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

Comedy all-stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd can't save Anaconda sequel

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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