Celeb Dish with Steve Kmetko

 

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Story and photo: by John Chambrone

(Picture from Opening Night at Clip)

TAMPA-Veteran entertainment reporter Steve Kmetko will be appearing in Tampa as a featured guest for the Clip Film Festival. Taking place between October 8 - 18, the festival is celebrating it’s 20th year. Formerly known as the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, the event is a celebration of gay cinema. Kmetko will be there for opening weekend festivities. I recently got the chance to interview him for ‘Out in the Open,’ where I called him at his home in Chicago.

JC: What prompted you to come out professionally?

SK: It has been 11 years now, it coincides with the death of Matthew Shepard. For so long it had been speculated about Nathan Lane but he never talked about it. Then finally he got to a point where he said in an interview with the Advocate, where he was on the cover, that as long as these kinds of things are still happening, it is incumbent on all of us who are gay to let the straight people out there know just how many of us there are, and that this is not acceptable. That made so much sense to me. Besides, I think that at some point every gay person out there is tired of living a lie. Fortunately at this day and age, they don’t have to do it as much as we once did. I think we are making progress. That was the primary reason, the brutal murder of Matthew Sheppard. I just felt compelled to be public about it.

JC: I know that you have spoken to his mother recently, how did that go?

SK: It went very well. I long admired her for all of the work she has done since her son died. She became an activist for gay people against violence. Here is a woman, it is my impression, that is fairly soft spoken, very gentle, and just living her life. All of the sudden, this horrific crime intruded. Not only intruded, but claimed someone that was very dear to her. So she rolled up her sleeves and started speaking out. Here, 11 years later, she is working on getting an anti crime anti violence bill through congress. She is pretty convinced it is going to happen soon and if it does, she is certain the president will sign it. So I say good for her. It is quite a story.

JC: I did get the chance to meet her 10 years ago. She is an amazing woman. Can you tell me about your involvement in myQmunity and how we can hear the interview?

SK: You go to myQmunity.com and there is a little picture of me, several years old, because who uses current pictures in this day and age. There are a number of podcasts we have since we have been doing this. We have the current ones as well as the ones we have done previously on the website.

JC: myQmunity is bringing you to Tampa for the film festival. What will you be doing while you are here in Tampa?

SK: You know what, John, I think they are keeping that a secret from me on purpose. I think they have more things scheduled for me than they originally said. We’ll find out when we get down there, but seeing as I am unemployed, I have time on my hands. It’s not like I have to hurry back here. I am really looking forward to it. I am really flattered when I am asked to participate in something like this. I’ve been the Grand Marshall of various pride parades, I have been involved with the AIDS Quilt and I was asked to read the names. I have participated in a number of times as a closing ceremonies host for the San Francisco to Los Angeles AIDS ride. I just think that if my presence out there can make a difference in some way, shape or form, without sounding as if I am too self-grandizing, I hope I will be there and I will show up. I am a member of AA and one of the tenants of AA is to suit up, show up, and do your part. Do the next right thing. That is what I am trying to do in my life right now. I am 56 years old, I am at that awkward age, the age where no one is hiring me. One of the reasons I got involved with myQmunity is because they gave me the opportunity to do a podcast. I am in a business that is changing, as is yours, dramatically because of technology, and because of the internet. The opportunity to do new things as well as recycle some of the interviews I did with celebrities over the years, just sounded very appealing to me. I would like to revisit some of those old interviews. I have interviewed some really big names and enjoyed doing it. Like Bette Davis, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg and Cher on a couple of occasions. We are going to bring out a lot of those old interviews and take a walk down memory lane so to speak We are going to do interviews with Judy Sheppard and Howard Bragman, a Hollywood publicist who recently wrote a book called, “Where’s My fifteen Minutes?’ He had some very engaging stories to tell, and some current stories. He represented Paula Abdul for a while, so we got him right as she was leaving “American Idol,” and he was able to talk from the inside on that. We are hoping that we can put some material out there and some news out there that will be of special interest to the gay community.

JC: I know that you have been doing news and entertainment reporting for years now. What got you into that kind of work?

