From http://www.laweekly.com/film+tv/film/one-from-the-heart-outfest-achievement-award-winner-donna-deitch/19195/:

ONE FROM THE HEART: OUTFEST ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WINNER DONNA DEITCH
Director shoots from the hip about the Hollywood gender gap and the soon-to-be sequel to her most famous film

BY ERNEST HARDY
Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - 7:10 pm
'I feel really honored," says director Donna Deitch, the recipient of this year's Outfest Achievement Award, between sips of coffee at Masa of Echo Park. "Outfest is an organization that does much more than have a festival for one week or 10 days of the year," she adds. "There's the Outfest Legacy Project, which archives and preserves gay and lesbian film. That just doesn't exist anywhere else, and it's such an important aspect of the preservation of the culture. But, also, in terms of people who have preceded me in receiving this award, it's good company." Those previous recipients include Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant and Sir Ian McKellen. "I'd like to see more women, but ... " Deitch's voice trails off in laughter.

Best known for directing the 1986 queer cinema classic Desert Hearts, about the lesbian love affair between an emotionally guarded, newly divorced college professor and the untamed cowgirl who teaches her to sing more than the blues, Deitch has also directed cable and network-TV movies, including the Emmy-nominated The Women of Brewster Place, The Devil's Arithmetic and Common Ground; the award-winning documentary Angel on My Shoulder; and countless episodes of episodic TV. Currently, she's working on a half-dozen projects, including a sequel to Desert Hearts and a film adaptation of her partner Terri Jentz's recent nonfiction book, Strange Piece of Paradise, for which Jentz is writing the script. The Weekly sat down for a conversation with Deitch three days before she flew to Zambia with Gloria Steinem and the activist group Equality Now for a conference on female sex trafficking.

L.A. WEEKLY: You reveal in your documentary Angel on My Shoulder that you're the daughter of a fashion designer mother. What do you think you inherited or absorbed from her, not just mother to daughter, but artist to artist?

DONNA DEITCH: Well, let me add something about my mother, which is not apparent from that film. My mother came to this country as a non-English-speaking immigrant, who worked in a sweatshop as a seamstress in New York. In many ways, it was my mother's history and struggle that had more, or equal, impact on me than the fact that she was a creative person. My mother was Jewish and ultimately got her entire family out of Hungary before the Nazis got in there, and that was the story she told to us as children.

L.A. Weekly: Quite often when the term queer sensibility is used, it really refers to categories of gay-male aesthetics, cultural politics and practices. Outside of academia and lesbian-focused publications, there doesn't seem to be much consideration given to what might be the lesbian equivalent of a "queer sensibility." Do you think there's such a thing as a specifically lesbian sensibility?

Donna Deitch: To respond to the earlier part of your remark, about the lesser attention given to lesbians vis-à-vis queer or homosexual issues or identity or sensibility, well, that simply parallels this [larger] society, because there's less attention given to women than men. So naturally, there's less attention given to lesbians than gay men. I mean, it's pervasive. Nothing new there. Now, is there a lesbian sensibility? With regards to what?

L.A. Weekly: Well, let's take film, and even non-gay film. For example, Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroomand Moulin Rouge — regardless of Luhrmann's actual sexual identity — are quite often cited as having a queer sensibility and, more specifically, a gay-male sensibility.

Donna Deitch: Ah, yes, yes.

L.A. Weekly: Would you say there is an equally identifiable lesbian sensibility?

Donna Deitch: Not that I know of. But I'm certainly not an expert. Someone else might say something different.

L.A. Weekly: What do you think of the feminist critique of the history of cinema as being largely defined by a male gaze?

Donna Deitch: Women's experience in the world is very different from men for very obvious reasons. First of all, the world is a much more dangerous place for women than it is for men. Women are not yet equal to men. Women are second-class to men, right? And, therefore, women's experience is different. Everything we do as artists comes from our own experience, so I think women tend to see things — I'm speaking very generally now — differently than men do.

Let me give a specific example. When I was thinking about the love scene I was going to be directing in Desert Hearts, I decided I was going to look at a lot of love scenes to study what was wrong with them. Why weren't they moving me in so many instances? Now, what was available to look at were primarily male-directed scenes because men direct most of the movies. I don't know if I saw any directed by women at the time. There probably just wasn't anything out there. What I was trying to do differently — is that something that wasn't the male gaze? I'm not sure. But it had to do with the fact that I didn't see any intimacy in most of those [male-directed] scenes, which was all right, but if there was no intimacy, then I needed a certain type of heat to replace that intimacy, something to connect with [the scene]. I mean, there were some great, hot [scenes], but those were the minority. Did that have to do with the male gaze? I don't know. It's hard to say, because so many of the films were made by men, so it's very hard to make the juxtaposition, to be able to look at what is different and what would be a female gaze.

L.A. Weekly: What do you feel comfortable sharing about the sequel toDesert Hearts?

Donna Deitch: Well, I'll tell you that it's an unconventional sequel. It's more about the world of Desert Hearts, not specifically about the two characters, although they are in it. It begins to grow in terms of the characters. It is set in the heart of the so-called second wave of the women's-liberation movement, in Manhattan. It's just the next upcoming sequel to Desert Hearts, but then there's going to be another one. I'm beginning to see several sequels. And I'm wondering if I might have a sci-fi sequel at the very end.

Donna Deitch will receive the 12th Annual Outfest Achievement Award at Outfest's opening-night gala at the Orpheum Theatre, Wed., July 9, 8 p.m. For tickets and more info, go to www.outfest.org.

