It’s time for another Sarah-less edition of Best. Lesbian. Week. Ever. Karman and Malinda have already run this gauntlet, so it’s my turn this week. Not that anything we do is ever really Sarah-less, because that would just be reckless. And before you ask, yes, my avatar is the Mahna Mahna dude from The Muppet Show. This is all I can give you while I’m still doing my time in the Statler & Waldorf witness protection program. Those guys can really mess you up.
AND I KEPT GETTING IN THE LONGEST CONCESSION LINE, TOO
New York’s gay and lesbian film festival, NewFest, came to a close this past Sunday. I caught a few of the films, but I’m sorry to say that I missed the winner of the Audience Award for Best Feature, Out at the Wedding, directed by Lee Friedlander (Girl Play).
Even worse, I didn’t just “miss” it – I intentionally skipped it, mostly because it brought to mind the abysmal April’s Shower. But now that I’ve read a little more about the film (and especially now that I know Jill Bennett and Julie Goldman are in it), I’ll be sure to add it to my Netflix queue. Out at the Wedding is a screwball comedy in which the main character’s secret romance with a biracial man somehow becomes a rumor (and then a ruse) that she’s a lesbian. That’s one way to get your family to accept your boyfriend: Spook them with some fake gaiety before you reveal the guy!
Here’s a still from the film – the woman gazing longingly from the other side of the fence reminds me of myself at about age 14, lusting after the local softball players (only I was probably wearing an itchy band uniform):
And how great is this picture of Cathy DeBuono? She plays the girlfriend-for-hire in the faux-mo shenanigans. She can also be seen in Logo’s upcoming half-hour comedy Exes and Oh’s, debuting this fall and also directed by Friedlander – see Sarah’s March 16 column for more on that. (Fun fact: According to IMDb, DeBuono was Terry Farrell‘s photo double on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Yeah, if I squint and imagine her with spots, she does look a little like Jadzia Dax.)
You can catch Out at the Wedding at Frameline in San Francisco on June 22 and at Outfest in Los Angeles on July 21. And here’s a trailer:
In an effort to ensure that you don’t suffer this same terrible fate and miss a potential audience award—winner at an LGBT festival near you, Malinda has put together this handy Guide to LGBT Film Festivals. Where were you in my hour of need, Malinda?!
Despite that mishap, I had a great time at NewFest. Read on for more of my cinematic adventures.
AWESOMENESS, ANGST AND AMUSEMENT PARKS
The Best of Lezsploitation – This was by far my favorite film of NewFest. It’s a compilation of Sapphic scenes from 1960s and ’70s exploitation movies, covering everything from Emmanuelle to Vampyros Lesbos. Producer and director Michelle Johnson, otherwise known as DJ Triple X, slogged through almost 20 films in order to cull the choicest clips of beehived predators and scantily clad housewives. (Yeah, I’m sure that was hell for her.) Her favorite? Abigail Leslie Is Back in Town. Hide your daughters!
After the screening, Johnson revealed that she’s also hoping to make a documentary about the women who starred in the films, to see what life is like for them after all those years of batting their eyelashes in the service of the male gaze (though, quite frankly, a lot of them seemed to only have eyes for each other).
A few of the clips in The Best of Lezsploitation featured the infamous Ilsa (Dyanne Thorne), more commonly known as the She Wolf of the SS, The Wicked Warden and Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, and I for one am hoping she’ll be in the follow-up documentary.
Pulptastic! Look for more lezsploitation lusciousness in the coming months on AfterEllen.com, and if you can’t wait that long, check out Wolfe Video’s Vintage Collection, featuring Just the Two of Us and That Tender Touch (coming to DVD in July).
Sonja – This German coming-of-age film sounded pretty good on paper. I mean, how cute are these two on their scooter?
I thought it might be another Show Me Love, but it was more like Show Me Shrug. Sonja, a textbook disaffected youth, spends most of her time slumping through fields, gazing longingly at her best friend and pouting at her parents, only to eventually succumb to the nauseating advances of a male neighbor a couple of decades her senior. The NewFest guide called it a film about the “evanescence and fragility of adolescence,” which I suspect is just a nice way to say “these kids are screwed up.”
I can’t really recommend Sonja. Even just thinking about it now makes me need a hug.
I also saw Itty Bitty Titty Committee (loved it) and Nina’s Heavenly Delights (almost sprained my eyeballs with too much eye-rolling). And I caught a few short films, including Airplanes.
I totally had déjà vu when I went to Coney Island a few days later. Luckily, my girlfriend was willing to hold my hand even without the surreptitious flirting on the sleigh ride.
KYRA’S ODE TO KISSING GIRLS
This week on Bravo’s Inside the Actors Studio, host James Lipton asked Kyra Sedgwick what it was like to work with Helen Mirren in the 1996 film Losing Chase.
