‘Stein’ Stars Kiss And Tell

It seems that in the world of movies, making a gay-themed film pretty much disqualifies it from being a hit. With the exception of a few recent efforts (“Chasing Amy,” “The Birdcage” and “In and Out” come to mind), movies dealing heavily with same sex relationships are made on a small budget for a small niche market. While many are profitable in the art-house circuit, they barely make a blip on the pop culture radar.

But, if ever there was a film poised to make a crossover, its “Kissing Jessica Stein,” an enjoyably “cute” indie-romantic comedy, the brainchild of writers and stars Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen.

“We never thought of it as a gay movie,” Westfeldt said during a recent Boston interview about the film in which she plays a journalist who, after one too many bad dates, answers a personal ad in the women seeking women section. “Both women are straight at the beginning of the film. In terms of the response from the gay community we sort of break it down like 80 percent -20 percent — 80 percent great, positive response, and about 20 percent in the more extreme section of the gay community that doesn’t want anything ever to give forth the notion that sexuality might be a choice.”

“Unfortunately you have these groups like Exodus who say ‘this is simply a learned behavior and you can unlearn it,” says Juergensen. “They say ‘Yes, it is a choice, choose the right way, choose healthy heterosexuality’ and that’s horrendous. When you have a story like ours that’s actually preaching tolerance — do whatever makes you happy if you feel your sexuality might be something other than what it is — I think that 20 percent is worried that this is going to add fuel to Exodus’s fire.”

Westfeldt and Juergensen came up with the idea while brainstorming ideas for a night of one-act plays they planned to do together after meeting in a theater workshop in the Catskills. “We started writing, we started riffing and talking about the dating scene,” Juergensen said, “We had this one idea for a sketch that just came out of our brainstorming sessions, which is; what if there are two women — very prim, proper Laura Ashley-dressers — who have had it with men and get together to negotiate how to become lesbians? Like that’s the only thing left.”

What eventually evolved was an off-off-Broadway play called “Lipschtick: the Story of Two Women Seeking the Perfect Shade.” “My agent saw it. And when I got back to Los Angeles, 20 studios had called to option this play and turn it into a film.” says Westfeldt. “Half of these people hadn’t even seen it, they just heard from an underling who heard from another person who heard that someone else saw it. And that’s the weirdest part.”

“It sounds cliché,” adds Juergensen, “But that Hollywood buzz machine is real and it’s bizarre. None of these people had even read a word of it since we didn’t want to give the play’s script out at that point. Which is why we realized we needed to write the screenplay, so we did.”

The film is now in limited release and earning positive reviews in several cities including Boston. Westfeldt said she believes the film has the potential to reach out and possibly even get to those who aren’t as accepting of the gay community. “Because Jessica is so conservative and ‘eeewww’ at the beginning of the movie and is [much more accepting] at the end,” she said. “We’ve gotten to people who have come in with a biased view or an anti-gay view. They don’t want to see two girls together but by the end they’re a little swept up in it. We felt like we might alienate the far left and the far right but if we could do everything in-between it might be the best thing for the gay community yet that’s not a fringe movie.”