This year Outfest Los Angeles, taking place July 13 to 23, is awarding its James Schamus Ally Award, which honours the efforts of an individual in bringing LGBTQ2S+ stories to the forefront, to Hollywood power couple Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone—and the duo will be in attendance to receive it. (Among their many ally efforts, in June the stars/filmmakers signed on as executive producers for a documentary about gay West Hollywood candlemaker Tim Sullivan.)
“A bonus of being in Los Angeles is that a lot of the big names are here already, so we can get them. It’s only a drive down the street for some of them,” says Mike Dougherty, who has been Outfest’s Director of Programming since 2018.
Founded as a symposium among a group of queer grad students who wanted to discuss queer film, and now in its 41st year, Outfest has a special position among the world’s large-scale LGBTQ2S+ film festivals—location, location, location. With offices in Hollywood, and access to notable venues like The Orpheum Theatre, The Montalbán Theatre and REDCAT arts centre at the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, Outfest has a knack for calling in glamorous favours and creating magic moments.
At last year’s festival, Billy Porter’s speech for his directorial debut of Anything’s Possible was so fiery that it caused a bit of a media storm, while the premiere of the first two episodes of Amazon Prime’s A League of Their Own series brought out the full cast, a star of the original film, Rosie O’Donnell, and a 90-year-old alum of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, on which the series is based, who announced that she had had just come out that year—yes, in her 90s. “When that fact was announced, everybody got to their feet and had thunderous applause for her. It was just such a heart-swelling moment to see,” Dougherty says.
While Outfest itself could take up most of a 10-day visit to Los Angeles, we asked Dougherty where film fans might want to go between screenings. Not surprisingly, many of his recommendations are cinema-related.
A queer insider’s guide to L.A.
We have Cinespia, which largely is known for its summer outdoor screenings at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery (6000 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles). It’s the burial place of people like Judy Garland, as well as the dog that played Toto in The Wizard of Oz. The grounds are amazing and you’re watching movies projected onto a mausoleum wall. During our dates they’re screening Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, which I feel is one of my favourite movies of all time, so I feel like I have to promote it, even though it’s happening during my festival.
Also this summer The Broad downtown (221 S Grand Ave., Los Angeles) has L.A.’s first exhibit of Keith Haring’s work. I got to see the preview, and it’s absolutely remarkable. Right across the street at the Grand L.A. (100 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles) is a retrospective on Jean-Michel Basquiat. The art lovers in the world need to head downtown and see those shows.
I am so not a fancy restaurant person, but I live in Silverlake, which is known for hip food places. One of my favourites is Pine & Crane (1521 Griffith Park Blvd., Los Angeles), which is in Silverlake. Their Taiwanese food is absolutely incredible—beef rolls and dumplings and dan-dan noodles. You don’t need a reservation to go there and it’s right down from queer bars like Akbar (4356 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles) and The Eagle (4219 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles). You can also go to the Hot Dog party at El Cid (4212 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles), which is a party run by Mario Diaz, who is a very prominent party promoter here. That’s all within three blocks.
This year we are also partnering for our family day, which targets a youth and teen audience, with a theatre called Vidiots (4884 Eagle Rock Ave., Los Angeles). It used to be a Santa Monica video store for many, many years and was very, very popular. It’s just reopened this month as a theatre and a community space. They revived the video store in one part, which leads to a micro-cinema, which then leads into a 270-seat theatre with a beer and wine bar, and a concession stand. It’s really remarkable.
— Mike Dougherty
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
