Pet projects.

What's your favorite gay filmmaker or TV producer up to these days? We've polled some of the entertainment industry's top artists to see what's next--and what's queer--on their schedules. Of course, the following projects may not be coming to a theater near you soon, but they remain top priorities for the folks who are trying to make them.

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman 

The Oscar-winning directing team behind Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt and The Celluloid Closet is hard at work on a feature-length documentary tentatively rifled The Pink Triangle Project, about the experiences of gay men and lesbians during the Nazi era. Now being shot on location in Germany, the documentary is set to air on cable's Cinemax in the spring of 1999. Also in development at Epstein and Friedman's San Francisco-based Telling Pictures is Save Me, a romantic comedy about "reformed" gay born-again Christians, written by Craig Chester. Alan Poul (Tales of the City, More Tales) serves as coproducer with Howard Rosenman [see page 76] for Fox Searchlight.

Harvey Fierstein

The man who brought his Torch Song Trilogy to stage and screen was recently commissioned by HBO to write an hour long animated children's special. "It's called The Sissy Duckling," Fierstein says. "It's sort of an adaptation of The Ugly Duckling, but instead of being ugly he's a great big fairy." Planned to make its premiere in time for Gay Pride Month 1999, this production boasts the star voices of Dan Buffer, Ellen DeGeneres, Andy Dick, Melissa Etheridge, Estelle Getty, Anne Heche, and Sharon Stone.

Gregory Hinton

The proudly HIV-positive executive producer of It's My Party has two projects in the works. The first, Cathedral City, is an adaptation of his recently completed but as-yet-unpublished novel. "It's set in the small town outside of Palm Springs where I used to own a gay bar many years ago," Hinton says. "It juxtaposes the gay and Hispanic communities that live there. It's about two guys who harbor an undocumented Hispanic woman." The second property is Circuit, inspired by the gay party phenomenon, which Hinton developed with Dirk Sharer (Man of the Year). "It's a social critique, not a light, happy thing," stresses Hinton. "I wrote the screenplay. Dirk would direct it."

Marcus Hu

The president of Strand Releasing and producer of such hits as Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss, The Living End, and Frisk is developing writer-director Lane Janger's Sundance short Just One Time into a feature.

"It's about this couple who are about to get married," explains Hu. "The man harbors a secret fantasy to have a three-way with his bride-to-be and another woman before the big day. The bride-to-be counters with what she really wants, and so she brings another guy in." Also on Hu's slate: an adaptation of Elizabeth Pincus's novel The Two-bit Tango written by James Bosley. "Set in San Francisco, it has a lesbian detective searching for a pair of young, very alluring, female twins," says Hu. "It's really a lot of fun."

Jennie Livingston

The director-producer of Paris Is Burning is about to start shooting her sex comedy Who's the Top? which she describes as "Woody Allen's younger dyke sister goes to the S/M dungeon, with musical numbers." Concurrently, Livingston is writing Prenzlauerberg, a drama set in the late-'80s art worlds of East Germany and New York City. Also planned is a video documentary of Provincetown, Mass. "In terms of the gay-straight mix, it's a pretty wild town," says Livingston. "And it could happen only in America, as far as I'm concerned."

Randal Kleiser

The director of Grease and It's My Party has had a filmed biography of Alfred C. Kinsey on his mind for a few years and has found renewed inspiration in James H. Jones's 1997 biography, Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life, which suggests that the famed sexologist probably fell in the middle of his own orientation scale. "The idea of doing sex research in the '50s just sounds so fun," Kleiser says. "There was a script developed that I read and liked and wanted to get off the ground, and then this biography came out that filled in all the blanks."

Rose Troche 

The director (and cowriter with Guinevere Turner) of the 1994 indie hit Go Fish, Troche followed that up with Bedrooms & Hallways, a London-set romantic comedy she wrote and directed. Although it had its world premiere at Cannes earlier this year, it still has no stateside distributor. "It's about a gay man who falls for a straight man," explains Troche via telephone from Barcelona, where she's writing. "In mm, the straight man falls for him, but the straight man is going through a breakup with [a woman] who ends up being a very old and dear friend of the gay man, our lead character. It complicates the entire situation." Next up for Troche is a film about Dorothy Arzner and George Cukor, to be produced by Christine Va chon's Killer Films. "They were both gay directors," says Troche, "and both were considered women's directors."

