Back when I was reading Anne Heche's recent autobiography, Call Me Crazy, my dear friend and colleague Kim asked, "So. Is she crazy? Or crazy like a fox?" Based on the book, I thought she was mostly plain crazy, and just a little like a fox. Based on Anne Stockwell's interview in the November 6, 2001 issue of The Advocate, I have to change my vote; Anne Heche? Crazy. Or, at least, she has absolutely no talent for self-censorship.

Sometimes, it's cool when celebrities have no filter. John Waters, for instance, is enough of an iconoclast that he really doesn't have to give a shit what anyone thinks of him, and clearly, as a result, hasn't given a shit about his public image at any point in the past thirty years, god love him. Elton John? Super-catty bitch extraordinaire. I'm not saying that there's anything particularly shameful about a celebrity who has no sense of when to keep his or her mouth shut; I personally always have a little more respect for the (very rare) actor who'll cop to hating a co-star or musician who'll bravely call a fellow rock star a talentless hack. The thing is, if you're in the public eye, and you decide to make it your life's work to call out your fellow celebrities -- and, not only that, but you've just announced to the world that you spent several years believing that you were the Second Coming -- you kind of have to have a sense of humour and some humility about yourself, and Anne Heche really doesn't. Anne Heche loves herself, and she sure feels like every decision she's made in her life is absolutely right. At least, that's the impression she gives in the Advocate profile.

As one might expect, Stockwell has a bit of a different mandate in interviewing Heche for The Advocate than Barbara Walters did in interviewing her for ABC. Stockwell concedes that, back in the day, Heche was a tireless activist on behalf of the gay community, making herself (and her then-partner, Ellen DeGeneres) the go-to girl anytime any media event needed someone to stand out front looking blonde and elfin and non-threatening. But, Stockwell writes, "Many gays and lesbians feel that Anne is now trashing all she told us she believed. She came to fame in the gay movement; now she's talking about being raped by her closeted gay dad? She swore love for a woman; now she claims she was crazy at the time?...Yet it's her own contradictions, rooted so deep she can't see them, that make Anne a perfect poster girl for America's fractured attitudes toward gays and lesbians."

Despite this intro to the Q&A, Stockwell starts out slow, lobbing softballs. She promises Heche that she doesn't want to give offense, allowing Heche to reply that she's "been looking forward to this interview and a reintroduction" (to the gay community, presumably), since her breakup with Ellen. When Stockwell suggests that some people in that community are angry with Heche since she's apparently repudiated her putative homosexuality and married a man, Heche breezes, "Well, sure, anything you do in your life, people are going to be angry at you." Of course, if I were a gay reader who had, at one point, found Heche's visibility and apparent pride to be quite empowering, I would join the ranks of the angry when I read her declaration, "When I was with Ellen, I was telling people, 'If you come out, it's gonna be better for you.' But I honestly don't know that, and I used to say I did....You must tell your straight friends, because then we help you" [my emphasis]. First of all, "we"? "We" straight people? And then, not a column later, claiming, "Call me anything you want -- I don't call me anything. The labeling's about what makes you feel comfortable," and two pages later, exclaiming, "[J]ust because I'm getting married does not mean I call myself a straight." What if a gay former fan wanted to call you...oh, I don't know...a hypocrite? Would that be okay, Anne? Especially when you insist that straight people can help their gay friends "[h]elp you to embrace yourself. Help the rest of the straight community understand you"? So gay folk need their straight pals to validate their sexual orientation? Define their self-esteem? And on top of that, gay folk need to make it their life's project to act as ambassadors of homosexuality so that the straights can spread the word among the straights that gay people are okay? What the...what? That makes no damn sense.

(Those aren't the only contradictions in the interview. Heche complains about not working, allegedly for DeGeneres's sake, when she was with DeGeneres -- "I stopped doing acting roles because I thought, Well, this will prove that I've worthy of love!...I put out the energy of I can't work -- but when Stockwell mentions that some have described Heche as a "gold digger" as a result of her partnership with DeGeneres, she says, "I've always supported myself; I've worked my ass off." She says that she married Laffoon (instead of living with him, for instance) because "[h]e's a traditional man," but later gushes, "He's the only person I've ever met who truly does not judge.")

