IN FILMS, GAYS COME OUT IN A DIFFERENT LIGHT

So many gays on screen over the years, so little satisfaction--until now.

In the coming weeks, three independently made low-budget films that deal matter-of-factly with the homosexuality of their central characters will be released.

“Hollywood has tackled the issue of homosexuality a number of times in the past, treating it as the primary dramatic point,” says Vitto Russo, a noted lecturer on “gays in the movies” and author of an historical account, “The Celluloid Closet.” But, he says, “the films usually are about homosexuality, not about people and their stories.”

Two of the three new films are by first-time film makers, financed in large part within the gay community: Bill Sherwood’s “Parting Glances,” due for release by Cinecom International Films in Los Angeles March 7, and Donna Deitch’s “Desert Hearts,” due for release by the Samuel Goldwyn Co. in Los Angeles on April 25.

A third film, British director Stephen Frears’ “My Beautiful Laundrette,” is being released by Orion Classics in Los Angeles on March 14.

In the past, the typical movie industry version of the “gay film” has had story lines “that attempt to justify the a gay life style for straight audiences, rather than take it for granted,” observes Cinecom executive Ira Deutschman.

He cites “Making Love,” one of Hollywood’s recent and much-hyped attempts as the “prototype Hollywood gay film.”

“Personal Best” is often cited as another film industry story of a gay character’s coming to terms with his or her homosexuality, which is usually portrayed as a trauma.

“Hollywood films usually don’t deal with this subject at all,” says Larry Kardish, a film curator at the Museum of Modern Art. “When they do, the focus is on the subject , with a capital S--that is, homosexuality and the reactions to it, rather than focusing on the (gay) characters themselves.” The museum is co-sponsoring with the Film Society of Lincoln Center an upcoming series of new films that includes yet another movie on a gay theme that is due to be released later this spring, “Donna Herlindaand Her Son.”

The Spanish-language film by Mexican director Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, was described by Kardish as the story of a Mexican mother’s attempts to maintain a family unit that includes her gay son and his male lover, and the woman he has married in order to bear his mother a grandchild. Kardish noted that the matter-of-fact approach (to being gay) was especially noteworthy within the context of the macho Hispanic culture.

“What’s different about these upcoming films,” said Kardish, of the new wave of gay films, “is that they take homosexuality as a natural part of life, and let the characters and their stories go on from there.”

Speaking about the upcoming movies, Russo observes: “These three new films clearly have set out to tell stories about characters that happen to be gay. This was brought home to me when, on the way out of a screening of ‘My Beautiful Laundrette,’ I overheard someone saying, ‘I don’t get what the story has to do with the two guys being gay.’ ”

Frears’ “Laundrette,” which opened to strongly favorable reviews last fall at the London Film Festival and which has since played well with audiences throughout Britain, has been called “a landmark film” in both the gay and mainstream British press for its straightforward handling of a love affair between two men, one Pakistani and one British. Newsweek’s Jack Kroll praised the film’s “sophisticated, funny, sexy, compassionate” characters.

Early on in the film, one man simply reaches out, tenderly caresses and kisses the other, without any previous allusion to either’s sexuality. However, the love affair is only a subplot in the film, which initially was commissioned and later made by British TV for less than $1 million. The central plot deals with the place of Pakistanis in contemporary British life and the race and class conflicts that are the result.

“I wanted the story to be about Asians, not about gays, so the (gay) relationship had to seem perfectly natural,” says Hanif Kureshi, 29, the half-Asian, half-British playwright who was commissioned to write the script.

“I decided to take their relationship for granted, the way we do in our own lives now,” he added, noting that “the climate in London has changed a lot over the past five years, so that it’s much easier to be (openly) gay than ever before.”

Sherwood’s and Deitch’s films deal primarily with homosexuality, but in each the subject is approached from a different angle. Sherwood’s “Parting Glances” is about 24 hours in the life of New York City now, and about some of the varied people who populate it, including gay men--two in particular. Deitch’s “Desert Hearts,” set in the 1950s, is about a love affair between two women that grows out of one woman’s search for her own identity while in Reno awaiting a divorce.

