Just had to write a post to say how excited I am about the imminent theatrical release of Dee Rees and Nekisa Cooper's powerful lesbian drama, Pariah (in select theatres December 28th). Ever since their short film version of this story appeared on the festival scene in 2007, it feels as though the whole LGBT film community has been watching Dee and Nekisa on their very long road to reach this moment. Achieving national distribution for an African American lesbian feature hasn't happened since Cheryl Dunye made The Watermelon Woman back in 1996 (and while that wonderful film earned a great deal of well-deserved attention, the resources of First Run Features at the time were not quite so extenseive as those of Focus Features in releasing Pariah today). 

Congratulations to Dee and Nekisa and their entire cast and crew. And a nudge to the reigning expert on African American women filmmakers, Yvonne Welbon. It's time to add two new names to the Sisters in Cinema filmmaker directory.

And also time to add another queer film to the canon of films (Boys Don't Cry, The Hours, Beginners come to mind) which simultaneously meet and transcend that label of "queer film." 

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With the DVD release date being announced for Lisa Cholodenko's THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (it's coming on November 16th) I figured it was a good time to re-promote this project I worked on for FilmInFocus.com — The Lesbian & Bi Women's Movie Timeline. Click on the link below to get a fun visual and textual showcase of the history of queer women's cinema!

http://www.filminfocus.com/article/lesbian_film_history_timeline

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Of course you’ve seen the trailer for BABIES, the new Focus Features feel-good documentary portrait of four phenomenally cute tykes from around the globe (Namibia, Japan, Mongolia and California to be precise).

As part of their extensive promotional campaign they’ve also asked independent filmmakers to make movies about their babies — and fortunately have tapped the talents of out lesbian director Sara St. Martin Lynne (director of last year’s popular queer film fest circuit drama, Nightfliers). If only we could all make our home movies look this good! (Extra Bonus: Music by Julie Wolf).

You can go HERE to see the movie.

As a filmmaker who was myself commissioned to create a film for the FilmInFocus.com website (my short 575 Castro St., for the release of Milk) I am truly grateful for this unique model of engagement with independent filmmakers. Thanks Focus!

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The release of PIRATE RADIO offers a great excuse for me to blog about my favorite radio DJ movie of all time (in fact my favorite movie, period, of all time), Allan Moyle's 1980 NYC teen-girl adventure tale, TIMES SQUARE. Please chime in in the comments field below and share YOUR favorite radio DJ movies (maybe you're thinking about Allan Moyle's 1990 follow-up to TIMES SQUARE, PUMP UP THE VOLUME with Christian Slater?).

Allan Moyle's TIMES SQUARE is one of the all-time cult classic movies of my generation. The story is structured around late-night disc jockey Johnny LaGuardia (a great performance by Tim Curry) as he follows and narrates the drama of teen runaways Pammy and Nicky (Trini Alvarado and Robin Johnson). If you have not yet seen this film — run don't walk to your Netflix queue. If you HAVE seen the film — it's time to see it again!

During my obsession with TIMES SQUARE in the early '90s I did a substantial amount of primary research on the film's production history and script development. The article below first appeared in San Francisco’s Bay Area Reporter in September 1993 in conjunction with a screening of the film presented by Frameline (the San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival) at the Roxie Cinema with star Robin Johnson in attendance.

TIMES SQUARE: The Story Behind The Dyke Cult Classic

by Jenni Olson

Allan Moyle's 1980 teenage girl rock 'n roll adventure, TIMES SQUARE developed status as a lesbian cult film with showings at lesbian and gay film festivals in New York and San Francisco in the early and mid 1980s and continues to be a favorite at lesbian and gay film festivals in the early '90s.  Long-standing rumors about lesbian content removed from TIMES SQUARE have provided ample fodder for lesbian readings of the teen girl buddy movie. Indeed, a look at Jacob Brackman's original unpublished script of May, 1979 (on file at the University of Southern California Script Library) reveals many erotically-charged scenes between the protagonists, Nicky (Robin Johnson) and Pammy (Trini Alvarado). Some of these scenes were removed from the script prior to shooting, some of them were shot and then excised from the final cut of the film. A fragment of one such excised scene appears in the film's preview trailer - it is a one-second, barely perceivable, clip of Nicky and Pammy playing together in the river.

