Wolfe Nabs ‘Gayby’ at SXSW

Wolfe Releasing acquired the U.S. rights to the critically acclaimed and hilariously titled comedy Gayby at the SXSW Film Conference & Festival.

From writer-director Jonathan Lisecki, Gayby tells of a gay man and a straight woman who decide to have a child together. The film will be released theatrically later this year, in partnership with The Film Collaborative, and the DVD and VOD release will come in 2013.

I’ve seen the short film upon which it was based, on First Run Features’ Fest Selects: Best Gay Shorts Vol. 1, and I have to say it’s one of the funniest and most memorable short films I’ve seen (read my review here). Upon finishing it, I wanted to see more, as the characters, premise and writing were so promising. This looks to be a great release for Wolfe.

“Gayby is the funniest movie I've seen in years," said Wolfe president Maria Lynn. “It's a pleasure to be able to work with such a talented filmmaker as Jonathan Lisecki and help him reach the widespread audience he deserves.”

TLA Inks With Polish Distributor Tongariro

TLA Releasing has signed a deal with Polish LGBT distributor Tongariro to release content to Poland day-and-date with the United States and the United Kingdom. The first title under the deal will be the drama Beauty.

“The expansion into the Polish market provides further assurance of a global day-and-date strategy with our future releases, and we are excited to be making in-roads into a rapidly expanding European market,” said TLA President Derek Curl.

Additionally, the VOD service Outfilm.pl will debut in Poland in late February, featuring TLA content.

Mormon Doc Wins GLAAD Award

Wolfe Video release 8: The Mormon Proposition won Best Documentary at this year’s GLAAD Media Awards, which are given to outstanding gay and lesbian films.

The film by Reed Cowan, the writer-director and journalist and former Mormon missionary, explores the Mormon Church's involvement in California’s Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage in the state of California.

“This award belongs to the brave men and women who have fought for marriage equality for decades,” Cowan said, accepting the award. “And especially those who were courageous enough to tell their stories to the international audience the film continues to reach. GLAAD is about protecting and celebrating the stories of our community, and our team is honored to be a part of a proud GLAAD awards legacy.”

The film is available on DVD at retail, and through digital download channels.
 

‘Undertow’ Director Creates Sweeping Ghost Story

Javier Fuentes-León didn’t know how his first film as writer and director, Undertow (Contracorriente), would play to a Spanish audience when it opened. He didn’t expect the standing ovation he got — nor did he expect to win an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival, or to be submitted as Peru’s official best foreign language Oscar submission.

Wolfe Video releases the film June 1 on DVD ($29.95) and Blu-ray Disc ($29.95). Special features include deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes featurettes and a Spanish-language PSA for GLAAD with Sofia Vergara (“Modern Family”).

“It was amazing to get that close [to an Oscar nomination] with my first film,” Fuentes-León said. “It's been a beautiful trip.” 

Javier Fuentes-León

Fuentes-León’s journey into filmmaking began in Peru, where he was born, raised and studied medicine for eight years. He knew he always wanted to do something related to the arts, but that wasn’t something that seemed like an option in Peru.

So he moved to Los Angeles and attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where he created the seedling for Undertow in the form of a short called “Mariela’s Kitchen,” based on a play he wrote, in which a fisherman walks into his home to find his wife and his lover, only his lover is a ghost and cannot be seen by his wife. In the play and short, the lover was a female prostitute; it was only later, when Fuentes-León himself came out as gay, that he changed the gender of the lover to male.

In Undertow, the same scene appears and serves as the lynchpin for the story — fisherman Miguel (Cristian Mercado) has been carrying on with painter Santiago (Manolo Cardona) in a small Peruvian fishing town in which Miguel is married to beautiful Mariela (Tatiana Astengo) and is a leader in his community, while Santiago is shunned for being openly gay. Mariela wakes up from a nap to find Miguel pallid as Santiago tells him he has been pulled under the sea by the undertow and has died, leaving him a ghost that only Miguel can see.

