It might seem to some that queer cinema is in the midst of some kind of renaissance, but out actor Craig Chester has been making gay films for almost 15 years. In the early 1990s, Chester could be seen in such groundbreaking movies as Swoon, Grief, Frisk and Kiss Me, Guido, to name a few. However, just in time for GLBT film’s second wind, Chester wrote, directed and stars in the relentlessly fun and endearing gay romantic comedy Adam & Steve.

With a stellar cast, including Malcolm Gets as Adam’s love interest Steve, Parker Posey as Adam’s best friend Rhonda, Chris Kattan as Steve’s roommate Michael, as well as Sally Kirkland, Julie Hagerty, Paul Sand and Melinda Dillon, Adam & Steve is as star-studded as it is hilarious. If Woody Allen was gay, this is the kind of queer comedy he would make.

Gay & Lesbian Times: Your movie Adam & Steve opens in 1987 with Animotion’s “Obsession” playing in the background and the club populated with Dazzle Dancers and goths. Would you agree that the ’80s rival the ’70s as a source of comic material?

Craig Chester: That’s before everything became referential. Once the ’90s came along, we were just co-opting everything from the past. Now there’s nothing to co-opt. What would 1995 look like? One version of the script took place in 1987, but it was a retro night for 1975 – the whole thing of always referring to the generation or decade before you. Now we have Britney Spears, but that’s really just Tiffany and Debbie Gibson all over again. There’s this one shot in the movie, when Adam and Steve are 21 in 1987, where they are looking at the downtown skyline and there’s the World Trade Centers. What’s changed about nostalgia is that after 9/11, it became a whole other thing. Before 9/11, AIDS was the defining thing in the ’80s. Now the World Trade Centers have become this symbol for lost innocence. I look back at the ’80s now, when I was 21 in New York, as this innocent time before the world changed, before terrorism, when AIDS was just starting – this last minute of innocence.

GLT: The shots on the bridge, overlooking the skyline, bracket the movie. As someone who has lived in New York for 20 years, was this movie your love letter to New York?

CC: Very much so. I think New York is inherently romantic. Some people, like Nora Ephron, have used that to great effect. But I think that it is such a great backdrop for stories. There are so many stories going on in that city at any given time.

GLT: The movie has the Lady & the Tramp spaghetti scene homage, and there is also humor in the Woody Allen-meets-Monty Python quality of the public display of affection scenes.

CC: For me, the movie is in many ways a movie about movies, about Hollywood movies. We are sort of co-opting this romantic comedy formula – boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy gets boy back. In that sense, it’s very populist and traditional, and not very indie. At the same time, it’s a film about Hollywood. I think that in the independent film movement, comedies are not given their due in a way, which I think is sort of hypocritical. John Waters and Woody Allen were independent filmmakers in the ’70s who had a huge part in the independent film movement. And yet John Cassavetes gets all the praise. But John Waters was doing very provocative and groundbreaking films that were completely comedy and actually very queer. Somehow or another, humor has been lost in this queer identity. And gay people and the gay sensibility is so funny. Most of my friends are sharp, funny people. It’s almost like there is this secret shame about that in the independent film community. I don’t think comedies are looked upon as cool. When I wrote this, it was sort of an effort to lay claim to that again, the same way that John Waters or early Woody Allen did.

GLT: Rhonda’s character is a formerly fat person who continues to make jokes about being fat in her stand-up comedy act. There’s the funny line about Oprah.

CC: The Oprah line is one of the biggest laughs in the movie. The film is about being gay, but it’s also about being in a relationship – gay or straight. And Parker and Chris sort of serve that purpose as well. It’s really challenging to write a romantic comedy in a day and age of Oprah, where we have self-help and supposedly have all the answers about why relationships work or why they don’t work. It takes away the mystery and magic in a way. There was a time I was really into her [Oprah]. The thing that bothers me is it is tied up in this notion of Christianity: There is a right and a wrong, and there is this way to be that is healthy, which is just another way of saying Godly.

GLT: Which I think excludes a huge chunk of her audience.

CC: I think there is a segment of the population – housewives in the Midwest in unhappy marriages – and those are the people [in her audience]. For years, I had watched her and imagined myself as a straight woman in a marriage, and I’m not. I’m a gay guy, and I date guys, and some of it applies, but a lot of it doesn’t apply. The movie really deals with these ideas of the frustration of living in a society where every image is heterosexual, every relationship book is heterosexual, and Oprah is heterosexual, self-help is heterosexual, and movies and TV and commercials are heterosexual. The movie repeatedly brings this up. In this one part, I’m talking to Steve [Malcolm Gets] and I watch romantic comedies, and I’m Julia Roberts and then I’m the guy. The movie really comments on what it’s like to be in love in a society that does not necessarily provide images of [same-sex] relationships. We’re trying to see our own dilemma in a filter of heterosexual images, and some things are universal. Then there are things that don’t apply because we’re not heterosexual; the movie stakes claim to that. I’m providing images of a gay couple and what it’s like to be in a relationship when you’re gay. In the classic Jewish romantic comedy, you have the obstacle between the two characters, which are their own neuroses. In this film, the character’s neuroses are obstacles as well. But we have this extra added obstacle, which is [the] outside world: people throwing beer bottles at them and yelling at them from across the street. There is also the obstacle of promiscuity and available sex and drugs. There are more obstacles, in a way, for a gay couple than a straight couple.

