Tom Ford speaks, gets $20 Million

At the recent Cannes Film Festival, Tom Ford announced his intention to make his next feature, Nocturnal Animals, and Focus stepped in with $20 million of confidence-building cash. The fashion designer/filmmaker’s last movie, A Single Man, earned strong reviews and Oscar nominations, which is exactly the kind of film Universal’s Focus division loves to make, so this is a no-brainer for everyone. Ford will produce, direct and adapt the screenplay from Austin Wright’s 1993 novel, Tony and Susan, and the project is slated to star Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal. As of right now, the plot is bare bones, revolving around a woman receiving her ex-husband’s first novel in the mail, which then sets her on her own path of self-discovery. Vague-ish, true, but you never show your hand too early. More news as it develops, but for now, just know that it’s pretty good to be Tom Ford.

Where will Fun Home land next?

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Forgive the breathless nature of our enthusiasm for the Tony Award-winning Fun Home, but Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir turned stage musical is as sweetly intoxicating as a show gets, and we can’t help hoping for more success. So here’s some speculation, the kind where we hope that just talking about it makes it come true. There is rumor, hinted at by director Sam Gold, of expanding Home’s theater audience and opening it in London’s West End next, a fairly routine move when an acclaimed musical takes home the top prize. But for theater-deprived audiences in smaller towns, it’s the movie that counts. The producers, for their part, are being cagey about a film, standard practice when you’re fielding offers. “There’s definitely been interest in a film,” they’ve been reported as saying, before adding more non-specific words about being “open to anything” and wanting “to do what’s best for (the show).” So, OK, sure, none of this is official news. It’s more like people talking around an idea of news, which is how non-news eventually becomes news in Hollywood. Now we wait and hope it does just that.

Kristen Stewart’s Long Halftime Walk

Let’s not get too excited about Kristen Stewart. The Millenials aren’t as into labels and the “event” nature of coming out as generations that paved the road before. And good for them, because that’s freedom. So is K-Stew dating a woman now? It very well looks like it, and her mother has flip-flopped on talking about it in public. Is she bisexual? Probably. Maybe. Who knows. It only matters for our purposes because now we get to talk about her career as an actor in the same way we talk about Amber Heard, an entertainment figure whose life involves same-sex relationships from time to time. Good for us, then, that Stewart’s post-Twilight is turning out so well. She’s shaken the Internet’s fanboy disdain for that series and is currently getting rave reviews for her role in the acclaimed arthouse film Clouds of Sils Maria, with Juliette Binoche. Stewart’s currently shooting Ang Lee’s latest, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, a dramatic comedy about soldiers spending their last few days before returning to Iraq. It co-stars Vin Diesel, Garrett Hedlund, Steve Martin, Pitch Perfect’s Ben Platt, and the somewhat reclusive Chris Tucker. The lesson of the moment, then, is this: the work is what lasts, boyfriends and girlfriends (or both) come and go.

Out In The Night coming to Logo

Last year, we reported on Out In The Night a disturbing documentary from director Blair Dorosh-Walther that was, then, making the rounds of LGBT film festivals. It’s the story of four black lesbian friends – Renata Hill, Patreese Johnson, Terrain Dandridge, and Venice Brown – who were attacked by a man in New York’s Greenwich Village, and who then wasted no time defending themselves. It was a violent incident and, for their self-defense efforts, the women were tried and sentenced to between three and 11 years in prison. Meanwhile, they were slandered in racist media reports as “bloodthirsty” and a “gang.” Now their story will reach a national audience when Logo Documentary Films presents the film on June 22 as part of an ongoing series of queer docs. The cable channel is to be praised for selecting this hard-hitting, difficult subject matter over lighter, feel-good fare, especially when the cause of LGBT equality is, marriage or no marriage, still as vital as ever. Set that DVR.