Rob Cowen and Daniel Lipman have created and written and produced some wonderful quality television programs over the past 30 years including Showtime's "Queer as Folk" which ran for five seasons and is now on DVD. They also created NBC's "Leap Years" which I loved but didn't last long enough, and the wonderful series "Sisters" that starred Sela Ward and Swoosie Kurtz, among others, and, I hope, will be out on DVD soon.

But Cowen and Lipman, a longtime couple in real life, created what is their most important work more than two decades ago: "An Early Frost," the first TV movie about AIDS which was nominated for 14 Emmy Awards and won four, including one for Cowen and Lipman for their writing.

They were the recipients Friday night of the Lagacy Award at the Outfest Honors event in West Hollywood for this landmark film that starred Aidan Quinn as a gay man with AIDS, Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazarra as his parents and a very memoriable Sylvia Sydney as his grandmother. Out on DVD thanks to Cowan and Lipman's efforts, the movie also won a Peabody Award.

"It was the first film about AIDS and to preserve it is very important," Cowen told me before the awards show. "It was almost lost and out of print and if not for Wolfe Pictures, it might've been lost. AIDS is still around so it's a film that needs to be seen by people, who weren't there (in 1985). I think people need to be educated and reminded so the devastation doesn't happen to another generation."

Added Lipman: "We thought that when 'Early Frost' first came out 21 years ago, HIV and AIDS would be over by now and this film would be a part of the historical record."

Although AIDS is a heavy subject, the night's hostess Caroline Rhea made sure there were plenty of light moments. This woman is F-U-N-N-Y! "I'm not a direct member of the GBLT community but I have had a BLT," she said shortly after taking the stage. She then went off on bans on same-gender marriage: "Until gay people can get married, don't let straight people get divorced. It'll happen pretty quickly!" She got a little political too: "Everytime you watch (President Bush) talk, it's like watching your parents dance - a little part of you dies." And my favorite comment: "All the gay people I know just use the voice that God gave them and are just very, very brave."
What a sweetheart!

Faye Dunaway, still looking like a million bucks after all these years, was on hand to present the "Special Outie Award" to Regent Media for its extensive LGBT philanthropy and for the many queer films it has released over the years including Beautiful Boxer, Callas Frover, Sordid Lives, Summer Storm and Third Man Out: A Donald Strachey Mystery. The company is also behind here! Networks, the pay LGBT channel that has a library of more than 400 movie titles and original programming such as "Dante's Cove." Founders Paul Colichman (pictured, right) and Stephen P. Jarchow have been tight with Dunaway since she starred in their movie 'The Twilight of the Golds."
"I know the quality and care they put into their roles," Dunaway said. The very witty Colichman, a true life force, took the stage and told everyone that his business partner and friend Jarchow is straight but that "we embrace your alternative lifestyle."

Regent has contributed more than 50 masters of movies to be archived in the Outfest Legacy Project which is a historic initiative to preserve both the history and the future of LGBT media. While mainstream films are both collected by nonprofit archives (including the UCLA Film & Television Archive) and cared for by the commercial film industry itself, independent films are largely overlooked. Gay and lesbian independent films-including significant titles from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s-are in particular peril because of a perceived lack of commercial value by the industry and/or the filmmakers' inability to maintain their work themselves.

Outfest Executive Steven Gutwillig, as passionate and articulate proponent for the preservation of gay films as there is, told the crowd on Friday: "As a gay man, I'm desperate to know my own history." He talked about how many important movies that document gay history are in desperate need of restoration. "This blackout (of LGBT films) ends NOW," he said to applause. Gutwilleig talked to the audience about why it is so important to preserve these films: "Memory is a momument harder than stone."

After only one year, the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation has created the largest publicly accessible collection of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender media materials in the world (over 3,000 titles) and announced the first two feature films slated to be restored: Parting Glances (1986) starring Steve Buscemi and the groundbreaking Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1978).

The Legacy Project is working to raise funds to rescue these films and some of that money was raised on Friday night during a live auction charmingly hosted by Rhea who got a winning bid of $11,000 from an audience member for a private screening for 20 people of the upcoming musical "Dreamgirls" on the lot of Paramount Pictures.
But here's something I'm sure will garner even higher bids: the leather jacket worn by Heath Ledger in "Brokeback Mountain." Rhea said: "It has pure Aussie (body odor). It will get you laid for the rest of your life!" The jacket, which was modeled on stage Friday night, is up for auction on eBay for another week with proceeds benefiting the Legacy Project.