All I could think about was the first time I ever saw Guin, at the premiere of Go Fish at San Francisco's Gay & Lesbian Film Festival almost two years ago. I'm not talking about when she and Go Fish's director Rose Troche appeared on stage at the end of the movie to the thundering applause of a deeply appreciative audience of queers. I'm talking about hours later, when Rick and I went to the popular night spot The Cafe, where lo and behold, Rose Troche and Guin Turner had fled from the grueling demands of stardom. After some debate about whether or not we should impose ourselves upon them ("Do you know how many starstruck idiots must have beseiged them between their arrival in the city and now?!" I protested, not wanting to be one of them), we decided,what the hell? Rick, Rose and I had a grand time chatting--we talked about insideOut, Rose liked my piercings, and she's from New York, so it was all a very real conversation. Guin, on the other hand, was a wee bit preoccupied. She was still sitting at the table, gazing longingly out onto the dance floor. I stood less than three feet from her and admired the very snappy dark green suit she was wearing, and mused about how fun it is to see cute femmes in hot suits, and how it was even more fun that Guin is a great writer who just happened to be a cute femme in a hot suit. I also remember Rose saying something like, "Guin is okay, she's just a little overwhelmed by all this attention." This comment was in reference to Guin's somewhat...er, shall we say, celebratory state? ("Rose, I'm going to dance," Guin said. I wondered how she'd get down the stairs to the dance floor without falling down... .)
Now I was interviewing this chick whom I was certain would not remember me,but who had unwittingly taken part in one of the most memorable nights of my life. One thing I managed to do is demystify the whole celebrity interview thing--turns out all you have to do is talk to them, if you can imagine that. In spite of ourselves, Guin and I managed to cover some of the major points necessary in a standard celeb interview (except who she's sleeping with--I was too shy to ask) aging, what's next, the evils of the industry, gossip, the politics of fame... . I just hope we weren't supposed to focus on the video release.
GUIN Yeah, and please don't say I'm 31-years-old, my God! Girlfriends Magazine did this little piece on me, and they open it up by saying I'm 31!
ARWYN Where'd they get that?
GUIN They're crazy, I'm 27! And they talked to me in person for like a half an hour.
ARWYN What, did they just decide that you were lying about your age or something?
GUIN See, Rose is 31 so maybe they got--
ARWYN Got you guys confused.
GUIN But I'm 27! There's a big difference between 27 and 31! You know, in your late 20's you're totally sensitive about that!
ARWYN See, I'm looking forward to my 30's; I think it's gonna be a fabulous time for me.
GUIN I'm looking forward to my 30's, but I know that if I want to squeeze in a weird little acting career, I have to do it before I'm 30. And so I don't want it in the press that I'm 31, because everyone will say, "Oh, my God, she's an old hag." Women don't get to be over 30 and be in the movies.
ARWYN Not unless you're Meryl Streep or Glenn Close or something.
GUIN And I'm nooo method actress--I can only kind of be myself, you know?
ARWYN How've things been since the craze of Go Fish has settled down? Life back to normal?
GUIN What was normal? It's like saying will your body ever be the same after giving birth. You're forever extended and stretched out and sort of exhausted and saggy.
ARWYN What have you been up to since then?
GUIN (has to think about it--repeats question to herself) I did a movie this summer,Watermelon Woman... and I'm just about to sign a contract with HBO to do another movie--to write in it and star in it.
ARWYN What's that one called?
GUIN We don't have a title yet but it's about Betty Page the pin-up girl... . It's a fiction narrative about her, and I'm playing her... . What else? I'm writing another script with a friend of mine, that I want to direct. And I'm doing a Melissa Etheridge video. I just got a phone call and I'm very excited because in the video there's a love triangle, and I really wanted to be "the other woman", but the director hadn't decided who was gonna be who. I [found out I] just got cast as the other woman, which means I get to run up a set of stairs in Central Park in a red raincoat which is very exciting.
ARWYN Sounds very exciting. A red raincoat? The color of forbidden passions.
GUIN Yeah. It's Maria Maggenti [director of The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love] who's directing the video. And she's like, "It's the crane shot, Guin, it's the crane shot!" So I get to be in the crane shot, running up the stairs, Central Park--it's gonna be all cute. It's a Melissa Etheridge cover of a Joan Armatrading song, which is a great song.
ARWYN What's the song?
GUIN I don't know what it's called... . I think it's called "Why Do You Come Here?"
ARWYN (faltering) Okay... .
