@ the QFest :: Day 10

Just when you thought the festival was beginning to wrap up, they pull you back in. Usually, when film festivals are wrapping up the last day or two tend not to be very eventful. That is not the case this year with Qfest. Leading right into closing night on Monday, the programmers kept things going strong with the gay icon award to Sharon Gless and a "surprise" screening of Eating Out 3.

It's also around this point in the festival, at least for people who have been going strong the whole time they we get tired out and start to pray for closing night to come so that normal sleep patterns can return.

On-screen chemistry

Last year's festival screened The World Unseen starring Lisa Ray and Sheetal Sheth. The two are returning again this year in I Can't Think Straight, a film that also reunites their Unseen director Shamim Sarif. This time around the two are playing a pair of women who are both otherwise involved with men until they themselves meet and their immediate attraction sets in. While they may have realized they have feeling for each other, trying to tell their traditionally Muslim and Jordanian parents.

The film's title is a play on the confusion the two women are experiencing over their attraction to each other. Sarif, who also co-wrote the script with Kelly Moss, takes the girls' sexual discovery and makes an entertaining comedy without there being any cheap jokes. One of the best characters in the film, the servant to that of Tala (Ray) and her parents, but she barely has any lines. Rather it's through her facial expressions and complete distain for Tala's mother that she generates the lol's.

At times the film begins to drag, but Ray and Sheth are so engaging that it's hard to not stay glued to the screen. With the chemistry that they share, it's not hard to see why a re-teaming was so quickly made.

Honoring Sharon

Sharon Gless, who most people know from her work on Cagney and Lacey and Queer as Folk, came to town today for the screening of her new movie Hannah Free and more importantly to pick up the Gay Icon Award. This marks the first time that Gless has played a lesbian, despite what people might think of her iconic female cop role.

Gless, who got choked up upon being brought to the stage for her award prior to the screening, thanks the audience because she said it was the LGBT community that has kept her career going for the last couple of decades. But when she first heard of the achievement she was a little confused.

"When I got word I was getting the award, I asked don't you have to be really old to be an icon?" Gless said. "My husband said, 'Honey, you are really old."

During the speech she gave, Gless made sure to let the audience, who gave her an initial standing ovation, know how appreciative she was for their support over the years. "You gave me a career I never dreamed of and I hope to never let you down."

Before Gless was able to make an escape the audience, she had a conversation with a surly Gail Shister, a former writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer who seemed quite perturbed about her introduction and did a poor job of playing it off as a joke. The discussion between the two was awkward at times as Shister injected herself into the dialogue a bit more than necessary.

On more than one occasion during the conversation Shister dug into Gless's past to see if there were any lesbian urges for the straight actress. The most notable was her middle school English teacher Miss Moore. She admitted that she was in love with her English teacher and that her mother didn't approve, responding that the future actress was "acting so gay." Nevertheless, Gless didn't change how she was acting about Miss Moore.

"I got to invite her to my birthday. It was just me, my dad and Miss Moore. I think my dad was hitting on her," Gless explained. "I think I turned out very well, considering."

Playing a lesbian onscreen for the first time, however, was something that was a little bit more frightening for the former Cagney and Lacey star. She admits it wasn't because she was going to have to be portray a lesbian, but she was rather afraid of the reaction to it.

"I was not afraid to play a lesbian. I had a great fear I would play a lesbian that would offend you," Gless said to the audience.

The Q&A session, both before and the one after the film, happened to run over by quite a bit. But the audience couldn't get enough of their icon and on more than one occasion during the audience Q&A they had to be told to keep the questions to Hannah Free.

Unfortunately, the Q&A session after the film was the last time that anyone got to see her because she didn't make it to the VIP reception. At one point on stage she said her stomach was bothering her from something she had eaten. Apparently it got worse during the film screening because she was too ill to make it to the party afterwards. On the plus side there was plenty of Qdoba food and an open bar for people to mourn their missed opportunity to get up close and personal with Chris Cagney.

Freeing Hannah

Hannah Free tells the story of two women who are in a nursing home at the end of their lives. Rachel suffered from a stroke and is in a coma while Hannah had an accident and fell, leaving her in a wheelchair and unable to care for herself.

Hannah wants nothing more to than to see Rachel, but Rachel's daughter is forbidding it because she says it will upset her mother. Being that the two women had been living together as a couple, for most of their adult lives and secretly seeing each other off and on up until Rachel was married, Hannah can't help but feel a need to see her lover.

Much of the story is told in flashbacks recounting the sometimes rocky relationship that the women enjoyed. The flashbacks are done both in a conventional way as well as Hannah imagining that a younger Rachel is in the room with her.

Based on a play by Claudia Allen, who also wrote the film, the dialogue sometimes feels a bit too theatrical and unnatural. Having a co-writer to assist in making the dialogue flow better might have helped the otherwise well done film.

Gless is stripped down in the film, which marks her first time as a lesbian onscreen. In the current day scenes she doesn't appear to be wearing makeup and Hannah is not always put into the best light. But the actress turns in a winning performance with one liners that are as home here as they were with her character on Queer as Folk.

Got Mink?

See, here's the problem. When two big events are scheduled at the same time as a journalist (I'm using the term loosely here, so go with me) you must pick the best way to juggle things. Tonight, the VIP party for Sharon Gless was scheduled for the same time as Eating Out 3, featuring the iconic John Waters' star Mink Stole.

The answer was to go to the party and try to get some face time with both Mink and Gless (see above about why that didn't happen) and then go to the Q&A for Eating Out.

Well, after one too many tacos, I lost track of time and was running late for Mink's Q&A (and while she did go to the party, people were clamouring to get pictures with her so I didn't want to interrupt since Sharon was missing).

Though from the Q&A we did find out that Mink's favorite character is that of Taffy Davenport from Waters' Female Trouble. She was able to answer without even batting any eyelash and even corrected someone when they asked about doing a sequel with Taffy grown up. Mink reminded the viewer that Taffy died in the film, so no sequel was possible.

When asked about her performances, especially in the Eating Out series, she says that she was trying to be subtle and that she never tries to do broad or slapstick comedy.

"I'm never trying to be funny," Stole said, and without missing a beat added, "I'm just really funny."

The audience at the Q&A were especially curious about her upcoming projects. She's already shot three films. Two are horror movies. The Neighbor, which was done in Philadelphia, and All About Evil, where she plays opposite Natasha Lyonne. Stole commented that it's interesting because 10 years ago she played Lyonne's mother in But I'm a Cheerleader. The other project she has is a girls in prison film with Jane Weidlin called Stuck. One project that she is rumored to be in is the new John Waters film, but she knows nothing about it.

"I look myself up on IMDB ever so often just to see what I am doing," Stole said deadpanly. She told the audience that even though IMDB has her listed for it, she hasn't heard anything and the film isn't even in pre-production. Nor has any contract been sent to her.