Actor, writer, and director Craig Chester discusses his endearing new film Adam & Steve and being a queer cinema icon.

By Jeremy Kinser
Photos by David Jensen

When I tell Craig Chester that his directorial debut Adam & Steve made me and my friend decide to find our own boyfriends, the boyishly attractive 40-year-old's face breaks into a beaming grim. "People tell me that," Chester says, taking a sip from a steaming cup of Cuban coffee, "That to me is the best compliment, because everyone is so jaded and cynical." Everyone, perhaps, but not Chester himself. After a decade and half as an actor for hire in low-budget films, the dark haired actor-turned-writer-and-director himself is in a jovial mood as he discusses the new gay romantic comedy he directed, wrote, and stars in. Adam & Steve follows the courtship of two gay men (Chester and Malcolm Gets), both uneasy at finding themselves in a relationship, and both unaware that they have a past together. The film, already a hit on the festival circuit, opens in select cities across the country March 31 and is more than just a gay spin on familiar Nora Ephron territory. In addition to multi-dimensional characters and some genuine pathos, Chester incorporates farce (Parker Posey wobbles around in a fat suit), gross-out gags worthy of John Waters, as well as spontaneous musical numbers and a country-western dance-off (complete with Jackie Beat in cowgirl drag warbling a plot-inspired ditty titled "Shit Happens"), to great effect. Though a self-professed fan of romantic comedies, Chester wanted to turn the timeworn genre on its ear.

"I wanted to show how it's different when two guys fall in love," Chester informs, when asked about the "falling in love montage" ubiquitous in romantic comedies but given a humorous nudge in Adam & Steve as the protagonists are occasionally pelted with bottles and insults. "I wanted to show how it's similar, but also how it's different. If you read my book, (it's obvious that) I see the world from a very absurd point of view."

The book Chester refers to is his 2003 memoir Why the Long Face: The Adventures of a Truly Independent Actor. Detailing his unique observations of a life and career just outside the mainstream, the book is not only candid, and comical, but, as is evident from the title, also very self-deprecating. Chester's face has long been a familiar one to gay movie audiences since his breakthrough role (and film debut) in Tom Kalin's 1992 Swoon. The film, a mesmerizing, impressionistic telling of the notorious Leopold-Loeb murder, along with Todd Haynes' Poison and Gregg Araki's The Living End, helped usher in the queer film movement in the early '90s. Chester also found himself nominated for an Independent Spirit Award (he lost to Harvey Keitel), an anecdote he recalls with wry amusement in his book as he had to ask for the day off from the temp job he was holding at the time. Chester's struggle to maintain employment in a fickle industry lends his memoir not only humor, but a certain amount of pathos at well. By his own calculation, he was earning an acting income of less than $1,500 per year during much of the '90s.

Though Chester's film resume consists solely of gay characters in gay-themed films like Frisk, Grief, and Kiss Me Guido, the actor's not complaining. "There are so many different kinds of gay men. I've played killers, geeks, drag queens, schizophrenics, the boy-next-door ... I don't feel limited at all." This experience coupled with knowledge he'd acquired on film sets gave Chester the confidence to create his own project. While actors who step behind the camera are often deemed control freaks and become the punch lines of Hollywood jokes, Chester's motivation was at least partially altruistic. "For years I would go to film festivals with my movies and there would always be gay couples in the theaters and they'd always ask when are you going to make a movie about us, about having a boyfriend," he informs. "Years passed and nobody made that movie. I've had boyfriends and I have friends who've had boyfriends. There's no movie about what it's like to have a boyfriend. It's fertile ground that hasn't been explored."

It took six months to pen the Adam & Steve screenplay and, while not autobiographical in the strictest sense, Chester admits to borrowing situations and actual conversations from his own reality. In one case of art imitating life, he cast Parker Posey as Rhonda, Adam's lifelong best friend, a role she also occupies off screen. "There are actual conversations from our friendship that wound up in the script. There's this whole section where Parker's talking about the differences between gay couples and straight couples and that was something she had said to me and it ended up verbatim in the script.