Camille Paglia admits "Desert Hearts" obsession! "When it comes to Desert Hearts, alas, I can admit no faults in that delightful film. I saw it eleven times at its first two releases in Philadelphia in 1986. The lead roles were splendidly played by straight women (Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau, who had just learned she was pregnant) — and with wider range and subtler dramatic inflections than demonstrated by the stars of Brokeback Mountain. Desert Hearts was remarkable in its sense of place, its mesmerizing stream of music (country and Western classics), and its sharply observed supporting roles. If only more gay films had that kind of richness and humanity." - Camille Paglia (as quoted from http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/54/paglia.htm)

BREAKING NEWS: "DESERT HEARTS" DIRECTOR DONNA DEITCH TO BE HONORED AT OUTFEST (The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival)

July 9, 2008, 8pm - Outfest honors "Desert Hearts" director Donna Deitch with the 12th Annual Outfest Achievement Award preceding the opening night gala film "Breakfast With Scot." Outfest opening night takes place at the Orpheum Theater, a historic downtown Los Angeles movie palace.

July 12, 2008, 12pm - Outfest event: A conversation with Donna Deitch at the Directors Guild of America (DGA 2 Theater) in Hollywood, CA.

Jane Rule, 76
SANDRA MARTIN
Globe and Mail Update
November 28, 2007 at 4:45 PM EDT

Writer, teacher, cultural nationalist and lesbian role model, Jane Rule died last night of complications from liver cancer at her home on Galiano Island, British Columbia. She was 76.

The author of a dozen books, including the novels Desert of the Heart, This is not for You and Memory Board, and the non-fiction essays Lesbian Images, Ms. Rule brought the idea of women loving women into the quotidian world both in her personal life, which was lived openly for nearly 50 years with her partner Helen Sonthoff, and in her writing.

She explored the conflict between desire and convention and the constriction that fear can extol on intimacy, joyfulness and freedom. Her fiction falls into the category of social realism, but it was always driven by character rather than polemics. Typically an ensemble of homosexual and heterosexual characters interact, often communally, to represent the position of the artist in society or to confront bureaucratic oppression of difference.

As she herself grew older, Ms. Rule became more concerned in her writing about aging and the social webs that single women form as an emotional and physical counterpoint to traditional family networks.


Enlarge Image
Writer Jane Rule was the author of a dozen books. (The Globe and Mail)

Internet Links
Related: Books by Jane Rule

Ms. Rule, who was tall and lanky, wore outsize, often owl-shaped, dark-rimmed glasses and cut her hair in a Louise Brooks' bob. During her lifetime, she was part of two huge social and cultural revolutions: the decriminalization of homosexuality and the international ascendancy of Canadian literature.

When Ms. Rule immigrated to Vancouver in the middle 1950s, the state still had the legal right to intrude into the bedrooms of the nation and consenting adults could be charged under the Criminal Code and imprisoned for five years for engaging in homosexual activity. As for Canadian literature, it barely existed as a subject in schools, a discipline in universities or a vocation for aspiring writers. Novelists and poets, if they had any ambition, offered their work to New York or London publishers.

Although not overtly political, Ms. Rule actively supported the Writers' Union, the gay liberation magazine The Body Politic, where she wrote essays and a regular column, "So's Your Grandmother" from 1979 through 1985, and defended Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium in its 15 year legal dispute with Canadian Customs Officials for regularly impounding shipments of gay and lesbian erotica. She believed ferociously in freedom of expression and the innate ability of ordinary Canadians to define their own literary tastes.

Jane Vance Rule was born on March 28, 1931 in Plainfield, New Jersey, the middle child and elder daughter of Carlotta Jane (née Hink) and Arthur Richards Rule Jr. She was a tomboyish five before she discovered that being a girl had serious drawbacks, six before she realized that being left-handed indicated a school behaviour problem in need of modification, and ten before her myopia was corrected with glasses. She was "entranced" by being able to see "individual leaves on tree," read "assignments on the blackboard" and "judge a teacher's mood by her frown as well as by her tone of voice" and delighted that she could, if she chose to take off her glasses, retreat into "that soft, vague world of the nearsighted where other people's concerns and even identities were blurred."

Gangly and awkward, she grew to her full height of 6 feet by the time she was 12, and suffered in school from a husky voice, dyslexia and from being the perpetual new kid because her parents moved from New Jersey to California, Illinois, Missouri and back to California where the family lived while her father served in the Pacific during the Second World War. At 15, she read Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness and "suddenly discovered that I was a freak, a genetic monster, a member of a third sex..." as she wrote later in Lesbian Images.

She earned a bachelor of arts in English in 1952 from Mills College, "studying the great liars in order to learn to tell the truth...But the curriculum at a women's college in the late 1940s and early 1950s offered very little which could give me any insight into my own life or the world I lived in," she wrote many years later in an autobiographical essay. That fall, she followed a female lover to England where she was "an occasional student" at University College, London, reading Shakespeare and other 17th century writers and working on her first novel. Through lectures and student events, she met and became very close friends with John Hulcoop (the literary critic and professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia), who was doing a doctorate at the UC.

After a year, she went back to the U.S. because she had been admitted to the Writing Department at Stanford University after Wallace Stegner read the draft of her unpublished novel. Even so, she says he asked: "Why is a nice girl like you writing about decadent stuff like this?" She hated "the competitive, commercial atmosphere of the school, the condescending attitude toward women students." After a few months, she quit and went back to her parents' house in California and "marked time" until the fall of 1954 when she accepted a teaching position at Concord Academy, a private girls school in Massachusetts.

