AfterEllen.com: How long have you been the Entertainment Editor for Curve Magazine, and what attracted you to this position?
Diane Anderson-Minshall: started in mainstream publishing and around 1990 moved into queer publishing—queer newspapers, a weekly television show in LA, and freelancing for the new queer magazines. I edited a weekly newspaper in New Orleans and then did some freelancing for Deneuve Magazine. When my partner and I came out to California (from New Orleans) it was so I could take an editorial job at On Our Backs magazine, which at that time was only one of two lesbian magazines.

It was also at a point of great turmoil in the mag and after another particular dispute with the publisher a group of 4 of us—myself, my partner Susannah, Heather Findlay, and our art director--left and decided to launch our own magazine, which was Girlfriends. I edited Girlfriends (and was a minority owner) until I left at the beginning of 1999.

In 2000, Angelina Malhotra-Singh and I started Alice Magazine (which was a multicultural women’s magazine) and we sold it the next year.

Essentially I started writing for Curve not long after I left Girlfriends. I became a contributing editor and then near the end of last year moved into a new position of entertainment editor.

I’m attracted to the position of entertainment editor because I literally eat, breath, and sleep lesbian-in-entertainment issues. I’m feverishly devoted to lesbians in pop culture. I’m obsessed with lesbian subtext in films from bleak Iranian epics like Two Women to lesbosploitation schlock like Lord of the G-String. I watch more TV and movies than anyone I know and I have a particular disdain for people who can’t just rattle off the names of every actress on every prime time series that I like.

Also, I’ve been doing celebrity interviews since the early nineties and I think I’ve developed a relationship with a lot of publicists and handlers that can be an asset at a small magazine. Plus I’m not too bright, so it’s not like I could be out there writing meaty film diatribes ala Judith Halberstam so I could never—even if they’d take me—make it in academia. So where else is a film buff to go?

Are there common themes (besides the obvious) in the entertainment-related issues you cover in Curve? What compels you to write about a particular film/TV show/character/celebrity?
That’s a good question, actually, because I think I have a wider net than a lot of lesbian entertainment critics. I feel like I’m looking at the industry from a lesbian perspective so anything I infer to be of interest can be of interest to queer female readers. I think there have been some amazing changes to the film and television landscape in the last few years that affect spectators even if they don’t realize it. I know you think lesbian subtext equals no text, but I disagree. I think of that Bonnie Raitt video that aired years ago in which several different couples are dancing. One of the couples was same sex and everyone got all excited about it.

Viewers are still affected by lesbian and queer imagery in the background, the margins, the supporting players and that all helps shift the landscape a bit to be one that includes us. So I think that I “read” characters differently and want to relay that to our readers. I don’t like to make assumptions about character’s identities on television shows, for example, because just because the fact that Catherine Willows on CSI, for example, was married doesn’t mean she hasn’t experienced Sapphic surrender. And it doesn’t belie the fact that she’s a tough, butch woman who has never once donned a skirt.

For a shorter answer though, in terms of film, TV, DVD/VHS, and cable, I try to cover anything written by or directed by a queer woman, anything specifically or subtextually about a queer woman or women (which includes a lot of grrrl power, girl bonding stuff), and anything somehow featuring a lesbian (usually as an actress). So, I think that most people see Slumber Party Massacre (written by Rita Mae Brown in one of her “I have to pay the bills moments”) and sees a bunch of skinny white girls getting killed. I—and probably a lot of lesbians—see subtle messages about heteronormative behavior, girl bonding, and the impact of patriarchy on social interactions.

So, I want to look at what it means to have a lesbian star as a virgin (Fright Night) or having a lesbian direct a reality program (The Osbornes), a lesbian provide tiny special effects (Armageddon), or even having a closeted lesbian play a straight forensics investigator.

Do you think the recent increase in the number of lesbian/bi women in film and on television reflects a lasting and/or positive change in Hollywood, or just exploitation/an attempt to capitalize on the latest trend?
Both, probably. Hollywood is a really predictable industry and they go where the money is. Period. If lesbian representations raise the ratings and thus ad dollars then they’ll keep playing them but half the time they have to battle a lot of other forces that try to keep our images off of the 8 o’clock time slot (the family hour) so it has to be really worth it. Some networks, too, are trying to push the card on particular issues (like UPN, for example, just asked all of it’s showrunners to incorporate HIV issues into their shows).

