Jason Alexander of TV's "Seinfeld" stars in the movie adaptation of Terrence McNally's Tony-winning Love! Valour! Compassion!, which otherwise features virtually the entire original Broadway cast -- even the Broadway director. McNally wrote the screenplay (rated R) based on his own play about a group of gay men who find themselves growing into a family over the course of a series of weekends at an upstate New York summer house.

As on Broadway, Joe Mantello directs a cast that includes Tony-winner John Glover.

Alexander, who plays May 14-18 in on stage in Los Angeles' Promises, Promises, has taken over from Nathan Lane the role of the flamboyant musical-comedy expert Buzz -- "the love child of Judy Garland and Liberace" -- who finds himself falling in love with an HIV-positive man. In a well-publicized rift with McNally, Nathan Lane, co-star of the Off-Broadway and Broadway productions, turned down the L!V!C! movie, thus delaying the start of filming for a year until Alexander signed on to play the pivotal role of Buzz Hauser.

Filmed over four weeks in summer 1996 in Quebec and New York state, the movie reunites - with the exception of Lane - the play's original Off-Broadway cast: Glover, Stephen Bogardus, Stephen Spinella, Justin Kirk, John Benjamin Hickey, and Randy Becker with playwright/screenwriter McNally.

-- By Robert Viagas