Jerry PortwoodPictured: Alan Cumming (left) and Florent Morellet dressed in drag in front of the iconic diner.
"Everyone from Madonna to Amy Winehouse has walked through the doors," documentary filmmaker David Sigal said when his film Florent: Queen of the Meat Marketcame out in 2008. "I always thought the diner was the closest thing I had ever seen to Andy Warhol’s Factory. It represented an iconic meeting ground for the city.”
Sigal managed to interview over 50 characters about Florent Morellet’s 24-hour diner that was a landmark in the Meatpacking District for decades — including actress Julianne Moore, the artists Christo and Jean- Claude, designer Isaac Mizrahi, and downtown performer Murray Hill — and now it seems we may get just as many cameos in a planned comedy series on Showtime starring Alan Cumming as the gay restaurateur himself.
Deadline reports that Cumming's passion project (which he had originally shopped to Sundance Channel) is now in development and will be a "half-hour dark comedy," starring Cumming in the title role, written by Patricia Resnick (Mad Men, Nine To Five) and directed by The Good Wife's Rosemary Rodriguez."
As the site explains:
"Florent will explore the light and dark of that time, as well as the craziness of a place that become a destination for everyone from NY’s literati to the neighborhood hookers and hustlers, the NYPD, and the burgeoning LGBT community — all through the eyes of Florent, played by Cumming (with advice from the real restaurateur himself)."
It will certainly provide a very flamboyant role for Cumming that separates him from Eli Gold, his role on The Good Wife. The French-born Morellet would dress in drag for his annual Bastille Day street party. Plus, Morellet's menu board was infamous because it tracked his T-cell count (he tested positive for HIV in 1987). So there will hopefully be gallows humor mixed in the comedic, quirky plot of the series.
As Out Editor Aaron Hicklin wrote in his 2008 Editor's Letter before the diner closed:
"There have always been good reasons to find yourself at Florent — the much-loved diner in New York City's meatpacking district that opened in 1985, when the area was still known primarily for sex clubs, tranny hookers, and meat trucks — but the most compelling reason is that it never closes. I've lost count of the lost nights spent sitting on one of the red vinyl stools at the long countertop racing deadlines to finish a story, while being distracted by the spooling narrative of the night. As the meatpacking district began to gentrify it came to seem a minor miracle that Florent didn't disappear along with the rest of the gritty old neighborhood that was busy being Starbucksed to death, as designer shops and boutique hotels and, inevitably, a gleaming new Apple store moved in. I remember sitting at the bar early one morning and laughing at the gallows humor on the famous menu board on which someone had listed five reasons to be happy: 'Number one, Baby Gap hasn't opened here'yet.' That day may now be closer to hand than even Florent Morellet, the indefatigable owner, had anticipated. Earlier this year he announced that the diner that never closes is, finally, closing — done in not by waning popularity but skyrocketing rents."
Watch a trailer for Florent: Queen of the Meat Market below:
Alan Cumming to Star in Florent, a Showtime Comedy About the Gay NY Restaurateur
0Alan Cumming to Star in Florent, a Showtime Comedy About the Gay NY Restaurateur
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