Howard Rosenman

Rosenman has produced films as varied as Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Father of The Bride. One of his planned projects is Trophy Boys, "about a guy who searches for love and happiness with a zillionaire but then realizes it's the boy back home he really loves," says Rosenman. Written by Robert Horn and Danny Margosis, the script is based on New York magazine's post-Cunanan 1997 cover stow about young gay gold diggers and the rich older men who love them. More likely to hit the screen first, however, is Self-made Man, a murder mystery-thriller inspired by a true crime and written by Rick Nahmias. Set up at Immortal Films, the film will be coproduced by Rosenman, Eric Cahan, and Happy Walters. Jim McBride is attached to direct.

Craig Lucas

The man who wrote Longtime Companion and Prelude to a Kiss, among other films, says he has no less than three dream projects dancing in his head. First is an adaptation of his recent play, The Dying Gaul, to star the original off-Broadway cast (Tim Hopper, Tony Goldwyn, Linda Emond) and to be helmed by its stage director, Mark Brokaw. Second is an adaptation of Jane Hamilton's novel The Short History of a Prince, to star Tim Robbins and to be directed by Christopher Renshaw. Third, Lucas plans to direct "an original screenplay by me: a gay love stow with two adult gay men as protagonists, neither of whom are in the closet, neither of whom will die at the end." As a bonus this film would feature original music by Joni Mitchell. Lucas then adds that none of these projects is in development. No one has spoken to Hamilton, Robbins, or Mitchell. It's a wish list. The only sure thing is Lucas's adaptation of Jun Grimsley's gothic same-sex adolescent love stow, Dream Boy, which he is shepherding with producer Marcus Hu [see page 75].

Barry Sandier

He may have scripted Crimes of Passion and The Mirror Crack'd, but gay audiences remember him best as the screenwriter of Making Love. Now Barry Sandler is collaborating with novelist Patricia Nell Warren on the screen adaptation of her landmark The Front Runner. "It's been in and out of development for 20 years," Sandler says of the classic gay love stow, an assignment offered to him by a host of producers over the last decade. "It never quite came to fruition. It's something I've always wanted to do."

Gus Van Sant 

Now prepping his remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho for a Christmas release, the maverick director of Drugstore Cowboy and Good Will Hunting has three pet queer projects waiting on the runway. The first is an adaptation of Randy Shilts's biography The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. Second is an adaptation of David Schneider's Street Zen, a biography of Issan Dorsey--a gay man who became abbot of one of the nation's top Zen monasteries. Third, and most likely to next roll before the cameras, is Brokeback Mountain, a gay cowboy love stow whose script was written by

Pulitzer prize-winning Lone some Dove novelist Larry McMurtry and his scriptwriting partner, Diana Ossana. Recently set up at Columbia Pictures, the film is based on a short stow by another Pulitzer prize-winning author, E. Annie Proulx. Scott Rudin will coproduce with Van Sant, McMurtry, and Ossana

John Waters

"Gay is not enough anymore," says the maker of Pecker, Pink Flamingos, and Hairspray. "I would never just make a plain gay and lesbian movie because to me, that's not twisted enough. Every television show has gay and lesbian characters now. It's hardly cutting-edge, which is the way it should be. That's when we'll know we've made progress--when there is no longer any such thing as a gay and lesbian movie, just American movies." That said, Waters does have one pet project. "! have this Cecil B. Demented," he continues, "It's sort of my Die Hard. It's about teen terrorists who punish the movie business for making bad movies. They kidnap an A-list movie star and force her to be in their underground movie. It's terrorism against the Hollywood system, so in Europe it's cinematically correct. In Hollywood it's very cinematically incorrect. I'm still trying to get it made, and I think I'm going to be able to. I hope."

Richard Kramer

The award-winning writer-producer of thirtysomething, Tales of the City, and Nothing Sacred is coproducing, with Suzanne Todd, HBO's sequel to its 1996 abortion-themed If These Walls Could Talk. But here's the difference: The new quartet of half-hour films, which are all set in the same New York City brownstone during different decades, focuses on gay male life. Kramer is writing the 1990s segment, while dragmeister Charles Busch, Robert Nathan (Law & Order), and Will Scheffer (In the Gloaming) have been assigned the 1920s, 1950s, and 1970s portions, respectively. "I want people to be excited about this," says Kramer of the project, which is set to air in mid 1999. "These are not coming-out stories. They are stories of men who are attempting to craft lives of honor and integrity given the world's prejudice against this aspect of their identity. The stories are told from inside the gay male's experience. Every character in every one of these episodes gets laid--and we see it."