The straight season: the mainstream choices for lesbian and gay movie lovers may be thin this summer, but that's mainly because our stories have infiltrated the rest of the mass media. (Summer Movie Special).

"No gay films from Hollywood this summer? Well, that's really not the time for gay films, is it?" Bruce Cohen wonders aloud. "In & Out and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Neurmar both premiered in September. And The Birdcage opened in the spring. Yes, that's when you'll find gay films." The veteran producer could have added his own Oscar-winning American Beauty, with its far-from-inconsiderable gay subtext, to the list of such non-vacation time releases.

But does this mean that all Hollywood has formally decided to turn its back on gay and lesbian audiences at this, one of the busiest moviegoing times of the year? And how can the Hollywood mainstream overlook us when our lives are covered so assiduously by other entertainment outlets in television, video, and independent film?

"I think it's much easier for there to be gay elements in a Hollywood film today than it was in the past," says producer Laurence Mark. "It's begun to be a bit ho-hum, in fact. But as for a totally gay-themed film, that's as difficult as ever." Mark should know--it took him close to a decade to get the straight-girl-loves-gay-man romance The Object of My Affection to the screen (the film finally hit theaters in 1998). But what was seen as daring a decade ago is Will & Grace today. And even that ceaselessly GIAAD Media Award-honored show is far from the edge-cutter it once was.

Back in the late 1970s, when Vito Russo was a film critic for this magazine, there wasn't any half-empty/half-full glass to consider where Hollywood was concerned. In fact, there wasn't any glass at all. "Invisibility is the great enemy," Russo declared in his groundbreaking study The Celluloid Closet. "It has prevented the truth from being heard, and it will continue to do so as long as the celluloid closet is inhabited by lesbians and gay men who serve Hollywood's idea of homosexuality." A lot has happened since those words were written in 1981. And while many persist in hiding behind the rhetorical fig leaf of privacy--and the sometimes coercive "protection" of publicists and handlers--the closet no longer holds all Hollywood in its thrall. In fact, in addition to writers, directors, producers, and studio executives, there is a growing number of out performers, three of whom can be found in the not-as-gay-as-it-could-be summer of 2002.

Rupert Everett is the star of a new adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (gay in context if not in subject). Cherry Jones will be seen in the ensemble-cast chick flick Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood as well as in Signs, a new thriller starring Mel Gibson from writer-director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable). Then there's Broadway dynamo Nathan Lane, returning as the voice of Snowbell the cat in the family comedy Stuart Little 2.

And that's the key to summer 2002--the number 2. We'll have Men in Black II, Spy Kids 2, and let's not forget Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones. In other words, Hollywood is geared to the familiar and the familial.

"It continues to get easier to have films with gay characters or that deal with gay material," says Cohen, whose next project, Down With Love, starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor, is a tribute to the sex comedies of those pre-Stonewall icons Rock Hudson and Doris Day. "People barely bat an eye today when they see scripts that contain gay references. As far as a gay love stow is concerned, chances for doing one are few and far between. I think that will remain pretty constant for some time to come."

"But that's the way it is with all marginalized groups," says Mark. "We even get memos saying, `Can this character not be quite so Jewish?'" Veteran publicist Howard Bragman concurs: "I never thought I'd ever say this, but today it's a lot easier to finesse a gay character in a Hollywood movie than a Jewish one." And the easiest thing of all is to forget about sociological specifics--or any other consideration--and aim squarely at the family audience as this summer's sequels have done, all the better to ensure profits in these financially unstable times. And because of this approach, Hollywood has marginalized itself in relation to the entire culture, both gay and straight.

"It's a different world out there now than the one so many of us grew up in," Bragman explains. "Hollywood doesn't mean what it once used to. For the average consumer, watching a show on the networks or a show on cable or buying or renting a video or going out to a movie theater are all the same entertainment choice." And one can easily see what this newly flattened entertainment horizon means to gays and lesbians. One can scarcely feel gay-deprived when Queer as Folk and Six Feet Under are thriving on cable and when on the networks there appears to be a law in force that no reality-based program can proceed without a gay participant. Beyond that, there's the world of independent film--which explodes this summer in a series of gay and lesbian film festivals that have come to function as a launching pad for nationwide art-house releases. Some of the most talked-about films of the festival circuit might, if successfully launched, give their makers a boost for the future. And then they might not.

Christopher Munch, one of the signal talents of the New Queer Cinema explosion of the 1990s, gave up struggling to get his new--and much-praised--work The Sleepy Time Gal into theaters, premiering it on cable television instead. After winning the Academy Award for his screenplay for Gods and Monsters, writer-director Bill Condon has been working to get a biopic of the legendary (and apparently bisexual) sex researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey off the ground. In the meantime, Condon has taken the mainstream gig of penning the screenplay for the film of the musical Chicago (a Christmas release for this year). And then there's Gus Van Sant, who, having enjoyed both success (Good Will Hunting) and failure (Psycho) in the mainstream, has turned his back on it for the resolutely avant-garde (and slyly queer) Gerry. The most controversial film at Sundance, Gerry stars Matt Damon and Casey Affleck as a pair of dudes lost in the desert, and it may well find its way into an adventurous theater or two this fall, provided they're prepared to show a plotless, neo-Warholian conceptual art movie.

Or maybe those theaters would do better with a documentary instead--like The Cockettes. Directed by David Weissman and Bill Weber and featuring some of the most amazing archival footage ever assembled, this history of the rise and fall of the legendary San Francisco hippie-acid freak-drag queen performance troupe is the most extraordinary gay subcultural study since Paris Is Burning. "Some of the best American work these days is being done in documentary films," says Shannon Kelley, director of programming for Outfest, Los Angeles's annual gay and lesbian film and video festival. This season's crop, Kelley notes, is highlighted by the gay-parenting film Daddy and Papa by Johnny Symons, veteran hard-edged documentarian Arthur Dong's Family Fundamentals (about right-wing fundamentalists with gay and lesbian children), and Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House. "Ruthie and Connie is really something, because it's about a couple of women who came out and set up a life together well into middle age, and they have all sorts of interests and involvements in their lives," says Kelley. "The filmmakers can scarcely keep up with them."

Then there are the dramatic films. And as any filmfest attendee knows, some of the best of them have subtitles. And that's a minus to mainstream-minded moviegoers. "We all go to see American films, but it's so important to see films from around the world," says Marcus Hu of Strand Releasing, which has three of the most striking gay films yet made--the just-released Fleeing by Night and the upcoming Lan Yu, two lush historical romantic dramas from China, and this summer's Hush! a bittersweet, very modern comedy about a Japanese gay couple and the woman who wants to have their baby.

"Being gay in America is one thing," says Hu. "We know what that's like and can see it in many films. Being gay in other countries is a completely different experience. We need to learn about that and can do so through film. Why limit your outlook?"

Why, indeed?

Ehrenstein is the author of Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-1998.