“My aim was first of all to make a personal movie,” he said. “It's not my autobiography, In my life there's nothing similar to the main characters, but I also had to struggle with the same dilemmas of coming out and the fear of losing the love of people around you.”

The film then follows as Miguel deals with the rumors that surround him and Santiago, with Mariela’s pregnancy and the birth of their son, and with his own sexual orientation and what it means to be a man. It’s a stunning film, both emotionally and visually, with wide, spectral shots of the Peruvian seaside and the sand blowing in the wind.

“Of course, I wanted a gay audience to be proud of it, to embrace it,” he said. “But at the same time, I didn't want it to just stay there. I wanted it to be seen by people like my parents and their friends, to have them enjoy the story, be moved by it and hopefully in the process of watching the movie, humanize this dilemma, people who have a sexual orientation that is different than the one most people have.”

Besides crossing over to a wider audience globally, Fuentes-León hoped it would play well in Latin America.

“Except for in cities like São Paulo and Buenos Aires, you don't go to other cities and see an open gay community — there's not a gay niche like there is in the U.S. or Europe,” he said. “A lot of gay people in Latin America are not out — they're afraid to be seen in a movie theater that evidently has a movie with a gay relationship.”

He said that while he finds the comparison “lazy and limiting,” he doesn’t mind if people call his film a Latin American Brokeback Mountain, in that it’s a love story between two men that live in a rural area.

“There's a function that all gay love stories are the same, so if a film told it already than another film is just the same,” he said. “But how many ‘boy meets girl, boy loses girl’ stories do we see? But at least they are not comparing me to a terrible film.”

The Undertow discs include 24 minutes of deleted scenes with additional explanation and foreshadowing that Fuentes-León cut for pacing, including one scene that deals more in depth with the religious undertones of the film.

“When we wrote it and shot it, it seemed like an important scene, but when we edited it, it seemed like it stopped the story for the writer to talk about religion,” he said. “It worked as a scene but it seemed like it stopped the story.”

Fuentes-León said one man in a Colombian focus group summed up his film best: “I think it is a movie about being faithful to yourself. No matter how big the obstacles may be, being faithful to yourself is worth it.”

 

New Indie Titles, April 29: ‘When You’re Strange’ and More

Title: When You’re Strange: A Film About The Doors
Genre: Documentary/Music
Studio: Eagle Rock Entertainment
Street date: 6/29
Prebook date: 6/4
Price/Format: $19.98 DVD or $24.98 Blu-ray
Reserve on

This theatrical documentary uses rarely seen footage of The Doors to tell the story about the controversial rock band. The film is directed by Tom DiCillo and narrated by Johnny Depp.


Title: Don McKay
Genre: Drama
Studio: Image
Street Date: 6/29
Prebook Date: 6/1
Price/Format: $27.98 DVD $35.98 Blu-ray
Reserve for purchase (DVD or Blu-ray)
Reserve on

Executive produced by and starring Oscar nominee Thomas Haden Church (Sideways), the film concerns a janitor (Church) haunted by a mistake he made 25 years ago. He is pulled out of his funk by his ex-girlfriend (Elizabeth Shue), who is dying and wants to spend her final days with him but who is closely watched over by her doctor (James Rebhorn) and nurse (Melissa Leo). With Tribeca buzz, an amazing cast and critical acclaim, Don McKay is surely worth checking out. The discs come with commentary and deleted scenes.


Title: World Cup Soccer in Africa: Who Really Wins?
Genre: Documentary
Studio: Disinformation
Street date: 6/15
Prebook date: 5/18
Price/Format: $19.98 DVD
Reserve for purchase
Reserve on

As much as the World Cup is a globally celebrated event, South Africa serving as the host nation for the 19th FIFA World Cup raises some questions — who is uprooted by the building of new stadiums for the event? And couldn’t the money spent for those stadiums have been used to help the country’s poorest, who lack toilets or running water?


