By David Bauder
The Associated Press

DeGeneres

She was once simply Ellen DeGeneres, comedian. And that's what she'd like to be again.

Everything changed in the spring of 1997, when DeGeneres proclaimed from the cover of Time magazine that she was a lesbian. It was a major TV event when her character on the ABC sitcom, Ellen, came out a month later.

Now she was Ellen DeGeneres, gay comedian.

There's no putting that genie back in the bottle. But DeGeneres' new HBO stand-up special seems designed as a transition to a time when, she hopes, her sexual status won't matter. The show premieres Saturday at 10 p.m. ET.

She recently talked about how some of her stand-up comedy audience was there for the wrong reasons.

"They come because they're gay and I'm gay, and it's not like they really get the humor that I'm doing or get that that's not what I'm really all about," she said.

About 90 percent of the audience for her 2000 stand-up comedy tour was gay or lesbian, she said. This year, she senses it's about 50-50 gay and straight.

At the outset of the HBO show, taped before a New York audience, DeGeneres notes that despite their differences, members of her audience all have one thing in common. "We're all gay," she says.

The crowd roars. She cracks a few jokes about non-gays looking around nervously.

"That's my obligatory gay reference," she continues.

What everyone really has in common, she says, is they all like to laugh. She follows with nearly an hour of observational comedy, jokes about cell phones, behavior in elevators and annoying TV commercials.

The "g word" is never mentioned again.

Scott Seomin, entertainment media director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, doesn't believe the gay audience will feel abandoned. DeGeneres built her career on comedy that had nothing to do with being gay, he said.

That wasn't the case with the later years of her TV show. The final season was widely considered unpleasant, and DeGeneres fought with ABC over how much of the show dealt with sexual orientation. "It was no longer a character who happened to be a lesbian," Seomin said. "It was a lesbian character. And it suffered. It became a very different show."

He said he understood the psychology involved.

"When someone comes out of the closet, they really come out with a bang," he said. "It is such a relief. Depending on the experience, if you're accepted, you want to talk about it more. The way she was embraced empowered her to do more."

But the embrace didn't stretch far beyond the gay and lesbian community. Her secret fears - that she wouldn't get work or that people wouldn't like her because she was gay - came true, DeGeneres said.

"I was sort of an example of why people shouldn't do it," she said. "It took me three years to get back on my feet again. It was a long time before I had another chance."

For all the career calculation that has gone into her HBO special, something completely different may help her more in the long run. DeGeneres has drawn raves with her voiceover work on the hit Disney-Pixar movie Finding Nemo.

This fall, she will get another test before a mainstream audience when her syndicated talk show debuts.

DeGeneres said she's always admired Johnny Carson, and will use him as a model for an entertainment-oriented talk show.

"I think it will be the thing that will overshadow everything else I do in my career," she said. "I want to do this for 15 years or so. I want this to be the last thing I do."