Darren Stein didn’t become a cult queer icon by staying a normie. The director of Jawbreaker, the 1999 dark comedy starring Rose McGowan, Rebecca Gayheart, Julie Benz and Judy Greer, and G.B.F., the 2013 teen comedy starring Michael J. Willett and Paul Iacono, among other queer cinematic gems, has drawn inspiration from the most unlikely sources. In his office alone, the walls and shelves are lined with memorabilia from not only his own movies but also other cherished films, like Pedro Almodóvar’s Madres Paralelas.
Stein has also found inspiration in his world travels and has the stories to prove it. He recently sat down with Pink Ticket Travel to get some of those riotous stories on the record. Stein was also celebrating the possible impending premiere of Jawbreaker: The Musical, which recently found a director and cast, and was on the verge of getting a premiere date when we spoke.
What inspires you the most when you’re travelling?
I just love to connect with people in their city or country, to see their way of life. It’s something, being out of my realm of existence and experiencing something new, something I can learn from and immerse myself in. I think it’s why I’m not really into tourist things as much as just seeing what locals are doing. I think the people are just as important as the place.
Is there a city abroad that you’ve returned to multiple times?
Yes, when I was in an eight-year relationship in my twenties. With Tommy. He really loved to travel. His world just seemed so big and larger than life. I wanted that. I thought that was such an attractive thing, the fact that he was so travelled. He brought that to my life. Twice in a row we went to Costa Rica, to Manuel Antonio. It was all monkeys and beaches, and really fun parties. We stayed at a great hotel called the Mariposa Hotel (Manuel Antonio, Quepos, Costa Rica)— “mariposa” means butterfly. We were in bungalows with hammocks. It was just very transporting.
Then there’s London, which I went to with my mom and dad when I was 14. I remember seeing Starlight Express and King’s Road, seeing the punks. Being drawn to the London dungeon, all the wax effigies and torture mechanisms. I have always been drawn to horror and punk and musicals.
To go to London as an adult was a different experience. I was there again for the premiere of G.B.F. at the BFI Flare, which is the London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival. That was so much fun. I really relate to people in the U.K., I think, because they have a dark sense of humour. There’s a language that we share very easily.
You’ve mentioned that you’ll be staying in London again soon, before you head up to Edinburgh for the Jawbreaker premiere. Is there anywhere in London that you’re excited to check out?
When I was last there for the premiere of G.B.F. 10 years ago, I went to a bar called the Royal Vauxhall Tavern (372 Kennington Ln., London), which Morrissey referenced on the album Vauxhall and I. They often host a gay party called Duckie.
It was such a fun night. They played Morrissey’s “The Last of the Famous International Playboys.” The lyrics are, “Dear hero imprisoned/ With all the new crimes that you are perfecting/ Oh, I can’t help quoting you/ Because everything that you said rings true.” It’s about the gangster brothers, the Kray twins, of London’s East End, who went on a murder spree in the 1950s and ’60s. It was a cabaret full of gay men singing along to Morrissey. I mean, 200 guys singing at the top of their lungs.
You’ve previously mentioned that São Paulo and Berlin are among your top destinations. Tell me a bit about why you love them.
My ex, Tommy, later met this guy from Brazil. They’ve now lived in São Paulo for, like, 20 years. So when I went there for G.B.F., I was like, oh, this is finally my time to see how they live. It was just such a fun day of being with the people of São Paulo—Tommy and his friends in his neighbourhood—going to bars and parties and having this really organic experience. When I was in São Paulo, I went to a gothic bar, Madame Underground Club (R. Conselheiro Ramalho 873, Bela Vista, São Paulo). I love gothic culture, especially there. Because in Brazil, when people are into something, they’re into it. They’re fans.
And Berlin? I imagine you partied a lot there.
Oh my God, it was such a blur. I was so young. I had just made a documentary called Put the Camera on Me, about the films I made growing up in the 1980s in Encino.