Title: Le Combat dans l’ile
Genre: Drama/Foreign/Cult
Studio: Zeitgeist
Street date: 6/22
Price/Format: $29.99 DVD
Reserve for purchase
Reserve on

A remastered French New Wave romantic political thriller, Alan Cavalier’s film deals with the political situation in France in the 1960s. A member of a right-wing terrorist organization is involved in an assassination attempt and hides out in his friend’s childhood home with his wife, and a love triangle ensues. Sounds like Jules et Jim meets Casablanca, count me in.


Title: Word Is Out
Genre: Documentary/Gay/Lesbian
Studio: Oscilloscope/Millarium Zero
Street date: 6/8
Prebook: 5/4
Price/Format: $29.95 DVD
Reserve for purchase
Reserve on

In conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the first gay pride marches comes a release of this 1977 film, a documentary of 26 gay and lesbian people of various races, ages and backgrounds. The landmark film was shown in theaters and on television released in theaters around the world and shown on prime-time television and has been restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. The film will be released through Millarium Zero, a sister company to Milestone Film & Video, and through a distribution deal with Oscilloscope. The DVD includes numerous special features about the filmmakers, the film’s subjects and more.
 

Wolfe Celebrates 25 Years With $25,000 Giveaway

Wolfe Releasing, the largest distributor of gay and lesbian films, with more than 300 films, is celebrating its 25th anniversary by giving away $25,000 in DVDs.

Every month in 2010, Wolfe will give two entrants to its “$25,000 Wolfe DVD Giveaway Contest” a Wolfe Gay DVD Library and a Wolfe Lesbian DVD Library, each valued at more than $1,000. Entry is limited to once per month, at .

As well, 25 U.S. cities will honor Wolfe this year for its commitment to gay and lesbian film with commendations at various galas.

“After 25 years, Wolfe is still acquiring, promoting and cultivating the next generation of gay and lesbian filmmakers and films from all over the globe,” said actress Lily Tomlin, who starred in The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, one of Wolfe’s first mainstream crossover films.

Congratulations, Wolfe!

Sharon Gless Calls Out to Gay Following With ‘Hannah Free’

Legendary TV actress Sharon Gless, perhaps best known for playing Christine Cagney in pioneering female-cop drama “Cagney & Lacey,” has long appreciated her gay following. Other than playing tough lesbian icon Cagney (who wasn’t gay, nor is Gless), she played Debbie Novotny, the overbearing mother to Hal Sparks’ Michael Novotny, in Showtime’s “Queer as Folk.”

“[“Cagney & Lacey” was] really when I first because acquainted and close to the lesbian community because they were so supportive and really kept us on the air,” Gless said. “I have tremendous appreciation for the gay community for really keeping my career going.”

Her latest role is the title character in Hannah Free, a lesbian drama now out on DVD from Wolfe Video ($24.95). In the film, based on a play by Claudia Allen, Gless plays an elderly woman whose lifetime love is near the end of her life, and whose family won’t let her see her.

“What was so timely for me, and I do make gay and lesbian causes my thing, I’m very passionate about it … what I thought was so timely and why it meant so much to me is the fact that gay couples still can’t get into a hospital room, still are not considered family,” Gless said. “I was on Rosie O’Donnell’s cruise (for gays and lesbians and their families), and there were two lesbian couples just boarding the ship, I think they’d been together 30 years. As they were boarding, one of the women had a heart attack … and her partner was not allowed in the room. And the woman died, with her partner sitting out in the hallway.”

Gless’ Hannah is a free spirit who constantly left her lover to raise her kids alone, while never failing to return to her. Gless said the final scene of the film, when Hannah is confronted with the end of her lover’s life, was particularly challenging in that she sought to underplay Hannah’s emotional state.

