James Franco’s Interior, Leather Bar

The lineup for this January’s Sundance Film Festival has been announced, and it includes a handful of gay-themed films. These include Daniel Radcliffe as queer beat poet Allen Ginsberg in ‘Kill Your Darlings’, and James Franco’s ‘Interior. Leather Bar‘, the new name for the “homo-sex-art-film” he and Travis Mathews have made, based on 40-minutes of gay S&M that were supposedly removed from the 1980 William Friedkin film, Crusing.

Here’s a bit more info on the gay-interest films screening in Utah next month, with their synopses from the official Sundance Site:

Kill Your Darlings / U.S.A. (Director: John Krokidas, Screenwriters: Austin Bunn, John Krokidas) — An untold story of murder that brought together a young Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs at Columbia University in 1944, providing the spark that led to the birth of an entire generation – their Beat revolution. Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Dane DeHann, Ben Foster, Michael C. Hall, Jack Huston, Elizabeth Olsen.

Interior. Leather Bar. / U.S.A. (Directors: Travis Mathews, James Franco, Screenwriter: Travis Mathews) — To avoid an X rating, it was rumored that 40 minutes of gay S&M footage was cut from the controversial 1980 film, Cruising. Filmmakers James Franco and Travis Mathews re-imagine what was in the lost footage. Cast: Val Lauren, James Franco, Travis Mathews, Christian Patrick, Brenden Gregory.

Pit Stop / U.S.A. (Director: Yen Tan, Screenwriters: Yen Tan, David Lowery) — Two working-class gay men in a small Texas town and a love that isn’t quite out of reach. Cast: Bill Heck, Marcus DeAnda, Amy Seimetz, John Merriman, Alfredo Maduro, Corby Sullivan.

Lovelace / U.S.A. (Directors: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman (both of whom are gay), Screenwriter: Andy Bellin) — Deep Throat, the first pornographic feature film to be a mainstream success, was an international sensation in 1972 and made its star, Linda Lovelace, a media darling. Years later the “poster girl for the sexual revolution” revealed a darker side to her story. Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Hank Azaria, Adam Brody, James Franco, Sharon Stone.

C.O.G. / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kyle Patrick Alvarez) — In the first ever film adaptation of (gay satirist) David Sedaris’ work, a cocky young man travels to Oregon to work on an apple farm. Out of his element, he finds his lifestyle and notions being picked apart by everyone who crosses his path. Cast: Jonathan Groff, Denis O’Hare, Corey Stoll, Dean Stockwell, Casey Wilson, Troian Bellisario.

Valentine Road / U.S.A. (Director: Marta Cunningham) — In 2008, eighth-grader Brandon McInerney shot (gay) classmate Larry King at point blank range. Unraveling this tragedy from point of impact, the documentary reveals the heartbreaking circumstances that led to the shocking crime as well as its startling aftermath.

God Loves Uganda / U.S.A. (Director: Roger Ross Williams) — A powerful exploration of the evangelical campaign to infuse African culture with values imported from America’s Christian Right. The film follows American and Ugandan religious leaders fighting “sexual immorality” and missionaries trying to convince Ugandans to follow biblical law.

kink (documentary) / U.S.A. (Director: Christina Voros) — A story of sex, submission and big business is told through the eyes of the unlikely pornographers whose 9:00-to-5:00 work days are spent within the confines of the San Francisco Armory building, home to the sprawling porn production facilities of Kink.com. (The documentary is co-directed by James Franco)

Sundance runs January 17-27 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

The campaign for marriage equality has had a lot of things, but one thing it hasn’t had up until now is a full-on movie musical! However two straight Aussie guys are determined to set that right, as they’ve written Super Awesome!, and hope to shoot it early next year in Australia and the UK.

While they have the cash for the Aussie part, they need a bit of help for the West End of London set finale, so they’ve set up an IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign to help raise $50,000 to fund it. This will allow them to bring a skeleton crew to Britain and get their big ending in the can.

Super Awesome! is ‘A comedy feature film about a couple of down and out buds, Mark and Gary, given one last shot at achieving their dreams. Out of the blue Mark and Gary find themselves with 250K to headline the opening night of a massive international festival. It’s Rocky meets SuperBad set against the hilarious backdrop of two straight guys doing their best to write a musical about an issue they know nothing about – Gay Marriage. As the clock ticks down to opening night and the whole production inches towards collapsing, Mark and Gary ultimately are illuminated to the significance of gay marriage and the potential their musical has to make a change…but is it too little too late?’