At Concord, she met and fell in love with Helen Sonthoff, a creative writing and literature teacher, who was the wife of Herbert Sonthoff, a political dissident who had fled his native Germany for the U.S. in the middle of World War II. Ms. Rule's passion for Ms. Sonthoff and the twitchy times — The Cold War and Senator Joseph McCarthy's virulent anti-Communist witch hunts of the early 1950s made all sorts of people, including gays and lesbians, suspect — combined with the lack of privacy or free time for her own writing made life untenable at Concord Academy.

Meanwhile Mr. Hulcoop had completed his doctorate and accepted a job in the English dept. at UBC. Ms. Rule (then 25) left her job in Concord, moved to Vancouver in the fall of 1956 and began sharing a four room flat with him in the home of a B.C. longshoreman. She spent her days working on fiction at a roll top oak desk in a room with a view of the sea and the mountains and supplemented her "otherwise frugal fare" with bounty, "from coffee and tea to caviar and rock lobster tails" that her landlord brought home from the docks.

Although initially friends, Prof. Hulcoop says that he and Ms. Rule eventually became lovers. Their ill-fated coupling was soon crowded, not to mention complicated, by the arrival of Sally, the woman Prof. Hulcoop would soon marry and the appearance of Ms. Sonthoff (then 40). She came to Vancouver for a holiday with Ms. Rule that extended into a life long commitment — after an "amicable" divorce from her husband. Ms. Sonthoff was hired as a teaching assistant at the University of British Columbia in 1957, the beginning of a long university career. Ms. Rule held a variety of jobs to buy herself time to write — she read scripts, did freelance broadcasting, served as the inaugural assistant director of UBC's International House in 1958-59 and also worked periodically as a lecturer in English literature or creative writing. They both became Canadian citizens in the early 1960s.

As a couple, Jane and Helen, as they were invariably called, had their share of spats, infidelities and illnesses, but they were bound by a deep and abiding love. They loved travel, conversation, food, friendship and drinking and smoking — one friend said that Ms. Rule "smoked like a furnace and drank like a fish and enjoyed every minute of it." Their lives incorporated an expansive circle of friends, including many poets who embraced the avant-garde Black Mountain and Tish poetry movement around Warren and Ellen Tallman at UBC. For decades they also operated an unofficial welcome wagon service for newcomers to Vancouver.

Before Margaret Atwood arrived as a sessional lecturer at UBC in the fall of 1964, she had been told by the poet D.G. Jones to look up Jane and Helen. And she did. "They were the first people I met. They helped me rent an apartment, they lent me a card table — I wrote The Edible Woman on it — they lent me plates, they invited me to parties. They were just terrific and they were like that with tons of people."

Shelagh Day arrived at UBC at the same time and had the same experience. She was 20 years old, had a master's degree from Harvard, no teaching experience and had never been in Vancouver before, so she went to the head of the English department and asked for help. He immediately phoned Jane and Helen and asked them to put her up until Ms. Day was able to find accommodation. That was the beginning of a friendship lasting nearly half a century, even though Ms. Day has long since left the academy to work as a human rights advocate.

Ms. Rule published a dozen books beginning with the novel Desert of the Heart in 1964 and ending with After the Fire in 1989. Desert of the Heart, about two women (an English literature professor seeking a quick divorce and a change girl in a casino) who meet in a boarding house in Reno and fall in love, was actually Ms. Rule's third work of fiction. Even after accepting the novel in 1961, Macmillan demanded many changes, including deleting dates to avoid possible libel suits from casino employees who might claiming to be implicated as lesbians. The novel didn't appear until 1964 and was received by Ms. Rule's academic colleagues and some critics with wariness and fear. Years later, Ms. Rule liked to comment that her more liberal colleagues defended her against the hoary question of moral turpitude by comparing her to a writer of crime fiction and arguing that if writing about murders, doesn't make you a murderer, then ....

Despite a chilly reception officially, the book generated a flood of "very unhappy, even desperate" letters, according to Ms. Rule from closeted lesbians who wrote to her about their own lives because they sensed she was the only person in the world who might understand them.

" Desert of the Heart — coming as it did just before the late 60s women's movement — and containing as it did two lovers who were women — made Jane and Helen very famous in those circles," commented Margaret Atwood. "Her novels were never tracts, however. What interested her was character, in all its forms. The human-ness of human beings. The richness and unpredictability of life."

As for journalists, Ms. Rule quickly became the "go to" spokesperson for any and all issues involving homosexuality. "I became for the media, the only lesbian in Canada," she wrote in an autobiographical essay, "a role I gradually and very reluctantly accepted and used to educate people as I could." She was not above editing her own life to suit the cause, according to her friend Prof. Hulcoop, the literary critic who had drawn her to Vancouver in 1956. "After the publication of Desert of the Heart, she became a figurehead for lesbians so it didn't fit the picture that she had come to Canada to live with me and so I have been excised from all interviews," he said in a telephone conversation.

