Five years ago, writer, director, producer and activist Del Shores struck gold with the film version of his play Sordid Lives, spawning an instant cult following and putting lines like “Would you like a Valium” and “Shoot her in the head, Wardell” on the tongues of gay men everywhere. Last year Shores and company seemingly hit the jackpot a second time when he delivered a prequel in the form of a television series on Logo, bringing much needed viewers and press to the fledgling queer network.
Sordid Lives: The Series allowed Shores to delve a little deeper into characters like Sissy, Latrelle, Ty and Brother Boy and brought together an ensemble cast that included gay icon Olivia Newton-John, TV legend Rue McClanahan, openly gay Emmy-winner Leslie Jordan and even Shores’ own husband, Jason Dottley. The series was Logo’s biggest hit, so naturally everyone from Shores and the cast to the network to the fans thought that there would be a second season.
But that may not happen. Shores let us in on what he calls “a sordid mess.”
WATERMARK: What is the official status of Sordid Lives: The Series? Will there be a second season?
DEL SHORES: Well, it’s in limbo. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the show. It doesn’t feel right now that if Season Two is going to happen that it’s going to be very soon. Until we get this sorted out it’s a big sordid mess is what it is.
Is there an easy way to explain what that mess is exactly?
Logo ordered the second season contingent upon our foreign financier and partner International Management Group coming in for a second season with their portion of the money. The show was financed by three entities; Logo, IMG and the production company Once Upon A Time. IMG was interested in a second season but they had not sold enough countries to justify the expense. That meant that the second season was probably going to happen but it was going to take a while. We said, “Okay, we’ll wait.”
The good news for us was that the show was basically running on a loop on Logo and ultimately the 12 episodes ran right around 280 times collectively. So that means, in our business, that we get paid every single time it runs. The responsibility of paying those residuals was Once Upon A Time films and Stanley M. Brooks. He was the one who was supposed to pay the residuals for at least the first 10 runs of each episode. He has refused to pay us.
What did Logo have to say about that?
Logo’s responsibility was to pay us anything over 10, but their deal was that they paid Once Upon A Time so everything was funneled through them. They just kept the money.
Did they give you a reason for not paying you?
Their reason was that the show was over budget. That’s their claim and that they did not have the ability to pay this. However, this company has made 58 movies since. It is unfortunate that this is coming up on a year and we still have not gotten one nickel from them.
Is there anything that Logo can do to bring Season Two to the fans?
I wanted Logo to just buy the show from the production company, solve all these problems with the unions and they could own the show. They said because of the economy they were unable to do that. What really pissed me off was that after they told me that they could not buy the show back it’s on the front page of Variety that they had picked up reruns of Comedy Central’s Sarah Silverman Project. They were paying more for those reruns than they paid for the first run of Sordid Lives.
They paid $400,000 per episode. That’s $4 million dollars! We need a new home, a new network. That’s what I think.
Have you considered taking everything you have already written for Season Two and doing it as a sequel to the original film?
I have and it’s possible that I can continue the franchise through film and through stage and not through television. A lot of fans want it on TV and I loved the format of telling those stories because I got to get a little bit deeper into those characters.
Why is the DVD of Season One only being released in Canada and not in the U.S.?
Once Upon A Time, for some reason, has not made the DVD deal in America and IMG who owns the foreign rights has started to release the DVD in Canada because that is the country where the show started one week before it came out in the U.S. Again we thought, “What do we do here?” Our fans want this and the way I can do this legally is to buy them myself and sell them as collectors’ editions as an import.
Of everything you have written do you have a favorite line?
My favorite line is the mantra that the character of Mark has in my play Southern Baptist Sissies. “Sometimes I close my eyes and create a perfect world—a world of acceptance and understanding and love. But I always wake up, and now with hope.” That’s my favorite line because I do live with hope every day.
