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AE: What do you think of all the new outlets for gay media? Logo, Here! TV, etc... There’s not just gay film festivals anymore. What about marketing your indie film to outlets?
EG: I think it’s fantastic that the way you can distribute your work and exhibit your work isn’t just sitting in the dark with a bunch of people staring at a 40-foot screen. Although, that’s my main goal, and that’s the most romantic, wonderful way I want to see my stuff shown.

But it’s so wonderful, because so many people get to see your work. I had someone e-mail me from Texas about my first feature, “21.” She said “OK, I’ve seen the trailer 20 times, can you please send me a VHS copy?” And I thought: Oh my God. Some lesbian in Texas is watching a 2-minute trailer over and over and over again because there’s not that proliferation of queer stuff in mainstream media. Someone’s sittin’ in front of their computer watching a trailer.

AE: God bless the Internet. And the growing gay market.
EG: Amen. That’s a wonderful thing. I hate to say “isn’t that great - it’s becoming marketable.” You know what--it is great that it’s becoming marketable, because the wider the acceptance is, the more we can get away with producing what we really want to produce. I don’t want to disrespect The L Word, but when people rag on The L Word and say “It’s crap, it’s crap, it’s crap.” I’m like: ”And you know what? Good. Who cares? ‘Cause at least now people are used to seeing lesbians the way they want to see them. Now we’re going to make sure we show them the way we want to see them.” The door’s a little bit more open. It’s not open the way we want it to be--some people say “That’s not me, that’s not me, that’s not me.” True, it’s not us, but guess what? We’re going to sneak in, now.

AE: We already snuck in.
EG: It’s like I want to get in some club, and some shady person is like (looking both ways) “Shh. I’ll get you in.”

AE: A shady person with a lot of money and connections.
EG: Yeah, but the more, the better. If I see a bad action film, I’m not going to say “Hey, that’s not the way straight white men are.” But we have so little. I understand why I get panicked when I see something I don’t agree with that’s queer; Because I’m waiting and so desperate to see something that’s true. It is frustrating, but the more there is, the more we can have diversity. We can have tacky characters, we can have victims, we can have heroes, we can have losers. We can have whatever we want. We just gotta’ keep pumpin’ it out, though. ‘Cause then it won’t be such a big deal when you see “Monster” that this is going to look bad for us. You’ll just say: that’s a character I identify with or don’t. It was poorly written or it wasn’t. And you don’t have to worry about the impact it’s going to have on your community.

AE: But you worry about impacting the community a lot.
EG: I care a lot about my community. BUT, I also think that all of us filmmakers, if you want to produce fluff, go for it. But if you want to produce what you think is the ultimate truth, you’ve got to go for that, too. We all have a right to just get it out, get it out, get it out.

AE: Well, you’re getting Mom the movie out. Want to tell us a little about that?
EG: I’m producing a comedy that features Julie Goldman, the well-loved comic Julie Goldman. Who you can also see in The D Word on the festival circuit. Julie’s the first and only openly lesbian character on The Sopranos, she’s a great stand-up comedienne, has a one-woman show...

AE: Comic goddess.
EG: Yes! And also featuring Emily Burton, also of The D Word and from Lesbian Pulp-O-Rama. And she is hilarious. It crosses over being a lesbian movie, but also with an Odd Couple twist to it. It’s about a market researcher and her fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants cameraperson stuck on the road doing market research for a company called OPENCAN. It’s a situational comedy where they get stuck in a podunk town and have to stay at a youth hostel. The story’s kind of a morality comedy, where the morality is: Wherever you go, there you are.

AE: Very Buckaroo Bonzai.
EG: (laughs) Yeah. It features a lesbian protagonist. It’s a slice of life comedy, but it offers a more sparse dimension to what we’re being presented. Once again, that’s a problem I have with a lot of the lesbian representation out there; it’s either sanitized or victimized, and there’s no kind of range in between. So, the kind of movies or screenplays I produce are simple stories, but ones that resonate as being universal. And not in the way everyone says “Oh, art is so universal.” Then how come we don’t see any lesbians, if it’s so universal?

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