The basic plot of the film is conveyed in its publicity blurb: "In the heart of Times Square, a poor girl becomes famous, a rich girl becomes courageous, and both become friends." Pammy is the quiet and sheltered daughter of a prominent politician, Nicky is a streetwise troublemaker. Admitted to a hospital for the same psychiatric tests, the girls share a room and get to know each other. They escape from the hospital, create a home for themselves in a dockside warehouse and live their lives together against the gritty urban backdrop of Times Square. There's tons of romantic tension between the girls, and, most importantly - they love each other and they're not interested in boys. As their friendship begins, Pammy's first feelings for Nicky are expressed in a poem she writes in her journal (which Nicky steals): "your ribs are my ladder Nicky, I'm so amazed, I'm so amazed." Pammy later recites T.S. Eliot to Nicky and proclaims to her, "everything you do, or you say, is poetry. At least I think so." 

In their poetry, music and other idiosyncratic forms of artistic self-expression, the girls perform for each other, and together, throughout the film. Each gives loving support to the other in their artistic pursuits as they encourage one another to grow and develop self-confidence. 

Early in the film, Nicky gets Pammy a job as an erotic dancer, "I'm brave, but you're pretty. I'm a freak of fuckin' nature," she tells Pammy as Pammy prepares to go on stage at the Cleo Club. Nicky (with her hair tied back and looking as butch as ever) positions herself at the front edge of the stage to watch, and Pammy focuses on Nicky as she begins to dance (in the original script she dances topless). In a later scene at the Cleo Club, Pammy watches Nicky perform her song "Damn Dog" (a poem Nicky had first read to Pammy on bended knee: "I can lick your face, I can bite it too, my teeth got rabies, I'm gonna give 'em to you. I'm a damn dog.")

While there's no explicit lesbian content in the film, the romantic tone of Nicky and Pammy's interactions is undeniable. The original script had several scenes and plot elements that developed this aspect of Nicky and Pammy's relarionship, including a scene of their first meeting in the hospital, in which they have to undress in front of each other; two scenes where they take off their shirts and play together in their underwear in the river (the clip of which remains in the film's trailer); a wrestling scene; a scene of the first night that they sleep (sleep, not fuck) together and a scene of Pammy dancing topless at the Cleo Club. Most of the scenes removed from the script/film are scenes involving erotic tension or physical contact between the girls.

There are many rituals remaining in the film, in complete forms or as remnants of rituals excised from the original script. The film relies heavily on ritual and symbolic meaning, and, in fact, contains an excess of overdetermined pieces of dialogue, references, ideas and objects that signify the girls' bonding together and rebellion against society.  After they escape from the hospital, they cut each other's wrists and hold them together to become blood sisters; they make a pact that they will shout each other's names when they need each other; they call themselves the Sleaze Sisters; they have their own sayings like "No sense makes sense;" they write and perform poems and songs; they drop TV sets off of buildings as one of their trademarks and they wear garbage bag outfits and black out their eyes.

Of the ritualistic elements removed from the film, three are especially significant as they convey the intensity of the bond between Pammy and Nicky.  Early in the script, just after they escape from the hospital, they henna and cut each other's hair (with this scene removed, their hair inexplicably changes color and length in the second reel of the film). The girls also create a journal together, called the Doomsday Book, to write their poetry and songs in (the scene where Nicky burns the book at the end of the film is still intact although all reference to the book itself has been removed). Also excised is a scene, again relatively early in the script, where Nicky "pulls up her shirt and pulls down her jeans a little to show Pamela a tiny P and an N, tattooed prison-style on her abdomen. 'I got a lot of dumb ideas. But at least I make 'em up myself,'" says Nicky.

TIMES SQUARE is one of the most remarkable rock n' roll soundtrack movies ever made (artists include Patti Smith Group, Pretenders, Talking Heads and Roxy Music), and the soundtrack often provides romantic commentary on the developing relationship between the girls. "You Can't Hurry Love" accompanies their escape from the hospital, and when Johnny (Tim Curry) the disc jockey learns that "you two sweethearts have a favorite song" he plays it for them. The song is dyke-rocker Suzi Quatro's "Rock Hard."

In a letter to her father, which Johnny reads over the radio, Pammy proclaims, "We are having our own Renaissance." Indeed, they create their own scavenged culture in their pastiche clothing, the decor of their squat on the pier, their poetry and music, and in their own unique brand of political activism. They decry the hypocrisy and prejudice of the establishment in a live radio performance of "Sleaze Sister Voodoo" in which they proclaim: "Spic, nigger, faggot, bum/Your daughter is one."