“When confronted with a highly emotional situation like that, you don’t usually fall apart,” Gless said. “You don’t go for the obvious.”

Gless was approached by Allen to play Hannah in the film after Gless starred in one of Allen’s plays in Chicago (her “Cagney & Lacey” co-star, Tyne Daly, also has starred in a radio play by Allen).

“She called me one day and said, ‘they’re putting one of my plays on film, do you want to be in it?’ I said, ‘absolutely,’” Gless said. “She writes women beautifully, so I knew it’d be fabulous.”

Gless now stars in TV’s “Burn Notice.” While that show and many others she has been in are available on DVD, there’s one notable exception: Other than one season and some reunion TV movies, almost all of “Cagney & Lacey” is still unavailable.

“My greatest regret is that ‘Cagney & Lacey’ never made it to DVD,” Gless said.

She hopes that if a “Cagney & Lacey” movie remake were to happen, renewed interest in the series would lead to its release on DVD.

Gless hopes that a feature film of the show would get even grittier than the series allowed when it aired during the 1980s. She said a technical advisor on the show was a female police officer who kept the show rooted in the reality of police work.

“I asked once our technical advisor, if you see something really horrible, is it really bad for a female cop to cry … in front of one of your male colleagues?” Gless said. “And she said, ‘Sharon, I’ve seen men cry, the things we see.’”

Gless on DVD

Cagney & Lacey: Season One is available on DVD — the set collects early episodes beginning with Gless’ first episodes as Cagney, who was played by Loretta Swit and Meg Foster in the show’s earliest incarnation — as are reunion sets Cagney & Lacey: The Menopause Years and Cagney & Lacey: The Return. Season sets and a complete-series set of “Queer as Folk” is available from Showtime, and the first three seasons of “Burn Notice” are out on DVD from Fox (season two is also available on Blu-ray).

New Indie Titles, May 20: ‘Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg’ and More

Title: Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
Genre: Documentary
Studio: New Video/Docurama
Street date: 8/24
Price/Format: $29.95 DVD
Reserve on

The popular documentary profiles Gertrude Berg, the TV pioneer who starred in the first popular sitcom, “The Goldbergs.” The two-DVD set includes interviews with such subjects as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, actor Ed Asner and producer Norman Lear, plus more than two hours of special features. 


Title: Before & After Stonewall: 25th Anniversary Edition
Genre: Documentary/Gay/Lesbian
Studio: First Run
Street Date: 6/8
Price/Format: $39.95 DVD
Reserve for purchase

The two-DVD set includes documentaries on the gay community prior to and after the June 28, 1969 NYPD raid of Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn, which helped jumpstart the modern gay rights movement.


Title: Mary and Max
Genre: Animated
Studio: MPI/IFC
Street date: 6/1
Price/Format: $24.98 DVD, $29.98 Blu-ray
Reserve for purchase (DVD or Blu-ray)
Reserve on

This stop-motion animation tale of unlikely friends — the daughter of an alcoholic mother and distant father, and a 44-year-old man with Asperger’s Syndrome — features the voice talents of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette and Eric Bana. The film was screen last October via Sundance Selects On-Demand.


Title: Sex Positive
Genre: Documentary/Gay/Lesbian
Studio: E1
Street date: 6/15
Price/Format: $19.98 DVD
Reserve on

Studios continue to line up titles for Gay and Lesbian Pride Month with such films as Sex Positive, a documentary on gay S&M-hustler-turned-AIDS activist Richard Berkowitz, who helped pioneer the idea of “safe sex” in light of the AIDS epidemic.


Title: Eclipse Series 23: The First Films of Akira Kurosawa
Genre: Foreign/Arthouse
Studio: Criterion
Street date: 8/3
Prebook: 7/6
Price/Format: $59.95 DVD

Before the legendary director created masterworks such as Rashomon and Seven Samurai, he made these four films — Sanshiro Sugata, The Most Beautiful, Sanshiro Sugata: Part Two and The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail.
 

