Actors with ambition to produce and direct know that to make their dream projects come true there are dues to be paid. So when Dollhouse star Eliza Dushku announced her intentions to make The Perfect Moment, a biopic about the late gay artist Robert Mapplethorpe, she probably knew there’d be clout-and cash-collecting detours along the way. And here they are: the horror film Zoe, slated for 2011 and co-starring James Van Der Beek and Freddie Prinze, Jr. (is it set in the ’90s too?) in which Dushku plays a small-town waitress terrorized by… well… something; you’ll see when it opens. And then there’s the future mega-event known as Ghostbusters III, a project she’s been circling, one that would pretty much catapult her to the A-list, with all the production shingle perks that status tends to dole out. Hope so. And really, what’re a few slimed ghosts on the road to making art?

Back in the 1960s, Barbara Stanwyck (who may or may not have been bisexual – as was rumored during her career – but who was a favorite of lesbian and gay audiences all the same) played Victoria Barkley, sturdy matriarch of the wild west TV drama The Big Valley. So it’s fitting, in a way, that Susan Sarandon, about whom no one creates sexuality rumors because her early career choices (The Hunger and The Rocky Horror Picture Show) more or less cemented her position as a queer screen icon, may be stepping into Stanwyck’s ladylike boots. Poised to re-enter pop-culture consciousness as a feature film, The Big Valley is just the right sort of remake candidate: one that’s had time to exit public consciousness first. It has no other cast yet, but Romeo would love to see a gay cowboy subplot somewhere in the mix. Nothing major, just something where the quiet “special friends” get to live happily ever after.

So Nine tanked at the box office. Oh well. We’re now back at a point in the movie-making landscape where one failed big-budget musical doesn’t derail the genre’s viability, which is great news for fans of that heightened reality where breaking into song and choreographed dance moves is commonplace. Here come two more: The Song Is You, from Dreamgirls director Bill Condon, is about a man who turns to music as a refuge, connecting it to key moments in his life (or as Condon has described it, “(falling) into his iPod Shuffle”). In turn, the man also falls into a romance with a singer he hasn’t even met. At the same time, the remake of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is on the horizon. No cast yet, no release date yet, no nothing yet, just a teasing promise. So, message to people responsible: obviously she’s not going to play the lead, but there must be a liberal infusion of Dolly Parton into this movie all the same. Anything less will be blasphemy. Now go make it work.

Anyone who follows the man recently ejected from a Southwest Airlines flight for taking up too much seat space knows that Kevin Smith is a bear. A heterosexual one, but still a bear. And his gay bear colleague, documentary filmmaker Malcolm Ingram (Small Town Gay Bar, which Smith produced), has enlisted the help of Silent Bob to get his next project off the ground. Smith has executive-produced and also makes an appearance in Bear Nation, a doc from Ingram about the bear subculture (for the still-uninitiated, they are that niche market of gay men who refuse to shave, wax, or say no to seconds at the buffet) and all the ways they’ve begun to make their presence known in the larger gay world. The film premieres any minute now at Austin’s South By Southwest Film Festival. Non-Austinites will have to wait for a local fest or cable airing, all of which are highly likely to follow. Prep now by growing that facial hair.

Given the lascivious reader comments that followed a recent AfterEllen article about Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks (“Dear Lord, thank you for creating this woman…”), it appears that the show’s voluptuous leading lady has, with good reason, turned an army of lesbians into those cartoon wolves with popping-eyeballs and unfurling tongues. Which means, of course, that The Family Tree, a comedy-drama coming this year starring Hendricks, might have an unexpected demographic giving it a bump at the box office. It doesn’t hurt that the movie features a lady-lineup of co-stars like Selma Blair, Hope Davis, Rachael Leigh Cook, Gabrielle Anwar, Heroes’ Madeline Zima and Life Unexpected’s Brittany Robertson. But what’s the movie about? A mother stricken with memory loss, giving her dysfunctional family a second shot at being happy. So it’s not like they’re all going to be washing cars in soaked, suds-covered tank tops or anything. And besides, that’s a straight guy’s fantasy, anyway. Isn’t it?

Is there an odder gay success story than Leslie Jordan’s? The character actor got his big break playing the hilarious bitchy Beverly Leslie on Will & Grace and, instead of shuffling off into obscurity when the show ended, enjoyed even more ardent fandom from his turn in Del Shores’s hit cult comedy Sordid Lives. Now Jordan’s coming to the New York stage in an off-Broadway one-man show, My Trip Down The Pink Carpet. Based on his memoir of the same name, the Emmy-winning actor will tell his own tales of Hollywood mishaps, drunken behavior and what Sean Hayes is really like, thanks to producers Lily Tomlin and her partner Jane Wagner. The show opens at New York’s Midtown Theater on April 14 and runs through July 3. Unless it turns into The Fantasticks or something. Then you have all the time in the world to get there.

OK, so maybe you’ve never heard of Christian and Olli. And if you haven’t, it’s because you’re either a) Not living in Europe, b) Not eating up all the YouTube clips you can find of the German show Verbotene Liebe (“Forbidden Love”) or c) an average person who waits for the English-language version to show up on American TV, ignores it, then Netflix queues the DVDs. So here’s the short version: two gay characters living together in Dusseldorf are in love. They’re young, cute and they make out a lot. What’s not to like about that? And now former HBO Vice President Sam Martin has a U.S. version in development that will transplant the story to Portland, Ore. No casting or timeline yet, but how cool will it be to have a show where the gay couple is the A-story and not just the good friends of the leads? Answer: very.

There have been documentaries about the late, legendary YSL before, but they’ve all been focused, almost exclusively, on the designer’s stunning career in fashion, with little attention paid to the man’s equally fascinating personal life. But the most recent film about Saint Laurent, titled L’Amour Fou, will balance the story for history. The doc, from director Pierre Thoretton, revolves around the auction that followed Saint Lauren’s death, and uses archival footage to tell the story of his life with companion Pierre Berge. Picked up for European distribution already, it probably won’t be long before American arthouses get to see it for themselves. And when you go, please don’t show up at the box office wearing sweatpants and Crocs. You don’t want the man’s ghost haunting you.