Tolkienism.

For the now documentary Ringers: Lord of the Fans, a roughly chronological chronicle of the pop-cultural impact of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic novel The Lord of the Rings, gay producer and cowriter Cliff Broadway traveled from New Zealand to California to Oxford, England, to interview uber-fans and most of the stars of the Peter Jackson film cycle. Gay and lesbian fans of the books and movies, he discovered, "are legion."

"There are gay Lord of the Rings fans from the 1960s who have taught me how to write in Elvish," marvels Broadway, whose Ringers was just released on DVD (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, $24.94) after a well-received premiere at January's Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. "Every generation looks at this book and they find something else in it that pertains to them."

That universal connection to Rings is exactly what Broadway and director-co-writer Carlene Cordova (who met at a 2001 Ian McKellen book signing and now run a production company, Stormcrow) wanted to explore in their film, which they recruited on-screen hobbit and Lost star Dominic Monaghan to narrate. Yet one of the more interesting ironies is that Broadway doesn't think "the word homosexual was even in Tolkien's vocabulary," given the professor's "severe" Catholicism.

Nonetheless, the deeply affectionate relationship between Frodo and Sam was first a revelation at age 11 for Broadway, who plans to continue making gay-centered films through Stormcrow.

"There was nothing else in the world that could save Frodo and Sam except for their love for each other," ha says. "That's what I was learning."