SK: I originally started out in sports. My first TV job thirty years ago was in sports. Then I transitioned into news, then breaking news. I worked in 5 markets in 5 years on my way to Los Angeles. I had set a goal for myself and lo and behold, sometimes goal setting works. I went from Rhinelander, and Green Bay, Wisconsin, to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Louisville, Kentucky, and then to Los Angeles in 5 years. I was young then and could still do it. I have always had an interest in pop culture, movies, music and television. I have been known to take a TV with me on vacation to a resort that doesn’t have a TV because I am that bad. I was in Hollywood and working for the CBS owned station. Their entertainment reporter was leaving back in the mid to late eighties. I wanted that job very badly. They didn’t see me in that particular role. Sometimes you are pigeonholed and they don’t see you as anything else. They saw me as a spot reporter or as they like to say, a general assignment reporter, someone who is equally ignorant in all areas. I knew I had a certain interest in entertainment reporting. Two things came along to convince them. Mr. Merv Griffin called me to ask me to audition for his daytime version of the ‘Wheel of Fortune.’ They started looking at me a little differently then. Virtually that same time, Entertainment Tonight called me and had me sit down and do an audition for them. There was a no tampering clause in my CBS contract, so Entertainment Tonight said they have gone as far as they could go. At that point, CBS said that maybe they had better rethink this. To my good fortune and my benefit, I ended up covering entertainment. I was at CBS from 1982 - 1992, and then they decided to cut back on features. They brought a new news director in, and cutbacks always seem to follow. Mine was one of the jobs that was eliminated. I had been out of work for a year and a half and E had been pursuing me. It is funny the way things change. Back in the early nineties, I thought of cable TV as ‘beneath me.’ That has changed quite a bit. I don’t think that people of a certain age delineate between cable TV and pay per view, or premium channels, or broadcast channels. It is just whatever they want to watch, they can find it. I signed on with E in 1994 and we went from 30 million homes to 80 million homes and 125 countries in a matter of 8 and a half years. I’d like to think I helped the network grow. It was probably the best job I had ever had.

JC: How are you going to top that? What is next?

SK: I don’t know. Any suggestions? One of the things that was said to me at the end of my tenure with E, by one of the management types, was they were going after the MTV crowd, and I wasn’t cutting it. There is no real arguing that point. I am 56. If you look at E now, which I do on very rare occasions, you see people like Ryan Seacrest, who is in his 30’s and Joel McHale who is a very talented guy, who I imagine is in his late twenties or early thirties. It is a fact of life and you have to accept it. If you are fortunate, once you get past the age of 40, and especially 50, if you are fortunate, you can find work, but otherwise in this day and age, it is very difficult. That 18-34 demographic is a killer.

JC: Where do you see yourself in the next few years then?

SK: Fortunately I am not desperate for work, which is a nice thing. One of the reasons I moved back to Chicago was for my family. My father passed away last year at age 91, and my mom turned 90. My brother is 70 and had cancer earlier this year so it allowed me to come back home to Chicago. I wasn’t working in LA, I wasn’t wild about LA any longer and I wasn’t happy with the way television was going per se. It gave me the opportunity to come back and be a part of my family. I had been selfish enough all of those years, in building a career and doing the me me me thing. Now I am very happy to be here in Chicago when my family needs me. If something comes along, we can take a good hard look at it. I had a gig in February with Disney. They did a syndicated show that aired all over the country. That was great fun. They flew me back to LA for a week. We taped a show featuring their upcoming movies for the rest of the year, highlighting them. They are mostly animated features. That was great fun and I am hoping things like that happen again. There has been talk about doing a few of them a year so we will see if that comes to fruition and I don’t get too old before they get around to doing it.

JC: Earlier you said you have talked to a lot of people in the past. Who was your best interview? Who was your worst interview? And who would your dream interview be with?