GUIN You know that song?
ARWYN It's sort of familiar... .
(Guin starts singing the tune)
ARWYN Yeah. My girlfriend's big into Joan Armatrading. I'm just sort of like, ya' know...
GUIN "Whatevah"?
ARWYN Exactly. So, you're still in New York--you haven't shot down to Hollywood and done the big star thing.
GUIN No, I mean when [Go Fish] first came out, I did a couple of creepy auditions, ya know, and then I just decided I'm not an actress. Like all these movie parts that I've gotten, I've not auditioned for, I've just been asked to do them. That's how I want it, and that's not how it's going to be if I wanna be in Hollywood. I have to audition, and I can't audition, it makes me crazy. All the sudden I feel like I'm 13 and I have an eating disorder, you know what I mean? It's like, Am I too fat, am I too short?--it's not healthy. So if people want me to be in their movie they have to ask me. Otherwise, I'm just invested in making them, writing them. Mostly writing, perhaps directing. The one thing I do when I write things is write a part for myself, so I'm going to be in this movie. I wouldn't be able to do it until after Betty Page, which will be in the summer.
ARWYN What's in the future in terms of other lesbian-themed films?
GUIN Well, the interesting thing about the Betty Page project is that she wasn't a lesbian. But she was often photographed, when she's not alone, with another woman, being tied up by her, or being spanked by her, or whatever. So that's going to be really fun to play this straight character, but sort of put this lesbian...it's not even content because they weren't lovers, but there's something lesbian about it, you know what I mean?
ARWYN The aesthetic or the...
GUIN Something. The eroticism of it, and the fact that they all worked together and they were all friends and this is what they did, early pornography. But my own ideas are all about lesbians. I'm just like that...I'm just, you know, I'm gay.
ARWYN Imagine that!
GUIN And the movie that I'm writing with a friend of mine is about two best friends in New York who have a cable access show about their dramas, and weird people, and non-monogamous relationships and blah, blah, blah. It's sort of like Go Fish but taken one step further--they're like, drinking and being mean to each other and smoking pot and living in New York and being hideous.
ARWYN So it's darker, more dramatic content than Go Fish.
GUIN More like my real life! Not all sweet and cute like Go Fish!
ARWYN Why do you think it is that seemingly this new wave of lesbian fiction has been mostly light comedy and almost no drama if at all, or the light comedies are the ones that have been getting the big press?
GUIN Well it's this weird thing. The reason Go Fish is the way it is is because Desert Hearts was bad. We were really invested in making a happy representation of queers--not forever, not as though that's the only way to represent us, but just for once. And now it's like this whole thing where everyone's "Oh, we're all happy and cute and in love!" But that's about what the industry wants. I think it's this overcompensation for the sad representations of gay women--
ARWYN Vindicating the tragic lesbians of the past.
GUIN Yeah, but now it's time to go back, or at least to get real. We're just attempting to get real, but we have to set the foundations for it first. Here we are all fucked up, here we are all happy, and now it has to be "Here we are for real".
ARWYN So how do think it would be received if there were a move toward hardcore, more gritty kinds of things?
GUIN I don't know. I hope people are ready for realness. I mean, no matter what you do, you're going to be criticized. I just got off the phone with someone who said, Oh, a friend of mine saw Go Fish and said it was [full of] stereotypes.
ARWYN Stereotypes? Really?
GUIN That what I said. I was like, "Stereotypes?! We're working on not making stereotypes." And she said they all look the same and they all dress the same and that's not how she looks...
ARWYN Wow. I don't think that's true at all.
GUIN Me neither. And I said, you know, it's not like a "We Are the World" video. We're not trying to represent every single person, it's just our one little milieu of life at that time.
ARWYN I thought the characters were pretty diverse anyway in terms of style, and I don't think they all looked alike or acted alike.
GUIN Apparently this woman did. I mean, you could say the same thing about Bar Girls, style
ARWYN Oh, God. I didn't wanna go near that movie.
GUIN And, that was wise.
ARWYN I think that's another thing that's happening--when these movies come out, everybody gets so excited that there's yet another lesbian movie. And I think it's overlooked a lot of the time that some of this stuff is bad. People just want to consume it because we're so image starved I guess. So there's this profusion of junk that's being put out, and people are like, "Oh, what a great, wonderful movie!" And I think that's kind of dangerous.
