who was the first centerfold for playgirl magazine

'At that point I knew we had to go outside the studio system. 'Can we make just one little change?' they said. 'It was a certain go except for one little problem. In fact, a major studio was interested in his 'Man of the Year' script, too, said Shafer. He moved to Hollywood, did some modeling and fitness training but spent his nights hammering out screenplays, one of which he sold to Paramount for a film yet to be made.

It won him a student Academy Award nomination. Shafer went to film school at the University of Oklahoma, where he made a short about three teenage girls scheming to run away from a small town. And later, of course, I thought it was a great experience on which to base a film and satirize the whole thing.' I felt Playgirl was offering a great opportunity for somebody like me with acting, writing and directing ambitions. 'To some extent the job pushed me back into the closet again, and I even had to drag my lover back into the closet with me. Suddenly, I was afraid that being identified as gay would rob me of an opportunity in the entertainment business I was struggling to be part of. When I was chosen Man of the Year I had only just come out. 'I felt it was a career move, but I had mixed feelings about it. 'It was a job, a part I played,' said Shafer. The big gimmick of 'Man of the Year' is that Shafer had to pretend to be straight. With a couple of exceptions, Shafer hired actors to play key characters. And they won't talk about me now, either.' Playgirl magazine editors have de clined to comment on the film. But officially the magazine doesn't talk about its gay readers.

The women who work at the magazine know that. 'I'm guessing at least 25 percent of readers are gay men. 'Playgirl has a huge gay readership,' said Oklahoma-born Shafer. But the fact remains that Shafer, who is handsome and muscular - his current day job is as Richard Dreyfuss' personal trainer - was chosen as a sex object by a magazine aimed at women. 'Man of the Year,' now playing at the Lumiere, purposely blurs truth and fiction. 'Gay men are so often portrayed as drag queens or killers but hardly ever as the guy next door.' 'Making a comedy, a satire of the media, I hoped to set up a point of view we don't see in a lot of gay- themed films from Hollywood,' Shafer said.

Shafer, 33, calls his movie a 'mock documentary.'

Who was the first centerfold for playgirl magazine