Get Used to It: Ep. 91, "Film, Truth, & Videotape"

my [Applause] [Music] hi welcome to get used to it i'm sheila cuell your host this and today i've got a great show for you there have been a number of gay and lesbian film festivals around the country over the past several years and we see more and more and more and more films and products being entered in these festivals and the differentiation among the product and the people who are participating uh just made me want to talk to three really smart and interesting people about what's happening in our community about film about culture in the larger sense about how it's changed or hasn't changed well you'll see and judge for yourself today i'm very happy to welcome to get used to it nancy rosenblum who is a movie critic appropriately enough given our subject matter but also a 10-time emmy-winning editor also a writer and producer films uh video radio has a radio show welcome nancy hi glad to be here so very excited a quintuple threat or or whatever my dears yes happy also to welcome shari freelo who is a filmmaker and also a programmer for the sundesk sundance film festival and for outfest which is the la gay and lesbian film festival welcome shari thanks it's really great to be here thank you well i hope so i think i certainly am pleased to have you here and our third guest is michael kearns who is by my description a one-man cultural revolution performer actor writer director and dad dad he asked me to add that he has an eight-year-old daughter whom he's inordinately proud or maybe ordinately nance let's start with you if you don't mind i think i've known you the longest so we'll start with you tell us a little bit about your background i mean you spent most of your adult life making film or video or photography um so say a little about kind of how you got into that and more importantly what is it that appeals to you about doing that as opposed to something else i love it it is my heart and soul how far back do you want me to go oh not too far okay um i've always shot pictures i've always loved images went to cal arts as a photo major got into video there um but have always watched movies and loved movies and um there's nothing else i want to do i love going to the movies i always go with delight and and hope to be delighted well that's an interesting thing for a movie critic usually you see the other thing but i remember years ago you were making a collection of photographs of lesbians why did you decide to do that i mean i know photography was what you your art at the time because i love lesbians yes as well and i i wanted images of strong women not necessarily you know strong here and strong here to um to be out and for everybody to see them for popular culture to enjoy them for um it's kind of come out come out wherever you are and with the photographs i said what people did said their ages um some people had children some people didn't have children do you know what i mean cross-cultural and there we are and it was just um again it exciting you know the people that make up my life or that i meet or that i think are wondrous then you wanted to start doing moving images because i remember when you were at calarts doing video i started actually i did a show there called um vegetables a reaction to male violence against women and it was a series of um four different shots of vegetables being in various stages of mutilation like a carrot gets chopped up um asparagus through a meat grinder and in stages and then i had um information there about self-defense and so it didn't just like wow you know um and it and because i also started at eight years old using my dad's bell and howl moving images was like a natural progression and so um i don't know i just moved into the video department and started uh experimenting with that and got into editing and you know at school you know you do everything so i shot and did all that and i really loved um putting the pictures together and the sound and all of that but you're also a critic now and so i guess it's sort of in in the theme of what i wanted us to talk about today uh as you've seen over the years even if it's just the last 10 or 15 um the emergence of more and more and more it seems to me film by and about lesbian gay transgender um questioning undefined whatever how do you think it's changed from sort of our early days of film if it has are the themes different uh do we look better you know whatever i think the chan the themes have changed and we always look good but um yeah i think i think a couple of things have happened i think we've developed our skills as storytellers and and our craft as filmmakers and so that enhances people's viewing pleasure and i think also as the gay lesbian transgender movement has grown and it's you know a lot of us have already come out we're successful at our jobs were looking to get married and have families i think the movies reflect that now as well so and and cross cross you know internationally the gay and lesbian films that are coming out i mean domestically everything so why is it important for us to two things i guess to make our own films and to show them in places like festivals i mean it seems as though it's very insular in a way actually no i mean first of all um and you know shari will probably definitely speak to this but i think there are there are so many films that are gay and lesbian transgender themed that will never see the light of day if it weren't for festivals they're not going to get distribution for whatever reasons and they could be like you know the next cabaret and for some you know whatever reasons not get distribution so it's a chance to see them it's a chance to meet our peers it's a chance to um go into the lobby and go wow look at all these lesbians do you know what i mean so um and i think it's really important to have our lives i mean even if i go to a lesbian themed movie and it's not my experience there are parts of it that ring true to my experience and it's so