Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Park City, Utah-Courtesy of drought and too-warm temperatures, the snow on the ground is sparse this year here at the Sundance Film Festival. The supply of queer films, however, is rich. As the festival’s first (and longest) weekend draws to a close, I’ve seen audiences stand and cheer our stories, whether told lightly and played for laughs or examining the darkest, most unsettling corners of our lives.

Camp got its due and then some, starting with Die Mommie Die, a pastiche melodrama that gives writer-star Charles Busch, in drag as a fading celeb with murder on her mind, a chance to twirl, swirl, and channel Barbara Stanwyck via Lana Turner as only he can. Jason Priestley is yummy too, as one of those handsome gigolos who services everybody in the family. And if one drag sensation isn’t enough, there’s also Girls Will Be Girls, a campy, Crayola-colored comedy that features three cross-dressing sensations: Evie Harris (Jack Plotnick), Trick’s Coco Peru (Clinton Leupp), and Varla Jean Merman (Jeffrey Roberson).

Speaking of camp, there was Todd Graff’s feature debut, Camp, an exuberant musical shot at an actual summer camp for young performers. Think Fame with teenage drag queens. The audience roared at delicious scenes like one teen singer dosing her rival’s prop martini with Clorox, shoving her retching into the wings, and sweeping onstage to complete an electrifying rendition of Sondheim’s "The Ladies Who Lunch." With all due respect, Elaine Stritch couldn’t have done it better.

Music took on a different mood in Prey for Rock and Roll, starring hot, hot, hot Gina Gershon as a small-time rocker agonizing over whether to pack it in or go on hauling amps and playing gigs for pennies. The ladies in the band-Drea DiMatteo, Lori Petty, and Shelly Cole-fell right in behind Gershon and kicked up a really righteous noise. That’s exactly what was called for in this film adaptation of the play written by out rocker Cheri Lovedog. Prey features original songs bt Lovedog and arrangements by Stephen Trask of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame.

World filmmakers produced intriguing work like Brazil’s Madame Sata, a beautifully shot story of a petty criminal in 1930s Rio who’s just as likely to kick the living bejesus out of both friends and enemies as to dress up in beads and a sarong and perform at the local tavern. Really hot man-to-man sex is included.

Out Canadian filmmaker Thom Fitzgerald’s The Event, starring the redoubtable Olympia Dukakis as the mother of a gay man who decides to outpace HIV by committing suicide, argued eloquently for the right to die.

Death was also the subject of the much-anticipated Party Monster, offering Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green as real-life ’80s gay club kids Michael Alig and James St. James. Alig, as we know, is the party promoter who got too far into drugs, killed his drug dealer (played in the film by the totally buff and tough Wilson Cruz), and dismembered the body. St. James, I guess, is Alig’s Boswell. With Alig doing prison time for the murder, St. James wrote Disco Bloodbath, the book on which Monster is based; he also appeared in person at the Sundance premiere screening, looking as fabulous as ever. The two young actors were awesome in the movie, helped along by superb costume and production design, bright and beautiful cinematography, and the sharp sense of humor and pathos from directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, for whom this is a first foray into narrative filmmaking. Cautionary tale though it is, Party Monster is surely the best re-creation yet of the uniquely gay creative frenzy that swept downtown New York in the ’80s.

Most shattering was the world premiere of Soldier’s Girl, the fact-based story of the murder of Pfc. Barry Winchell, beaten to death with a baseball bat by one of his fellow soldiers as "punishment" for his budding love affair with transgendered performer Calpernia Addams. Written by Academy Award nominee Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia), starring hunky Troy Garity as Winchell and the beguiling Lee Pace as Addams, Soldier’s Girl played out to its inexorable ending as a sold-out crowd gasped with fear, sympathy, revulsion, anger. When the lights came up, the audience jumped to its feet, clapping until hands were sore and arms were tired. Winchell’s parents were in the audience. So was Garity’s mother, Jane Fonda, behind tinted glasses and a writhing knot of photographers. But the most memorable figure onstage was Calpernia Addams herself, in a simple floor-length black dress. She was very soft-spoken, and she looked very much alone.

Flying home from Sundance, back to the profoundly discouraging realities of this day in America, it’s good at least to know that queer filmmakers haven’t stopped fighting to make our voices heard. If only we could infuse all our fellow citizens with a little of the anger and energy I saw in Park City, Utah.

Stockwell is senior arts and entertainment editor for The Advocate