New Indie Titles, May 6: ‘Shinjuku Incident’ and More

Title: Shinjuku Incident
Genre: Action
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Street date: 6/8
Prebook date: 5/6
Price/Format: $24.94 DVD
Reserve for purchase
Reserve on

What’s a Jackie Chan movie doing in IndieFile? Well, this one is a throwback to his classics and has been nominated for four Hong Kong Film Awards, including best picture. Chan stars as a Chinese immigrant to Japan who rises through the ranks of a black market mob to become the head of the infamous Shinjuku district. Special features include commentary on select scenes with Chan, as well as a behind-the-scenes featurette. 


Title: Fuel
Genre: Documentary
Studio: Cinema Libre
Street Date: 6/22
Prebook Date: 5/11
Price/Format: $24.95 DVD
Reserve on

The Sundance Audience Award-winning doc about alternative fuels features Sheryl Crow, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Larry David, Richard Branson and Robert Kennedy Jr.


Title: For My Father
Genre: Foreign/Thriller
Studio: Film Movement
Street date: 6/1
Price/Format: $24.95 DVD
Reserve for purchase
Reserve on

For My Father is an Israeli-German drama about a young Palestinian man on a suicide mission who finds forbidden love while awaiting the completion of his mission. It was nominated for seven Israeli Academy Awards. The Film Movement short film included on this DVD is Ali & the Ball, an Australian film about a young boy in a refugee detention center who must protect his mother and sister.


Title: Dark Arc
Genre: Dark Comedy
Studio: Vanguard
Street date: 8/24
Prebook date: 7/16
Price/Format: $19.95 DVD

A strange love triangle ensues when a visual performance artist and his muse stage visual events to influence the life of a down-to-earth graphic designer. Writer-director Dan Zukovic wrote and directed the ’90s cult film The Last Big Thing.


Title: Soundless Wind Chime
Genre: Drama/Gay/Lesbian
Studio: TLA
Street date: 6/22
Prebook: 5/25
Price/Format: $19.98 DVD
Reserve for purchase
Reserve on

This dreamlike film about a Swiss pickpocket and shy Chinese man falling in love has won numerous queer film festival awards, and it’s nice to see a low-key, atypical gay love story for a change.

YouTube:

Emmy Winner Leslie Jordan Gets Into ‘Eating Out 3’

For being openly gay in an industry with a crowded closet, Leslie Jordan has had a marathon acting career. The diminutive actor has made quirky cameos and played memorable reoccurring characters on TV since the 1980s, in such shows as “Newhart” and “Murphy Brown” through this decade on shows such as “Ugly Betty” and “Boston Legal,” until one of those roles landed him a Primetime Emmy in 2006 for playing the caustic Beverly in “Will & Grace.”

Now with an autobiographical book out, My Life Down the Pink Carpet, Jordan returns to film with a role in the third edition of the campy “Eating Out” series, Eating Out: All You Can Eat. The movie comes to DVD Nov. 10 from Ariztical Entertainment at $24.95. In the film, Jordan plays an older gay man at an LGBT center who offers words of advice to the film’s young lead.

On becoming involved with “Eating Out” …

Jordan: The director, Glenn Gaylord, got in touch with my agent and told me they had this great little script. I was a little hesitant, thinking, not only is it low budget, but it’s part three! Why didn’t they want me for one and two? But we all went to lunch and he was really enthusiastic about it. I did this play for a number of years called “Southern Baptist Sissies,” and in that play I got to play an older gay man who in the end got to help a younger gay man, and that drew me to this role. My part is so small, but I have a pivotal part where I got to help one of the young gay hunks.

On not having seen the first two films …

Listen I’m the most self-centered SOB, I try so hard to be au currant, but I just hadn’t seen them. When I showed up at the lunch, I hadn’t even read the script. But I B.S.-ed my way through.