It wasn’t playing in the Berlin Film Festival, but I wanted to go to the Berlin film market and try to get some exposure and distribution deals. A friend of mine from New York who worked at Killer Films was there with Party Monster. He was like, “You can come to the Party Monster premiere.” It’s all a funny story about the Party Monster premiere, because it sort of sums up the chaos of Berlin in a nutshell. They had free wine, so I had a lot of wine, and it got kind of lit. There was a German drag queen in the bathroom, and I was in the bathroom as well. I dramatically threw my wine glass on the ground and it shattered. I was trying to be provocative. People loved it. But the German drag queen wanted to one-up me. So she grabbed the mirror off the wall in the bathroom and threw it on the ground and shattered it. Then the security came into the bathroom, and they’re like, “What’s going on in here?” She goes, “I don’t know, I was just doing my makeup in the mirror, and the mirror, it just shattered!”
It was such a magical night, because it was so chaotic and decadent. I think the energy of a city can affect you as a traveller, as a tourist, as somebody new to that energy. And I think that on that night in Berlin, I was—I don’t want to say possessed, but I was inspired.
Any other favourite spots there?
Romeo und Romeo (Motzstraße 20, Berlin) is a great gay café, great for meeting people and people-watching.
You previously hinted at a romantic weekend with an ex and a mysterious Welshman in Sitges, Spain.
That was me and Tommy again. We were in Sitges. We had this rule that we could travel and have three-ways while we travelled. Because we were in our twenties, and it sounded like the thing to do, right? So we met this Welshman in Sitges, and we both fell in love with him over the weekend, as you do on vacation. We invited him back to L.A. But in my recollection, it was just an invitation to come for a month, or for a few weeks, to be our guest. But I think the guy thought that he was coming to L.A. to be our third.
It got dramatic. He came to L.A. with a pool cue stick. He was a—you know the movie The Color of Money? He was a pool shark. He made money playing pool. He got here and he was like, “Where do I play pool here?” It became apparent that he was…I don’t want to say that he was a grifter, but something was going on. At one point, we were at lunch, and he said to me, “What would you say if I told you I was going to fight you to the death for your boyfriend?”
We ended up buying him a one-way ticket back to Wales.
Tell me a bit more about Jawbreaker: The Musical and its journey to the stage.
We started back when Heathers: The Musical started, even before Mean Girls was being developed as a musical. I got a call out of the blue from an assistant producer who said, “Hey, would you ever consider making Jawbreaker as a stage musical?” I was like, of course. They sent me a composer and lyricist, and we found a great team. I decided to write the libretto.
We had 24-hour readings and 48-hour readings in New York. We did those for a couple of years with people like Jinkx Monsoon, who played the Carol Kane role. And Joanna “JoJo” Levesque from G.B.F. played the Gayheart role, and Liz Gillies from the Dynasty reboot and the musical 13 played Courtney. We finally got it to the point where it was going to premiere in Seattle, and then one of the financiers got cold feet.
Basically, this guy Bryan Campione who works at Playbill was a fan of the readings we had in New York, and he recently met some young producers who were looking for a show for Edinburgh. He brought up Jawbreaker again and they were like, we would love to do it. I connected them with Sony, and they got the rights to do it in Edinburgh for that developmental production. It all happened really fast.
Over the last couple of years, I also adapted it as a film musical for Columbia Pictures. I was paid to write that, but that still has not been greenlit. Kim Petras wants to play Fern, and Chloe Bailey is interested in playing Courtney. Mckenna Grace wants to play Julie. Once Jawbreaker is a stage musical, then the film musical can get made.
What’s the biggest difference between the movie and the musical, story-wise?
The biggest difference story-wise is that Fern, the Judy Greer role, is trans. The reason why is because the movie resonates with a lot of queer people—but trans people really love it. I got a DM from a trans actress who said that when she was a young girl, Fern’s transformation to Vylette was one of the first times she saw herself in a movie. She felt like that was a trans narrative.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