validating and it's so validating for example just to take my mother to go see who's kissing jessica stein and we can like talk about it and um you know or or a more radical movie but it's you know it's it's important is it more important now or less important than it's been because it seems like in the early days we couldn't find anything about ourselves and we had to go you know to people's garages and they were showing them you know on sheets i exaggerate only a little right but we live in a big metropolitan area and someone that lives in ohio you know they're lucky to you know i mean they're it's just as important you know it's just as important and and i mean i think you know i think it will always be important to have our images out there and um become as as much mixed with popular culture as we can you um also interview people on your radio show are they mostly filmmakers or other kind of artists um everybody writers filmmakers i interviewed ruthie and connie um oh yeah tell us about them a little bit there was a film about them in the outfit and it's called ruthie and connie every room in the house and it's a documentary about their lives now these women um met in the 50s um in new york in brooklyn they were raising their children together in a building called contello towers they built a synagogue they were community activists well lo and behold they fell in love with each other and um they came out kind of in in the 70s but they weren't aware of any other lesbian movement they weren't aware of stonewall they weren't and um and divorced their husbands um you know their kids were estranged from them and they're still and they're activists now they're 65 and 68 and they lead pflag workshops and um coming out their their kind of mission it seems is coming out at whatever cost but they didn't make this film right this film was made about them right it's a documentary about them so i guess i mean to state the obvious we there's a lot of people we wouldn't know but for these films and i guess a lot of other stuff shari when you're when your title is programmer for sundance and for outfest and other festivals what does that mean exactly well what that means is that i watch a whole lot of films go to a whole lot of film festivals and i select films for the festival slate so do you work not just exclusively with gay and lesbian films or is that the major area of your programming um uh well i well for sundance i i look at all pretty much every american film that's been made independently uh and then some studio films uh so that's pretty much across the board yeah for outfest um you know i watch a lot of gay and lesbian films but i also watch a lot of experimental films made by gay filmmakers who the content is not necessarily gay i watch films by straight filmmakers that i feel have something to offer a gay and lesbian audience so it cuts across the board so why is it important that we have such a festival outfest outfest or other festivals across the country like outfest well you know festivals are really important because this is these are where the new talent comes through this is these are the platforms that new filmmakers trying new things get to show their work to an audience for the first time and connect with the audience for the first time and then maybe find some distribution maybe not but but but complete the filmmaking process which is to connect with an audience for the first time you know festivals have a totally different agenda than distribution companies you know we're interested in seeing new voices seeing new kinds of things on film where distribution distributors are interested in selling films and that's like a totally different set of values that they're looking for so you get to see a broader range of films at festivals than you would at your multiplex so have you seen a change over the past 10 or 15 years in terms of the kinds of film we are making in our community for ourselves or each other or about ourselves yeah there well there's been quite a change in the last 10 15 years uh it's been changing and changing and changing again um you know there there used to be uh i guess ten years ago of just an abundance of coming out stories coming of age stories and you know this was really important at the time a lot of those films were not uh you couldn't catch them at your multiplex or even at your art house theater whereas now you can uh in both in both sets of theaters there's been especially in the american scene i think there's a there's more now now that distributors are have sniffed out dollars uh in gay film you know there's a kind of a rush uh amongst filmmakers to make a commercially viable film so we're starting to see a sway toward a more um commercialized aesthetic uh but then there's also another part of the filmmaking community that just continues to to just make their own crazy experimental films and you know again that's what that's where festival festivals come in because that's where you get to see those films well one of the aspects you programmed at this most recent outfest in l.a was uh did you would you call it the platinum set oh yeah the platinum section yeah tell us about that yeah well uh last year was my last last year of co-directoring outfest and one of the things that i started was a section dedicated to experimental film um that's being made and that speaks to queer community and it's been called a platinum it's a section of five programs one including a multimedia performance installation called platinum oasis where we take over the coral sands which is a kind of a historic uh institution here in los angeles a motel is it it is a motel yes it's an 18-hour event starts four in the afternoon on saturday goes overnight to sunday and we fill every 40 rooms with a multimedia performance artist the stage goes on all night and it's just fantastic really really intensely creative work that's been presented in this event and then there's also shorts programs that we show in the platinum section and