It’s Definitely Come Out of the Closet

Seventeen, and on the edge. And ambitious.

The gay and lesbian Outfest screens the most films of any L.A. festival (275 last year including shorts and videos, 230 this year), lasts longer (12 days) and claims that more than 80% of its screenings sell out.

Its attendance figures are impressive, although comparing numbers for festivals can be risky because there is no outside impartial audit. Outfest reported 32,000 admissions for last year’s edition, with 35,000 projected for this year.

The American Film Festival’s AFI Fest, which has streamlined its program compared to years past, reports 1998 attendance of 45,000 for 62 films (which doesn’t include programs that screened out of competition) over seven days.

The newer L.A. Independent Film Festival reported 25,000 admissions for its spring 1999 event, which included 29 feature or documentary films over six days. Another major L.A. event, the Pan African Film Festival, drew an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 people for its 12-day, 76-film event.

The more modest Hollywood Film Festival reported attendance of 10,000 for last year’s five-day affair, at which 29 films (11 features) unspooled.

The cachet of Outfest speaks for itself: Foreign governments, blue-chip companies and the “industry” side of the movie business are all aboard as sponsors, supporters and participants of the festival, which begins July 8.

Sponsorship has catapulted a whopping 30% in just one year, and the Fortune 500 roster includes Pacific Bell, United Airlines, Anheuser-Busch, Absolut vodka and Levi’s. The Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild of America are involved, along with major studios Paramount, Universal, 20th Century Fox and Sony, as well as cable networks Showtime, HBO/Cinemax, MTV and E! Entertainment.

Other supporters include Fine Line Features, Artisan Entertainment, Trimark Pictures and Tisch Entertainment. The William Morris Agency, Endeavor, United Talent and Agency for the Performing Arts also are aligned.

In addition, the festival is expanding beyond gay audiences and the borders of L.A., with festival highlights this year touring to Fresno and Santa Barbara immediately before L.A., and San Diego just afterward.

Heterosexual attendance has more than doubled, to 8% from about 3% just four years ago, based on audience surveys the festival does each year.

And the four-city run, bookending Los Angeles, is now almost a month long, stretching from Tuesday through July 23. The expansion is expected to boost overall attendance to the 40,000 mark.

This year, no less a formidable entity than the French government is also aligning with Outfest to promote gay and lesbian tourism to that country. France’s New York and Los Angeles tourism offices are coordinating with Outfest on “Vive La Difference,” a series of gay-themed French-language films that run through the Bastille Day weekend, July 14.

Perhaps the most significant symbol of the watershed status Outfest is attaining in the local film community, this year’s theme--”Welcome Home”--alludes to, among other things, the wholesale geographical shift to Hollywood and some legendary cinema venues. Those include the Egyptian Theatre, where Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 “The Ten Commandments” debuted; the John Anson Ford Amphitheater, onetime home to Heifetz and Piatigorsky; the fabled Pantages Theatre, which hosted the Academy Awards in the 1940s; and the Directors Guild Theatre on Sunset Boulevard, which has served as a venue for years.

Even on a global level, Outfest is making waves, along with the whole mushrooming milieu of gay and lesbian film programming.

The Los Angeles festival is organizing, for the first time, an international summit of programmers of gay and lesbian films, not only for gay festivals but also for such television venues as Britain’s Channel Four and the American Sundance Channel.

With the number of gay and lesbian film festivals doubling in the past five years to 80 worldwide--most major cities now feature a gay film festival--programmers are flying in for Outfest from Italy, France, Brazil, Australia, England, Canada, Germany, Korea and Poland, as well as such U.S. cities as Washington, Austin, Chicago, Portland, New York and Baltimore.

In addition to the nuts-and-bolts realm of forums and screenings, programmers will be power-schmoozed at a luncheon with executives at Paramount, a cocktail reception hosted by the Directors Guild, and a closing-night party hosted by DreamWorks-based producer Bruce Cohen at his home.

Outfest’s ascent parallels the increasing integration of gays into both mainstream culture and the film industry, and the explosion of gay-themed films.

Observes former Outfest president Cohen, whose “American Beauty” starring Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening comes out this fall: “Though more and more gays and lesbians have power as studio executives, studio heads, agents, producers, directors and writers, and have supported Outfest for years, what started last year and we see continuing this year is that straight executives and lawyers are just as excited about wanting to come. They hear about it from their partners at the water cooler.”

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The festival has become a kind of umbrella, says Outfest president Morgan Rumpf: “Outfest is a bridge between the entertainment industry, filmmakers and audiences. We are building a sense of community through film.”

And it’s that role, which film has traditionally played, to bridge countries as well as communities and to cross-fertilize cultures, that is attracting France.

“The reality is that France is gay-friendly and has been one of the countries that has traditionally taken in gay authors, writers and artists like Oscar Wilde and Gertrude Stein. It’s a place where your private life is sacred, sexuality and sex is OK and good,” says French Tourism officer David Gregg. He says France will be out in full glory “with gay brochures and a banner” at Outfest.

“We wanted to show the gay community that we are really involved in what they are doing, to sponsor an event, and this one seems to be the event in Los Angeles to sponsor because it’s the biggest film festival. It’s also an opportunity to show French culture to Americans who don’t necessarily have access to that,” says Gregg. “Gay and lesbian content in French films has been going on for a long time, and it’s kind of exploding right now.”

It’s exploding all over the globe, contends Shari Frilot, Outfest co-director of programming, who is also an associate programmer at the Sundance Festival. “Gay-themed international films have doubled, I’d say, since about 1995 or 1996,” Frilot estimates. “Two years ago, when I heard there were 40 lesbian-gay films in production internationally, I was floored. And sure enough, two years later, I’m sitting here programming them. And they’re in top festival programs across the board, across the country.”

Along with quality, the glamour quotient of Outfest has been a magnet, ratcheting up the event’s stature in the industry and out.

This year, director Gus Van Sant receives Outfest’s achievement award on opening night. Last year’s recipient was Ian McKellen.

The festival centerpiece is “Get Bruce,” a documentary about leading comedy writer Bruce Vilanch, the famous quipster for Bette Midler, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal, who are expected to attend the post-screening party.

Closing night belongs to “Trick,” the heralded New York-set film expected to boost the star of Tori Spelling, who is also scheduled to attend.

“We offer something that certainly no other gay film festival can offer,” boasts Rumpf. “We are in and part of the capital of the movie-making business. Years ago, Outfest was a place to come, see some interesting work, hang out. Now it’s the place to come to see important films that are usually some of the funniest movies of the year, films that are released by studios, actors you recognize, screenings and parties with stars and executives and the cream of Hollywood.”*