Writers/directors Guy Edmonds and Matt Zeremes met a decade when they appeared in  London and Australian productions of Holding the Man, based on Timothy Conigrave’s memoir about the love between two HIV positive men. Through that they met many gay people who told them their stories, and with the current fight for marriage equality they felt moved to come up with something that might be able to change hearts and minds. As they say in the film’s IndieGogo campaign, ‘Marriage inequality sucks! This film speaks about it’s suckiness but does it through humour!’

Take a look at the campaign video above, and head over to IndieGoGo to find out more.

It’s your chance once more to help get an interesting sounding gay-themed movie into cinemas by giving a bit of cash to a Kickstarter campaign to help fund Facing East, a movie adaptation of Carol Lynn’s acclaimed stage play, which Tony nominated Broadway actor and director Will Swenson is hoping to bring to the screen.

Guinevere Turner (Go Fish, American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page) has written the screenplay, which follows ‘Alex and Ruth McCormick, an upstanding Mormon couple who have done everything right. He is a well-known radio personality, “One-Minute Dad,” giving great ideas on how to be a good father. She is a mother who has sacrificed everything for her family and is determined to lead each of her three children into God’s “celestial kingdom”, where they will be together as a family for all eternity. Theirs is an ideal life. Except for one flaw, which has brought them now to a point of crisis.

‘Their gay son Andrew, who had not been “healed” from his homosexuality despite every effort, and who had for a year been living with a man that he loved… has taken his own life in a flower bed beside the Salt Lake Mormon temple.’

While Ruth is relieved that her tortured boy is in God’s healing hands and feels the less said about unpleasant things, the better, Alex is desperate to understand what went wrong. This brings them into contact with Marcus, Andrew’s partner, which forces Ruth and Alex come to know their son in a way they never had before.

Will Swenson grew up in the Mormon faith himself and is well aware of the pressures this can cause, and so he’s well positioned to bring this story to the screen. He and his wife, five time Tony winner Audra MacDonald, were recently honoured by PFLAG for their efforts to promote marriage equality with the 2012 Straight for Equality in Entertainment Award.

There’s a great team already put together for the movie, with plans already in place to shoot the film towards the end of 2013. While most of the production budget is already in place, that cash won’t be available until near the time of production, and so they’re looking for $65,000 to get them to that point. And that’s where you can help. You can find out more over at Kickstarter. And as always with this sort of crowd-sourcing campaign, various different rewards are available depending on how much you give.

Will Swenson and Audra Mcdonald

Ian McKellen has long been at the front of the fight for gay rights (he even co-founded Stonewall) and he’s certainly not been leaving the battle for marriage equality to others. His latest action is to make a video to support a New Zealand equal marriage campaign.

Of course McKellen is no stranger to the country, having spent a lot of time there playing Gandalf in Lord Of The Rings and now The Hobbit. As he says in the video, “I hope that by the time I get back to Middle Earth I might even be able to get married.”

The antipodean nation is currently debating The New Zealand Marriage Amendment Bill, which would legalise equal marriage. It passed its first reading back in August, with a majority of 80 votes to 40 in parliament in support of the change. However it has yet to become law.

McKellen filmed his video for New Zealand Green Party on the set of ITV’s Loose Women, saying “New Zealand gave women the vote before every other country in the world, the rest of the world has looked towards New Zealand for social advance and here we are again- this time at the exciting prospect of two people of the same gender being able to get married and to join the rest of the population.

“It will be a popular move, I know, and I’m glad your major political parties have embraced it, supported too by the younger generation who see things a lot more clearly than people of my age.”

A couple of months ago Sally Field spoke movingly about her gay son, Sam Greisman, while accepting the Human Rights Campaign’s Ally for Equality Award in Washington, D.C. Now she’s been speaking further to Oprah Winfrey, saying that parents have an important part to play in further the cause of equality.

On Oprah’s Next Chapter, due to air in the US today (Sunday December 3rd), Field says, “It’s important to have a parent speak about raising a magnificent, proud, intelligent, funny, lovable, sexy gay son. And there are so many parents who are frightened of that and who don’t embrace their children as they struggle. Those children are struggling to embrace who they are, who nature — what nature intended them to be.”

Sam came out when he was 20, and she has stinted in supporting him ever since. She’s also furthered the cause by playing the mother of a gay son on TV on Brothers & Sisters.

Take a look at a portion of the interview with Oprah below.