a few features from around the world really so is there more exciting work going on in other countries or are we kind of keeping up i mean i some of the theme i think that we discussed has to do with the the potential commercialization of our films maybe more interest in um being shown which is not a bad thing obviously is it the same internationally because we tend to think of film as such an american thing especially commercial film well there's a range of films being made internationally as well you know come undone was a movie that was picked up french film that was picked up um and you can find it in your video stores but there are also films like lubov and other nightmares which is you know way out there probably won't get see the light of day after the film festival circuit certainly there's more there's more support internationally especially in europe for films that that buck commercial values that have dark themes that are formally rigorous experiment experimentally wise so you actually do probably see a more of a range of films with a higher production value in general just because there's more money but you do see that range here in the united states you just see some of the production value slipping a little bit um in in the lower budget realm well the united states not a huge fan of art generally i mean it isn't a thing that every child we don't even have to study it in school right anymore we don't have to do it we don't necessarily have to learn about it we don't have to study its history whether it's filmic art or even you know digital art it doesn't matter we don't necessarily emphasize it uh it's not a way that we value something so in a sense it makes it even more difficult uh i think here but is this kind of art just film generally for our community has it helped with our movement and with people you know dealing with who they are you know i'm really glad you said that about the where art stands in our society because it's it's a pretty hostile environment to be an artist in america um and it's a shame because it is such an incredibly powerful tool for political movements and activism um you know i i've pretty much dedicated my life toward uh cultural activism through film and and through through different art forms but primarily film you know there's something the thing it's one of our greatest accomplishments as human beings that we can make art and art has a trend the power to transcend and when you combine art with a political message you you are able to communicate and and grow something that you just wouldn't be able to do on in in a newspaper or standing on a microphone um just reading from text it's i mean it's amazing it's real well it's physical i mean you don't even know how it's getting yes it speaks to something that that is beyond language it speaks to your your childhood it speaks to how you what something smelled like two days ago it's uh it's very powerful so is it just inherently political because we make a film about being gay well you know i think everything's political you know yeah i it's it yes i i would say yes i mean it's you can make a movie about the chair that you're sitting in and i think that would be in in certain terms political because you know that chair wouldn't be made in west africa um it could be made here in america so that's you know it depends on really the audience and how they consume it uh you know some some audiences will be inclined to consume in a more political way than others uh certainly our culture in america we've been raised to not really read things politically but everything is political well michael you've devoted your life to this kind of culture and sometimes seeming like a lone voice in the wilderness i mean not only because you've done these one-man shows but just thematically i mean tell us about your newest show and some of what you've done well i'm working on several shows now but i'm doing a show at the end of the year on aids again um with nine different characters uh two of whom are african-american a hetero an ostensibly heterosexual couple uh and and everyone it's sort of uh inspired by laronde where each person passes the virus on to the next person in the world of crystal meth hustling and also in in a world of very ostensibly very heterosexual straight life too and i think that you know what i've heard from both of these brilliant women is is that you know we need this voice we were voiceless for so many years we had no voice and it's no accident that many gay men and lesbians have found their salvaged salvaged lives in the arts because we had to find some place to define ourselves and to say not only are we here but we're here and we're all these different things to suggest and i know that you're being the devil's advocate on some level but that it's insular of course is is would be as silly as suggesting that a heterosexual film festival is insular there are so many types and lesbian stories that i've barely begun to you know and and i think i i'm open to a lot of them yet i don't know every lesbian story i certainly don't know all the stories of lesbians of color of different countries different cities in this country uh the the rich tapestries that these stories create is unbelievable the same with gay men i mean i don't see myself reflected in will and grace so i mean i need to go elsewhere i can't turn on the television and particularly see my story accurately told so i think that we need to you know we're thirsty and hungry to go to these film festivals and just be informed moved challenged angered turned off turned on anything that and do that to the rest of the world as well i mean that's what's beautiful and and invigorating and shocking and disturbing about it i'm certainly not suggesting i'd like everything that i saw but boy if it if it challenged me in some way then we're doing something right and i think we need it more than ever and i also think that we're at a at a critical period of time where and this is is is very true in