Heche also uses the interview to talk some shit about DeGeneres that didn't make it into the book. Heche says that when she told DeGeneres about Celestia (Heche's name when she was Jesus), "She tried to break up with me." When Heche screened her movie Stripping for Jesus (primarily about her childhood abuse) to DeGeneres, she claims DeGeneres said, "'Don't ever show the tape to anybody.' She threw my tape out." Heche perverts the language of homosexual identity by saying, "Every single choice I made in every relationship was because I was not ready to be out about who I was" [my emphasis], as though her insanity was her...I don't even know. Her "mental-health orientation"? Whereas, in the book, Heche claims that DeGeneres didn't want Heche to act in movies when they were together, in the interview, she elaborates: "I think she was threatened by me meeting men. I felt like I was not trusted. Which was offensive to me." Goodness, yes. Why shouldn't DeGeneres trust you when you made enough of a connection with your documentary cameraman that you started dating a month after breaking up with her?

Stockwell starts to take the gloves off when she points out to Heche, "If the gay community had hoped for one gesture from you now, it might have been that you wouldn't marry while gay people still can't." Heche's brilliant comeback? "Oh, wow, I never even thought about that!" If I were Stockwell, it's at this point that I would have walked out in disgust, but Stockwell is more of a journalist than I am and bravely soldiers on, observing, "People might counter, 'Then don't say you were married to Ellen, because you weren't.'" Heche comes up with some nonsense to the effect of "I was married for 3 1/2 years to Ellen under the traditions of how I was allowed to marry Ellen," whatever the hell that means.

It's around this point in the exchange that Heche start to unravel. Because Heche, in her book, insists upon her father's homosexuality at every opportunity (even tossing in little bigoted digs about his lisp and calling him a "fairy") -- alongside her descriptions of the horrific abuse she suffered at his hands -- Stockwell observes that, statistically, "heterosexual men molest girl children," and asks, "[D]o you worry that your book will play into people's misconceptions about abuse?" Heche snaps, "You can't say that." Uh, that's funny, because I think she just did. Stockwell asks about Lauren Lloyd, the (gay) manager who, along with her girlfriend, convinced Heche in the hospital that she should remain sane and stay on earth instead of ascending to Heaven in her spaceship; it seems that Heche and Lloyd no longer have a business relationship, but Heche shuts down this line of inquiry: "I don't think my relationship with Lauren is something I need to talk about."

As a moderator of several online bulletin boards, which sometimes attract young, sheltered, uninformed, and sometimes just plain ignorant posters, there have been many times over the years when I have had to explain to people that it's not okay for (allegedly) straight men to react violently when they're mistaken to be gay, and that defending their "manhood" is no excuse for homophobic behaviour since gay men are...you know, men. I sure never thought this fairly straightforward fact would be something that would have to be explained, in small words, to Anne Heche, ostensible gay activist. Apparently it does. Stockwell asks Heche, "You told Barbara Walters that Coley feels exactly as you do about not labeling sexuality. Is there by any chance a same-sex connection for him in the past that would help him be so open?" Now, granted, it's obviously not the case that a straight guy who is cool with gay guys necessarily has to have made out with a dude in the past. But given the circumstances of Heche's sexual evolution over the course of the past five years, and given that Stockwell is interviewing Heche not for, say, Glamour, but for The Advocate, it's not so unexpected that Stockwell might have occasion to ask Heche about her new husband's sexual identity. At first, Heche spouts some claptrap about "When he meets you, he doesn't meet your sexuality, he meets an individual." When Stockwell repeats her question, Heche loses her shit: "One, that's none of my business or your business to even ask that question, and I think it's completely out of line." Okay, "one," for someone who seems to blame every unhappiness of her childhood on her father's gay double life, I should think it actually is kind of your business to know whether your presumably mostly straight husband has had sex with a man. Stockwell repeats her assertion from the start of the interview that she doesn't intend to give offense, but Heche snaps, "I'm finished with this conversation....[A]fter everything I have given you, you are now asking me about my husband's sexuality?" It's not clear whether Heche is referring to everything she's given Stockwell in the course of the interview, or everything she's given the gay community (to which both Stockwell and Heche refer at several points in the article, describing Heche's former activism). Stockwell once again pokes at the exposed nerve of Heche's staggering hypocrisy, needling, "Anne, there's no intention to offend you or Coley. But you've said yourself many times, there's no shame in being gay." Caught, Heche recants, "There is no shame in being gay!"

Well, golly, Anne, as someone should have told you before you set out to write yourself a book: Show. Don't tell. Because for such a good actress, you're just not that convincing.

Also? YOU ARE CRAZY. Heading us off at the pass by pre-emptively "outing" yourself as crazy? Doesn't make you less crazy.