If you haven’t seen that movie, it’s worth a look – even though, as AfterEllen.com reader cosmiccowgirl noted on the blog, the characters’ lesbian leanings are inchoate at best. At least there’s a nice kiss between Sedgwick and Helen Mirren (aka No. 31 on the AfterEllen.com Hot 100 list).
Actually, even though I’m thrilled every time someone celebrates the magnificence that is Mirren, I’m a little ambivalent about Kyra’s coy, cutesy tone when she talks about kissing girls. Yes, Kyra, we’re glad you like to do it – mostly because we like to watch you do it – but must you paint it as a naughty, I’m-just-a-girl-who-can’t-say-no way to misspend one’s youth? It’s like you have the kissing version of Tourette’s or a lip-oriented variation on the urge to pet the hair of strangers.
Still, we’ve come a long way since I saw Losing Chase in the theater in 1996. There were only about eight people there, and four of them were two straight couples on what looked like a double date.
At the first hint of a connection between Mirren and Sedgwick, one of the straight women hissed, “Is this movie about lesbians?” Then, when the smooch finally happened, she proclaimed, “It is about lesbians!” – and promptly left the theater. Eleven years later, audience members tend to be a little less blatantly homophobic, at least. And when they do have a fit, I’m the one who storms out and gets my money back.
CYNTHIA AND CHRISTINE, SITTIN’ IN THE AUDIENCE, C-L-A-P-P-I-N-G
On the 2007 Tony Awards, which aired this past Sunday night, there was a brief shot of Cynthia Nixon and Christine Marinoni in the audience. I fell all over myself to make a screen grab of it (like, I actually tripped on the coffee table), but the results aren’t exactly stunning. Still, I remain amazed that an out lesbian couple is so visible – yet so unhassled – in the theater world and in New York City in general. (Fine, I followed Cynthia for about a block once. But that was just the one time!)
For more Tony Awards fun, visit the blog.
I’D GO OUT OF MY BODY TOO, OR AT LEAST MY MIND
In a brief interview with E! Online, out actress Heather Matarazzo reveals that she doesn’t remember a thing about her big scene in Hostel: Part II.
“By the time we got to that torture scene, I was completely naked except for a triangle patch covering my hoo-ha,” she said. “I was dragged out by my ankles, hung 15 feet up in the air with chains on my wrists and a gag in my mouth. It was an out-of-body experience. I really honestly cannot remember a single thing that happened.” Here she is in a much less harrowing scene:
Unfortunately, Heather, I can remember every detail: I saw the movie this week. I know, I know: It was wrong of me to feed that beast with my $10.50. But, well, I didn’t hate it. Not because I think torture porn is a good thing, but because there were some interesting lesbianish moments.
First of all, the scene Matarazzo has so blissfully forgotten is obviously an homage to the Countess Bathory, that legendary lesbianish pseudo-vampire who bathed in the blood of virgins to keep herself young (if you really want to know more, read the book Dracula Was a Woman or Pam Keesey‘s fabulous books Daughters of Darkness and Dark Angels, but don’t blame me if you have nightmares).
And as Brian Juergens of AfterElton.com said in an email to me, the main character (Beth, played by Lauren German) might be gay or bisexual. She rebuffs every man who expresses an interest in her, but she doesn’t even blink when a manipulative Slovakian model (Vera Jordanova) shows some affection during a trip to the hot springs. (Yeah, it sounds like late-night Cinemax.)
I mean, yeah, I’m reaching a bit, and I’d prefer to get my positive gay images from movies that don’t also involve some pretty misogynistic images (surprisingly, not the bloodier ones but the images of prostitutes and exotic dancers). But let’s not get crazy. Anyway, I like Heather Matarazzo and I’m glad I got to see her and her finely sculpted neck and shoulder muscles on the big screen. (Hanging upside down has its health benefits; just ask Rosie O’Donnell.)
WE WANT VISIBILITY, NOT RISIBILITY
In the June 10 issue of The New York Times, the Sunday Styles section celebrated the commitment ceremony of Mary McBride and Leslie Kotz. McBride is a country-folk singer, and Klotz is the director of business development at a Manhattan talent agency. They exchanged vows in Montego Bay in May; both wore lovely white dresses.
It’s all sweetness and light until you get to this sentence in the article, in which they recount how they came to share an abode and a future: “Ms. McBride moved in gradually, at first bringing just her books, then her clothes, then her guitar and then her rusty furniture, which made it official.”
That’s right, because nothing says “I love you in a gay way” like a six-string and a truckload of rusty furniture! Also, tsk tsk, New York Times: Did you just make the U-Haul joke?!