the arts where you know corporate america realizes that gay art equals money and there's value in it financially and that's a wonderful great thing we have worked years and years and years and years to get our footing and to get it to the point of being taken that seriously as artists yet at the same time we cannot compromise our stories and we can't start curtailing or caving in to the dollar because we know what happens there i think every lesbian and gay artist deserves to make a lot of money i'm not suggesting anything to the contrary but we also have to have our events at the coral sands which are which are edgy and and might not make a lot of money and we have to have those movies out there too so it's it's a very exciting time and and it's i just am thrilled to talk about it i can never talk about it enough because you're right it has been my life and and i it's a it's exciting to have spent my life at this well it's also it's also interesting to me the difference between film and performance too because with film it can be widely um uh distributed uh you know you can make a film and you can get it to horses breath oregon and they can see it there and it lasts um the work you do is often much more ephemeral more very exciting from that point of view i remember i saw a short film made about picasso painting something on a wall he painted this on a wall and they made a film of him making this painting and then he destroyed the painting so that the only way the art survived was in the film and it was very confusing to me in a way because i said to myself is that an authentic piece of art because now the the real piece of art is gone and in a sense i think film is very different from that point of view not just because it's moving pictures but that it has a different a different thing yet yet i'll say you've chosen to be primarily an actor who performs and it's like see michael hold it in your memory that's the only way you'll get it have you thought about recording some of this well some of my stuff is recorded but i also think that at some point it just becomes an artistic choice and i think that i know that's where i belong i mean just my instrument my energy my bigness belongs in a theater as opposed to and it's taken years to sort of reconcile that because everybody's telling you you should be a tv star and you should be in the movies and you should you should you should but where i'm most at home is on that stage whether there's four people or four hundred or four thousand that's where i live at my you know utmost artistically so i've just made that choice but some of my stuff has been taped and some of it will live on and certainly it's been uh printed so there is that element i mean it's been published and and all of the scripts will ultimately be available in that way but you're absolutely right i mean and now with the internet and the way things are moving so quickly this medium is like bursting in front of us in terms of getting those stories out so quickly and to so many places and and in a way cheaper than it's been in certain respects so that's what's you know just a thrill about well but the other thing you mentioned when you said crystal meth and hustling is the how clean our image is in the uh more commercial media and how worried we are about having it be clean i mean i think you know you don't want to only see gays and lesbians in depravity as other people would call it or whatever uh you want to see i mean there's also it's almost like we've got to be you know heroes or very funny or politically corrupt and that's a danger artistically because not a lot is riveting artistically that's politically correct it can be entertaining and it can be sweet and like a hallmark card but the the juicy stuff is probably not politically correct the juicy stuff has conflict and stakes are involved and that's usually not as politically correct as some people would like um and and that's you know my only as as the as the as an old man of the theater my only concern is that we don't lose that edge and start eclipsing the juiciness of our lives to fit some bigger uh sanguine version of gay and lesbian life yes we should have shows about parenting and marriage and all those things thousands of them and yes we should also not forget that there are homeless people there are people who don't want to get married there are people of color there are lesbians with children there are you know i mean there's a broad spectrum that we don't want to get lost in the commercialization of gay and lesbian filmmaking it's really important we're still oppressed i mean people still hate us it's not well embraced it's do you know what i mean and and that's that's what's so important to not lose sight of no matter how we're usurped by popular culture and how easily we fit in and how we're assimilated we must keep on you know we must remember our roots and and what really what really is still real and part of our lives but which way does that cut do we then have an internal struggle about i don't want you to show that because they already hate us we you do hear that but but you have to show it it's not all squeaky clean i mean are all heterosexual movies uh politically correct no of course not so i mean i think that we have to i think art is about telling the truth ideally and gays and lesbians if their truth is will and grace there is nothing wrong with that and that is a truth for a lot of people and i think that that should be applauded and and and those who who you know ascribe to that lifestyle and and love it and think it's funny that's wonderful totally but there's there are other truths that deserve equal time and equal examination and if they're not as pretty and glamorous and fluffed up so what we need we we have to tell the whole truth we can't just tell part of the truth because part of telling the truth is dealing with things like hiv cancer specific illnesses psychological or physiological that affect the gay and lesbian community all of these