Journalist Gerald Hannon, who had been part of the TBP collective almost from its beginning in 1971, remembers showing up at the house that Ms. Rule and Ms. Sonthoff shared in Vancouver, with his late lover Robert Trow, probably in 1975 to interview her for a profile in the magazine. "We were so intimidated. We were meeting a real writer with real books and we were just nobodies with a small paper in Toronto ... and I can still remember the terrors with which we approached your house in Kitsilano. We left happily drunk, on scotch, I believe, some hours later ... in the grip of the thrilling sensation that maybe we were journalists after all and that maybe what we were trying to do wasn't crazy — that it was graceful and kind and opened doors and windows and let in air and light."

After director Donna Deitch made Desert of the Heart into the film, Desert Hearts in 1986, it became a cult classic. Starring Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau, the film is one of the first and most highly regarded works in which a lesbian relationship is depicted favourably. The film gave the novel a new life, selling thousands of copies and securing translation rights from several European countries.

This heightened celebrity began after Ms. Rule and Ms. Sonthoff had been living on Galiano Island for nearly a decade. They had moved a 50-minute ferry ride away from the hurlyburly that was their life in Vancouver in 1976, when Ms. Sonthoff, then 60, retired from her tenured position at UBC. By then Ms. Rule had suffered her first attack of the chronic and severe arthritis in her spine and neck that would plague her for the rest of her life. For some weeks before the move to Galiano she could hardly move and she was told she would soon be in a wheelchair. Instead she kept swimming, the physical activity she has loved since childhood. In 1979 the two women built a lap pool on their island property and Ms. Rule began a daily swimming regime. As a bonus, the children of Galiano enjoyed free swimming lessons in the summers with Ms. Rule as the volunteer life guard, even as many of their parents benefited from preferential mortgage rates from the Bank of Galiano, as Ms. Rule was affectionately called because of her largesse with the money she had inherited and grown through canny investments in the stock market.

Arthritis meant that she had to change her writing habits. Instead of sitting hunched over a typewriter for hours at a time, she had to learn to write a first draft in long hand lying on a couch with a board in her lap and then quickly type what she had written at the end of each day. In 1989 she had to begin taking anti-inflammatory drugs. Two years later, Ms. Rule announced she "no longer felt driven to write," at least in part because of the dulling effects of the medication she was taking for her arthritis. Ms. Sonthoff, who may have been suffering from osteoporosis, broke her hip in 1999 and was sent to hospital in Victoria for surgery and rehabilitation. She subsequently dislocated it three or four times, requiring repeated surgeries, which eventually culminated in her death from hospital-based complications on Jan. 3, 2000. She was 83.

Although they had been a couple for more than 45 years, Ms. Rule and Ms. Sonthoff had never wanted to marry. Ms. Sonthoff had been dead for more than five years when same sex marriage was legalized in Canada with the passage of the Civil Marriage Act in July 2005. Nevertheless, Ms. Rule had made her objections to gay marriage clear in an essay in the Spring 2001 issue of BC Bookworld. "To be forced back into the heterosexual cage of coupledom is not a step forward but a step back into state-imposed definitions of relationship," she wrote. "With all that we have learned, we should be helping our heterosexual brothers and sisters out of their state-defined prisons, not volunteering to join them there."

She was given the Order of British Columbia in 1998 and the Order of Canada in 2007.

In September, 2007 Ms. Rule was diagnosed with cancer in her liver and probably other parts of her body. Declining further diagnostic tests, she also refused any radical treatment that would involve leaving Galiano. Instead, she kept swimming as long as she could in an effort to resist the inroads of the inexorable arthritis, and gradually accepted a walker and finally a wheelchair to get about. "She was not afraid of dying. She thinks she has had a gorgeous life," said her friend human rights activist Shelagh Day.

In fact, Ms. Rule seemed relieved to have her life foreshortened by cancer because she was becoming increasingly disabled by arthritis. "She had watched her grandmother confined to bed for ten years and she was feeling apprehensive that that was going to happen to her," said Ms. Day. Instead, Ms. Rule retreated to her bed in the middle of November with a bottle of Queen Anne whisky and a bar of good chocolate on her bedside table, hundreds of love letters from friends and admirers and a circle of friends and family who cared for her physical needs.

A celebration of her life is being planned.

from: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071128.wjanerule1128/BNStory/Entertainment/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20071128.wjanerule1128

March 10, 2008
From a 16 year old in England:
Hi there Lydia,
I can’t post anything publically really, as I’m not out yet. I just wanted to answer some of your questions that you posted. I had been looking ALL OVER for a copy of Desert Hearts. I went to the library, I downloaded search software, went to about 20 different website ( I couldn’t use Blockbuster as I couldn’t risk ym parents finding out). I eventually found it. On YouTube of all places! I think it’s so great that now virtually everyone can see it and be inspired to pick up a copy of the film. It’s reaching audiences that it hadn’t done previously and a whole new generation- I’m only 16. But now I’ve seen it about 15 times. I think I should take a leaf out of your book and slow it down! There hasn’t been a film like it. I wrote a letter to Patricia yesterday, but I couldn’t find an address. I would have emailed it to you but I handwrote it! So I signed up to this Celebrity address thing and it gave her Santa Monica Blvd address, so I sent it there- I just hope she gets it because I don’t fancy writing all that out again.
This film has helped me in so many ways- to escape, to realise who I am etc... I will come out eventually and much quicker thanks to this film, it’s just hard because my Asian family aren’t very accepting when it comes to that sort of thing.
Anyway, the way it really inspired me was to screenwrite/act because I can reach thousands of people through a medium and change their lives, change their outlooks and views.
This is all included in my letter to Patricia (who incidentally was the one I had a crush on. I say "had"... maybe that wasn’t the write word :])
I think thats the answer to most of your questions, but yeah I’d like to say thanks so much for making this documentary. It means a lot to so many people.
Alex, 16, England
Realised I didn’t answer two of your questions:
5) favorite scene
I really loved two scenes in DH (apart from the love scene) and they were 1) When Vivien takes Cay’s mail to the cottage and she’s just at the door... I think that scene’s fantastic because you can really see the chemistry and that line "how you get all that traffic with no equipment etc... " had me in stitches!! the second scene would have to be where the two main characters are downstairs at night and trying not to make noise; the chemistry again is fantastic and it’s the start of where Vivien starts to let down her guard. Cay is SO cute in that scene as well.