Meanwhile, in an essay in the June 11/18 issue of The New Yorker, Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know) recalls the experience of making her first movie back in 1996. That was the year she was “giving lesbianism a whirl and had cut off all her hair.” Giving it a whirl? Did you go on one of those amusement park rides too, Miranda? At least you didn’t say it was a phase and then throw up on Denis Leary’s carpet.
COME OUT, ROCK OUT, RUB YOUR BELLY AND PAT YOUR HEAD AT THE SAME TIME
Spinner.com is “Rockin’ Out” in celebration of Pride. The site includes interviews about coming out with Amy Ray, Tegan Quin, Lucas Silveira (the Cliks) and Kaki King. Some highlights:
Tegan Quin (of Tegan and Sara) says being gay is really just another detail, like having brown hair: “[T]here are moments when you’re at an event – if someone’s like, ‘So, do you have a boyfriend?’ In those situations, I think of what I’m going to say. But when I wake up, it’s certainly not the first thing on my mind. I’m not like, ‘I’m gay!’ I’m usually like, ‘I’m starving!'”
Amy Ray has two gay older sisters. Regarding the last one to come out (her middle sister), Amy says, “I think my parents were holding out hope that she might be straight.” She then added, “My parents are really liberal now.”
I love it when the story ends with “My parents are really liberal now” rather than “My parents engaged in repeated viewings of Carrie and locked all three of us in the basement with a giant candle-filled altar to Tom Wopat.”
GET OUT YOUR BIG FAT GAY WALLETS
It’s time for some retail therapy: The SHOP tab on AfterEllen.com (in the top right corner of each page) now links to a special “AfterEllen.com Recommends” section of the Logo store featuring books, DVDs and music of interest to AfterEllen.com readers.
One thing to keep in mind: “Recommended” doesn’t really mean something’s fantastic; it just means we think you’ll probably want to know about it, or we think you might be looking for it. The AfterEllen.com section will be updated with new items monthly, so check back often.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
Dorothy Snarker assembled all the AfterEllen.com Hot 100 images into an awesome montage that’s perfect for a desktop near you. That is some giant eye candy!
Speaking of our Hot 100, ContactMusic.com is currently running a story with the headline “Hailey “frightened” of Jolie Feud Over Gay Honor.” No, I’m not kidding; they’ve actually twisted Leisha’s quote into that. What a model of responsible journalism.
The Heather Graham-Bridget Moynahan romantic lesbian comedy Gray Matters will be released on DVD on June 19. Two words: Molly Shannon.
On June 17, the Queer Black Cinema Visions Pride Benefit takes place in New York. For more information, see the press release.
Ellen DeGeneres‘ line of American Greetings cards debuts on Monday, June 18. At only $2.79 a pop, the gay just keeps on giving. (But if I hear one more person say “Ellen’s a card,” I will be inflicting some lethal paper cuts.)
There’s a new thread in the AfterEllen.com forums about Kick, an Australian drama that premiered June 9 and features a lesbian character. Somebody make some clips of this already!
The annual Out at the Park weekend, which takes place at but is not sponsored by Dollywood and Dolly’s Water Park, sounds almost as fun as a trip to Gay Days at Disney World. But there’s the added cool factor of Dolly Parton and her mellifluous melodies. The 2007 event takes place this weekend, June 16-17. Wear red if you go!
The first episode of Logo’s new surfer reality series, Curl Girls, is available for free on iTunes and Xbox Live (the show premieres June 18). Flippers optional when downloading.
The first episode of Angela Robinson‘s Girltrash launched this week! Watch it now.
This year’s nominees for the Television Critics Awards include The Wire (which features a lesbian character), Friday Night Lights (ditto) and 30 Rock (which features bi-curious shoes). The winners will be announced July 21, and our own Malinda Lo gets to vote! We’ll probably blog about the winners, so stay tuned.
Rachel Weisz has been cast as the mother in the film adaptation of The Lovely Bones, which may or may not include a lesbian character. (Who cares? Rachel’s in it!)
Finally, Fox News claims that the new programming chief of NBC, Ben Silverman, is dying to get his hands on Rosie O’Donnell – in a professional way, of course. Meanwhile, Barbara Walters had this to say about the post-Rosie era on The View: “There are things we’ve been able to discuss that we weren’t able to discuss with Rosie, like heterosexual sex.” Not cool, Babs; not cool.
And how did Rosie respond on her website? She kept it simple: “she is almost 80.” That’s either a slam or an acknowledgment that Walters is sometimes about as modern as a tea cozy. Either way, the prospect of hearing the remaining View ladies gab on about sex makes me glad I no longer tune in.
That’s it for this week! Check back next Friday for a new installment of Best. Lesbian. Week. Ever.