Patti Smith's darkly co-dependent dirge of obsessive love, "Pissin' in a River" signals the beginning of the end for Pammy and Nicky. In the most heartwrenching scene of the film Nicky destroys their home, burns their journal, and throws herself into the river. She emerges sobbing, "What the fuck is wrong with me?" Distraught, she storms into Johnny's radio station, "put me on the radio, I got somethin' to say." When Johny hesitates she smashes the control booth window, shouting, "You fuckin' little straight!" She then calls out her song to Pammy on the air: "My heart/it's pumpin'/my foot/it's runnin'/my head/it's hurtin'/it's hurtin' me./I never told you/everything/I never said the stuff I should/I was chicken to tell you/I never thought I could./ Find me/help me/save me./Can you hear me?/Can you feel me out there?/Pammy! I'm callin' you Pammy! Pammy!" 

While Nicky's previous song to Pammy, "Damn Dog" had a sexy edge to it, this one is a desperate cry for help as she realizes that they must go their separate ways. Their break-up is partly prompted by Nicky's jealousy at the possibility that Pammy might be interested in Johnny (this possibility is quickly dispelled as Pammy tells Johnny that she hates him). Thinking she has lost Pammy, Nicky's jealous rage is succeeded by a deep depression. Pammy makes it clear to Nicky that she loves her but says, "I can't be like you." Nicky's final statement, as she performs "Damn Dog" in Times Square, is a proclamation of her love for Pammy, "she was the best friend I ever had." Nicky turns and dives into the crowd of teenage girls below, smiling and waving back at Pammy as she is carried away by her adoring fans. 

Although the removal of so much material from the original script gives the film a fragmented feel and sometimes sloppy continuity, the bond between the girls is always clear, and always has some proto-lesbian resonance to it. As such, TIMES SQUARE is a marvelous experience not only for lesbian youth, but for any girl who's ever had a crush on a girl or who's wanted to see girls on film without boys in the middle.

The most intriguing thing in the unpublished screenplay of the film is the following scene description (not in the film), which begins towards the bottom of a page, the next page of the script is missing: 

The Hideout   Night

NICKY is pumping iron with a set of weights she has fashioned from a lead pipe and some iron wheels. PAMELA watches proudly from across the room, where she is sewing.

NICKY - Even though you may stagger…

Copyright 1993, Jenni Olson. It is okay to use excerpts without requesting permission but please credit: Jenni Olson (www.butch.org). Thanks. 

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My short film 575 Castro St. is finally having it's San Francisco premiere this weekend at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Come see it in the Voices Carry shorts program at the Kabuki on Sunday, April 26th at Noon or on Wednesday April 29th at 12:15pm. The film is showing at tons of other festivals in the coming months (thanks to the fabulous folks at New American Vision for helping me with all the tedious details of that process).

Keep an eye out for it at:

Boston LGBT Film Festival (April 2009)

Torino GLBT Film Festival (April 2009)

OutView Film Festival in Athens, Greece (May 2009)

QDoc: Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival (May 2009)

Connecticut Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (May 2009)

Frameline: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival (June 2009)

Los Angeles Film Festival (June 2009)

Queer Takes, Minneapolis (June 2009)

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (July 2009)

Outfest: Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (July 2009)

Come see the film at any of these fine festivals. Or just go watch it online right here, right now.

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Feeling compelled to post a blog entry I think it's a good time to share an excerpt from my current script (in development). I just got my first funding in April. The Herbert Family Filmmaking Grant from the San Francisco Film Society. Encouraging to know that someone has faith in me. Anyone else? You can actually make a tax-deductible donation to my project via the SF Film Society website right here (note that the project is either called Get Me Guinevere Turner or The Royal Road — depends on my mood). Read on and see if I'm worth it.

The Royal Road (script excerpt from a film by Jenni Olson)

I imagine California has this whole unique genus of greenery that thrives on, is actually nourished by, the exhaust of automobiles. The abundant scrub and extended stands of trees along the freeways are testament to this. It really seems a logical equation when you see, too, the thick vines and dense ground-cover that attach and crawl on the overpasses and freeway clover leafs.

Highway 280 South, the Junipero Serra Freeway, actually used to have a huge wooden sign just South of the city limits that said: “The World’s Most Beautiful Freeway.” But they took it down about a year ago.