GUIN Yeah. I read a review of Bar Girls in the New York Times and they were like, Oh, it's so sweet, and blah blah blah, and I suddenly realized that like half the people who said that Go Fish was good probably said it was good because they were thinking, Let the lesbians have their little cute movie--we won't slam it, because you know, they try so hard, and they have their little cameras and their little friends. And I was like "Oh Fuck, man! I wanna make a movie that the New York Times hates!" But for real reasons, that they're not afraid to say they hate. I'm really looking forward to the day when there can be a lesbian movie out and I can say, "You know, that doesn't look good, I'm not going to go see it." But at this point we're like, "Okay, we got another one--how are we being represented now, what do we think of it, we have to have an opinion, we have to build on it, etc." It's this whole mandatory viewing thing.
ARWYN Like you have to support it no matter what. It's almost like these things are becoming sacred cows. And that's a problem I ran into when I was reviewing Two Girls in Love. I'm trying to think, "Well, because this is a new wave of movies that's happening in lesbian cinema, is there a kind of separate rule for reviewing them," at least in the beginning?
GUIN I know, and that's why I tried really hard not to say anything bad about Bar Girls to the press. Because, you know, they tried, they made a movie. And it's not offensive, it's just not very good. It's true, it's tricky. I haven't even seen Two Girls 'cause I didn't want to have an opinion about it. Now I'm working with Maria, and I haven't told her yet that I haven't seen her movie!
ARWYN You're gonna get cornered, ya know!
GUIN And the other woman in the video (there's three women in the video) and one of the other women is the blonde from Two Girls, and she said to me last night, "You know, I'm so embarrassed to say I haven't seen your movie!" And I was like, "Oh, don't worry about it!"
ARWYN That's funny.
GUIN You should see her in real life.
ARWYN Why, what does she look like?
GUIN She's a soap star.
ARWYN She's a soap star?
GUIN I don't know what soap opera it is, it's one that tapes in New York. So she came to this casting thing in like, heels, tight jeans, full makeup, fluffy blonde hair, little black sweater.
ARWYN (horrified) Is she queer?!
GUIN Nope.
ARWYN Oh, wow...
GUIN Neither of them are, neither of those actresses are queer.
ARWYN Neither of the protagonists--?
GUIN In Two Girls? No. And that's not even a secret, they've said that to the press.
ARWYN So who in the cast is queer?
GUIN Maggie Moore, and the blonde woman who's the friend of theirs who's like [affects Valley Girl voice] "You guys are not gonna like, go to the prom together, are you?" That's a friend of mine. She's totally queer and she plays the weird straight girl!
ARWYN So is the version of Go Fish on tape the same that we saw, or is it like a "director's cut"? Is there "never before seen footage", or what?
GUIN No, it's the exact thing; it is the thing itself.
ARWYN How do you think its being on video is going to affect the dynamic in terms of who's seen it, who hasn't, etc.?
GUIN I'm interested to see if there's a whole new wave of people talking to me in the streets. I think it's be great because I think there's a segment of our lesbian population who wouldn't be caught dead standing in line to see a dyke movie, but would happily sneak in and out of Blockbuster. And that's fine, I just want them to see it. And almost every dyke I know has seen Desert Hearts fifty times on video, so that gives me hope that they'll wanna see Go Fish fifty times, too.
ARWYN I think it probably will open the movie up to a broader population of straight people, too.
GUIN But you've seen the cover of the box, right?
ARWYN You know what, I was trying to decide whether or not to ask you about the cover.
GUIN Well, tell me what you think, I mean honestly. I think it's fucking ridiculous and I almost cried, but--
ARWYN Argh, I saw it, and I looked at it, and I looked at it again, and I said, No, that's not what I think it is! I was enraged, I think it's awful. It makes the movie look like some stupid little girlie movie for boys or something!
GUIN It's gross, I know, it's totally gross.
ARWYN Whose idea was that?
GUIN Hallmark Home Entertainment--hello?!--who bought the video!
ARWYN Well that explains it.
