GAY PEOPLE'S Chronicle

FEBRUARY 19, 1999

Evenings Out

Coming-outfilms come of age

Two Sundance favorites, one shot in Sandusky, will appear in Cleveland film festival

by Mark J. Huisman

The 1999 Sundance Film Festival closed with a bang January 30 after over dozen queer-tinged flicks had their long-awaited premières, and distribution deals flew through the air like snowflakes.

For ten days from January 22, the festival took over tiny Park City, Utah, a ski resort nestled in the Wasatch Mountains east of Salt Lake City. Sundance has a long and valiant history of supporting gay and lesbian films, and this festival was no exception.

From raucous romps to emotive dramas, this crop of gay and lesbian narrative features and documentaries is the strongest to emerge from the festival in some time. And with the release of one festival entrant, The Edge of Seventeen, scheduled for March, Sundance films will arrive in theaters sooner than ever.

Edge of Seventeen, last summer's gay and lesbian film festival favorite by writer Todd Stephens and director David Moreton, is an immensely welcome addition to the "coming-out" canon. Eschewing the easy way out, so to speak, Stephens wrote characters of amazing depth and gave them a narrative of immense intelligence. Eric (Chris Stafford) is a gangly teen in Sandusky, Ohio with a sort-of girlfriend named Maggie (Tina Holmes).

When Eric becomes enamored of Rod (Andersen Gabrych) a co-worker at his hateful summer food-service job, all bets are off. The teens' manager on that job, Angie (Lea DeLaria) may know the score, but nobody else does, especially Eric's mother (Stephanie McVay).

The entire film is a revelation, from its delicate presentation of Eric's burgeoning sexuality to Maggie and Mom's confused reactions to it. Seldom has a gay film treated its female characters with such respect.

Her big presence in healthy display, DeLaria is at her most captivating yet. You just might find a tear or two of laughter or love in your eyes over DeLaria's portrayal of Angie, who is young Eric's Jack-Danielsswilling, dog-kissing, advice-belting, onedyke support system.

"I hate coming-out films where everything is okay," director Moreton said in a telephone interview. "That's not reality. People get hurt. Eric's relationship with his mother is strained, his best friend leaves. That's reality."

The film was shot in the Sandusky-Huron area, and several scenes involve extras from Northern Ohio's queer community, Another wonderfully mature coming-out

flick is Simon Shore's Get Real, the bittersweet story of Steven (the charming Ben Silverstone), a 16-year-old student in a rural English town who falls in love with the dashing school track star, Johnny (Brad Gorton). After an unexpected sexual encounter, Steven and Johnny begin a relationship that teeters between secrets and lies and honesty and rapture. Screenwriter Patrick Wilde hits the nail on the head again and again, with moments like a prom scene where the boys dance with girls but eye each other longingly, and a speech in which Steven comes out to his entire school.

Both Edge of 17 and Get Real will appear in the "Ten Percent Cinema" portion of the 23rd Cleveland International Film Festival, held March 18-28 at Tower City Cin-

emas.

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Among the disappointments Sundance was Tod William's debut feature, The Adventures of Sebastian Cole (Paramount Classics), a thoroughly repellent drama about a young man in upstate New York whose stepfather, Henry, decides to become Henrietta.

Without even realizing it, this confused film ignores the difference between becoming a transgendered person and becoming a drag queen. Since these are the very kind of people who make sequels, here's a hint for them: This subject involves more than wigs and handbags, so next time please do your homework.

Another offender was Columbia Pictures' Go!, a feature by Swingers director Doug Liman. Apparently, queers can now be a target audience if a movie has car crashes, gun fights and drug overdoses filmed in blurry, rainbow-hued takes. This loud, obnoxious, juvenile filmmaking is typical of the stories straight men are allowed to tell, over and over again.

Documentaries included Beefcake, an expose of the 1940s and 50s muscle mag scene by Thom Fitzgerald (The Hanging Garden). Using both archival footage and stylishly campy re-creation, Beefcake offers ten laughs a minute and an equal amount of bare flesh, making it this year's skin flick to beat.

Lea DeLaria is Angie, Eric's “one-dyke support system" in Edge of Seventeen.

Get Bruce! is a marvelous portrait of comedy writer Bruce Vilanch. Director Andy Kuehn is one of Vilanch's longtime friends. Readers of his "Notes from a Blond" column in the Advocate already know of his insouciant style, as do viewers of all of the Emmys, Academy Awards and virtually every other Hollywood-produced awards show, all of which Vilanch writes. Stars sharing delicious dish about their own Bruce-infused creative process are Bette Midler, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, and Whoopi Goldberg--who is especially candid, revealing her experience with the censorship that is part of ABC's annual Oscar broadcast.

Leading the pack of narrative features were comedies, including Jim Fall's tenderly funny film Trick, which tells the story of two boys attempting to find a sex shack for the night-shy musical theater composer Gabriel (Christian Campbell) and club stripper Mark (Jean-Paul Pitoc, the most eye-popping little hottie to slink across the

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In a walk-in cooler, Eric and Rod discover first-time love in Edge of Seventeen

screen so far this year). The cast also includes Tori Spelling as Gabriel's best friend Catherine, a relentless study in smotherhood who appears to have her tap shoes tied too tight. Will the boys get to it or won't they?

Trick also includes a wonderful subplot about a 40-something gay man named Perry (Steve Hayes) and his estranged lover (Kevin Chamberlain). The moment when the two kiss and make up is utterly wondrous, a rare chance for the first generation of queer activists to see themselves on screen.

Two films are in classes all by themselves: New Zealand director Garth Maxwell's When Love Comes and Gregg Araki's new film Splendor, his fifth and record-making Sundance entrant. Araki introduced the film by saying, "Nobody's dick gets cut off, no heads get blown apart. I hope nobody's too upset about that."

Nobody was, as Splendor is the Continued on page 13