GLT: Add the fact that one of them is Jewish and the other isn’t. Everything you add to it is just compounding this relationship.

CC: For a lesbian or gay couple to get together and make a relationship work is amazing considering the obstacles in this world. I think that’s why the gay marriage issue is so profound in a way; because when you think about what we have to go through just to be able to have a relationship. … A lot of my friends are romantics, but they’re embarrassed about it. I think it’s all tied into this notion of misogyny, in a way, because it’s feminine to be in love, it’s feminine to be romantic.

GLT: The character of Adam is also written very well. In the scene at the Big Apple Rodeo where he says, “I can barely one-step” then, “Give me a bottle dance, and I’m fine.”

CC: Jewish people get that [laughs].

GLT: Would you say that humor is Adam’s defense mechanism, and is it your defense mechanism?

CC: Yeah, absolutely [laughs]. Oh my God, I’m so busted! Humor is my total defense mechanism; it’s how I deal with uncomfortable situations all the time. It’s works! It gets me out of sticky situations. Except for Kiss Me Guido, I’ve been seen in mostly dramas and considered a dramatic actor. This movie, in a way, is a coming out for me because I really am a comedian, and I love comedy. I always go see comedies; I believe in them. People who’ve read my book know, but people who haven’t and come out and see Adam & Steve are surprised that I’m funny because I’ve been in Swoon and all these depressing dramatic [films].

GLT: I read your book, and know you were raised in a fundamentalist Christian family. I thought it was kind of funny that you would cast yourself as a Jewish character. Can you say something about that?

CC: I’ve lived in New York for 20 years, so I feel like an honorary Jew [laughs]. Every role I’ve played has been Jewish. I’m working out some kind of Jewish karma in this life. … I relate to Jewish people; I relate most to the Jewish mentality. I think it is because I’ve sort of grown up in New York. I don’t relate to the born-again thing. I mean, I do. Steve is from Texas, and Steve is me in many ways. In a way, all the characters are me; even Rhonda is me. I had my face surgery, and I went from looking not so great to looking OK. Parker’s character is really obese, and then she loses the weight, and the world treats her in a different way. That’s totally because of my face surgery, re-interpreted through that character. In a heterosexual movie, when you have a man and a woman, you have inherent differences. But when you have two guys, to make the formula work, you have to make them totally opposites. Steve is a Christian, Adam is Jewish, and that’s really why Adam is Jewish – I’m trying to make them different. It’s funny because Steve’s parents are Christians, and they were really uncomfortable. I was worried that people wouldn’t read my script correctly. So I did 10 staged readings in New York. Everybody in New York at some point went to a reading of Adam & Steve. Alan Cumming played Steve in one reading with me, and John Hickey, Jane Adams, Illeana Douglas and Margo Kidder played my mom in one; all these great actors. One of the readings that we did was me and Malcolm. Parker is my best friend in real life, and so I wrote it with her in it. I needed someone to play Michael, Chris Kattan’s part, so I asked Parker’s agent if she had any actors that would be good, and she said she had shots, and one of the head shots was Chris Kattan. It’s funny because I wouldn’t have thought of him in this part, because up to that point the character had been played by macho guys; the role was written for a Steve Zahn-type guy. But Chris was this interesting choice, so he did the reading and he totally made me see the part in a different way; it was [a] much more interesting interpretation of that character. Also, he and Malcolm together was just like, “What?” And Parker and Chris had chemistry.

GLT: The scene where they’re trading those jabs… my stomach hurt from laughing so much! It’s really funny!

CC: They’re so great together. I did re-write the roles for actors in some ways. Like, Parker makes fun of him being short, and that was written because of Chris. We had a great casting director named Kerry Barden, who had cast me in three films, and he is very successful. Chris, Parker and Malcolm came on as a result of the readings, but Julie Hagerty and Melinda Dillon and Sally Kirkland all came on through Kerry Barden.

GLT: Would you say that the central romance of the story is something that is based on a cumulative experience, or is it more of a romantic fantasy of what you would like to have?

CC: It’s based on experience. A lot of it is stolen from my life; from meeting boyfriend’s parents and their meeting mine. A lot of it comes from my life experience, and in that sense it’s sort of more authentic in that way – because I’m gay, and I’m making a movie about being gay. But, the part of it where it becomes fantasy is when Steve comes back [laughs]. Because I’ve had relationships end, and when Steve comes and sings a song to Adam from The Sound of Music, it’s this egregious, corny, over-the-top romantic thing; that’s something that’s never really happened to me in real life. But I would like to believe in that.

Adam & Steve will be featured in San Diego’s FilmOUT film festival taking place April 13-16 at the Birch North Park Theatre.