“I intended the film as an homage to New York City, and also to the gay community, which in spite of this (AIDS) crisis we are living through, continues to be such a life force,” says Sherwood, a New York-based independent who went beyond a matter-of-fact acknowledgement of his own homosexuality to say, “I feel very lucky to be gay.

“For years, I have felt, as many gays have, that we have been portrayed badly or offensively in films, if at all.”

Citing what he considers to be “astounding ignorance” of gays and the way they live on the part of heterosexual film makers, Sherwood says: “I think one of the problems Hollywood has had dealing with this subject is that it’s usually approached so gingerly. Even in ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman,’ it takes one hour for the two characters (played by William Hurt and Raul Julia) to kiss, and then it’s set up to shock the audience. This is why I had two men kissing right from the start, in ‘Parting Glances,’ to get it over with right away, and allow us to get on with their interaction with other people and with what’s going on in all their lives.”

“What’s going on” in the life of Sherwood’s film includes AIDS, which he says he could not ignore in a film about current life in New York, “when we’re all living through this horror every day.”

Deitch, a West Coast film maker, expresses similar sentiments when recalling her initial attraction to the 1970s novel by Jane Rule, “Desert of the Heart,” which forms the basis for “Desert Hearts.”

“I felt there had not been a romantic love story between two women in the history of the commercial cinema,” she notes. “When (romantic) relationships between women were explored, they usually ended up in suicide or in a bisexual triangle.

“I thought the times had changed to the point where there was more frank and open discussion of sexuality,” she says, referring to her 1979 purchase of the film rights to Rule’s book.

Both Sherwood and Deitch say they wanted to make their “own films from scratch,” and outside the Hollywood studio system. They cite the unlikelihood that they would be given the opportunity to direct, even they could interest the major studios in their projects. Adds Deitch: “The subject matter was yet another (studio) hurdle.”

Sherwood raised an initial $40,000 “mostly from friends and colleagues,” and an additional $250,000, by the time the film was completed last fall, “mostly from gay men and women, several straight women, and a few straight men.”

“Everyone saved the day,” he recalls, “but ultimately it was one New York angel who saw a rough cut of the film and came in with the money we needed for completion.”

Sherwood describes the investor simply as one of the associate producers of Broadway’s recent “As Is,” a play about the AIDS crisis.

Sherwood says the distribution deal with Cinecom was set within one week of when the company’s executive vice president for marketing and distribution, Deutschman, screened the film.

“They seemed on the same wavelength as the movie, and what was more important, they had no qualms about presenting the film as a gay film,” says Sherwood.

Deitch’s struggle to raise the total $1.5-million cost of her film was far more time-consuming. She says it took nearly four years to raise the funds from individuals, “mostly lesbian and feminist women,” in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and several other U.S. cities.

She started publishing a newsletter “to keep up communication and interest,” and finally sold her house near Los Angeles to help cover completion costs of the film.

Deitch also describes a more laborious casting process than Sherwood’s, who said he used many first-time New York actors, none members of the Screen Actors Guild. Deitch says several actresses declined to read for the role eventually played by Helen Shaver in the film, “on the basis of the lesbian (love) theme.”

Deitch deliberately set out to find a specialized distributor for the completed film, “so the film wouldn’t be lost among the majors’ bigger films.”

She says she chose the Goldwyn Co. over others interested, because she liked the distributor’s recent handling of “Stranger Than Paradise” and “Dance With a Stranger,” and “because they offered me the most money.”

“It’s hard to think of spending all this time on one film, but it’s absolutely been worth it,” Deitch said.

Looking ahead, and noting that she now has a publicist as well as super-agent Sam Cohn to help guide her career, Deitch expresses confidence that her persistence will pay off.

“If this film proves to be popular, it will also prove that I know more than others (in the industry) about what’s really going on out there.”

Sherwood, who says he has another screenplay--with two gay characters--in hand, but still no desire to work within the studio system, also expresses confidence about his future. And he says he “couldn’t care less” about being pegged as “a gay film maker.”

“All I know is that I am getting lots of offers to write and direct, so my film must have struck a chord somewhere.”