Out and Proud

The Out List director on gay rights and Dallas sheriff Lupe Valdez

The number of out-and-proud gay people in the United States has proliferated in the 21st century, so it's no longer a surprise when a prominent person comes out of the closet or a television show features a gay character.

But, as the fight over same-sex marriage proves, those in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community still don't enjoy the same civil rights as heterosexuals.

That's part of the reason why director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders made The Out List, an HBO documentary about the diverse gay community in America. Dallas County sheriff Lupe Valdez is one of the stars of the film and the reason for a private screening at Angelika Film Center Dallas on June 13.

Black Tie Dinner is hosting the exclusive Dallas screening, which includes a discussion with Valdez, Greenfield-Sanders, and producers Catherine Pino and Ingrid Duran.

The film features interviews with a broad cross-section of people from the LGBT community, including celebrities such as Neil Patrick Harris, athlete Wade Davis and unknowns like teacher Wazina Zondon.

This is not Greenfield-Sanders' first attempt at tackling a minority group's opinions on their place in the world. He's previously made three different versions of The Black List and two volumes of The Latino List. Plans for The Women List and possibly The Boomer List (about the baby boomers generation) are in the works.

We recently chatted with Greenfield-Sanders to discuss the film, gay rights and why he chose Valdez.

CultureMap: How did you decide whom to approach and ultimately use in the final version?

Greenfield-Sanders: The hardest thing is to pick 16 people that really give a cross-section of this community. You try and have a balance of men and women, bisexual, transgender to deal with. You try to have a range of professions; you don’t want everyone to be a famous movie star. To find people who are relatively less known, like Lupe Valdez, who is wonderful, or Twiggy Pucci Garcon. Around 15 or 16 is an hour. It gives you just enough time to have three to four minutes with each person.

CM: How tough is it to make sure everyone in the LGBT community is satisfied with a piece like this?

GS: It’s impossible; I’m never going to satisfy everyone. But I think it’s a beautiful film that addresses many of the most important issues around right now.

CM: Who would you have liked to be in the film that you either couldn’t get or didn’t make the cut for some reason?

GS: We really wanted Ricky Martin, and he wanted to do it, but he was on Broadway and couldn’t give us the time. By the time he was available, we had finished the film. It would’ve been good because it’s another Latino voice, it’s kind of a fascinating story and he’s very well-liked.

CM: Of obvious interest here in Dallas is your inclusion of sheriff Lupe Valdez. What specifically made you want to interview her?

GS: So many things. First of all, she’s an amazing person; we loved meeting her. The struggle that she has gone through — it’s an incredible life story. I think she’s come to terms with who she is as a woman and a lesbian and a Latina. She’s just an incredible, exciting person.

CM: How close do you think we are until a film like this becomes unnecessary?

GS: It’s kind of what [writer/director] Dustin Lance Black said. I’m paraphrasing, but he said, "I can’t wait for the day when we don’t need to be fighting for our rights anymore." And I think that’s everyone’s wish, that equality is so important that [we] get to a day that we can worry about other things.

At this point, a film like this is still very important. Like Neil Patrick Harris said, a lot of people don’t know as many gay people as we do in New York or on the West Coast, so living in Middle America, you meet gay people on television. Television has been very valuable in that sense, because it’s made people understand other people.

CM: I was glad you included R. Clarke Cooper, the Log Cabin Republican, because it’s not a perspective people hear all the time.

GS: Personally, I think it’s kind of a Stockholm Syndrome, to be in an organization that really doesn’t like you, that works against you; it’s kind of amazing to me. It was interesting to meet him and to kind of understand, from his perspective, that he feels closer to Republicans politically, with the exception of their attitudes on gays.

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The Out List premieres June 27 on HBO.

Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez was one of 16 people interviewed for the documentary The Out List.

Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez

Portrait © Timothy Greenfield-Sanders HBO

Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez was one of 16 people interviewed for the documentary The Out List.

Movie Review

Forrest Gump team reunites for unusual film experiment Here

Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in Here

Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures

Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in Here.

The quality of the career of director Robert Zemeckis can almost be broken evenly in half. His first 12 films, which included the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Forrest Gump, and Cast Away, were mostly hits both with critics and audiences. But in his last 10 films starting with The Polar Express in 2004, Zemeckis has become obsessed with pushing technological boundaries, which has ironically hindered the success of those movies.

His latest boundary-pushing film is Here, which uses the highly unusual technique of never moving the camera. Instead, it’s what happens at this one particular corner of the world that’s of interest, from the time of dinosaurs to the rise of COVID, and many other things in between. The film sees a small parcel of land go through many changes, finally resulting in a house built around 1900, a home that goes on to be occupied by a number of people over the course of 120 years or so.

The most prominent among them are Al (Paul Bettany) and Rose (Kelly Reilly), who buy the house soon after Al comes home from World War II. They raise a family of three children, with one of them, Richard (Tom Hanks), becoming the main focus of the film. He falls in love with Margaret (Robin Wright), has a child of his own, discovers a love of painting, gives up that passion to provide for his family, and more as he spends almost his entire life under the same roof.

The marketing for the film wants to make sure you know that it is the long-awaited reunion of Zemeckis, Hanks, and Wright following the Oscar-winning smash hit that was Forrest Gump (Eric Roth, who wrote Gump, also co-wrote this film with Zemeckis). Zemeckis clearly liked the storytelling from Gump, as much like Forrest being part of many historical 20th century moments, the small area of land in an unnamed Eastern state in Here somehow sees it be both the home of the son of Benjamin Franklin and the inventor of the La-Z-Boy recliner (fact check: not true).

Zemeckis was inspired to use just one angle in the film from the graphic novel by Richard McGuire on which it is based. Similar to the novel, Zemeckis inserts rectangles that show small glimpses of different time periods overlaid on the current scene, fading them in and out to help with transitions. Although at times the film can feel more like theater than a movie, these brief looks at other eras within another era help the film feel more dynamic.

What doesn’t work is the computer-generated imagery in the film. Before the house is built, everything on screen (save for the actors) is CGI and it feels wholly unnatural. And for some reason, Zemeckis has the nearly 70-year-old Hanks and nearly 60-year-old Wright play themselves as young as teenagers, and the de-aging technology simply isn’t believable. As their characters age, the effect improves, but only slightly.

Because the performances of everyone in the film are chopped up into small pieces, it’s tough to say any one of them stands out. As the bigger stars, Hanks and Wright naturally draw attention, and they acquit themselves well. Bettany and Reilly are fine, but they seem to be playing mid-century caricatures instead of actual human beings. Actors in other time periods aren’t given enough to do to be judged properly.

Alternately cheesy and poignant, Here is a bold swing from a filmmaker who has made many in his long career. Because of the inherent emotions that come with following characters over a long period of time, the story has an impact, although it constantly has to contend with Zemeckis trying to distract viewers with displays of technical prowess.

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Here opens in theaters on November 1.

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