Set in 1969 Greenwich Village following the Stonewall riots, Lez Be Friends is a wacky, loving homage to the great sitcoms of the '70s. Putting a gay(er) twist on Three's Company, producer Stephen Israel (Boy Culture) and writer/director Glenn Gaylord (Boychick) tell the story of Ricca Pike, a butch lesbian who must pretend to be straight in order to live with her two (inevitably shirtless) gay male roommates, lest she incur the wrath of their lesbo-phobic landlord, Truman DuBois (played by Robert Michael Morris, Mickey from HBO's The Comeback).

In episode one ("Stonewalled"), Ricca and her best friend, Jamie, move from Ohio to The Big Apple. While apartment hunting, they meet hunky Stonewall Inn bartender Blake, who is desperately trying to find two new roommates. Faster than you can sing "come and knock on our door," the unlikely trio agrees to shack up if only they can overcome one major obstacle: convincing the lesbian-hating, southern-dandy building owner that Ricca is a hetero girly girl.

Episode two ("All's Kwell That Ends Kwell") places the kids in a very hairy situation: a crab infestation that finds the roommates on a funny, frantic hunt for patient zero.

-- REELING Chicago Film Festival

LEZ BE FRIENDS is a hilarious sitcom that plays like a twisted Three's Company, creating an outrageously funny take on gay life of the period. - from the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival

Here's a wonderful write-up from the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, where LEZ BE FRIENDS will screen on 7/15 and 7/18:


Move over "Will and Grace," 70s queer history serves as the basis for a delightfully skewered sitcom with gay and lesbian characters that would make Norman Lear proud.

A throwback to the three-camera sitcoms of the 60s and 70s, "Lez Be Friends" consists of two super-sized episodes that pay homage to those comedies of days gone by. In "Stonewalled," Ricca Pike, a young, butch lesbian, moves from Ohio to New York City with her gay best friend, Jamie, in order to pursue their dreams. It's the day after the Stonewall riots, and Blake, a hot bartender at the Stonewall Inn, invites them to become his roommates under one condition; Ricca must pretend to be straight since the landlord is an old queen who doesn't like lesbians. In Episode Two, "All's Kwell That Ends Kwell," crab lice infest the Casa DuBois and the residents discover that they're the gift that keeps on giving. Writer/director Glenn Gaylord (of the popular short film, BoyChick) and producer Stephen Israel (Boy Culture) were inspired by TV shows like "Good Times," "All in the Family" and "Maude." These shows addressed culturally taboo and controversial subjects with wicked comedy. With a fresh-faced cast, funny, tasteless costuming and cameos from Emily Brooke Hands and Rebekah Kochan, (both from the Eating Out movies), don't miss this exclusive sneak preview.

Now that I'm safely back home from the World Premiere screenings of LEZ BE FRIENDS at the 31st Frameline, San Francisco's LGBT Film Festival, I can finally sit back and reflect on the whirlwind.  And aren't you glad I said "whirlwind" instead of "worldwind", which I've been hearing too much of lately in the mispronouncing world in which we live.  (Behold the absence of a dangling participle in that sentence, grammar buffs!)

The official WORLD PREMIERE was Friday, June 15 at noon in the beautiful Castro Theatre.  Beforehand, my BF Steve and I met up with Robert Michael Morris, Stephen Israel, our Producer,  our lovely 1st AD Robyn Dettman, and Ruben Gamundi, who helped finance the project.  The latter two live up in the San Francisco area.

The program guide write-up for the Frameline 31 Film Festival in San Francisco by author, Andy Bailey:



Lez Be Friends
USA, 2007, 70 Minute Running Time
Genre/Subjects: Comedy, Drama, Gay, Lesbian
Language: English
DIRECTOR: Glenn Gaylord