6) favorite line of dialogue

there are a few again:

Frances: i’m handlin’ it

but also when Vivien goes on a ramble about how staff and pupils won’t approve (of an affair with a 25 year old woman) and then said "I love you too"- it was so poignant and said with such emotion, it gets me every time!

"You can start my putting the Do not disturb sign on the door"- WOW
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Nov 5, 2007 4:45 AM From Carrie:

Hi. I love the photos from the DH event and I’m incredibly excited about your documentary!

I think it would be wonderful if you used the photos to create a simple video montage to upload to Youtube. In addition to making lots of fans happy, it would be a great way to promote your documentary and lure people to this myspace account . I make this suggestion based upon the popularity of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHVdnKXmBig.

Also, I’m always surprised that no one makes a big deal out of the fact that Helen Shaver met her husband on the set of DH. It’s pretty fantastic that a lasting (going on twenty years) love affair was spawned by a movie that has meant so much to so many of us. Perhaps in the past fans might not have appreciated having heterosexuality "spoil everything," but I think we’ve gotten to the point where such us/them divisions are behind us. If possible, could you please mention Helen’s husband in your movie.

Take care and good luck with your project!


Hi Carrie,
thanks for writing to me and for your suggestions. I think your YouTube idea is brilliant and I will definitely post a slideshow plus maybe a few video clips from the dvd signing. I had actually seen that clip you mentioned before on YouTube and was a bit jealous that someone had gotten footage of patricia, helen, and alex chatting because i never got the three of them together, nor did i get footage of helen and patricia really chatting together. i had done brief interviews with each of them separately. but i am going to be seeing patricia and helen later in the week so this is a chance to get the footage i missed. i agree with your comments about helen’s marriage due to desert hearts - kind of funny too that patricia calls the child she was pregnant with during desert hearts her desert hearts baby. that baby is in their 20’s now! yikes, how time flies.
- Lydia Marcus, Director "Desert Hearts Mon Amour"

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Nov 7, 2007 11:46 AM
Rachel:
I’m in LOVE with DESERT HEARTS & VIVIEN & CAY & HELEN & PATRICIA! I’d like to know how to get a poster of it. If you know could you Please tell me. I’m only 25 years old so I was only 3 when this great movie came out. I just discovered it last month & I’ve been watching it ever since. Also along with poster info could you if you know how I could contact Donna, Helen & Patricia. So I can tell them how much I’m in love with their movie. Thanks so much. I love your pictures of the signing. I’m so freakin’ jealous. LONG LIVE DESERT HEARTS!



Hey Rachel,
thanks so much for writing to me. i’m so glad you finally found the movie and love it so much. i found my own desert hearts poster on ebay - so i suggest you look there. I can’t give you any contact info for donna, patricia, or helen, but if you’d like to write a letter and email it to me here on myspace or at desertheartsmonamour@earthlink.net, I’d be happy to post it on my myspace page, on my official website desertheartsmonamour.com (once it launches), and who knows, possibly include some of the text in my documentary. glad you liked my pix, i hope to have more up soon as i’m seeing donna, patricia, and helen later in the week. - Lydia Marcus, Director "Desert Hearts Mon Amour"

Nov 7, 2007 2:30 PM


Rachel:
Well thanks a lot I’ll have to look on ebay. Yeah you must take more pictures of the gang. I’m waiting to see them. I just find it so cool your going to see them again. Again I’m so jealous. Also thanks so much for telling me that your going to see them again. I’d really love to meet them & tell them how much I love there movie. I do get to see them though when I watch Desert Hearts like everyday. Has Donna mentioned a sequel cause she talked about that in the commentery of the movie. Let’s keep in touch cause were just 2 of so many people that love this movie. I’ll keep checking your website to. Thanks.



Lydia Marcus:
Donna told me that she wants to have the sequel out in time for the 25th anniversary. She’s currently working on the script. And Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau are supposed to be reprising their roles in the sequel.



Rachel:
Hey hi it’s me again. Just wondering if you’ve ever read the book Desert of the Heart by Janet Rule. I want to buy that to. Is it good if you’ve read it. I’ll probably buy it anyway cause it’s what it is I was just wondering.

Lydia: you should definitely read the book, it’s really well written. i read it a twice in college. jane rule is still alive but pretty old - i think upper 80’s. the book alludes to more of vivian’s (i think called evelyn in the book) repressed homosexuality. definitely let me know what you thought of it after you read it. i actually wrote a term paper in college comparing/contrasting the movie vs the book. at some point i’m going to be able to post old interviews/stories/reviews about desert hearts. i have a pretty extensive file. i even have an early draft of the script. i have to get everything scanned first. if you’re looking for other good lesbian films - check out Aimee and Jaguar (a true story about the love affair between a jew and the wife of a nazi officer during ww2). one of my favorites. VERY intense. I’m sure you’ve probably seen Bound as well by now. There’s a great book called "The Celluloid Closet" by Vito Russo that tracks the history of queer cinema up til around the time of Desert Hearts. Unfortunately Vito died of AIDS not long after the revised edition came out. so the book is a definite time capsule, BUT it’s still a very useful tool to help search out queer films from the past you’ve probably never even heard of. Also, do a google on Jenni Olsen - she’s written several contemporary books on the subject. And right not, afterellen.com is probably the best place to find out about lesbian tv/film that’s new.

