My father moved out to Park City in in the mid-'70s and lived in a Winnebago behind a hippie joint called Utah Coal & Lumber that was one of only two or three restaurants at that time. Park City was a sleepy little mining town, with not a condo in sight.
I started making movies in the early '90s, a few years after I discovered 'the cinema' during a three month stay in Paris during which I watched 100s of films.
I came to N.Y.C. in 1988 and got very involved with Act Up. I also started making movies, including two very gay shorts, 'Vaudeville' and 'Lady.' It was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and New York City was both dying and very alive at the same time.
Everything encourages you not to tell stories of gay lives. There is no economy yet for that kind of cinema.
Music Box has proven itself in a few short years to be a cutting edge distributor with a sophisticated understanding of both the market and cinema.
Fighting bitterness can be a full-time job.
Secrets make for good drama, and revealing the hidden truths and contradictions of life is, for me, one of the most exciting aspects of making movies.
Without community events like NewFest, I don't think we'd have a queer cinema in America.
There's a lot of things lost in the Digital Age.
All history is defined by shifting modes of reality and time and how things change. That's what I love about cinema. It changes in the moment.
I think there's a fear of difference in American cinema.
I've been hiding crucial events in my life since I was 13.
I always hope that people feel less alone when they see a movie that I make. That some part of the story played out on the big screen will resonate for individuals in the audience in a way that gives them comfort.
As a filmmaker, you realize that places have character based on their history as much as a face does or an actor does.
You can understand why good publicists go on to run distribution companies: because the creativity involved is complex and nuanced.
Suspense films are often based on communication problems, and that affects all of the plot points. It almost gives it kind of a fable feeling.
I always think of my films within the context of where aesthetics meet economics. That's the nature of making art - not being naive about what is possible and getting what you need to tell the story you want to tell.
It's easy to make a film, but it's hard to make a career of being a filmmaker.
Seeing the road show of 'A Chorus Line' in 1977 at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Memphis was a life-changing event for me: there were gay people, on the stage, and they all lived in New York.
I'm not interested in a film about deceit anymore. I think I was always invested in deceit on some level. But it no longer compels me the way it did for so many years.
