Love and hisses

IT IS ALMOST certain that nothing as filthy as Notorious C.H.O. has ever before graced the tony Herbst Theatre, with its chandeliers and pastel-hued frescoes. It was one half of the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival's opening night – Lan Yu was on tap over at the Castro Theatre – and though the early evening's phallocentric humor didn't quite go over too well, all was forgiven by the time Margaret Cho was finished. The G-spot jokes were routine, but the connection between the music of Enya and colonic irrigation certainly broke new ground. Other bits – Cho's humiliation upon returning a tape called Beaver Fever to the vid store very late, her moment of socially awkward truth in an S-M-club sling, and especially her opening riff about delivering blow jobs to rescue workers at Ground Zero ("because we all have to do our part") – nearly made me lose control of my own inner tubing. Cho certainly has a few dick jokes up her own sleeve, but the shifted erogenous focus was perfectly defined by her response to a boyfriend whining "Why can't you just come when I fuck you?": "Because I can't come when you fuck me!"

Ex-San Franciscan Cho incongruously followed up her own show onstage by appearing mellow and polite. She confessed she is no longer single (a new frontier; as she puts it, "I've done everything but monogamy!"), which may have explained the real life-screen life contrast. However, she also noted she is currently working on "a fag and fag-hag Dumb and Dumber" script, so clearly her freak flag will be flying for at least a little while longer.

The after party was cramped, with hundreds seemingly unaware or uninterested in the fact that the whole ground floor of the Herbst was also available for standing around and drinking mandarin Vodka thingies. I repaired there after too many second-floor ex-boyfriend sightings (yes, this festival is "as much about community as seeing films," dammit, as Frameline's board prez noted) left me feeling perilously Proustian.

The whole shebang is one very Big Gulp. For one thing, it's three weeks long now; for another, every venue is really, really large. I already miss the Roxie and the Victoria, whose slum ambiences always made the fest a little homier. On the other hand, you can't underestimate the perverse thrill to be had in seeing a $10,000 16mm movie like Everett Lewis's Luster projected before a semi-bewildered packed house at the golden temple of the Castro, as it was late Saturday night. Lewis got up on stage beforehand, prompting a chorus of hubba-hubba whistles, to which he gushed, "You can't know how gratifying that is. Really, you can't." Yes, self-esteem is tough for 6-foot, 5-inch L.A. muscle boys, it seems. Yet Luster, about a blue-haired skateboarder looking for love in nearly all the wrong places during one comi-tragic Melrose weekend, was so truly sweet it made one want to give Lewis a big hug. Or a big something. The audience, however, had mostly moved on posthaste before the post-flick Q&A; either it was too punky for them or they (like the film's protag) raced off to fall head over heels for the next 20 guys a day. Life is short, art is long.

On the other hand, almost nobody left after Sunday afternoon's Questioning Faith, in which seminary student-documentary filmmaker Macky Alston (who dug up his clan's slave-owning past in Family Name) drills various intimates about their belief in God or lack thereof after a close friend's death leaves his own sense of mission shaken. Spirituality being one of the less bootylicious topics out there, the Castro was only somewhat full, but those who came were definitely the politest audience the festival is likely to have this year. They sat good-naturedly during multiple projection dilemmas; they sat en masse for the superb pic's subsequent Q&A.

Lest one think the fest has gotten a little too respectable for its own boots, however, it should be noted that the festival trailer (backward-cascading waterfalls set to an emo-rock soundtrack flanneling on about the "misty breeze of my waterfall") got hissed like heck at Questioning Faith. It's already the most-hissed trailer in Frameline history. Kudos to the makers: Your trailer may be murky and meaningless (if blessedly short), but this audience needs to get tired of its own reckless opinion-making. I mean, hissing just cuz something is ... neutral? Get a life. If only the sheer psychic energy of those s's could be harnessed for something powerful – like closing the ozone hole. Maybe that will be the hook for next year's trailer. (Dennis Harvey)