Interview With Liz Feldman

AE: What are you working on now?
LF: One of the things I'm working on now is promoting the short film I made with my sister, called My First Time Driving. It was a story I always wanted to tell because I thought that maybe it could help people. It's currently playing film festivals.

I had a really unique coming-out story which involved my mother knowing I was gay long before I did. When I was 16, I went away for the summer for a drama program, met a girl. She totally seduced me —

AE: Nice.
LF: Yeah, super hot. We're still friends. And I was like: "Huh. I guess I like girls." But I wasn't ready to say anything about it. Plus I thought I also liked guys at the time.

So a year passes, I go to another summer program, and my mom comes up early to see our show. I let my mom into my room, but I didn't realize that in my roommate's bed were two girls sleeping. They weren't gay; we had all just been up all night and they were tired.

About a month later, I'm coming back from having spent the night at one of those girl's house. I'm a senior in high school and I'm coming home because I have an appointment with my SAT tutor. I get home and my mom says, "There's a letter on your bed … it's from me."

So I start going over in my head all the bad things I'd done from the night before. I smoked cigarettes, I drank alcohol. I was already spinning my story in my head. I already know I'm in trouble because — my mother had a hard time communicating the tough stuff, so she often did it through poetry. So I know I'm in trouble because I know it must be tough because in this envelope is at least one poem.

She tells me, "Don't open it here, open it in the car!" I'm 17 years old, I've had my license for six months, and my mother won't let me drive the car. So she will be driving me the 15 minutes to this appointment because I'm not allowed to drive the car even though I've had my license for six months. And this was far more pressing on my mind than my sexuality, because all I wanted was that goddamn car!

So I open the thing, and it's a poem and it rhymes and it's from the perspective of a daughter talking to her mom, and it's basically like … I'm gay.

I was so shocked and not at all ready to discuss it. So I turned to her and said, "You're very perceptive." I didn't know what else to say. And she says, "There's another poem." I look behind it and the second poem is the mom talking to the daughter, saying, "It's OK, we'll figure it out, I still love you." And it all rhymed.

I said nothing, so I think my mom knew she was onto something. So she kinda freaked out in the car a little; she was crying and worried. This was 1994. You forget how different things were then; it was before Ellen came out of the closet. You can read about that on BeforeEllen.com.

I knew that my mom would be fine with it eventually, but I knew my dad was very homophobic. He made it very clear to us growing up that he felt that gay people had a mental disease, which even before I was ever aware of my own sexuality, I remember thinking that was so wrong. I had a sense of social justice about it, and it really bothered me when I was 10 or 11 to hear him talk about that.

So when my mom surprised me with these poems, the only thing I could think to say was, "Don't tell Dad." But of course that's her husband … so that night she told him. I was watching TV and my dad came in and said in a thick Brooklyn accent, "Your mother told me you've been having some questions about your sexuality."

So I said, "Yeah, I have." He got really upset and started to tear up, and as much as I was mad at him for having the beliefs that he had, I really kind of felt for him too. It was definitely not what he expected. So he wanted me to get a psychiatric evaluation. And I said I would, but only if he went with me.

So we all went — me, my mom and my dad — to this therapist. She said, "What's the problem?" And I said: "That's just it. I don't think it's a problem. Everybody else thinks it's a problem, but I just wish we would stop using the word 'problem.'"

And I look at myself now, as a 30-year-old woman looking back at me at 17, and I'm really proud of the way I handled it. I don't even know if I would have handled it that well now. So we talked about it, and I had my psychiatric evaluation, and we all met back together. The therapist said I was the most mentally stable teenager she'd ever had in her office and that I didn't need therapy, but that she recommended that my parents stay on.

That was our conversation in the therapist's office, then we were done and we walked out to the car and my dad put his arm around me and said, "Most mentally stable kid, look at you!" because suddenly he was all proud of me again, and my mom handed him the keys to the car. And he threw them over at me and I caught them, and that was the first time I ever drove the car.

And that's the genesis of the film, except that I wrote my dad out of the movie to protect his privacy. And the story is inspired by that story, but it's really just about my relationship with my mom.

I made the film with my sister, which was also a dream come true. I always wanted to work with my sister, we're very close and get along really beautifully. And we just had this great experience making the film and we've had a lot of success with it.