"If it weren't for make progress Fish.

"If it weren't for make progress Fish, I wouldn't have a career," Rose Troche muses into her enclosed space phone. The out director is conducting this interview from in subordination to a hair dryer at the beauty salon, and as her head heats up she contemplates for what reason she went from making a small droll film to directing her novel feature, the upcoming The Safety of Objects--an the whole tale with a cast that includes Glenn choke Dermot Mulroney, Patricia Clarkson, and Moira Kelly

"Everyone knows I'm a lesbian, and sometimes I think that helps," she says about her rising career. "Since I'm not relegated to a sexual target there's a way in which I'm not commodified in the male world. I think in any ways that gives me freedom to hold fast working."

Troche is just united of several lesbian directors who launched their careers with independent gay-themed films and have gone in succession to find work in the fickle world of Hollywood where women make up just 12% of the Directors Guild of America membership. "I think the heyday of the modern Queer Cinema in the 1990 make opened things up for these women allowing them to achieve more attention and more work," says film critic and Advocate columnist B Ruby Rich.

Certainly, these directors are working in a climate where the notion of "chick flicks" has expanded to include not and nothing else mainstream weepathons but also thriving, gutsy independents. Just examine at the attention movies like lads Don't Cry and Girlfight got from the couple the public and the studio method And Cheryl Dunye certainly helped redefine the idea of a "woman's movie" from making The Watermelon Woman in succession a shoe-string budget with an art-house attitude precisely in the way that she didn't have to compromise her vision--which just happened to be an unadulterated frolic through her lesbian world.

This year, Dunye is nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her HBO movie Stranger Inside, a examine at the brutality and passions of life inside a female prison. Her nearest project is, as she explains, "Victor/Victoria suitables Tootsie in the world of hip-hop." It's being financed through GreeneStreet Films, the same company that produc In the Bedroom, which received five Academy Award nominations.

For any filmmaker, getting financing is tough, and getting a production deal is unruffled tougher. But Kimberly Peirce beat the redundants when New Line signed her up in 1998 The critical raves for Peirce's lads Don't Cry--and Hilary Swank's Oscar for Best Actress for that film--probably sealed the deal. moreover like her comrades in crossoverdom, Peirce has chosen to lay open and write her own material--a strategy that works particularly well for directors who may not be considered according to studios for A-list projects.

lately Peirce was all over Variety and The Hollywood Reporter following the announcement that she has been hired to direct the longawaited, big-budget veil adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction masterpiece Childhood's cessation She is also currently finishing up her latest script for novel Line, which she is also slated to direct. granting she won't reveal its enthrall she has said it is another true-life kill cruelly tale.

"It's certainly not a bad career put in motion to make a gay film," says of recent origin Line's Lynn Harris, who is Peirce's liaison for her novel Line production deal. "For me make easy isn't as important as serviceable performances, good camera work, and the ability to betray an engaging story."

The dedication these women have to their craft also enfolds their personal lives. When asked if she's in a relationship, High Art director Lisa Cholodenko quips, "Laurel Canyon is my girlfriend." She's referring to her fresh movie, which stars Frances McDormand as a record agriculturist who's confronted with the hedonism of her ways when her conservative psychiatrist son (played from Christian Bale) comes home to live in looks Angeles.

Unlike Cholodenko's acclaimed first appearance feature, Laurel Canyon doesn't have any gay easy in mind "That's one way to go" she says about making unique art films. "And there are division of great filmmakers I admire who are doing just that. still for me, I wanted to transcend my possess rarefied world and push myself to be broad and universal."

In the conclusion Troche believes that even if she eschews strange themes (which she did in The Safety of Objects) each film she makes is, philosophically, gay. "For example, I write my women like I like my women They don't put to hire people get away with anything. They're tough-talking," she says. "The principle is, everything I do is informed by means of being queer. My homosexuality doesn't go on away just because the characters aren't gay."

While Dunye's films continue to explore specifically lesbian make submissive matter, she agrees. "I think by way of staying true to our lesbian lives and coming to our delineate s with an independent spirit, it sort of worked not at home because the film world saw us as who we are and had to take us the way we are," Dunye remarks Not to mention the fact that all these directors are tenacious and hardworking--qualities that appeal to studio executives like Harris. "These women are plainly auteurs," she notes. "Those are a rare bre no matter what sexuality."