GUIN They're calling themselves Evergreen, but it's a division of Hallmark. They said, "We want to fly you out to LA and re-shoot because we don't like the still that Goldwyn did," and the stills that Goldwyn did kinda sucked anyway so I was like All right. And I asked, "What about Valerie?" (V.S. Brodie who played Ely) And they said, "Well, we really see you as the star of the movie." Which means, you know straight-looking. So I get there into the studio and they're like, We just wanna do some interesting shots of you sitting on a couch. And I get to this photo studio after being in L.A. where everyone's treating me like a star--and what's in this studio but this huge bed with white silk sheets and this fucking Swedish supermodel who's like [affects affected, dumb-Viking Swedish accent] "Hellouh". And the first thing I said to her was "If you could see who you're fucking replacing you would laugh your ass off." And she's like [same accent] "Whåt?" And I'm like, "Oh, forget it!" And we get halfway through the photo shoot the makeup guy goes "What would your mom say if she saw this, Ilsa?" And she said, "My mother will never see this. It was all fucked up. Her best friend was there, and there was a part where we had to put our arms around each other, and she's looking at her friend all nervous. I'm thinking, Please! Like I want your Aryan ass anyway!
ARWYN That is really vile.
GUIN And I actually cut the whole photo shoot short. I was like, Okay, I can't do this anymore! Because the photographer and the art director, who were these two straight men were going, "Guinevere, look here! Look here! Close your eyes! Good. Look here! Close your eyes!" I was getting so irritated. And I was wrapped in this sheet, and the guy's like, "Maybe it would be better if you put your arm around her." And I'm like, "If I put my fucking arm around her, I'm going to be standing here naked, okay?!" So they're all nervous. Then the photographer goes [cooing], "Oh, that's good, just a sweet, quiet, nice little image." And that's when I was like, "Fuck! Okay, I'm gone! I'm leaving, bye-bye!" The thing is, we fought so much about what the [movie] poster was gonna look like; we fought so much about the marketing. We've been fighting about this for like a year and a half, and I kind of gave up. I said, "Do whatever the fuck you want, I don't care, I'm moving forward." And Rose wasn't with me, and I couldn't do it by myself, and there were 25 people in the room. I would've had to have been such an incredible diva to not let that happen.
ARWYN Well not only that but you just get sick of fighting the bullshit after a while. You just kinda have to be like "Fuck It!" But I was really surprised because I figured it would just be the picture on the poster, which is a really nice picture.
GUIN Yeah, I know. They gave me this whole speech about marketing to the mainstream and "you have to realize what you're competing with in the video store", and they're just trying to make it look sexy for straight people, it's just plain and fucking simple. If you read the back of the video box, the words "sex" and "sexy" are on it like fifteen times.
ARWYN Serious? I didn't even read it.
GUIN And the word "lesbian" is nowhere. It says "gay" once--this little, tiny, quick, three-letter word "gay". But other than that it's all "smart", "sassy", "sexy", "raunchy", you know. Whatever. I'm used to it by now, though, it's been such an incredible load of bullshit to be a slightly crossover movie, and to see how people treat me, how they wanna photograph me, how they wanna photograph Rose, and how they don't want to see V.S. Brodie, don't even care who she is. I mean, Rose and I would get in really huge fights in front of photographers because the photographer would say, "Okay, Rose, can you stand behind Guin and look at her; okay, Guin, can you stand in the foreground and look at the camera?" And Rose would be like [growling], "Howcome I always have to look at you?! Grrr!" And I'd say, "Well, yell at the photographer, don't yell at me!"
ARWYN So, okay. One last question If you could do anything right now, if you had all the time, all the resources in the world to do whatever you wanted, whether it be film related or anything else, what would it be?
GUIN [thinks] Humm...interesting...I think I would do a huge, multi-million dollar lesbian movie that was like...
ARWYN (momentarily overjoyed) Like explosions and stuff, like Arnold Shwartzenegger?
GUIN No, more like really glamorous locations and things. Like I would love to do a movie about androgyny, and I would love to do a world-wide search to find the most androgynous women and turn them into fabulous movie stars and make them really rich and make everyone see the wide range of things that women can look like. I would love to make a movie out of Jeanette Winterson's The Passion...
ARWYN That would be amazing.
GUIN But have it be a huge budget, shoot it in Venice--
ARWYN Sweeping epic.
GUIN Yeah, wouldn't that be fab?
ARWYN 70mm panoramic... .
GUIN I mean, someday, I'm gonna write a book, a couple books, actually, and that's what I'm really supposed to be doing for myself. But I'm getting all distracted with this movie thing, because people pay much more attention to movies than they do to books. I think we need to do a little bit more work on lesbian representation in the film industry, so, I'm doin' it.
ARWYN I'm glad to see you have a lot going on for yourself. I mean, after rocketing to stardom like you did with Go Fish, there's a real danger in getting hit with that potentially career-killing label "flash-in-the-pan."
GUIN Yeah, I was worried about that for a little while, but things are going good.
