Hetro- Metro- Retro-sexual

Festival activity has died down for the holidays, so I've been focusing on writing a follow-up movie to Butch Jamie. I guess you could call it a sequel, but that makes it sound so cliche, like it's the same movie twice. It's not like Jamie gets cast in another film as a man and dates another straight girl. No, we've been there, done that. This movie simply takes various plotlines from the end of Butch Jamie (which I won't give away if you haven't seen it yet) and creates a whole new movie out of them. This one I've tentatively titled Heterosexual Jill.


As you may know, one of the plotlines in Butch Jamie is about Jamie and Jill's relationship. Jill is straight and thinks Jamie is a man. Jamie isn't a man, so you can see the dilemma. Now...if they end up together, if they don't, how, why, what, who, where -- there's plenty of surprises to be had, so I won't go into much detail (the story isn't as cliche as it may sound). But regardless of how things turn out, there is obviously something interesting about that situation, something that deserves to be explored; that little something called sexuality....


Was Jill attracted to Jamie because she thought she was a man, or was she attracted to him because he's really a woman? If we want to get deep about it, we could say -- what is gender -- the way you present yourself, or who you are? And how does who you are change depending on the way you choose to represent yourself and how other people perceive you and relate to you?


So the film is a romantic comedy. I think the words "romantic comedy" are almost as bad as "sequel" -- cliche, generic, same-ol, same-ol. So...let's just call it a comedy with a "romantic element." The #1 question that people ask me is -- "Is there sex in it?" Well, let's say for now that...I'm trying. I'm trying to have sex in it. We'll see how that goes. I tell people that there often isn't sex in comedies, but that doesn't seem to make any difference to them. Then somehow we always end up talking about the LWord, and even though the LWord has a lot of sex in it, lesbians do like to complain about how the women are represented on the show. So picky, those lesbians.

But let's get back on topic. Heterosexual Jill. A follow-up comedy with a romantic element. The tagline might read "Hetro-sexual is the new Metro-sexual" (I don't really like that, but I'm just brainstorming. Maybe it could be something like "Hetro-sexual is so Retro-sexual." Although don't be fooled by the title -- the film will have lots of lesbians! Maybe the tagline should be "Lesbians may have sex in this movie." That will probably be better for sales). There may be some singing involved (not a "musical" as one may try to label it, but rather a film with singing....) We have Jill dealing with her sexuality, we have Jamie dealing with Jill, somehow we'll have Lola and David in there (again, I don't want to give away the ending to the first movie, so I'm tip-toeing around the plot with all four of the characters), we'll have a new character named Jose whose name rhymes with gay, we may have a girl named Ruby whose name rhymes with booby, and of course, we'll have Howard, the cat actor (Hey - Howard ryhmes with coward. I just noticed that. That must have been a subconscious choice on my part).



The story is still in development so anything can happen. But so far in my rough draft, we have Howard running around in mini tap shoes, Howard being chased by Jamie who is wearing a big black cat suit, and possibly Howard in a sombrero at some point. We'll see how it all goes down. Howard is shooting a movie, so the costume choices are endless. As Glen suggests in this draft, we could even dress Howard up as a dog. But -- that's just a little much, don't you think?

GLEN
Think of it - if we cast a cat in a dog's role, that would be something original. No one has ever done that before. Have you ever seen a movie where they've done that?

JAMIE
No.

GLEN
They have all sorts of small dog costumes - toy poodles, Chihuahuas, min pins...what was that other one? I suppose we could find a Pomeranian outfit.

JAMIE
(cracking a smile)
Maybe you could dress him up as a Great Dane and then build a really small set so that he looks bigger.

A dyke, a wig, and a funeral

As some of you may know, I have a short film out now on The Ultimate Lesbian Short Film Festival DVD. The film is called Half-Laughing, and it's a dramatic story with streaks of satiric humor. It's about a young dyke who goes home with a shaved head for her grandfather's funeral only to confront her mother, who wants her to wear a wig.



The story isn't what I'd call autobiographical, but I did have a very surreal experience with a wig and a funeral at one point. The film is more interesting than what really happened, so here's the trailer if you haven't seen it yet:



Also, here's the behind-the-scenes video with interviews with some of the actors. We shot the film a few years ago, and I just finished putting these interviews together! Finally off my to-do list! :)

Chi Kind of Town

Right before I went to the Long Island G&L Film Festival (here's a link to my Long Island blog entry), I went to Chicago to represent Butch Jamie at Reeling, the Chicago Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival. I'd never been to Chi-town before (that's what the locals call Chicago; at first I thought it meant Chinatown, but it doesn't. Also, the "chi" is pronounced like "shy."), so I stayed a couple extra days to sight-see.



Above are pictures from Millennium Park, an outdoor center for art, music, architecture, and landscape design. I loved it -- it was one of the highlights of my trip. The park cost $145 million to build although it's free to go to, and it opened only a couple of years ago. It gives Chicago a very modern feel. I spent several hours looking around, taking photos, listening to this awesome soundscape thing they had (shown in the second picture above), and then after it got dark, I watched an artsy video presentation with images of glaciers and human figures. The whole place was kind of like an outdoor museum. There were several sculptures, including a big, metal sphere/blob thing that reflect's Chicago's skyline.




Here are some reflections of the sphere taken from my camera phone at night:



As for the film festival, it was a lot of fun. We had a Friday night screening of Butch Jamie with an after-party at a local hangout. Saturday night I went to another party where I met Peter and CeJae, two guys who had seen the movie the night before.



CeJae (the one in the second picture) wanted to pretend that he was my girlfriend for the night. I let him kiss my cheek for the photo, but that was it.

Sunday I interviewed with Tello Films, a new online video site that features films for/by/about lesbians. The interview isn't up yet, but I'll keep you updated.

After my interview, I met up with some other filmmakers and actors for brunch.


So that's it for Chicago--I hope to be back again soon. It's my new favorite city!

I Fought the Cat and the Cat Won

I found out a few days ago that Butch Jamie won The Long Island Gay and Lesbian Film Festival Jury Award for "Best Female Feature"!


(if you want to see a couple of photos from the festival, here's a link to my blog entry about Long Island)

This is the second award for the film; last July, the film and I won the Outfest Jury Award for "Outstanding Actress." I have pictures from Outfest posted on our webpage, so I won't bore you with those. But I do have one special one that has never before been seen. I had to bribe my stalker to get a copy:


It's a pic of me signing some autographs after our Outfest screening in L.A. a couple of months ago. I know it kind of looks like one of those obscure photos of Big Foot or a UFO sighting since it's far away and a little blurry, but if you look really closely, you can see the back of my shoulder.


Now those of you who have seen the film know that my rival in this biz is Howard, the cat actor. Make no mistake about it - in real life we are no different. Howard has not won an acting award or signed any autographs, yet people often tell me that the cat is the one who steals the show. Posted below is an outtake from the film of me and Howard improvising a scene where I'm trying to convince him to eat cat food at an audition. One lady told me that the cat's brilliance is that in every single argument he and I had, the cat won. But take a look at the clip and see what you think; I think I may have won this one.