But I do think that in terms of queer imagery on television and film it’s one step forward, two steps back. I don’t think we’ll ever not have lesbian images on screen but I do think that you can have a Sundance darling like But I’m a Cheerleader come out and surprise everyone, suddenly everyone is abuzz over the idea of more lesbian films, and yet nobody is actually funding lesbian features.

This year’s Sundance, by many accounts, had a dearth of lesbian features. Lots of lesbians in attendance, far fewer on the screen.

How do you think the portrayal of queer women in entertainment has changed over the past several years? What kinds of trends are you seeing now?
I think that more and more lesbian writers are involved behind the scenes and that, especially in television, seems to shape the way all women are presented in these shows. I also think when women are behind the scenes they can manage to play a scene that appeals to both men and women.

It’s what Teresa DeLaurentis, author of "Alice Doesn’t Feminism," calls “offering their heterosexual female audience a ‘safe’ means of engaging with a lesbian fantasy scenario by offering them at the same time the possibility of denying this fantasy.”

That may be but I think it’s a swift move on the part of the writers. It’s not like you don’t need an overwhelming crush of viewers to keep a show on the air and if it doesn’t turn off viewers that Jill Hennessy’s character on Crossing Jordan is really butch and has anger management issues and seems to be more attracted to Mariel Hemingway (who is 40—another good thing on TV) then her male coworkers, it’s a good thing for the network and it’s a good thing for dyke viewers.

Overall, in film, I think the representation of lesbians has become more authentic but I’m not sure if we’re necessarily out of the margins yet.

Any current trends or developments in this area that you’re particularly excited about?
Most notably, lesbian filmmakers getting mainstream projects like Cheryl Dunye (doing My Baby’s Daddy) and Lisa Cholodenko (with Laurel Canyon) because I believe that lesbians bring a unique vision to screen—even in the “obvious” absence of queer content.

I think actresses are more willing to play lesbian roles now days. It used to be that nobody would take a lesbian part—remember when Cher did Silkwood? Nobody would take that part. Even with later films, from Desert Hearts to Bound, the filmmakers did not have ease in casting the films. There was a lot of inference that these women’s careers would be over.

Then in the mid nineties, you could not launch a film with lesbian characters without the aid of the queer press. Bound, for example, became a cult hit in large part due to the queer press. Now, a film like The Hours can turn away lesbian coverage (which they did), cast some of the most talented A-listers out there, and get nominated for an Oscar. So, that’s an evolution in and of itself and though I hate that the studios can thumb their noses at us (and talk with the boy mags) I still think it’s a great thing that they can attract large national audiences. Or that straight audiences can “get” that Queen Latifah is queer in Chicago.

I think, though, that the most exciting trend is probably the development of digital filmmaking—it costs a whole lot less and, face it, that’s always been the number one problem confronting female filmmakers. Now instead of schtupping for funding a lot of filmmakers (like Erin Greenwell, who did 21) can just get out there and do it. Also, lesbians are embracing camp a lot more in their work—Nanci Gaglio’s Pussies, Angela Robinson’s D.E.B.S., Jennifer Arnold’s American Mullet—and that is a nice development to the cannon of lesbo cinema.

I think docu and short work has been, for the last decade, been especially strong for lesbian filmmakers. I’d like to see distribution improved for shorts. Diane Nerwen’s The Great Yiddish Love, for example, is an incredible film but I don’t think many people have been able to access it. Film festivals are great but until direct-to-consumer distribution improves (or lesbian consumers begin to embrace short compilations, which they haven’t yet) then something like this will just sit in the archives.

Oh, another thing, trans imagery—films and docus by, about, for FTMs—have really increased. I’m not sure whether lesbian viewers are embracing them (or whether, if they do so, they do it under the insistence that these are really just butch women). But it’s a growing cannon nonetheless.

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