Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema (2006, iFC) is a series of interviews with GLBT actors, directors and producers, as well as people who had been involved in the making of landmark queer films, discussing the impact that queer film/film making has had on their lives.I think the most important thing the documentary communicates is that queer film opens up a community. While most of the people they interview share the same story of going to the video store and hunting for videos that had two men on the cover or two women or whatever, it seems that whenever a queer film gets theatrical release, it creates this moment where a community is formed within the theater of queer people all experiencing a film that speaks directly to them. There are more queer film festivals than any other kind. However, today, many queer films are being made for straight-to-DVD release, which eliminates that communal experience.
There were some other very important moments, though, that I think translate very well into a discussion about television. One was where a gay man said that if he'd been able to access queer cinema earlier, he would have saved a fortune in therapy trying to find a way to identify and talk about what he was. This is a really crucial statement as far as I'm concerned. I grew up in rural Maine, where there were very, very few people who were different from one another. Although I am not gay myself, I can imagine how difficult it must be to understand what you're feeling when no one around you seems to be feeling the same way. One of the most essential functions I think queer tv (and queer cinema) provides is access to queer culture--to a vocabulary to talk about yourself and what you're thinking and feeling, a way to recognize that you're not the only one of your kind.
Of course, another message the film clearly communicates is that you can't tell a queer story if all you do is swap out straight characters for gay ones. Because society is so heteronormative, the nuances of the stories are so different. The emotional elements are entangled with emotional ties to friends and family in different ways than in heterosexual relationships; lust and acts of lust are in different contexts.
And yet, in the best known queer films, the actors portraying queer characters are almost always straight. Most of the people being interviewed seemed to be okay with this, but noted that frequently the actors go into it thinking, "Ooh! Oscar time!" John Waters, whose teeny tiny mustache makes me think he has a smear of poo on his upper lip, pointed out, however, that it is far less brave for a straight actor to pretend to be gay in a film than for a gay actor to be openly gay and play a gay part. For a straight actor, it's acting. For a gay actor, it's opening themselves up and sharing a series of actual experiences, frequently at the risk of being pigeonholed as "that gay actor" and dooming ones' self to a lifetime of gay roles. Unless you're Rupert Everett.
