MQFF 2017 Looks To The Darker Side Of Sexuality On Screen

Standard film festival practice is to program a sure crowd-pleaser as the opening night film. But the 2017 Melbourne Queer Film Festival bucks that trend: opening its 27th fest with I Am Michael, in which James Franco plays Michael Glatze, the queer activist who 'converted' to being a straight, anti-gay pastor.

"There are people in the queer community who feel like this film shouldn't've been made," says Justin Kelly, I Am Michael's director. "Since I'm gay, and a lot of the people on the film were gay, it was really hard for us to make a film about someone who, after having been a gay activist for ten years, with a boyfriend for ten years, went on to write that all gay people were paedophiles who were going to burn in hell."

I Am Michael is one of two Kelly films at MQFF. The other is his follow-up, King Cobra, which reunites him with Franco, and recruits a bonkers cast (Christian Slater! Alicia Silverstone! Molly Ringwald!) in a tale of ambition, greed, and murder in the gay porn world, based on real events.

"There are people in the queer community who feel like this film   shouldn't've  been made."

"It was really great to get the two Justin Kelly films, particularly I Am Michael, which is our opening night film," says Spiro Economopoulos, MQFF's Program Manager. "This being my second year, I wanted to push a little bit more, program some films that were more difficult, challenging, or provocative."

The provocations extend to other highlights: Handl Klaus's Haneke-esque Tomcat; Olivier Ducastel & Jacques Martineau's boy-meets-boy tale Paris 05:59 Theo & Hugo, which opens with 15 straight minutes of orgy; and You'll Never Be Alone, the dark directorial debut of cult Chilean synth-pop stud Alex Anwandter. And, even, to the retrospective strain, which includes the still-outrageous-after-all-these-years 1970 John Waters rumpus, Multiple Maniacs.

Economopoulos has also programmed two iconic films of feminist cinema trailblazer Dorothy Arzner: 1929's The Wild Party and 1940's Dance, Girl, Dance. "I always think it's really important to have retrospective titles at festivals, to look back as much as you look forward. It's a really vital part of any film festival."

In highlighting the works of Kelly, MQFF is introducing local audiences to a next-generation queer filmmaker; someone who grew up, in suburban Los Angeles, obsessing over Waters, Pedro Almodovar, Catherine Breillat, Francois Ozon, Todd Haynes, and Gus Van Sant. After going through film school and spending 15 years working on film crews and making short films, Kelly would make his debut with Van Sant as executive producer, bringing to screen a story Franco had optioned from Benoit Denizet Lewis's article My Ex-Gay Friend.

At first, Kelly was unsure how he could tell a story about someone "saying such vile things", but changed his mind when he met Glatze and could humanise him, especially given the enthusiast response he received from his subject. "[Michael] was pretty excited," says Kelly. "Think about it: out of the blue, someone tells you that Gus Van Sant wants to produce a film where James Franco is going to be playing you. You'd have to be, at the very least, a little bit flattered. And as you see in the film, Michael is a person who loves attention. He's always the one up on a soapbox, speaking out, no matter what he's speaking about."

"I wanted to push a little bit more, program some films that were more difficult, challenging, or provocative."

Glatze didn't even lose his enthusiasm even after seeing the finished film at its Sundance premiere; admitting that I Am Michael's portrait of him as confused, and someone capable of horrible acts, was true. Eight months later, Kelly was already behind the camera again, shooting Franco in another scandalous true story from the MySpacey mid-'00s: the 2007 murder of gay porn peddler Bryan Kocis. "It really came from James Franco. He, clearly, likes to work very fast and make a lot of films," Kelly laughs.

After reading Andrew E. Stoner & Peter E. Conway's book Cobra Killer: Gay Porn, Murder, & The Manhunt To Bring The Killers To Justice, Kelly had kept the idea in his "back pocket", but never thought he'd actually get it made. "But, somehow, from producers to crew to actors, everyone loved this fun, not-too-serious, gay-porn murder story," he says. "So many actors wanted to be involved, to do something different. Christian Slater hadn't played a gay character before... Keegan Allen, coming off this fame and success with Pretty Little Liars, wanted to [make] this wild departure from the teen world. Same with Garrett Clayton, who was fresh off a Disney stint, and was looking for something more 'adult', more challenging."

The Melbourne Queer Film Festival runs 16 — 27 Mar.