Desert Hearts, Where are You?

Originally published 7-23-05

I couldn’t help but cringe as I perused the offerings for this year’s Outfest, the gay and lesbian film festival held every July in Los Angeles. It’s the same story each year. A line up of low-budget indies, mostly focused on sex, with no-name actors and cheesy titles. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an avid aficionado of independent film, but will we ever escape from the celluloid gay ghetto?

I know I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, or in this case a movie by its press kit, but how many shots of shirtless boy toys – I counted 22 – can the programmers squeeze into one 40-page film guide? And I wasn’t even counting the five guys in skimpy tank tops, and one of ambiguous gender in a sleeveless leather vest from the queer shorts series called “Transgenre.”

The catalog was filled with crowd-pleasers like “Guys and Balls,” a feature ostensibly about soccer players; a collection of explicit lesbian sex shorts called “Pornocoia;” and “Positively Naked,” a documentary about nude guys with HIV; none of which appealed to me, but judging by the masses at the Director’s Guild of American and the festival’s eight other venues, there were plenty of comers willing to dig into their pockets for $12 for regular admission.

Combing through the program book looking for the chick flicks was nearly as fruitless as cruising for women at the Abbey on a Saturday night, but I did find a few female-focused features and shorts, most of which I got tickets for, no matter how awful I thought they would be, for reasons I will explain later.

I saw the Sapphic snoozer “Sevigne,” the embarrassing “Hearts Cracked Open” – a double feature with the depressing “Women in Love” – and the brooding though moving “Unveiled,” among others. Oh how I yearned for just one “Desert Hearts,” Donna Deitch’s seminal lesbian film that proved great gay motion pictures are possible.

At one point, during the Funny Girl Shorts program, I thought I just couldn’t take it anymore. While Jill Maxcy’s “Never Rob a Bank with Someone You Love” gave me some good chuckles and “Beyond Lovely” scored originality points for its tale of a queeny poltergeist with aspirations to have his own TV show, “Diving for Pearls” was so weird and disgusting that I couldn’t turn away, but I wished I had.

One so-called “short” was what I call “interminable.” After about 20-mintues of “Lesbian Pop Idol,” a docu-style video in which lesbians in bad bar lighting competed in Karaoke, I turned to my movie companion to state most tactfully, “Geez, this is long,” to which she very frankly replied, “It’s torture.”

The evening was saved by the hilarious “LA Dolls,” the story of two real dolls – I mean 12 inches tall and plastic – who play out their courtship and eventual break up in various LA locales, including WeHo’s famed lesbian sushi joint, Murakami, where they commemorate their love with a bud from the ubiquitous roses lady whose cameo elicited the night’s loudest and longest laughs.

Despite my discouragement by the apparent lack of quality fare, I stuck it out and went to as many of these movies as possible. Why, you might ask, would I waste hours of my life sitting in the darkened DGA watching bad gay cinema? I did it for the cause.

My belief is that the best way to raise the bar for gay film is for Me and You and Everyone We Know – which is not just an invitation to action but the title of an invigorating new indie with a commitment to artistic vision that I can’t wait to see in gay movies – to go watch as much homo-cinema as possible in order to show those holding the purse strings that gay content means big bucks.

Only when the studio heads see dollar signs will they get behind gay filmmakers, and with a bit of support we will see the plethora of talented gay screenwriters, directors, set designers and all those lesbian best boys and grips in Tinseltown join forces to make great gay movies with higher production values and with respect for their audience.

To be fair, there were some exceptionally worthy offerings at Outfest, such as “Little Man,” a documentary about director Nicole Conn’s commitment to save her premature baby’s life despite all odds and the risk of losing her relationship with her partner; “The Education of Shelby Knox,” the true story of a Texas teen who takes on local high school officials to promote sex education and gay tolerance; and the dark and delightfully dysfunctional comedy, “Happy Endings,” from gay fave Don Roos.

Outfest also admirably put on a number of workshops and labs to forge connections between filmmakers and nurture emerging talent.

For effort and stamina as the oldest and largest continuous film festival in LA, sticking it out since 1983, I give Outfest a big thumbs-up, sort of like Uma Thurman in “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,” but don’t get me started on that one.