TWO TOP FILMS WILL NOT BE IN GAY, LESBIAN FEST

Two of the potentially most noteworthy films to focus on gay characters in recent years will not be shown at the Los Angeles International Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival, opening tonight, because their U.S. distributors fear their being pigeonholed as “gay films.”

The films are Jill Godmilow’s “Waiting for the Moon,” about an incident in the 40-year-long relationship between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, due to be released in March by Skouras Pictures; and British director Stephen Frears’ “Prick Up Your Ears,” about the life and death of English playwright Joe Orton and his longtime companion, Kenneth Halliwell, scheduled for release by the Samuel Goldwyn Co. in April.

“These are important films by prominent film makers that are of obvious interest to gay audiences, and it is to our great disappointment that we have not been allowed to show them,” said Larry Horne, director of the film festival.

Representatives of the two companies defended their decision as part of the strategy they are using to market the films.

Horne said that he even had offered to highlight each film as the opening-night presentation at the fifth annual, two-week-long festival at the Four Star Theater on Wilshire Blvd.

Instead, the festival, produced by the Gay and Lesbian Media Coalition, will open with two other new films: “Mala Noche,” an American independent film by Gus Van Sant, about the relationship between a Portland liquor-store clerk and a young, Mexican illegal; and “Anne Trister,” a Canadian film about the homosexual awakenings of a young Jewish artist.

Over the course of the festival, which this year has as its honorary chairperson Patty Duke, president of the Screen Actors Guild, 30 other films focusing on gay characters or gay themes are scheduled. (Information: (213) 273-2675.)

Horne said that both Skouras and Goldwyn were approached in January about the possibility of including “Waiting for the Moon” and “Prick Up Your Ears” in the festival, and representatives of both companies initially reacted favorably to the idea. Both Godmilow and Frears, in recent interviews in New York, noted that “the gay market is a natural audience” for these films.

However, the two distribution companies subsequently decided separately to reject the invitations to include their films in the festival, because, according to Horne, “they didn’t want the films to be pigeonholed as gay or lesbian films.”

The companies also recently rejected a request by the New York-based Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the oldest national anti-discrimination group within the gay community, to use the two films for fund-raising benefits in New York. The reasons for the refusal were similar, according to several sources close to both films.

“We are breaking our backs to try to properly position the film within the gay community, with underpublicized private screenings, massive mailings and so forth, but we will not pigeonhole this film,” Jeff Lipsky, president of the motion picture division of Skouras Pictures, said this week.

He called it “an important marketing decision” by his company not to include “Waiting for the Moon” in any gay-themed festival.

Bingham Ray, Goldwyn vice president of theatrical sales, expressed similar sentiments this week when he said, “To take (‘Prick Up Your Ears’) as strictly a gay film for a gay audience would be to limit its potential audience.”

Ray, who said Goldwyn also was working in an “underpublicized” manner to establish relationships within the gay and lesbian communities in major cities around the country, maintained that he might consider other gay-themed films for a gay film festival. However, of the Frears film, he said, “I just couldn’t see that, through the Los Angeles (gay) film festival, this film would be brought to a broader audience.”

Both Lipsky (who formerly worked for Goldwyn) and Ray worked together last year on the Goldwyn release of Donna Deitch’s “Desert Hearts,” about a love affair between two women, and both men said this week that a similar marketing strategy was employed on that film “because we didn’t want to turn broader audiences away by highlighting the erotic nature of the film.”

Both men acknowledged that the strategy regarding festivals was selective, depending upon the market and the film.

“Waiting for the Moon” shared first prize at last month’s U.S. Film Festival, sponsored by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute in Utah. Lipsky said the film also will be included in upcoming festivals scheduled to be held in Dallas and Cleveland, but that Skouras has rejected an offer to include the film in the upcoming San Francisco Film Festival.

Ray said that “Prick Up Your Ears,” Frears’ first film since last year’s “My Beautiful Laundrette,” would be included both in the San Francisco festival and in a festival to be held in Seattle. It stars Gary Oldmam, who portrayed Sid Vicious in last year’s “Sid and Nancy,” and Academy Award-winner Linda Hunt.

The two companies decided separately to reject the invitations.