Rachel:
Wow woman thanks so much. I again watched the movie last night & guess what I’m still totally in love with it. I will have to get the book cuase I really really want to read it. But again it does involve having money. I think I’m going to buy the poster of Desert Hearts today. I hope it doesn’t cost money to register on ebay. Cause I got confused by all that. I’m in awe of you doing all that stuff on the film. I’m even more jealous of you having an early draft of the script. How the heck did you get that? That Aimee & Jaguar movie sounds real real good. I’ll really have to look for that. Yes I own Bound & that’s a great movie to. I also own 4 seasons of The L Word which Helen was on for 2 episodes but she was so mean on those 2 episodes. I really didn’t like her character but I always take it as she did get Bette to cry after the miscarrige. Do you watch The L Word? I just got season 4 yesterday so I haven’t watch it yet. I also have High Art, The incredibly True Adventure of 2 Girls in Love, Better Than Chocolate, Imagine Me & You, Loving Annabelle & a few more. I do want to thank you for putting off of Claire of the Moon. I saw the trailor of it on the Desert Hearts DVD & it looked good but than I read that you didn’t like it all that much so now I’m not going to buy it or even see it.

Rachel:
Hello! I just looked at more of the pictures. So cool. I wish I could have been there to say hi to Helen, Patricia & Donna & that’s probably all I would have said cause I would have been so freakin’ nervous to say anything elese. I ordered the poster so hopefully it will come soon & I can place it on my wall. Very exciting. Do you have more pictures. I just love seeing them.

Lydia:
hey rachel,
here’s answers to your last two emails:


the "Desert Hearts" script I found years ago (I think either in 1991 or 1992) at a place on Hollywood Blvd in Hollywood that sold scripts and other movie memorabilia. I used to just call or search various movie memorabilia places until i found stuff - and there were quite a few of these memorabilia shops in Hollywood - you know back in the pre-internet era. I don’t actually know how many of those stores are still around. The fact that it was an earlier draft probably made it pretty rare.


Yes I do watch the L Word, but I can’t say I’m a huge fan. I’d have to say that Logo’s new show Exes and Oh’s is doing a much better job at "representing." And it’s funny too. The L Word is often funny, I just don’t think it’s meant to be intentionally funny. The show is more camp to me. But occasionally they get it right. Now if Tina and Bette would just get back together!


Regarding Claire of the Moon, just because I wasn’t a fan I don’t think that should keep you from seeing it. The filmmaker behind it, Nicole Conn, happens to be a really awesome person. At the time it came out, we all had such high hopes for it because we were all starved for images after Desert Hearts. I’d be curious what someone today would think of it without all that pressure.


RE pictures: I’m working on getting some more pictures from the Power Up event to post. I posted the best ones that a member of my crew shot, but I’m scouring the internet looking for more. Plus I’m going to see if Donna Deitch has any personal ones she can share with us. Eventually I will be able to pull a few stills from my video footage, but no time for that right now. I’m trying to learn Final Cut Pro so I can edit some of my own footage and put up quicktime clips for people visiting the site. Anyway, I was fortunate enough to get close to 20 minutes with Helen and Patricia at the Power Up Premiere to interview them for this documentary. I was going to do a one on one interview with Patricia prior to the event starting but there was some kind of snafu regarding her flight from NY to LA so I ended up grabbing what time I could with both of them together. They really have very good chemistry together even off-screen. And Patricia’s hair was quite a bit longer from when I saw her at the LA Virgin Megastore DVD signing event. She told me that Donna asked her to start growing it out in anticipation of shooting the sequel. Good call on Donna’s part. :-)
- Lydia Marcus, Director "Desert Hearts Mon Amour"

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Ada:
It’s so true about Helen Shaver’s husband never being mentioned (not even by Donna on the dvd commentaries). I didn’t know about it until recently. Deitch may have been simply trying to respect the privacy of her colleagues, but it definitely seems to be a terrific bit of trivia worth mentioning.

It reminds me of the nasty comments made many years ago about Patricia Charbonneau "flaunting her baby" when she attended special screenings of DH. The woman was gracious enough to appear in public in order to bring happiness to her fans, yet some people criticized her for "advertising her heterosexuality/traditional motherhood role" just because she wanted to remain close to her own child. Charbonneau’s daughter, by the way, appearanced in last month’s episode of "In the Life" (when her mom was signing dvd’s in NYC) and she’s a total sweetheart.