When she saw it, she was like, 'Oh, that's interesting,'" Chester recalls, chuckling. As far as Adam being a stand-in for Chester, the actor insists, "I wouldn't say I'm a lot like Adam, but it's the most like me of any character I've ever played." One difference may be that while Chester is eloquent and engaging, his character has great difficulty expressing himself. When I tell him the awkward pauses in the characters' conversation give the story an emotional truth, Chester nods in agreement, "All the characters in the movie are sort of socially retarded and don't know how to deal with each other and have issues in terms of intimacy," he adds. "In a way the characters in my film are losing their emotional virginity."

Another topic Chester wanted to explore was the gay mid-life crisis. Chester takes a hearty gulp of coffee and declares, "The movie to me is about what do you do when you're in your late 30s and have never had a relationship before. When straight men have mid-life crisis you wake up at 40, realize you've been married for 20 years, have an affair with your secretary, and you buy a sports car. A gay mid-life crisis is when you're 40 and realize you've never been in a relationship. These guys wonder what it's like to commit to someone."

Chester made the decision to cast the openly gay Gets, probably best-known for his stint on the sitcom Caroline in the City, as his love interest after working on a number of films in which straight actors nabbed the gay roles. "There's so much drama making sure they're okay and holding their hands, and saying, 'I'm sorry I slipped you my tongue,'" he says with a giggle. "The fact that Malcolm and I are openly gay actors -- people watch the movie and believe that we're really boyfriends and the movie is about our relationship. It's because we have chemistry and we're both comfortable with our sexuality. There's a certain knowingness because we are really gay and we have laid in bed with a guy and said we loved him. We bring our life experience to our work." Casting the musical theater-trained Gets also inspired Chester to rewrite his character. "He's a Broadway star and has been nominated for Tony awards so I had to have him sing at the end. I wanted a big corny romantic ending that gay people have never gotten before."

The film was, in award show-speak, a labor of love for all concerned. Chester admits, "So many things just fell into place. I've worked on a lot of films and this one always had a very special energy about it." He reveals that Courtney Love, whom he calls "completely generous," donated her vocal services on one of the songs in the film for free due to her friendship with out rocker Roddy Bottum, the film's composer. Another surprise was what would ordinarily be the arduous task of convincing Yoko Ono to allow the use of John Lennon's song "Love" over the end credits. "Normally the rights for that song cost 200 grand. We got it for $5,000 because Yoko is a big proponent of gay marriage rights. When she found out it was about a gay wedding she completely helped us out."

Asked whether he feels a need to carry on the legacy of a queer cinema he helped launch, Chester reflects for a moment. "I definitely feel a sense of responsibility to continue to enlighten people through my work. I made Swoon in the first wave of queer cinema. The films were a reaction to AIDS. All the people involved in those films, myself included, were AIDS activists. Films reflected that anti-establishment anger. Now the relevant issue is marriage rights so we have these love stories coming out. I do feel a responsibility, but I don't want to keep making the same films I did then."

While balancing a relationship with a demanding workload is difficult for most of us, Chester faces other obstacles. Now dating a younger man, Chester shrugs his shoulders as he laments the toll his career takes on his dating life. "It's tough because when I meet a guy they're either too into what I do or not into it enough. Either all they want is to meet all my famous friends and go to all the things or they judge show business as silly." Another challenge he's faced time and again is that his dates can easily get the upper hand on him. "I'm at a disadvantage because I'll meet somebody and they can go out and read my book and find out who I am. It takes me six months to find out who they are. So when I meet someone and start dating him I tell him, 'You can't watch my movies and read my book for six months because you have to get to know me first.'"

Asked if his Adam & Steve director was a taskmaster, Chester, currently writing a screenplay about late gay actor Montgomery Clift, smiles and rolls his eyes. "The hardest part was the physical exhaustion. All the other actors would go home at the end of the night and I'd have to stay working. Physically that was the hardest part. Making a movie is more fulfilling than any role I've ever played. You really use every aspect of your soul in a way. I didn't think I'd love directing as much as I did."