AMBER BENSON: OUT ON THE TOWN

Spotted in The Advocate

Hopping into the festival van, I introduce myself and realize I'm talking to Amber Benson, the unjustly murdered Tara of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She's sitting in the back with Cole Williams and Russell Brown--her leading man and director, respectively, in tonight's opening feature. During a hilarious ride, the straight-but-polar-opposite-of-narrow Amber regales us with behind-the-scenes Buffy stories. Lesbian fun fact: In order to get Willow and Tara's unprecedented love scenes on the air, Benson, costar Alyson Hannigan, and series creator Joss Whedon submitted such carnal clinches that the horrified censors willingly went with the footage we saw. Food for thought, no?

It's doubly fun afterward to see my new friends Cole and Amber in Russell's film, Race You to the Bottom: Both actors hit their marks as a bi guy and a hetero girl swept up in an affair in Northern California's wine country. The movie is a smart window on a new world of romantic complications. Where old-world queers were traumatized by the thought of an either/or coming out, young queers with fluid sexual boundaries are up against a whole new set of dilemmas.

So, still banging on about how "unjust" the murder of Tara was... even after all these years. We do wonder what happened to the out-takes that the censors didn't pass, though...

Is it just us, or does Race You To The Bottom put anyone else in mind of Threesome?