Can’t wait to see all of the fun stuff in your collection. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Posted by Ada on Saturday, November 10, 2007 at 9:19 AM

Lydia:
Yeah I know Patricia Charbonneau took a lot of heat, in a sense, for being straight. If I recall the issue of taking her baby to promotional events had actually something to do with being a struggling actress and not having $ for daycare or whatever. I heard that "In the Life" covered the NYC dvd signing but I haven’t seen the episode yet. I keep checking their website - because now you can watch new content on their site. I’ve never seen a picture of any of Patricia’s kids so that would be really interesting to see. I saw Helen Shaver perform on Broadway in Jake’s Women back in April of 1992 (the show was so good I actually went to see it twice on Broadway and once when it finally toured to L.A.). Well anyway, I saw Helen going up to the stage door before the show walking with her son who at the time was a really, really young child. And when Helen, Patricia, and Donna attended the dvd signing in L.A., Helen was there with her husband. Anyway, thanks for checking out my page, come back again - I will definitely post some teaser video clips soon. And I’m going to be seeing Donna, Helen, and Patricia in L.A. tomorrow so hopefully will have new pix up soon!
- Lydia Marcus, Director "Desert Hearts Mon Amour"
ps to everyone writing me letters or posting to the blog, check out my Desert Hearts questionaire on this myspace page and if answer my questions and post written answers or let me know that you have a video or video blog you’d like to respond with. All this will help me with my documentary. thanks!
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Ada:
http://www.inthelifetv.org/html/episodes/51.html

Posted by Ada on Sunday, November 11, 2007 at 7:02 AM

Lydia:
thanks so much for the in the life link! i guess when i checked last the content wasn’t up yet. the link came in handy as i got to watch it today before i actually went and did an interview with patricia (and helen) at the power up premiere at the beverly hills hotel. too tired now to post pix or info about the event but i will very soon.
- Lydia Marcus, Director "Desert Hearts Mon Amour"
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Dee: thanks for this page
WOW, a movie that was released around the time I was born, the irony is I found it at the library and rented it. I hate westerns and old flicks but then again old movies can win new hearts. I’m on my third watch and have 3 hours to hop on the bus to return it on time. I wish I could help/watch you build your project for the knowledge, then again I’m in NYC.
Hope your dreams become fathomable.

Lydia:
hey dee, thanks for writing to me! i’m so glad you found desert hearts - you are the FIRST i’ve heard of someone getting it at the public library - that is soooo cool. maybe you could write back and say why you’ve watched it three times in a row - what is it that is capturing your attention. personally i find the film pretty timeless but i’m curious what a 20something exposed to current tv/cinema thinks of a 21 year old lesbian film. how does it stack up? any other extra thoughts that spring to mind, would love to hear back.

Dee: I think that it is the transformation of Helen Shaver’s character, Professor Vivian, and the subtle take on the romance. It had a simplicity that created a vibrant raw beauty. I enjoyed the status changes throughout the movie as well as how the movie only advanced toward the plot. I watched it three times to test my emotional vulnerability to the acting. I believe that if I watch something three times close together without losing interest then it is the perfect type of movie to learn from. I am an inspiring writer, actor, lover, and movement maker, I find that old and new things hold value to who I will become so I study them to study them and remember them well. I hope I answered your questions and you accept my add request so I can check up on your pages.

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from F.D., Québec Province, Canada:

1) when/where/year/how old you were when you first saw Desert Hearts

30. I saw it a year after it came out, at a screening at McGill University. Many French speaking people didn’t have a clue this movie existed, even in quite a large city like Montreal. They also didn’t know squat about k.d. lang, either. That’s Canada: mainly two solitude, between the French and English speaking populations. Different cultures, different patterns of reference. But I digress...

The downside was that the room was filled with young males students in their early 20’s, most likely presenting bad cases of testosterone poisoning. Their howling and catcalls during the love scene made me regret that it was included in the film. At the time, I thought that the scene was too long and too explicit. Didn’t watch the movie again until the vintage DVD came out.

I’ve now moved to a small city, with no interesting lesbian crowd at all. To top that off, I’m also an archaeologist (which are even less represented than lesbians in this neck of the woods!). In two important aspects of my identity, I’m therefore isolated. Desert Hearts have been filling my own emotional desert. It also made me appreciate the good sides of the movie. In the past, because of a short involvement in film making, I got to be very critical of some of the technical low downs. Now, these flaws don’t seem so important, when considering the problems that came with shooting such a movie. The divergence from the the book also bothered me, since it didn’t seem to help the movie. Jane Rule’s book had it’s own flaws, one of them being that it was not written to be a movie, so that had to be dealt with. Kuddos to Donna Deitch and her crew.

2) how many times you’ve seen it.

Plenty, didn’t count. The whole movie, especially the love scene, took a whole new meaning without the catcalls!

The excerpt of the making of of the love scene, available on the DVD set, made me realise that Ms. Shaver and Charbonneau truly cared for one another on the set. They were considerate to one another, in a natural way; some sort of pairing strategy against being exposed. That’s probably why the movie and the love scene are so effective. It’s never easy to film a nude scene, especially during one or more days of filming. Staying true throughout the scene is quite an achievement. I’ve read somewhere (sorry, can’t find the article now and it was in French) that they felt safe with one another, which wasn’t the case with some love scenes in other movies. The same article reported that it had been harder to be in love scenes with men, for them both, than it was being in a lesbian one. On the other hand, since I’m not so gullible, they might have said that to please the lesbian crowd. Anyhow, Helen Shaver refers to this trust relationship in the clip (Chemistry) you’ve posted online, so it must have been pretty important to them.

3) why it’s your favorite lesbian film

It isn’t my sole favourite, since « Imagine You & Me » is also pretty good, even if it uses a totally different register. There are also great French and French Canadian movies which have lesbian characters, as well as other foreign films. I’d put « Desert Hearts » in the 3 best ones, though. Not only was it a noticeable change in U.S. productions, but it had a worldwide effect after a while. It was also one of the first ones to adopt a positive angle on lesbian relationships.