things need to i mean we can't it we can't be pretty all the time and glamorous and gorgeous we also have to look at the the the things that we're confronted with i mean there's a high incidence of alcoholism and drug addiction in the gay and lesbian community all of these things have to be we can't shove them under the rug and say you know here we are now we're now we're living in your world and let's not forget the films that actually put us on the map in the first place that's an interesting point this is uh you know todd haynes tom calen these guys were making films rose troche we're making films about messy lesbian gay lives and these and and doing wonderful jobs of telling these stories and it was from their their films that time in the early 90s that this whole media revolution began with these movies about messy lesbian and gay lives beautiful beautiful gorgeous movies and so you know it's it's good to like to to see how that arc naturally travels through time but but there's always you know that spark of truth that you're talking about is always going to pay off into to yet another part of this evolution that we're that we're the exciting evolution of media that we're on i really believe that it wasn't um ellen's coming out and bad writing that canceled her show but she started dating and that was what was dangerous sex sexuality you mean to the the sponsors the absolutely the larger culture right and to the people who were right and all of a sudden oh this show isn't funny anymore what happened to the writing when i thought after she came out it was hysterical and very funny and still very good writing and oh boy she's got a girlfriend and came out to her parents and do you know what i mean sure incrementally it got less and less comfortable for that viewing audience and for the sponsors and for the money and that's a shame but good for ellen that she didn't cave in to probably what she was being told by a lot of people and too bad for ellen that she had to suffer that the consequences of that but she's going to be fine she's going to bounce back and do amazing things we don't even know probably next year the other amazing thing i think is what cherry was saying is that in just in terms of the artistic worth of something i mean this was told to me years ago and i and at first it seemed so strange and foreign but the more truthful the material is the more universal it will be and you know i had a hard time with that at first especially because i was dealing with all this gay stuff and all this sexual stuff and all this alcohol and drugs and i was dealing with all these things and i thought oh you're going to think i'm a freak and they're going to think i'm just a wacko and the director who happened to be a straight woman kept saying the more truthful the more universal and that was the biggest lesson as an artist i could have possibly learned well and there are sort of funny universal truths and and i think that that also puts us in conflict sometimes about how we choose our art i saw not too long ago monsoon wedding i haven't seen very many indian films and i always love the ones that i see this one i thought was particularly stunning only because every group in the audience on the way out said that's my family these were italian jews these were african-americans these were everybody they're all talking to each other going that's my family it's just like my family and there was a play in la several years ago called nine armenians which was the whole first act was the family trying to leave the grandparents house and the car was in the front yard and they kept getting in and out of the car more food came in and out of the house you know that kind of thing there is that sort of universal thing yet there are also stories that only we can tell partly out of i think oppression it is a particular kind of oppression not worse than others not easier than others just you know different it's quite unique because for one thing not everybody knows when you're gay and it's a choice that other oppressed groups generally don't have to make you know in terms of coming out but um it in a way though are our films more critical of our lives now because we're braver or were they always sort of critical when you say cutting edge i mean you're the curator what do you think critical of our lives yeah i mean i don't know maybe crystal meth is just saying well this is the way it is but i think to some extent there's been some critique inherent in showing addiction well you know there are the movies that look at the difficult sides of what's going on in different communities and gay and lesbian people every year every year there's one there's several actually uh so it's it's you know it's it's something that really fascinates our cultural makers who are filmmakers and they make films about them every year and thank goodness because who's going to talk about this i mean there's a really fantastic okay this is an interesting uh example an italian movie hard to find good italian movies this one's really good made by lesbian about gay men um who it starts out as sort of like a big fat glossy movie about uh this uh accountant he's a banker and he's with his boyfriend and he's had been living with hiv for 10 years and he falls in love with this boy beautiful boy knocks him off his feet just completely is subsumed by the bliss of love and he has unsafe sex with this guy and you know this is a really important movie that we need to see and and and she does it with such skill and and and so smart in terms of just like it's not about these guys it's about what do you do when you're in love and you forget yourself what do you do when you're overcome with this emotion and it's wonderful you know this is a this is a movie that's critical but at the same time you know it's a it's it's a it is a universal truth i mean a straight person can see this movie and really relate to what's going on on the screen and ultimately the message that one potentially gets from