20 T aprii 21. 1905 T just out
1993 CLOS DANIELLE CHARDONNAY
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A D ream C om e T rue
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Bar Girls marks the beginning of mainstream permission
to tell our stories, one at a time
T
by Shelly Roberts
1992 MARCARINI DOLCETTO D ’ALBA
$ 1 2 .9 5 BTL
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D
on’t you just love a good lesbian
success story?
.
theater so this girl can pick up her $12 worth of
popcorn and jujubes, hunker down in the middle
of downtown anywhere, and see her movie on the
big screen.
It’s a big dream.
Bar Girls proves that dreams can come true.
Bar Girls, which opens to limited wide release
in April, is a movie about lesbians. And (what a
great relief) it isn’t a movie about all lesbians. It
doesn’t even try to make
broad generalizations that
cover every class and cat
egory of sapphic sisterhood.
It’s a story about one
woman and the evolution
and revolution of her rela
tionship and her friendships
in a middle-class lesbian bar.
The mechanics and dynam
ics of the relationships are,
of course, uniquely lesbian,
because all the key players
are. But the universal truths
belong to the wider world of
romantic comedy. The plea
sure of seeing this movie is
in not taking it as a female
homosexual metaphor, but
as a human metaphor played
out in lesbian costume. The
lesbian characterizations in Lauran Hoffman
Bar Girls are not coincidental. But what happens
to these women isn’t so different from what
happens to anybody else, and therein lies the
beauty.
Bar Girls marks the beginning of mainstream
permission to tell our stories, one at a time. Out
loud. In public. Permission that says every public
offering does not have to represent all lesbian-
kind, and that sometimes a story told about a
particular group of lesbians could, and probably
will, be about that one particular group of lesbi
ans. That the movie got made at all is a testament
to the practical dreamer behind the package:
Lauran Hoffman. She was the playwright, the
screenwriter and, most emphatically, the pro
ducer.
“The audiences have been so grateful,”
Hoffman shared in a recent telephone conversa
tion. “Lesbians are starved to see slices of life that
include them. There is so little material out there
for us. It isn’t often that we get to see ourselves
presented publicly.”
The movie was directed by Marita Giovanni,
who has directed a number of lesbian plays,
award-winning PBS documentaries, and short
narrative films. Bar Girls is her first full-length
feature. She concurs with Hoffman’s vision of
capturing a lesbian snapshot. “It doesn’t mirror
everyday lesbian life at all,” Giovanni responded
to my probing about the film’s universality. “To
capture the entire scope of lesbian life, I think,
would be very expensive and very historical in
scope, would have to be more of a documentary,
and runs the danger of being very boring. What it
[Bar Girls] does is mirror a certain lesbian popu
lation.”
But the real story of Bar Girls isn’t the story in
the film. It is the story of Hoffman, a determined
woman going into lesbian bars to raise money.
The biggest challenge in making the film, accord
ing to director Giovanni, was keeping it going.
“Lauran went in with very little money. She kept
everyone coming to the set and working for the
love of the work.”
In fact, when the five scheduled weeks of
shooting began, Hoffman had only raised enough
money to pay for the first three. It was a balancing
act. She would go into the bars and talk up the
production. She would lead prospective backers
onto the set so that they could see that there was
an actual product to be investing in. She adopted
“the kicking gravel and looking cool” school of
investment selling. “I’d let people in the bars
know that there was this movie being filmed, and
well, yes, there might still be a few shares avail
able. I’d have to check. Then I’d take them to the
set, and that would often
get them hooked.”
Actors and production
crews signed on as be
lievers and most accepted
deferred salaries, willing
to bet on ultimate suc
cess. N ancy A llison
Wolfe, the lead actor who
portrays Loretta, the char
acter that most represents
Lauran Hoffman, told me
that there were times
when no one knew if they
would get it finished. “But
we were so damned de
termined. To get it done,
we would have sold lem
onade! It was a real bond
ing experience. Every
body— am azing ac
tresses, tech people—
pulled together. There were people with r6sum6s
a mile long working without pay.”
The result doesn’t have the shiny patina of a
studio-produced movie. It doesn’t have the gloss
that money can buy. It does have a story that has
drawn accolades at film festivals for the actors
and for the film. At the Berlin International Film
Festival, although the film was neither dubbed
nor presented with subtitles, audiences seemed to
get all the jokes, understand the plot, and tell their
friends. It was the most sold-out ticket in the
festival; people had to be turned away at the door.
As a result of Bar Girls' festival response,
Orion Pictures picked it up for nationwide distri
bution. Hoffman acknowledged the preceding
success of Go Fish as a factor in Orion’s decision
to bring Bar Girls to a wider audience. “It really
helped us,” she explained. “Because when a stu
dio can see good numbers on a certain type of
film, it impresses them. And that gave us a chance
to show them what we could do.”
If you’ve ever dreamed of walking into your
neighborhood theater and seeing yourself on the
screen, plan to catch Bar Girls.
Bar Girls opens Friday, April 28,
at Cinema 21 in Portland.
Shelly Roberts is the author o f The Dyke
Detector and Hey, Mom, Guess What! She
misses the old movie theater popcorn and longs
fo r the days before she knew it was lethal.