Forty six-year-old Kiss The Bride director, C. Jay Cox, has been helming films for more than 37 years now. While it may seem impossible, Cox’s love of movie making dates all the way back to his childhood.

“I made my first movie when I was in third grade,” Cox said in a recent interview with the Gay & Lesbian Times. “It’s funny; we used to spend summers on the rodeo circuit, and always taking home movies along. And, I remember from the time I was a little kid, they always had to kind of point me to the arena. I always spent all of my time watching whoever was running the movie camera, thinking ‘I want to do that!’ So, it’s been a lifelong obsession that, fortunately, I have been able to at least dabble in.”

Cox has more than dabbled – he penned the screenplay for the 2002 Reese Witherspoon vehicle, Sweet Home Alabama, wrote and directed the 2003 gay film Latter Days. He called the shots as director with the new film, Kiss the Bride – a gay romantic comedy starring Tori Spelling, Phillip Karner and James O’Shea – which is set to open May 2 at The Ken Cinema.

Cox is versatile as writer and director, but much prefers his time behind the camera.

“I so much prefer directing, hands down!” he said. “I love the whole part of directing where you get to be complicit with all of these other great people, and that’s the playing part for me. …

“Writing, so often, is me in a room with a computer, sitting there kind of staring at the wall trying to pull stuff out of my brain, which is sometimes excruciating. When I’m deep into a writing project, there’s times where – I’m better at getting out now – but there have definitely been times where I’ve realized I haven’t left the house in three days!”

While sitting at the computer, Cox even programmed a laugh track in one of his “F” keys, so he’d a get a reaction to his writing.

“Sometimes it’s frustrating; you come up with a great line, and if you’re at a party, and you say something really funny, you get that instant gratification,” he explained. “And sometimes, I’d write something and I would think, ‘That’s really funny,’ and then you look around the room for the response and just nothing.”

In 2002, Cox didn’t have to worry that his one liners would fall on deaf ears. Sweet Home Alabama was a bona fide comedic box-office hit – Witherspoon, though, wasn’t the first choice for the role.

“No, in fact, at one point when we sold the project, obviously there were only three women that you could cast: Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, and Cameron Diaz,” he said. It was before Witherspoon garnered sweetheart-status for Legally Blonde when Cox threw her name into the mix.

“I was a huge fan of Election – the producer and I suggested Reese Witherspoon for the role, and we thought she would be a great fit,” he said. “The people at Disney were adamant that they were going to make it with a movie star and Reese Witherspoon was not a movie star.”

When Legally Blonde scored with audiences, “the head of production came in the Monday after it opened and said, ‘OK, we want to make a Reese Witherspoon movie.’”

Such was the topsy-turvy world of Hollywood, as Cox discovered when he wrote and directed Latter Days, in which a young Mormon missionary falls for a West Hollywood party boy. Naturally, the film stirred some controversy.

Latter Days was originally scheduled to be shown at a movie theater in Salt Lake City – home of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but the theater pulled the film saying it “lacked artistic merit,” due to the homosexual content, and its depiction of the Church.

“Well, that was completely unexpected,” Cox said. “At the time, I was thrown by it, [but] as it turned out, it generated a great amount of interest in the movie.”

Cox, who was raised Mormon, found inspiration for the film in his own life.

“I was a Mormon missionary, and years later, after coming out and living as an out gay man in Los Angeles, I came across pictures of myself as that missionary at 19,” he said. “And, it just seemed like a completely different lifetime and person. The idea really germinated from if I could put that person I had been at 19 with the person I had become in a room, what would they have to say to each other?”

With his latest film, Kiss the Bride, audiences may leave saying that it reminds them of a more gay version of 1997’s My Best Friend’s Wedding. There are even a few references to the Julia Roberts film, which Cox says were put in on purpose.

“What we didn’t want was people saying, ‘Have these people never seen My Best Friend’s Wedding? Don’t they get that there are similarities?’” Cox said. “So, we wanted people to know that, yes, we understand that thematically there are similarities – instead of really working to distance ourselves from that, we wanted to acknowledge that right off the bat.”

Kiss the Bride is the tale of Matt (Karner) who had a “special” high school friendship – including some secretive “extra curricular” activities – with Ryan (O’Shea). Matt is surprised to receive an invite to his old chum’s wedding and determined to return to his hometown to see if there are still any feelings for his former flame … and, of course, to size up the competition, bride-to-be Alex (Spelling).

Cox approached the former “90210” and Trick star, about being in Bride after a perfectly timed run-in.

“Coincidentally, I was flying back from Miami during casting, and Tori and Dean (McDermott) were sitting behind me,” he said. “And being the eavesdropper that I am, I was listening in on them occasionally, and thinking, ‘Wow! She has the perfect sense for Alex.’ So, we sent her the script and she really responded to it.”

Gay movie audiences have also responded to Cox’s ability to showcase different avenues of the gay community (in Latter Days and Kiss The Bride).

“What I’ve been interested in, is finding the commonalities in people,” Cox said. “Like in Kiss The Bride, they’re definitely going back and dealing with a shared past, and I think there are those things that unite us. And realizing that whatever happens with the relationship, there is going to be that common bond.”