EQUAL OPPORTUNITY.

GAY AND LESBIAN FILM TV PROFESSIONALS OF COLOR TALK ABOUT THE STRIDES THEY'VE MADE--AND HOW FAR SHOW BUSINESS STILL HAS TO GO

Patrik-Ian Polk is a successful gay African-American executive in Hollywood: At 28 he's a vice president of production and development at e2 Filmworks, the indie film division of Edmonds Entertainment Group. But, says Polk, he is in a minority--if not a minority of one, then of not many more. "I can name three black agents at major talent agencies," he says. "None of them are gay. As for African-American executives at the studios, forget it. And in terms of gay and black, I can't name any."

It's a familiar refrain when talking to the handful of high-achieving out gay and lesbian people of color working in Hollywood. "There are very few Asians and Asian-Americans in the independent world," says Marcus Hu, copresident of indie distributor Strand Releasing (Edge of Seventeen). "As for gay people of color, I think I'm the only one."

The same minuscule representation applies to films with stories built around gay people of color. "It's a big celebration when someone makes a short, let alone a feature," says Shari Frilot, one of the influential programmers at the Sundance Film Festival. "I can count the number of black gay films on one hand."

So why, given that gays and lesbians as well as African-, Asian-, and Latin-Americans are all now firmly entrenched in all strata of the entertainment industry, do gay and lesbian people of color struggle to raise even a blip on the Hollywood radar? The reason, many gays of color suggest, is that gay groups like the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and racial groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People lobby the industry for better representation separately, while gay people of color tend to fall between the cracks.

Parks Barclay, the prolific Emmy-winning TV writer-director with credits including NYPD Blue and The West Wing, is an activist in both the gay and African-American communities in Hollywood. He says that because there is no general constituency for gay African-Americans, the gay white media are struggling to become more inclusive. Strand's Hu agrees: "There's always been a velvet mafia in the system, and that is predominantly a white male one," says Hu, "but there is a keen awareness in the gay world of being inclusive of the subsets of gays and lesbians of color."

That is not necessarily the case with racial communities. "Like Asians and Latinos, the African-American community generally keeps its distance from gay men," says Barclay, "so gay African-Americans tend to feel disenfranchised from their own racial community."

Frilot, who was an experimental filmmaker before she joined the Sundance staff, agrees: "When I sent my first film out to festivals in 1992 and '93, I had a great response from gay festivals but had a tough ride with African-American festivals."

Most successful gay people of color in entertainment simply get on with their careers in an effort to establish a precedent. One such pioneer is Cheryl Dunye, an African-American lesbian filmmaker whose second feature film, Stranger Inside, tells the story of a lesbian imprisoned in the same jail as her estranged mother (Stranger will debut on HBO on June 23). "I have a responsibility," she says. "I'm an educator at UCLA and Pitzer [College] and am approached all the time by lesbian filmmakers. Because of my visibility I'm making my mark, which will make it easier for someone to reference me. For me, my sexuality, race, and gender are advantages that give me confidence. I believe that I will survive because of my marginality."

Barclay is similarly vocal--he is a regular columnist for The Advocate, for example, and recently accepted the Stephen F. Kolzak award front GLAAD for his activism. "I bring my partner to events, and when I won the Emmy, I kissed him on the lips," he says. "The more visible I am, the easier it is for others." He also believes that by sitting as the cochair of the African-American steering committee of the Directors Guild of America, he can be more effective in pulling people up "than through some sort of ad hoc gay-black association."

Arthur Dong, a distinguished Asian-American documentary filmmaker with credits that include Licensed to Kill, about antigay murderers, and Coming Out Under Fire, about gays in the military, prefers to let his work stand for itself: "I am on the boards of the Academy and the Independent Feature Project/West, and when I was approached to join, was it because I was a gay Asian person? That could have been part of it, but, hopefully, in the end it comes down to promoting the art of the documentary form."

The studios are also more integrated than they used to be, says Fritz Friedman, a senior vice president of worldwide publicity at Columbia TriStar home video, who is haft Filipino and haft Austrian. "I'm one of the first Asian men to hold a senior rank in entertainment," says Friedman, adding that his climb up the corporate ladder has never been hindered by his race or sexuality. "In a city where everybody's trying to be unique, the way I look and the way I am are an advantage," he says. "The name certainly shakes up people's expectations. I wonder--if I were called Fritz Chin or Fritz Yomagata, people might think differently of me." In Hollywood, Friedman believes, it is cool to be open to different sexualities and races because personal difference is equated with creativity. "It's uncool to be prejudiced," he says.

Tolerant it may be, but as a supplier of entertainment Hollywood is still ultra-reactionary. Witness Polk's directorial debut, Punks, an exuberant portrait of four gay 20-somethings--three black, one Latino--searching for love and happiness in West Hollywood. Programmer Frilot was instrumental in bringing the film into the Sundance Film Festival 2000, the same festival that played The Broken Hearts Club, a similar ensemble piece set among white gay friends. While the latter enjoyed the backing of Sony Pictures and a nationwide release last year, Punks failed to find a distributor until recently, when black company Urbanworld picked it up. "Them is nothing for gay African-Americans," explains Polk. "Zero. That's why I sat down to write Punks. We've had movies like The Broken Hearts Club before, but we've never had Punks before."

Polk is hoping that if Punks breaks out when released this fall, it could make a difference. Similarly, Dunye is waiting to see the ratings for Stranger Inside when it screens on HBO. "It will be interesting to see how many people turn it on and view it, because it is something new," she says. "But as my old friend the late gay black poet Essex Hemphill said, `If you're going to be made a token as a gay person of color, what do you do with a token? You put it in the bus and ride it as far as you can go.'"

Goodridge is U.S. editor for Screen International.