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AE: Why did you borrow so much from the musical format for this film?
JL: Sadomasochism, role-playing, and other kinds of different sexual activities are seen as difficult things to show, things that people aren’t able to deal with. So I wanted to find a vocabulary that is about something light and fun. The vocabulary [used in musicals] in American culture is about love. It’s about being transported. It’s about the light parts of our psyche. I wanted there to be a vocabulary, not so much to make light of the battle within Alixe, but to explore her conflicts in a way that shows that there’s some levity to her journey and some joy.

AE: What filmmakers made you want to become a filmmaker?
JL: Well, a lot of people. Werner Herzog. Peter Weir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder. John Waters. Stanley Kubrick. Chantal Akerman. The Maysles brothers.

My uncle was the [late] filmmaker Alan Pakula. He gave me a job on his film Orphans, and when I finished Paris Is Burning, he was totally encouraging and loving.

AE: What did you think about Secretary?
JL: Secretary is interesting. I think it’s a good movie. The thing about that movie that I like is that in the end, their being kinky didn’t preclude their falling in love. That, I think, is realistic. But that she had to come from a dysfunctional family was unfortunate, because I don’t think one’s tendency to have kinky sex is more determined by a dysfunctional family than anything else.

In terms of S&M in movies in general, I think American films haven’t dealt with sex very well, because we don’t really see sex as complicated.

AE: I was wondering if you could talk about Earth Camp One.
JL: That’s a documentary that I’m working on now. It’s about how I lost four family members in five years and a hippie summer camp I went to in the 1970s in Northern California, called Earth Camp One. It’s a mixed media, meditative film.

AE: Are you working on any other projects?
JL: I’m talking to one of the queer TV networks about developing some material. I have a project that I’ve been hoping to do for years and I’m still working on it—a TV series based on a Natalie Angier book, Woman: An Intimate Geography. And there’s a script that I’ve been developing for some time. It’s a dramatic script set in 1989 in New York and in East Berlin. It’s about a bunch of artists.

AE: How did you come to make Paris Is Burning?
JL: I moved to New York. I was taking a class in filmmaking at NYU, a summer class, and I met some guys who were voguing in the park and I [started] photographing. And I started going to balls to see them and to film. And I started photographing a lot and getting to know the people. And eventually, that evolved into the film project, which then took seven years to make.

What interested me about the ball world, as I got to know it, is that even though it was considered a gay subculture, it had so much to say about mainstream America. There was this huge commentary being made about race and class and gender.

AE: How did you handle the success of that movie?
JL: It was surprising. The fact that it was ever finished was shocking and wonderful. I handled it fine. I was thrilled.

What was hard was to realize that the fact that I had this huge success did not translate into the business thing. I think some of it was because I’m a woman, and I think when a woman has a success, the industry says it’s a fluke. I also think it was that I wasn’t willing to just say, “Okay, well, I have to figure out what the next commercial thing is. I got to do exactly what I wanted last time. Next time, I’ll do something that’s more what someone else wants done.” In retrospect, [refusing to do commercial projects] may not have been the right decision. It’s really tough to be a film director.

AE: Would you say being gay has helped or hindered your career or had no effect?
JL: Well, I can’t really answer that question, since I haven’t lived a parallel reality in which I was straight. I do think we may be beginning to get to the point, with digital media and the Internet and on-demand cable and things like that, where the fact that we’re this hugely diverse country is beginning to affect the marketplace. I was at a meeting at a gay cable network and someone said to me, [regarding a project I had in mind], “Well, that’s actually not gay enough.” And we both looked at each other and laughed.

Who’s The Top? is scheduled to be shown at The Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films this month, and Paris is Burning has just been released on DVD.

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