Gay-themed movies can usually be counted on to have a gay or lesbian filmmaker at the helm. Then again, brothers and sisters can usually be counted on not to mack on the same woman.
Turning the tables on both of these Hollywood conventions is filmmaker Sue Kramer (pictured above, left), the writer-director-producer of Gray Matters, a romantic comedy with a gay twist, opening on Feb. 23. It stars Heather Graham (Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Boogie Nights) as Gray, a flighty New York City ad exec questioning her sexuality; Tom Cavanagh (TV’s Ed) as Sam, her goofball brother; and Bridget Moynahan as charming Charlie, the gal they both go ga-ga for.
Kramer, who lives with her husband and 2-year-old daughter in the gay-friendly neighborhood of Park Slope in Brooklyn, N.Y. , cites her sister Carolyn, who is a lesbian, as her inspiration for this lighthearted romantic comedy. “Carolyn always had crushes on many of my friends, and at first I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that’s so weird, she likes my best friend,'” Kramer recalled.
“And then all of a sudden, this big light bulb went off in my head, and I was like, ‘Of course she would like her. We’re so close; we like everything in life the same; we have the same taste in everything. Why wouldn’t she like my best friend?’ So I thought, ‘How can I make that interesting?'”
The answer is the fun, frothy Gray Matters.
Kramer drew inspiration from 1940s comedies to make the film, which took six years – and several casting changes – to complete. “I’m a cinephile to begin with, but I love Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges and William Wyler, and I love bantering dialogue,” Kramer said. “I love dialogue that kind of goes over each other and that is real, and I was very inspired by those movies. I wanted to pay homage.”
One particular old-school tip of the hat is sure to spike the blood pressure of modern lesbian audiences: a sexy pas de deux featuring Graham in a sharp suit and Moynahan in a provocative negligee, re-creating the “I Won’t Dance” scene from the 1946 Jerome Kern biopic classic, Till the Clouds Roll By. “That’s actually one of my favorite scenes in the movie. That was something that I had just visualized for so long,” Kramer said. And beautiful women dancing together never hurt a lesbian film’s grosses.
While it will obviously appeal to gay audiences in search of queer content, Kramer hopes the film will also draw in straight crowds: “I feel like it’s a film for everybody.” But why would a straight writer-director spend time, energy and Hollywood capital on a lesbian-themed movie? “I don’t think that you should be in any category in life, so I don’t think that there should be gay writers only doing gay stories and vice versa,” said Kramer, adding that she “wanted to write a movie that [my sister] could take my parents to, that she could take her straight friends to, that she could take her gay friends to, and that it could be somebody on-screen that she could relate to as a lesbian.”
Acknowledging that most portrayals of lesbians on the big screen tend toward the stereotypical, the psychotic, the tea-drinking or worse, Kramer said: “It’s not like gays have been portrayed as smart, funny, interesting, pretty women. I wanted to do something that could kind of encompass everything Gray was feeling about coming out, but also put it in the right format, so it could appeal to a bigger audience than a small art film.”
Kramer described the character of Gray as a combination of herself and her sister. “I tried to make a character that was gray in every way,” she explained. “Everything from the title to her name to all of her personality traits are all about [the fact] that she can’t commit to here or there. She’s not black or white. In terms of what she orders, she always has to order two things, and she can’t decide what to wear, so she has to buy four outfits instead of one. Everything that she does is just indecision, which is just part of the whole coming-out process and not being ready.”
Coming out is a topic Kramer knows about firsthand from her sister Carolyn, and one that plays a prominent role in Gray Matters. When Gray finally admits to her best friend/brother that she’s gay, he tells her that he has known since she was in the second grade. Was that the case with Kramer and her sister? “Oh, my God, it was so the truth,” she said. “I was 10 and she was 16, and she was depressed, and I was like, ‘So, why are you depressed? Is it because you’re gay?'”
Though Carolyn denied it at the time, she eventually did come out – years later. “She made it like this huge, big deal, like, sit me down, ‘You’re never gonna believe in a million years,'” Kramer recalled. “And I was rolling my eyes, like, ‘OK, I’ve known since I was at least 10, if not sooner.”
Kramer grew up in New York and went to film school at UCLA in the 1990s. She has been writing professionally in Hollywood for a decade, but for one reason or another, until now none of her feature-length scripts have been made. “It’s a very frustrating process,” she acknowledged, “to be writing script after script after script, and everybody’s always like, ‘Wow, you sold something, that’s so great!’ But no one ever sees it.”
