Luca Guadagnino, Gregg Araki, Gus Van Sant, Kimberly Peirce, and Jamie Babbit On How Queer Filmmaking Has Changed

Their films went on to transform not only queer cinema, but American culture itself: expanding who could be noticeable onscreen and exposing stories that mainstream audiences could only imagine.

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But I’m a Cheerleader follows Megan (Natasha Lyonne), a girly teenage cheerleader whose family and friends send her to a conversion therapy camp because they suspect she’s a lesbian. Instead of being “cured,” she falls in love with another camper (Clea DuVall).

“I really wanted to make something that spoke to me as a young queer person. I grew up in Ohio, and I never saw femme lesbians on TV or in films,” says Babbit. “In the ’90s, when I came out to my mom, she was really confused. I said, ‘Why are you confused?’ And she said, ‘Well, you were terrible at sports.’”

The film’s concept came during a pivotal point in history. The AIDS crisis had reached up-to-date peaks and the government was suppressing many advocacy groups that were demanding justice. Federal policymakers had stalled on passing proactive legislation addressing AIDS and were sluggish to conduct widespread clinical trials or fund research. The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) adopted the slogan “Silence = Death” to protest this government neglect. Throughout the 1980s and through the 1990s, protests erupted nationwide.

Babbit says that she was swept up in the movement.

But pushback to the film came from her own community too, including from older gay viewers who felt like the movie satirized queer trauma. Many doubted the sincerity of the love story, Babbit says. “Even though it’s a comedy, it also felt like a rebellion,” she says. “The movie also came out of a desire to be able to laugh at our own.”

The ratings board was alarmed by the film. They told Babbit to cut down a scene of Natasha Lyonne masturbating, fully clothed, as well as change the mention of a woman going down on another woman. They stamped the film with “NC-17.” “They asked me to lighten the sex scene, so they could look frame for frame and make sure nothing was happening in the darkness,” she adds.

Babbit hasn’t given up on making queer stories more noticeable. Today, she’s working on Red, White & Royal Wedding, a steamy enemies-to-lovers flick featuring a prince and the president’s son (which is a sequel to the hit Red, White & Royal Blue). “That will be streamed worldwide on Amazon. I was given full freedom in the sex scenes, and for the first time in my career was applauded for doing things that definitely would have been censored when I started,” she says.