that movie is more valuable than 300 lists of don't do this and don't put your thing there and make sure you have this on it when you go to the party in other words that the emotional reverberation and impact of that could do more to change someone's behavior in my opinion than 150 black and white lists i just think that the visceral as you start that visceral punch and humanization of it the fact that this is human behavior that we can't judge it we can't you know we can't sit back and say oh he's a bad person he's a human being it also allows people to forgive themselves to start over to make another plan i mean think what we've gleaned from sitting in a dark theater and watching a movie well it's true we talk about the filmmakers a lot but has our audience changed i mean there's more of us who know the other guy is gay or lesbian that's certainly true but has our audience changed and i i think there's more straight people that are willing to give um a gay themed movie a chance but what i think is unfortunate kind of about what michael and shari were saying is that it is there are universalities there's um a film called a family affair that was a comedy that was basically about this woman that was commitment phobia and it was a comedy and she kept looking for mrs rydowitz and it was a very funny movie had a great sense of humor and totally it didn't matter what your sexuality is we can all relate to having been there um it didn't get picked up a movie that that got picked up um called all over the guy which again it completely universal his two straight friends okay we can all relate fixed him up um with another guy and they you know started dating and having a good time and and um and i thought oh my god this movie really has what it takes to like make it in the straight world and because you know gay people hopefully are going to see it and it didn't and i think the reason is because while we are able to see the universality in heterosexuality and relate to it on an emotional level and connect it to our own experiences in life for some reason i don't think heterosexuals are able to see that well it often goes only in one direction i mean i was thinking i went to a sparks game the women's nba team for los angeles um and there were little boys there wearing jerseys with the players names and numbers from the women's team and it always went the other way i mean our role models i don't know i mean i won't speak for you but growing up in the 40s and 50s the strong role models were all men and i totally identified with them not because i wanted to be a man because i knew i was strong and i was going to be because you didn't have any other role models to identify with i didn't want barbie dolls i wanted race cars right and it doesn't it's not about sexuality it was really about what was supposed to be good i remember the uh the there was a film about brown versus board of education and it was fictionalized i think they did it on television to show thurgood marshall as one of the attorneys and the thing i remember very well is when they were showing images of dolls to african-american children and saying is this a good doll or is this a good doll and all the white dolls were good and all the bad all the black dolls were bad to the kids and the notion that you want to be the next thing up whatever you see i think is what it reminded me of nance when you said you know we can identify with heterosexual films that's all we've mostly ever seen we had to transcribe them right and trans and put ourselves in those positions we and and so it's become almost habitual that we do that we're able to look at a heterosexual film and sort of place ourselves in there with some transformers how showgirls becomes a gay film exactly oh well how a lot and probably you know all those joan crawford and betty davis exactly those are all gay movies because that sensibility struck us and it was easy to make the leap easier to make the leap and that's why they became but now think of the kids growing up i mean they can you know go to see their brother or their sister's film at the film festival i mean there is exposure i mean my kid at her school she happens to go to a progressive school but they pay as much attention to harvey milk as they do to martin luther king as they do to you know there's a new world out there yeah you know it's interesting the question about the audiences that you asked because the audiences are changing because times are changing um you know the audiences at lesbian gay film festivals specifically um you know they're now having babies they're having families and and we're seeing movies that reflect that and i think also just in general they're becoming more sophisticated you know it wasn't what it used to be 10 15 years ago when there was we were so hungry to see just anything and you could put just anything on the screen and people are like yes now it's not that way now it's like you know um that light is in the wrong place and i can see the boom you know the audience will be all on that they're and they're becoming more sophisticated which is good because it raises the bar for filmmakers to make you know films that that that continue evolve artistically it's interesting to see you know i think also um at lesbian gay film festivals audiences tend to be getting older and this is this is sort of an interesting thing um i think it has a lot to do with the increasing commercialization of of queer film um in this country that tend to be the opening closing centerpiece titles uh uh that don't really speak to a new generation of of uh like you know adolescent queers they want they actually want to see that dirty messy riot girl short film about skateboarding yeah because that's what they're living that's their life that's their life and and uh you know the the the thing that um well you know it could be said about you know sort of the the movement in general uh it gets it's a little stuck in a certain way an important way and i mean they're not