NewFest 2008: A Chat With Director Gabriel Fleming

The NYC NewFest queer film festival kicks off today and one of the highlights is sure to be director Gabriel Fleming’s The Lost Coast, a favorite of the editors at The Advocate who’ve screened it. (It screens June 7 and June 10.)

The Advocate caught up with Gabriel Fleming during the Cannes Film Festival, where he was promoting the new Michelle Williams drama Wendy and Lucy. Directed by Kelly Reichardt, that film made its world premiere at Cannes and Fleming – who worked as an assistant director and on continuity for that film – walked the red carpet, met with distributors for his own movie and basically schmoozed for days on end.

We met near a carousel so the casually dressed, handsome Fleming could wolf down a panini while taking phone calls that told him he needed to change into some better clothes before walking the red carpet for the premiere of another film he’d scored tickets for (the eventual Palm d’Or winner, “The Class”). To give him a chance to eat, I ran down the queer events of the festival, which included Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson kissing in the new Woody Allen movie “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”

“Is that even news anymore?” wondered Fleming, who pointed out that there’s been a lot of press about bisexuality lately but, “it’s only for women. It’s very frustrating. I’d like to see it happening for men.”

Fleming works as an editor on reality TV to pay the bills, including two seasons on “America’s Next Top Model” so it’s no surprise he references that world.

“There’s that show with Tia Tequila,” he points out. “But somehow male bisexuality is threatening to the public at large. That’s actually what my film “The Lost Coast” is about. It’s about two high school friends who fooled around and they never talked about it and the one who is straight never acknowledged it at all.”

 

Fleming rattles off the festivals “The Lost Coast” is screening at: NewFest in June, the San Francisco Frameline in late June, Philadelphia's Phillyfest in July and  “then another one I’m not able to talk about yet,” says the single director, who is based in Los Angeles.

The film shows two one-time high school friends getting together during Halloween. They became intimate on a camping trip years ago and now one is gay and the other is about to get married to his girlfriend. Can something so significant for one of them be essentially meaningless for the other?

Similarly, Cannes has been a significant event for him, even if the pressure was off of Fleming and it was of more import to director Kelly Reichardt and actress Michelle Williams, making her first major public appearance since the death of one-time partner Heath Ledger. Fleming met with distributors and got a taste of media overload, impressive even by LA standards.

“I’m a filmmaker and I’m not really into the business side,” says Fleming. “To see the market here was a very strange experience for me. The market side is so huge that it seems like the film festival is almost an afterthought. The whole red carpet approach was very strange, with the photographers. I’ve seen that happen to other people but I’ve never walked through it myself. I watched the other red carpets – like the Woody Allen one -- and it’s just huge. I didn’t know any place could out Hollywood Hollywood. But Cannes – they just go for it.”