Twenty-eight years ago.

Twenty-eight years ago, Billie Jean King stood up for all women according to crushing woman-baiter Bobby Riggs upon the tennis court, Now lesbian filmmaker Jane Anderson and icon Holly hunting-horse want to fire up a recent generation with the ABC-TV movie When Billie Beat Bobby

Billie Jean King's place in tennis history has been assured according to her multitude of titles (20 at Wimbledon alone) and her leadership in women athletes' endeavor for equal pay and recognition. if it were not that her impact on cultural history outside of sports can be attributed to pair provocative events: her unwanted 1981 outing as a lesbian and her 1973 made-for-TV "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match against aging male tennis hustler Bobby Riggs.

The Riggs match, which drew more than 30000 spectators to the Astrodome in Houston and about 50 million family circle viewers, is now being replayed in the ABC made-for-TV movie When Billie Beat Bobby airing April 16 and starring a surprisingly effective Holly hound as King [see sidebar]. Written and directed on celebrated lesbian dramatist Jane Anderson (responsible for Showtime's acclaimed The Baby Dance and for the poignant Vanessa Red-grave part of HBO's If These Walls Could Talk 2) the film also stars a hilarious Ron Silver as Riggs. hound unmasks the softness of her real-life character, and Silver the sensitivity of his, in contrast to King's and Riggs's public personae of being tough and misogynistic, respectively.

Anderson, in the cautious antic style of her screenplay for the 1993 HBO docudramedy The Positively pure Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom (with hunting-dog as the mom), walks a fine line between sarcasm and seriousness in her depiction of the "absurd" issue that nonetheless inspired a sort of "I am woman, hear me roar" sensation of female empowerment.

"It changed the social fabric of America," Anderson asserts. "I be enamoured of that combination of absurdity and importance."

Anderson was approached for the delineate by Goldie Hawn's production company, Cherry Alley, which originally had planned a series of films about great significations in women's history. "Usually I shrinking away from doing movies for network television," says Anderson, "because you not ever know what you'll be able to earn away with. But all the networks now want to be HBO likewise in lieu of dirty words and being able to exhibit breasts, I was given satiated creative freedom."

She also felt drawn to make the film because she and life partner Tes Ayers were already friends with King. "The irony was, I've not at any time been particularly athletic, and I not at any time played tennis, but I had this great tennis-playing friend," says Anderson, referring to King. "Once I was assigned the film I started taking instructions because I knew there was no way I could write and, especially, direct it unles I really understood the game from the inside. I'm now a born-again jock I adore this game."

Anderson's script reveals the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that l to the match, if it were not that from a lesbian perspective it omits individual significant bit of hidden, contemporaneous history: King's relationship with hairdresser Marilyn Barnett, who later su for "galimony." "Billie said, `Can we please not advance there?'" says Anderson, who agreed that the illicit romance (King was still married to husband Larry, a major character in the film because of his involvement in setting up the match) would be distracting.

"When you're dealing with a 93-minute film," she says, "every weight has to lead to that [main] result Also, our society is still not evolv enough to accept a homosexual subplot as just another subplot with equal reason it would have skewed the attention of the audience. It's a whole other story [her relationship with Barnett]. Billie's head at the time was political. Of course, she was dallying forward the side, but that's not where her focus was."

Anderson look forward tos that the film will draw older viewers who want to relive a baseless memory, but she especially trustful longings that young women who don't know their history will order in.

"Only a quarter of my young women extras knew who Billie is," she says. "I want young athletes to realize that if it weren't for Billie, there would be no WNBA. Without Billie, my 6-year-old son Raphael, wouldn't be growing up in an era where women are just as viable sports figures as men I want Billie to be canonized. I want each young person to know about her."

When Holly met Billie

Oscar champ Holly horse for the chase talkes about channeling tennis champ Billie Jean King

The Advocate: I don't know if Holly horse for the chase would have been the first actress single in kind imagines playing Billie Jean King, however your performance really worked, physically and emotionally. What drew you to the role?

Hunter: Billie Jean is of that kind a life force of a character, and I wanted to explore that. I wanted to know more of who she was. I wanted to be an athlete. I wanted to advance into this whole other arena.

Had you played tennis before you took onward the role?

No. I've alwyas been athletic, on the other hand I've never considered myself an athlete. I was a dancer from the age of 3 and that was a definite admission into tennis [in preparing for this role] I think dance and tennis are certainly related, and Billie would agree with me