Director Miles Swain has been enjoying the ride he’s been on ever since his film The Trip debuted last year and won a truckload of awards, including the HBO Award for Best Feature at the Washington D.C. International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Best Debut Film at the Rehoboth Beach Independent Film Festival and the Audience Award (Best Feature) at the Reel Pride Michigan Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. The icing on the cake came when TLA Releasing — the same company that handled Food of Love and The Fluffer — picked up The Trip for distribution.

Released this past May, the heart-warming dramedy made for $1 million has already amassed $200,000 in limited release — not bad for a movie that has been showcased thus far in fewer than 20 cities. Swain was in an exceptionally good mood speaking with the Gay and Lesbian Times in advance of The Trip’s weeklong run at Landmark’s Ken Theatre starting July 18. He could well be summing up his life philosophy when he says, “I love entertaining people.”

Gay and Lesbian Times: I understand you originally had your sights set on being an actor. Who were your influences?

Miles Swain: I was always a big fan of Kevin Spacey in things like The Ref. And of course there are the Al Pacinos, the Robert DeNiros, the character-driven leading men.

GLT: What made you switch from acting to directing?

MS: I went to film school [L.A. Film School, a 10-month program]. The reason I went was to further my acting. My thinking then was, ‘I’ll go to film school and write great parts for myself and I’ll direct them and produce them and star in them.’ I was the lead in all these dumb, low-budget student project shorts. But I’d get in the editing room and I’d think, ‘Why did I do this?’ or ‘Why did I do that?’ It was because I was spending too much time in front of the camera.

GLT: So you decided to change hats and focus on directing.

MS: Once I started directing, I fell in love with the whole process. It was much more fun, and a bigger creative outlet for me. I had a bit part in The Trip but I cut it out. You want to keep your movie tight when you’re dealing with comedy. Plus when it runs an hour and a half, you get six showings instead of five!

GLT: Within a year of graduating, you raised the funds for The Trip. Was that hard to do?

MS: It was actually pretty easy for me…. The script touched a lot of people. It was original, and they could see the heart that was in the story. You have these two wonderful characters who really love each other and are in a long-term relationship, which you don’t see very often in gay cinema. One of the pitches I made to [potential investors] was, ‘Straight people need to see this film. It’s not offensive; it’s not full of sex or violence or nudity.’ I felt they could learn something [about gay people] while being entertained.

GLT: Do you recall the first review of The Trip you read?

MS: Yes, I do. I can’t remember who the critic was, but he said something I totally disagreed with. I can take criticism, but the one thing you can’t knock [in this film] is the chemistry between Larry and Steve — they give good performances and they have major chemistry. This guy said they were like oil and water, or something like that. It was kind of hurtful. Then, all of the sudden, out of nowhere, all these glowing reviews came in, followed by all these film festival awards. We won something like 11 awards, more than any other gay film, including Big Eden.

MS: This is an easy film to attack. There’s a lot of fluff in it. I wanted to make a film for young people, and for older people too. I was trying to reach out to both markets. You can tell by some of the things we touch upon in the story, and my use of newsreel footage. I’m so annoyed by the way Hollywood films portray gay characters, like The Bird Cage and all that. There are people in the Midwest that watch movies like that and think, ‘Oh, that’s what gay people are like.’ That upsets me.

GLT: But some reviewers got on your case about the character of Michael, whom they said was just another bitchy queen.

MS: When I sat down with [actor] Alexis Arquette, I told him I wanted to make fun of what is essentially a stereotypical character. I wanted him to be so over the top, so outlandish, that people would find it hard to believe there were actually gay people like that. Maybe I didn’t get that message across clearly, but he’s there for camp value, to be entertaining.

MS: Aren’t they? Anybody who can act in those wigs deserves brownie points! I really wanted to go with unknown, undiscovered talents for the Alan and Tommy characters. We probably saw 200 people — I drove my casting director crazy. Steve is Canadian; we almost didn’t get him because his head shot was submitted through the regular mail and my casting director didn’t like to take submissions unless they were from a casting agent or were delivered by messenger.

When I saw his head shot, I said to myself, ‘If this guy walked in this room, and there was such a thing as love at first sight, this is somebody that I could fall in love with.’

MS: We definitely share a lot of personality characteristics. Sometimes I don’t speak up about things; I hold things in. (My boyfriend, Carmine, is sitting next to me, nodding his head.) I had a Tommy in my life. He didn’t pass away or anything, but I made some mistakes and didn’t own up to them, and he ended up walking away.

GLT: Why are so many gay films bad?

MS: A lot of them don’t have a message. They take place over a weekend and are about a bunch of gay people who get hooked up with somebody, break up, then get back together. They’re not really meaningful.

MS: I’m not a gay director. I’m a director who happens to like dick. The only difference between me and a couple dozen other directors in this town is that I admit to liking it ... at least most of thE time. My interests are not just in gay films, even though I’m sure most of my stories will have a gay sensibility. Bryan Singer’s X-men movies are really about outsiders trying to be accepted; Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin is less about a superhero than those wonderful rubber outfits and codpieces!