Gray Matters, however, might finally help her break the trend, and Kramer couldn’t be happier about it. She is especially excited to finally hear her dialogue on the big screen: “To be a writer, to see your words that you’ve written for film — you’ve written them to be heard — to finally hear them is just a thrill.”
But her years spent toiling at the typewriter were not for naught. Using her Hollywood screenwriting and film school connections, the novice director was able to score a top-notch cast for Gray Matters. In addition to leads Graham (“I just knew after having this amazing lunch with her that I had found my Gray”) and Cavanagh (“an amazing gift — they’re actually really rare, the guys that are comical and good looking”), Kramer snagged Oscar-winning actor Sissy Spacek to play Gray’s kooky therapist and Alan Cumming to play Gordy, a cute cabdriver who goes from crushing on Gray to becoming her bosom buddy.
She wrote both roles for the actors and credited Spacek, who was quick to commit to the part, as being “incredibly instrumental for me going to agents and actors. Having somebody of her stature, it was much easier to get big actors to read the script with her name attached.”
Another of the film’s supporting roles is that of Gray’s co-worker Carrie, played by the riotously silly Molly Shannon, who should be issued a warrant for the number of scenes she steals. Kramer described landing the Emmy-winning Saturday Night Live alum as “a miracle,” since Shannon turned down the role repeatedly before Kramer finally convinced her to take it.
“I would not take no for an answer with Molly,” Kramer said. “I just kept calling [her representatives] every day and saying, ‘I can’t accept that.’ And they were like, ‘You have to accept that.’ I said, ‘You don’t understand. I see her in the role and no one else. I won’t even meet with people. She has to do it.'” Eventually it occurred to Kramer to go around instead of through: She got a message to Shannon through a mutual friend, and the deal was sealed.
And fans of The L Word will surely notice a small but key role played by Rachel Shelley, aka Helena Peabody. Shelley plays a high-powered, hard-to-please client of Gray’s who shows up in the right gay bar at the right time. Kramer credited her sister “100 percent for finding me Rachel Shelley.” Carolyn, a fan of the soapy Showtime series, “kept saying, ‘Rachel Shelley, Rachel Shelley, you have to meet her. She’s it, she’s it.’ And she was right.”
After the film was cast, however, the first-time director still faced many challenges, not the least of which was having three jobs: screenwriting, directing and producing. “It took a lot of delegating,” Kramer admitted. “It was really a lot about having different hats on. When I was writing the script, it was really just keeping focused and making sure the script was as good as it can get. And then once I got on the set, I just concentrated 100 percent on directing.” Kramer said she “loved the entire process of making the movie,” but working with the actors was tops. “It was so interesting to … figure out everyone’s process.”
The shoot, which took place in New York and Vancouver , was not without its glitches. One scene in particular, in which Gray is walking though New York ‘s Union Square Green Market, was a bit hairy to film. “The farmer’s market was my best and worst idea that I’ve ever had in my life,” Kramer said. “It was an absolute nightmare in terms of trying to control the crowd.”
But random bystanders mugging for the camera was the least of it. Kramer had to beg the vendors, who were losing business to the gawkers, to let her shoot. “It was definitely one of the most challenging days. At the end of the day, I looked at my producing partner Jill [Footlick], and I was like, ‘What the f— was I thinking? Why did I write this? Why I come up with this idea?’ Thousands of New Yorkers that I think are not gonna look in the camera?” Thankfully, she was eventually able to find a clean take in the editing room.
Kramer hopes that all audiences, gay and straight, will relate to the movie’s message about self-acceptance. “The whole movie is about embracing yourself and being comfortable with who you are,” she said. To that end, she has written Gray’s coming-out as a positive, organic process. Gray doesn’t end up punished, dead or straight at the end of the film, and for that Kramer deserves our praise and thanks.
In fact, she’s counting on it: “I’m hoping I have a float at next year’s Gay Pride parade. I’m kidding, but my sister keeps going, ‘Do you realize how many gays are going to … do you realize?’ I’m like, bring it on, gimme the float!”
Gray Matters opens in five cities on Feb. 23, 2007, before a wide release March 9. Visit the website for more details.