to say that we've not gained tremendously from the work and and and sacrifice from all those before us uh but there's like there's there are changes and we need to we need to adjust that's fascinating and really like blow blow out the picture a little bit because the pitch is blowing itself out you know there are these whole new generations that that have different needs than than we needed so they're not making film young people younger people they are making film uh but they're not always getting programmed they're not even in the festivals even in the festivals and or or they're getting programmed and and they'll be putting in the smaller theaters and this is always this is like a constant struggle how i got into film festivals in the first place you know i was that young kid what 10 years ago made a film that was crazy about cosmic demonstration of sexuality women's sexuality and the cosmos and like what was that and they said mainstream but back then you know i was i was put in the rotten theater and clumped together you know with all the other black filmmakers and and i just felt like well it's great to be with my colleagues but gosh you guys don't really understand my movie and you're not really programming it so i got involved you know and and tried to do a festival that spoke differently that that talked about sexuality and gender and and race in different ways than was being talked about with the regular um film festivals the lesbian gay film festivals and and that there's going to be another change it's you can smell it in the air there's going to be another shift again because we've we've hit that wall and that's just how like we need to reactivate and that's in a way part of the evolution which is exciting i mean what you're describing is i mean somebody should just be out there really looking at studying those issues and creating a space for those kinds of films well what would it look like i mean if you i i know sometimes it's hard to articulate but you say that they're we're stuck and something could could open up i want you to say more about that because i think or or i'll say more about it i could i could say just a bit about it just being a a programmer of lesbian gay film and going going to different festivals with clumps of lesbian gay film festival programmers and we're always asking ourselves eating each other is it gay enough i'm just so sick of that question it's not okay like how do we is it gay enough oftentimes what that question means is did the character was the character gay enough did it have enough gay content those are sex gay sex yes they're gay sex is it hot and i you know i okay well it's a question to ask but i have to come up with different answers to really meet the changing times well does it speak to you know our lives today maybe there is no gay character maybe maybe he was gay and then became straight and fell in love with a woman but does it speak to our experience you know well yeah it's gay enough it's not gay enough it speaks to a gay audience so you know that's like the new question i think that it's replaced the question is it too gay that's what's fabulous is it too gay too is it gay enough it's a very typical dynamic i've lived a long time it's too fabulous yeah so don't you think also that i mean on a national level that there should be maybe a film festival that's devoted to younger people i mean you know i'm just brainstorming you know in a way that's another kind of clumping as i think that's true but maybe it's a visibility rising clumping lesbian film festival is in in its own way when i said is it a little bit insular that's what i meant it's kind of you know you have this thing where you say we we have to showcase our own work because by showcasing it we and we we encourage it on the other hand is sundance full of gay films ten percent well that's sweet that's our that is a percentage we'll show it a good 10 to 15 films out of 120 some odd films every year and that's important too also we have to look at the fact that the reality is that the programming is such also that it has to sell tickets right i mean that's partly you're you're also choosing films predicated on to some degree whether there's x number of tickets are going to be sold to festivals not so much as like the main but still it's an issue right isn't it an issue about bigger slots like well opening night you know you gotta you gotta put together a program that's gonna that's gonna carry a 1500 you know 1500 seat house but um you know the shorts about transgendered lives it's okay it's not going to necessarily and and the festival is built so that some good nights will subsidize you know there's a film that we showed actually yesterday about uh a telenovela with gay characters in nicaragua wow and you know this this film just came from nowhere and as it turns out 70 of nicaraguans are watching it at every day at four o'clock in the afternoon and so and no one knows about it here um you know it it took a lot to bring this film and to you know get it subtitled and there was a lot of expense involved how cool but you got to do that you got to show those films and take that risk and and hope that people will come sometimes they come sometimes they don't but it's important but it's there yeah and it's important that it's in the brochure because it lives afterwards well no it's not and you're getting some exposure just from looking at the brochure and we don't have our own award ceremonies well that says i mean really oh yeah outfits are you talking about nationally oh nationally or internationally i don't know you know some kind of that's an interesting oscars now you know you see i mean i'm going to go to the to the latin grammys right because there's so much product it makes a lot of very interesting you could have you know your own show what do we have instead what we have is an anti-defamation group glad who is watchdogging the you know the the commercial media more or less and they're the only ones giving any kind