It was a quaint wooden sign, the words gouged into it with this handmade quality. It always felt like a title to the show you’re about to see. Like a kind of promise, a notice about what lies ahead.

This ash gray ribbon of road stretches from the North to the South conveying a hundred thousand little cars like a giant slot car track set down upon this stunning natural landscape. And the more you think about it the sadder it seems. It’s not the freeway that’s beautiful; the freeway is a travesty, an eyesore. Maybe they realized this and decided to take the sign down. 

Half a cup of coffee and some pop music get mixed together with this spectacular view for a feeling of utter mania. I am exhilarated and invincible. I am so susceptible to the simple manipulations of bubblegum pop — completely transported listening to the joyful little voices of Hansen as I whiz Southward; enraptured with the poignancy of the lone persistent strand of telephone lines that follows the contour of the highway. The poles stand a lonely, heroic vigil; their arboreal heritage suddenly visible to my eye as I rediscover their analog qualities here against the unending backdrop of trees along Crystal Springs Reservoir.

They are the new endangered species, the telephone poles, in an era of urban deforestation known as under-grounding. Their wires, their aerial roots, are being buried — cutting off this previously ubiquitous, mundane, un-noticed feature of our daily vistas.

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I am sitting here blogging when I should be working. It's 1:30 in the afternoon and I'm listening to a podcast from MoMA in celebration of Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems. Although I am not in the mood for writing an actual poem right now I am in the state of mind where I don't want to work. Hence blogging. 

And the urge to share a poem which has nothing (and yet everything) to do with my work as a filmmaker. Like O'Hara I want to observe the mundane details of the world, and convey them in compositions so simple that they seem to arise effortlessly, guilelessly, as portrayals of what is simply there.

Here is a fragment of one of my favorites [The Light Comes On By Itself] and then I am off to the dentist:

"I have a penchant for sad red bricks

and the sun burning itself up out there

for toll booths and water towers and

I am waiting for you to love me."

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As a frequent advisor to filmmakers I always tell them about how it's only after completing your movie that the hard work really begins. Having had my peak experience at Sundance showing my humble little short, 575 Castro St. my email In Box was awash with requests for DVD screeners from festivals all around the world. Screening at the Berlinale (does it get any better than these two fests?) immediately after Sundance brought another onslaught of kudos and invitations to be juggled and I'm just as thrilled to be screening at the Fargo Film Festival next week as I am about my imminent premiere at the LGBT Film Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia. Ah, if only I had the resources and inclination to be a world traveler! 

With the Oscar wins for Milk I'm sure to get even more requests for screenings and am grateful to ride the coat-tails of Sean Penn and Dustin Lance Black as far as they can take me.

It has also been terrific reading the variety of blog reviews reflecting on the fact that 575 Castro St. manages to serve as both a documentary of the film set of Milk and as a simple showcase of that amazing artifact which provided such a brilliant structuring device for Black's script (the original audio tape of Harvey's wishes in the event of his assassination). The most recent blog item I've come across (on Sugar & Medicine) calls my film "moving, surreal" while Jonathan Kiefer at KQED.org describes it as being: "Like a memory-infused dream."

Yes, it's true this is the hard work part of filmmaking. But it's also where the work all pays off.

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"575 Castro Street doesn't strain for grandeur and doesn't need to; the power comes from resonant simplicity. It plays like a memory-infused dream, in which all that's fully palpable is a feeling of absence, the residue of a human soul." — Jonathan Kiefer, KQED.org

When you make short film it's rare to get a full-size review where a critic will apply their skills and attention to describing your film's merits beyond a one sentence plot description. Jonathan Kiefer over at KQED.org has just given 575 Castro St. a very generous appreciation and it is especially nice that he echoes what many viewers told me during Sundance: that it is the perfect companion piece to Milk.

So many people said this to me while I was in Park City -- how haunting it is to hear Harvey's actual voice speaking the words they have heard Sean Penn say in Dustin Lance Black's wonderful script (which so beautifully utilizes so many of Harvey's words verbatim from the tape).

Read the rest of Jonathan's review at KQED.org! And go watch my film, of course.

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Wow! I am so happy about this interview. Damon Romine from GLAAD talks to me about my film, 575 Castro St. and the current state of LGBT cinema as we stand out on the Main Street balcony of the Queer Lounge during Sundance 2009. Note the frequent plugs for FilmInFocus.com!

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