AfterEllen.com: Tell me about the plot of this new film.
Jennie Livingston: Essentially, it’s about a lesbian couple, [named Gwen and Alixe], who love each other. They live together, but they don’t agree about what they want to do sexually. And so, they have to work that out.

AE: What inspired you to do this film? Was it based on personal experience or people you knew?
JL: It was based on both personal experience and a lot of people I know. But primarily, it was inspired by the fact that in films, you really don’t see very many female characters that have a lot of sexual agency. Women tend to be either objects of desire or we tend to be portrayed as wanting sex because we want love—and that’s it. A woman wanting sex [for sex’s sake] is very suspect. It tends to indicate that she’s a whore or that she’s got a problem.

AE: In the press release for the movie, you wrote that, in America, we tend to confuse S&M with real violence.
JL: What people confuse in their real lives is beyond me, but when people see movies, they think that if you represent even a fantasy about violence, it’s the same as showing violence. The irony is that a movie about a rape fantasy is unfundable, [while] a movie about a serial killer who stalks women and actually kills them is perfectly fundable. And so, I think there’s dishonesty on the part of the film industry at large.

AE: Do you think the executives who passed on Who’s The Top? did so because they were uptight about the content?
JL: [In general], I don’t think [the movies they pick have] so much to do with their personal feelings as what they think they can sell. When we were pitching Who’s The Top?, it was before Chicago and before Moulin Rouge, so the musical thing seemed weird. And the lesbian thing… This [movie] was [pitched] before The L Word.

I think that a lot of investors and a lot of companies [still] believe that something that’s for a lesbian audience will never make money, because they feel the man determines who goes to the movies. So if you, [as a filmmaker], have a gay male movie, they feel at least men are gonna pay to see it. But if you have a lesbian movie, they think, “Who’s gonna pay?” They think lesbians don’t have any money and there aren’t very many lesbians. And there’s a perception that there’s no need for their stories. But that was the perception with black stories back when Spike Lee made She’s Gotta Have It. And everyone said Paris Is Burning shouldn’t be made. But the movie was a huge crossover hit.

AE: Did 9/11 impact the marketability of Who’s The Top?
JL: Well, I assume it did. Mainly, people were just scared and distracted, so it was hard to do anything. And I think sex, a lesbian couple, and fantasy dance numbers may have been seen as irrelevant or trivial, in light of our new fears and our new consciousness about war. There was one funder who said, [after 9/11], “This is too violent,” and it was someone who really liked it before. But in retrospect, it’s impossible to say if I would have had the same difficulties if 9/11 hadn’t happened.

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