of awards to straight actors playing games did not attend this film about nicaragua i don't think there are i don't know it's kind of a beef with me to tell you the truth because why not i mean i understand you might have to um reward uh well eric mccormick because he'll bring in the you know he'll sell the dinners or whatever but what about the work um the outfest staff is doing what about imru which is a you know lesbian and gay radio show what about those p you know the people that really are lesbian and gay or lesbian gay actors in a movie or that you know writers directors i mean we have we have these people within our community you know that that um i mean if melissa estridge god love her and like power to her and yeah thanks babe but every gay organization has given her an award and that you know i don't i don't it's like i mean say what one will it's had it's a wonderful place i could not agree with you more it's a very corporate driven organization it's all about money it's all about selling that night out and anybody who says anything differently is deluding themselves that's what it's about i mean they have their place in the world and they should but it's it's not about what you're talking about the potential of awarding people who are in the trenches who are making gay and lesbian art be that film or television or theater whatever it's not about that and we need something that's about that this movie last night thelma which is a french film i it was a french swiss film that's about this straight man that falls in love with a transsexual man and the god both guys were actually quite excellent but the guy that was the transsexual what a performance i mean really great performance why can't he you know get some spikes you know get some recognition and get another job yeah you know i i hey even tim curry didn't hardly get a lot of work after oh absolutely not it took a long time for him to do a long time although i wish he'd gotten something every time somebody saw that movie wouldn't he be so rich yeah wouldn't he yeah i mean what a performance i don't know why i got off on that but it just well no no it's absolutely yeah you know from transylvania to nicaragua exactly and everything in between so where do you see our culture going next i mean i don't know whether i don't think young people are leaving film per se even though you can create stuff on the internet and get it out there really fast and it's not exactly film i don't know exactly what it is it kind of exists in you know in the ether and that probably is going to be a growing form of cre creating and production i know the audiences generally out in the world are all supposedly young guys i mean that's who they're supposedly making movies for not in our community but you know in the world so i know they must buy tickets but so where would gay and lesbian filmmaking go if where do you see it going where would you like it to go well you know certainly the digital age is here and that's going to present a whole lot of opportunities for gay and lesbian filmmakers who are having a hard time finding money to make their movies now they can make their movie at home on their macintosh with final cut pro and we're seeing them and i'm seeing that sundance and they're great yeah and so it also uh opens up uh opportunities for some of the younger filmmakers that are coming up they can get their hands on a camera it's so easy to do um i think also what it's interesting there's a there's a there's a return of uh this collective spirit amongst younger filmmakers uh and when that happens you know that's all of these gay and lesbian film festivals came from a collective they all came from there and now we're starting to see them again so i don't know what it's going to be but there will be like an organizational outgrowth from this whether it's going to be internet based whether it's going to be a geographical like gay and lesbian film festival another another festival another kind of media collective but but we're we really are on the edge of something new that's going to come from the generations coming up it's also interesting that we haven't touched on and and i know that we're winding up but it's also so much you know the chairs political and and also we live in this political world and what is going to happen in that political world in the next eight years ten years is going to have a high impact on what all of us is saying but particularly gays and lesbians are they're going to have their own reaction to what's happening in that greater picture called the world which is politically driven as we know and and and we're going to be responding we're going to we're again our voices are going to need to be heard we're going to those kids at their digital cameras are going to have things that are urgent and critical and impassioned to say things that i don't know about but they will know about at their age and that's a thrill and some of it might not even have that much to do with being gay because they're growing up all everybody's everybody and it's much more accepted so they're just radical well and i i don't know whether they'll be defining themselves only right i mean it's that dual thing you know and everybody's saying don't ask me what race i am because i'm like lots of races it's you know it's not this and it's not what day is it and i'll tell you what my sexuality is yeah so i think it's been well um and as you said michael we are winding down it's so interesting to me at the beginning of the show i think we all look at each other going what are we going to talk about but i'm very grateful um to you for being my guests today for talking about these cultural issues shari and michael and nancy and i'm very grateful to you for joining us and i want you to make a commitment to making some art in your life as well i don't care what it is yes you can go see other people's art that's great you need to support it but make some of your own so that you can get used to it [Music] you