries and entertainment concentrates on people living in big cities. However L Word co-creator Ilene Chaiken wants to address that, as nearly 10 years after the show brought lesbian lives into people’s living rooms, she’s hoping to make a documentary series about LGBT people living in Middle America.

The area between the East and West coasts of the US is often seen as a hinterland of bigotry, devoid of gay people or any sort of LGBT culture.

Chaiken wants to address that, telling THR, “Being gay is not a monolithic proposition. We’ve lived so many different lives in so many different communities, with so many different experiences. I want to tell stories that are specific to being gay but reflect a lot of different realities of gay life.

“We were telling one story in ‘The Real L Word’ in LA and Brooklyn with a group of women we were following. This is a very different story, and it didn’t really belong in that story.”

She adds that “It’s going to be quite different in tone and ambition [to The Real L Word]. I have been feeling this for a while and [producers] Magical Elves and Showtime felt compelled to look in this direction.”

It will be, “Less glamorous and a story about different facets of gayness. We all know, especially those of us who are gay, that there are challenges and hardships and that there are a lot of places in the world in this country where it isn’t easy to be a lesbian or to be gay. That part of the story gets touched upon in The L Word and in three seasons of The Real L Word in Los Angeles and New York but we’re really going to look at what that is and explore it now in a more unvarnished way.”