SK: I would have to say that one of my best interviews was with Bette Davis. That was the most fun. Even though she had been through a double mastectomy and she was in failing health, she was in her mid to late eighties, she was still full of piss and vinegar. She smoked through the entire interview, she said exactly what was on her mind and I loved her because she was from the old school. Today so many of the celebrities you interview, especially the younger ones, they measure each word for maximum effect, so they don’t say anything that will take away from their career. God forbid they be a real person. One of my favorites stories was from Bette Davis. She did a movie with Lillian Gish called “Whales of August.” It was one of the last films she made and between the two of them, they had close to 200 years in cinema. So I asked her what it was like to work with someone who could hold a candle to her in terms of longevity, and she said to me, without skipping a beat, ‘Mrs. Gish should never have left silent pictures.’ Wow, good for you. That is so rude, but I love it. She was great. One of my least favorite interviews has always been Mel Gibson. The man does not seem to like the process whatsoever. I am certain when he sits down to promote a movie, he does it because he is contractually bound to do so. It’s no fun. It’s painful for him, it’s painful for the interviewer. I have interviewed him a half dozen times and I can go without ever interviewing him again. The dream interviews are the ones I didn’t get to do after leaving E. By that I mean that when a good movie comes out that I see, I really miss the opportunity to sit down and talk to the people that are involved. Right after I left E the movie “Chicago” was released and I would have loved to have had the opportunity to sit down with Renee Zellweger, Katherine Zeta Jones and Rob Marshall. Those would have been dream interviews for me. I don’t have regular contact with these folks anymore. There are some people that you get accustomed to interviewing and with whom you have a good rapport. There are a number of those I miss. Julia Roberts, Whoopi Goldberg. They came to play the game. It is a game, promotion. They came to play. They made it very easy and it was great fun. Sharon Stone was another one. I miss those. They are dream interviews that are no longer dreams.

JC: A lot of folks have been coming out recently like Neil Patrick Harris, Lance Bass, and George Takei. Were you shocked by any of them?

SK: No, not really. No one stunned me. There have been rumors about a lot of people over the years that claim to be straight that shall remain nameless. I would like to know whether or not they are. It is a scary thing. I lost a job back in 1980 when I was working in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I worked for a station, WOTV, Channel 8 and I was on the verge of a promotion to the weeknight anchorman. The general manager found out I was gay. He called me up into his office, talked to me for about 45 minutes and asked me all kinds of things he really shouldn’t have been able to ask. Do I show affection to my boyfriend in public? Am I going to be seen marching in parades? etc., etc. I was as honest as I could be throughout the interview. At the end of it, he said he might as well be honest with me and that I should start looking for a new job because I wasn’t going any further there. So when people come out, it never really surprises me, but it does make me feel a little bit better because the more of us that are visible, the better it is for the community as a whole. One of the people I wish that would come out and be more vocal, and you can come up with any excuse you want, but it would be Anderson Cooper. I don’t know for a fact. He’s never said to me that he is gay, I’ve never slept with the man and I don’t know as a mater of fact, but there certainly are a lot of arrows pointing in his direction. I just think it would be nice all the way around. That is from a strictly selfish stand point.

JC: Why do you think so many people in the entertainment industry are still so closeted?

SK: I haven’t figured that out entirely. I would like to think that the stigma has gone away. but I will tell you that I had a manager and an agent in Hollywood, both of whom were gay, both of whom told me I could not do the cover of the Advocate. Absolutely not. No way. I did it anyway, right after the Matthew Shepard thing. If you were to talk to them today, they might say that is the reason that I am not working. You know what my mind keeps going back to? I wonder if America is too puritanical to accept people who are gay in that business. I keep thinking of Sir Ian McKellan and what a performance he turned in in ‘Gods and Monsters,’ as well as a number of other films he did around that time, like the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. He had been nominated a number of times and he came out publicly. I think it was known in Great Britain, but not here, and he didn’t win the Oscar. I often wonder if he would have kept his mouth shut for six more weeks that it would have made a difference. I don’t know. It certainly hasn’t hurt Neil Patrick Harris’ career now has it? What a talented young man.

JC: Yeah him I didn’t expect. I have no gaydar whatsoever, so when he came out I was like, ok, that’s cool.

SK: He’s really something. He’s very charming and talented.

JC: Since you are a professional interviewer, I was wondering how you think this interview went. What would you have asked that I didn’t?

SK: I thought this interview went very well. As a matter of fact, I thought you steered away from questions that I am so tired of answering, like why did you leave E. That was 7 years ago. That just doesn’t interest me anymore. I am not certain I would have added that much. A lot of people don’t even know that I was with E anymore. I thought you did a great job John.

JC: Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?

SK: I just hope that everyone comes out to the film festival and they will check out myQmunity.com, listen to our podcasts and support the website.

JC: Thanks and see you at the film festival.

Be sure to stop by and meet Kmetko this weekend at the film festival. For a complete guide to Clip, and for any other information you need regarding the films, parties, and special events, click onto www.cliptampabay.com. If you’d like to hear the interview, check out www.wmnf.org and go to on demand, podcasts, and then ‘Out in the Open.’