Television sitcoms from the '60s and '70s are comfort food for multiple generations. For many viewers — then as much as now — Maude's abortion, Archie Bunker's racism and the homophobia and the confusing sexual permutations of "Three's Company" exposed societal issues while they entertained, with their pithy resolutions, canned laugh tracks and outré apparel.Like a Norman Lear sitcom that never was (and certainly could not have been in its day), the revisionist sitcom Lez Be Friends serves up butch lesbian heroine Ricca Pike and her straitlaced gay male sidekick Jamie, who arrive in Greenwich Village on the day after the Stonewall riots in search of an apartment. Offered a room by the Stonewall Inn's hunky bartender Blake, Ricca must pass as a feminine straight girl so as not to incur the wrath of the lesbo-phobic landlord Truman Dubois.Like an inverted "Three's Company" for those who thought "That '70s Show" lacked a certain je ne sais gay, Lez Be Friends is a rollicking homage to the sitcoms that shaped many of us, for better or worse. With the pilot episode "Stonewalled" and its follow-up "All's Kwell That Ends Kwell" — in which crab lice infests the residents of Casa DuBois, prompting a witch hunt for Patient Zero — this two-episode, feature-length package harks back to a more innocent era, serving up laughter and bad outfits and reminding us that while things seemed much simpler post-Judy and pre-AIDS, gay drama couldn't hold a candle to the outrageous shenanigans inherent in gay situation comedy. — ANDY BAILEY

This one is from WIRED.COM by the wonderfully-named Angela Watercutter:

The Funniest 70s Show Yet
By Angela Watercutter June 18, 2007 | 8:52:39 PM Categories: Film, Television



 Director Glenn Gaylord loves the sitcoms of the 1960s and 70s, like, a lot. And if there's one thing he likes more, it's probably lesbians. In his latest project Lez Be Friends, the director pays homage to both the Norman Lear sitcoms of his younger years and his sisters in the struggle. The film, which is essentially two episodes of a show of the same name complete with Grindhouse-style commercials from the era, is set in Greenwich Village a day after the Stonewall riots (yes, I know, that technically makes it a 60s show). Flannel-loving lesbian Ricca Pike (no kidding) and her clean-cut gay friend Jamie arrive in New York from Ohio and are desperate for a place to live. They meet local hot ticket Blake, who is a bartender at the Stonewall bar and in need of roommates because his boyfriends (yes, that should be plural) have left him. They agree to move in, but there's a catch. Ricca has to pretend to be straight to be approved by the building's Sappho-phobic landlord Truman. Hilarity (and VD) ensues. The film, which had its premier at the the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival going on all this week walks the perfect line between tasteless and priceless (its like Will & Grace except the butch girl makes the jokes - instead of always being the butt of them). It also had the audience laughing so hard at the screening I saw that folks often missed the next line. Gaylord and his producer Stephen Israel made the film on a shoestring and most of the participants worked for free. They say they'd reward their cast and crew handsomely if the film ever got picked up as a television series. Did you hear that Logo?

The following is a review of LEZ BE FRIENDS written by Lincoln Madison, who writes FILM QUEEN REVIEWS on BLOGSPOT. Check it out!




Film Queen Reviews

Reviews of Movies I've seen, especially in the Frameline31 lesbian / gay / bisexual / transgender film festival
Friday, June 15, 2007
Lez Be Friends

Lez Be Friends is the pilot and first episode of a new sitcom, which we can hope might actually be coming soon to a (cable) television near you; I can certainly imagine it on Logo. The setup: a young gay man (Jamie) and a young butch lesbian (Ricca) from Ohio move to New York City the day after the Stonewall riots. They happen into an apartment-sharing situation with the Stonewall's bartender (Blake), but the landlord upstairs hates lesbians, so they have to contrive to conceal Ricca's true nature. Hilarity ensues, with plenty of eye candy in the mix: both Jamie and Blake are dreamy. I would say that probably more than 3/4 of the jokes worked, which is a pretty good batting average for a sitcom. The producers are serious about taking it to a network if they can find one willing to give them a chance; given what they did with a shoestring budget, I can only imagine what they could do with even 1% of the budget for plain-old Friends. Failing that, the episodes already filmed must come out on DVD.

Lez Be Friends, dir. Glenn Gaylord, 2007 USA, 70 min.

Technorati tags: Lez Be Friends, Frameline, Frameline31, LGBT Film, sitcom

NOTE: Lez Be Friends will screen again on Sunday, June 17, at 9:30 p.m. at the Victoria Theatre

by Lincoln Madison
queerfilm.blogspot.com