4) why it had an impact

It came when the available lesbian films where absent or so negative that it was frightening: Mädchen in Uniform, the Killing of Sister George, The Children’s Hour... and I pass over the vampiric lesbians. Whatever the country the lesbian(s) got killed or were seen in a negative way. Mind you, some of those ways where pretty creative. ;) Having started an Anthropology of Women course at Université de Montréal in 1978, which included a lesbian theme, I was aware that something needed to be done to improve lesbian image in the movies. People often forge their idea of themselves and their society through the big and the small screen. This is particularly true for minorities; if your image isn’t properly dealt with in those media, you’re a gonner, baby.

Another detail that needs to be pointed out is that Helen Shaver was more established, as an actress, than Ms. Charbonneau was (it was her first movie, if I’m not mistaken). They must have been aware that it was quite a gamble on their part, even more so for Ms. Shaver. I don’t know if they realised the importance of the choice they were making, by accepting lesbian roles. Lesbians that didn’t die, to make matters worst. Unthinkable! They became role models for a bunch of lesbians, those two thespians. It didn’t seem to mess up their careers, but I’m pretty sure they could have done without the invasive lesbian fans.

5) favorite scene

Geez, you got me there, let me think. In the restaurant, toward the end, when Vivien is listing the problems a lesbian relationship would create in her world, she pauses and ends it with: « I love you too ». Helen Shaver did a great job at playing Vivien’s dilemma with finesse. Even in the face of adversity, she sees a ray of light beaming through. That light being Cay. I’d qualify that specific moment of realisation as gripping.

6) favorite line of dialogue

« Should I raise my eyebrows and gasp? » The way Helen Shaver says it translate the absurdity of passing judgements on people. I’m also quite fond of « That part went pretty smoothly », after putting the « do not disturb » sign on the door. Well, it’s a relief valve in all the drama, one that gets a smile on my face every time.

7) who you had a crush on -- Vivian (Helen Shaver) or Cay (Patricia Charbonneau)

Since I seemed to have identified with Ms. Shaver, I’d have to say Patricia Charbonneau. I don’t know if she has French Canadian ancestry, but her looks and name could be French Canadian. In fact, she could easily pass for a Montreal native, more than I do (I look German, don’t ask !). She looks a lot like my first love, which tipped the scale in her favour. That and her infectious smile. When I saw her in your recent interview clip and on pictures shot at other events, my first thought was: damn, she’s still quite a looker! It’s also the case for Helen Shaver, but she’s not the one that got my heart beating faster. I’m now a scholar and a college teacher, which could imply that Vivien’s role had an impact on my life.

8) did you ever get to meet any of the cast or crew

No.

9) did you ever write a fan letter to anyone from the film

I’m not into writing letters, especially fan mail. I don’t even know why I’ve decided to respond to your request. Probably because, looking back at it, the film is such a landmark that it’s worth taking the time.

Hoping to have helped a tiny bit in your documentary. I’ll be looking forward to see it.
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March 10, 2008 from a 16 year old in England
Hi there Lydia,
I can’t post anything publically really, as I’m not out yet. I just wanted to answer some of your questions that you posted. I had been looking ALL OVER for a copy of Desert Hearts. I went to the library, I downloaded search software, went to about 20 different website ( I couldn’t use Blockbuster as I couldn’t risk ym parents finding out). I eventually found it. On YouTube of all places! I think it’s so great that now virtually everyone can see it and be inspired to pick up a copy of the film. It’s reaching audiences that it hadn’t done previously and a whole new generation- I’m only 16. But now I’ve seen it about 15 times. I think I should take a leaf out of your book and slow it down! There hasn’t been a film like it. I wrote a letter to Patricia yesterday, but I couldn’t find an address. I would have emailed it to you but I handwrote it! So I signed up to this Celebrity address thing and it gave her Santa Monica Blvd address, so I sent it there- I just hope she gets it because I don’t fancy writing all that out again.
This film has helped me in so many ways- to escape, to realise who I am etc... I will come out eventually and much quicker thanks to this film, it’s just hard because my Asian family aren’t very accepting when it comes to that sort of thing.
Anyway, the way it really inspired me was to screenwrite/act because I can reach thousands of people through a medium and change their lives, change their outlooks and views.
This is all included in my letter to Patricia (who incidentally was the one I had a crush on. I say "had"... maybe that wasn’t the write word :])
I think thats the answer to most of your questions, but yeah I’d like to say thanks so much for making this documentary. It means a lot to so many people.
Alex, 16, England
Realised I didn’t answer two of your questions:
5) favorite scene
I really loved two scenes in DH (apart from the love scene) and they were 1) When Vivien takes Cay’s mail to the cottage and she’s just at the door... I think that scene’s fantastic because you can really see the chemistry and that line "how you get all that traffic with no equipment etc... " had me in stitches!! the second scene would have to be where the two main characters are downstairs at night and trying not to make noise; the chemistry again is fantastic and it’s the start of where Vivien starts to let down her guard. Cay is SO cute in that scene as well.

6) favorite line of dialogue

there are a few again:

Frances: i’m handlin’ it

but also when Vivien goes on a ramble about how staff and pupils won’t approve (of an affair with a 25 year old woman) and then said "I love you too"- it was so poignant and said with such emotion, it gets me every time!

"You can start my putting the Do not disturb sign on the door"- WOW