On his elder statesman status in the gay community …

Jordan: In my generation, we had no one. There was not one single person on the face of this earth that I could go to saying listen, I’m having a problem with this gay thing. I think my generation who came around in the late ’60s and early ’70s and went through the ’80s with the AIDS epidemic, we have something to say.

On doing low-budget films …

Jordan: I’ve reached a point in my career where sometimes I hesitate, I’m so spoiled. You do low-budget and you almost feel like your career is going backwards. The opposite happened to what I thought would happen. I thought I would be miserable, but I got caught up with the enthusiasm of the piece. I think it was the first time in the series that gay people were really playing gay people. … We got lucky this time. They hired four really good actors that happened to be gay. That really gave the project a fun feel. It wasn’t like straight boys having to kiss gay boys.

We had our first screening recently. I told my friend, we’ll sit on the aisle and if it’s really bad, we’ll just leave. … But it’s adorable. I’m so proud of it.

On critics of the film …

I would sit all those critics down and say listen, I would take criticism from someone who has done it, but until you’ve taken your baby and worked for years and tried to get it up and you know the pitfalls and you know what it’s like being on the set, having to shoot fast and furious, you need to give us an f-ing break.

On working with gay icon and John Waters muse Mink Stole …

We didn’t have scenes together really, but she was on the set with me. I think John Waters movies like saved my life when I was this little gay closeted boy in Knoxville, Tenn. I’m such a fan of hers.

On his oeuvre, which includes such films as Frankenstein General Hospital, Black Velvet Pantsuit and Farm Sluts …

Jordan: I had forgotten about Farm Sluts. Someone on the radio asked me about that and I said yeah, I did that right after Horse Hung Hispanics. I thought they were trying to say I did porn.

On his ’90s Blockbuster ads in which he starred with a dog ...

Jordan: Paramount hired me, and it was like the gig of a lifetime. They said we’re gonna put this on every single release from  Paramount this year. It was me and I had this dog and I was in this video store trying to rent and it was a trick dog, and I send him to get things. I’m telling you it was like, this was way before Internet, it was one of these underground things where people would come up to me and ask about it. It kind of made me famous.

On “Will & Grace” and his Emmy …

Jordan: The show was already over, which was kind of interesting because I thought after four years of being on the show, why am I being considered a guest star? But it turns out if you do less than five episodes a season, you’re considered a guest star. When I won, the only drawback is they don’t present that category at the Emmys, they present it a week early on Bravo called the Creative Arts Emmys. It’s 75 of the most boring awards. But I tell you, I was really honored because I’ve always felt there are two ways you can combat homophobia, and one is through comedy. Another way is to put a face on it, and I think “Will & Grace,” America welcomed those characters into their homes. There was a lot of progress made. It was more than just winning an Emmy. It was winning an Emmy for a show I was so proud to be a part of and a show that really broke new ground.

I got a call about a month ago, and it was Megan Mullally, but Megan called and goes, “So honey, what do you think? ‘Karen, the Musical?’” I said, “Megan, you don’t own that character, you’d have to clear that with NBC and the creators.” She said, “Oh honey I’ve done that.” So apparently it’s being written.

On what he gets recognized the most for …

Jordan: It depends on what part of the country I’m in, or what part of town. If I’m in a gay area, it’s “Will & Grace” and “Sordid Lives.” But it’s interesting, I’m recognized for this five-episode arc I did on “Boston Legal.” It was the first season, it was a lot time ago. David [E.] Kelley said he wanted to write a murderer that was so friendly and sweet that people would forget I was a murderer. I killed my mother with a skillet, and James Spader got me off. Betty White takes me under her wing and she ends up being afraid I’m gonna kill her with a skillet, and she kills me with a skillet. Only David E. Kelley would come up with this.

 

 

NOTE: This is the "clean" version of Ariztical's trailer, but it ain't that clean.