spotlight saturday church
sexuality might be—wherever that falls is really not important. It’s more about if you have ever felt alone, felt bullied or picked on, when you’ve fallen in love for the first time or you’ve ever felt loss, those are all human emotions that everyone can relate to. To that end, I became friends with many members of that community and they would advise and consult with me, the ball community and that world to make sure that everything was okay. I wanted to make that this was their voice, that this was their story and that they felt supported by it. Was it always your intention to createSaturday Church as a musical? I knew I wanted a part of that for sure, though I
can’t exactly remember when that came in…It took shape over time. It started with the idea of personal struggle and using fantasy to escape your reality and how those fantasies would evolve and manifest themselves with music. Then when I saw the vogueing and all of that, I realized it had to take that
shape. Figuring out how to do it was a whole other thing, especially as a first-time writer/director/ publisher. (Laughs) My friends all told me that I was insane to try and do a musical the first time out, but I was like, “We’ll figure it out.” (Laughs) It was better to be blissfully naïve, because it was definitely a lot. It’s like the first time you do anything that is new, if you knew going into it what it was going to take, most would run in the opposite direction. Tell me when did you connect with the amazing composer Nathan Larson? Nathan came on board the summer before last,
about four or five months before we started filming. I met him through a music supervisor that I knew. I had no idea what I was doing and he really made it work. The parts of the film where there was music usually contained just a descriptive paragraph from me, “They dance and this happens, or he sings about sadness.” He helped to walk me through how you create lyrics for something like this, the part I really didn’t want to do. I had this horrible image of me sitting in coffee shops and struggling. (Laughs) But he was like, “No man, you gotta help me write these lyrics too.” There were so many moments that took my breath away, like the locker room scene and “You’re gonna see me/You’re gonna know me/ You’re gonna love me…” it was beautifully done. I wanted that scene to be a little bit of a surprise.
The movie is so quiet when it first starts out and for better or worse you have a preconceived notion of what it’s going to be about. Then all of a sudden, he’s floating and they’re dancing around him… It was all choreographed by this amazing woman, Loni Landon. She had two days of rehearsal and she did it in a YMCA nursery, because we had no money and they were willing to help us out. They showed up day of and the set changed everything because there were lockers right in the middle of the space, so they had to rechoreograph it on the fly. This could have been a very dark film, because LGBT homelessness and how they’re taken advantage of is such an enormous problem. And yet, you managed to find the light and strike such a delicate balance between realism and fantasy. Homelessness is such a huge problem. It’s an epidemic and I think trans people and trans people of color in particular are hidden in many ways… even within the gay community. It’s getting a little better, but we’re not there yet. We are the LGBTQ community, but it’s very divided and there is a hi- erarchy. My experience as a white gay man is very
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different than one who is a person of color, that’s just the way it is. For white gay men in particular, I think we need to realize that it’s not the same and that attention needs to be paid to what trans people and trans people of color are going through. Absolutely. Though this film isn’t necessarily just about being gay, lesbian or trans, it’s really about being human first and each of those experiences are a part of being that. Totally. The easiest tag was to call it a “trans musical.” But for me first and foremost, it’s a human story and if people can relate to that it’s a wonderful thing. I wanted to make sure that the trans community enjoyed and could appreciate it, but if it can also reach beyond that, I’m thrilled. We all need allies and partners, and if they can participate, enjoy and learn from something like Saturday Church, that’s a good think.
Scene Two: Actor Luka Kain (Ulysses)
I read that you started fairly young in the modeling world, is that correct? When I was nine months old I had my first job,
a commercial for Disney. But mostly as a kid I did print ads for JC Penny, Target and a bunch for Brooks Brothers. I kind of got bored sitting in front of a camera and I asked my mom, because she’s my manager, what else we could do and that’s when I started going out for film and theatre. How old were you when you got your first acting gig? I think my first job was an episode forSVU or at
least it was one of the first things I did. It’s funny, actually Marquis (Rodriguez) who is also in Saturday Church, was actually in that episode too. We didn’t film on the same day, but I thought that was kind of a weird coincident. This film is such a wonderful experience to watch and sometimes painful. I wondered as I watched it, how much you actually knew about this world before you went into filming it? I was totally ignorant about it, really. I didn’t
really know anything about the ball scene either, and was very lucky to have Damon guide me through. He’s the one who told me about the Saturday Church program, gave me movies to watch like Paris Is Burning and introduced me to people like Kate Bornstein, which was really cool…She’s a role model of mine now. After shooting, we went to see her show at the LaMama Theatre, called
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