LOS ANGELES – Coming just two weeks after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in favor of gay marriage, Outfest Los Angeles launched Thursday night and will run through July 21.
Leading the way opening night was filmmaker Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s comedy, “C.O.G.,” last January’s Sundance hit based on an essay by writer David Sedaris.
In the movie, Jonathan Groff (“Glee”) plays a closeted Ivy League grad from an affluent family who decides to rough it, picking apples on a farm in Oregon. Alvarez told the L.A. Times it’s “more of a coming-of-age story more than a coming-out story.”
In fact, “coming out,” long a thematic cornerstone of gay cinema, is almost an afterthought at this year’s festival.
“If you take a look at all the films, I think a major theme is that there are no real coming-out stories,” festival publicist Kevin McAlpine told ARTINFO. “Often in films the one character is struggling to come out. That’s not really a thing here. The gay characters are very much out.”
Starting in 1982, Outfest is the city’s oldest continuous film festival. This year’s event offers 157 movies and videos from 28 countries in seven languages.
“Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth,” a documentary about the writer’s journey from sharecropper’s daughter to activist, poet, and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist of “The Color Purple,” will also be screened.
In addition to Alice Walker, the festival’s theme of “Heroes” will honor Gore Vidal with the documentary “Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia.”
Special events include screenings like “The Bride of Frankenstein,” as well as a screenwriter’s lab reading and a producer’s expo on fundraising and digital production and distribution.
The closing night gala will feature filmmaker Darren Stein’s “GBF,” starring Natasha Lyonne, Megan Mullaly, and Rebecca Gayheart. In it, a high school student comes out and finds himself adopted as the gay best friend to the school’s most popular girls.
Unlike the past, the gay character doesn’t face ostracism, indicating the change in attitude toward the gay and lesbian community.
As McAlpine noted, “GBF is just like the new teen comedy where it actually centers on the gay guy being the popular kid.”