Jamie says that she knew that the film would be one of those that queer people passed to each other on bootleg DEVS.
“I know there’s nothing happening, except grandma costumes!” “They said, ‘We can tell in that dark sex scene that there’s a lot of things happening,’ she laughs. The ratings board later highlighted the scene as a point of concern. Basically, I had the idea to shoot it very dark with hot spots of light.” The costumes they were wearing were those pink nightgowns which seemed like they were for grandmas. “I was scrambling to make the sex scene sexy, without any nudity. And when the two actors declined, she was left with a crisis on her hands. “I was a young director so I didn’t realise that you had to talk months in advance with actors,” she recalls. The ratings board also took issue with Graham and Megan’s sex scene, while Jamie herself also totally forgot to raise the topic of nudity ahead of filming. It was definitely sexism and I pointed that out.”
“I had RuPaul say the line: ‘Who wants to go down with me?’ The boys all raise their hands, and the rating board didn’t have any problem with that. “Those double standards really pissed me off,” she agrees.
“They don’t like female masturbation and they don’t like any reference to oral sex between women.” And looking at the straight teen movies released that time - in the R-Rated American Pie, the lead character graphically masturbates with a hot apple pie - there’s a disparity. “I had to shorten Megan’s masturbation scene, and cut a line of Hilary’s where she says ‘Did you go down on Megan?’” Jamie explains. It was like a fraternity, But I’m A Cheerleader, and you rooted for everyone in it,” he adds. We had a kissing make-out rehearsal back in the trailers. “We ended up asking one of the actresses - who I won’t name - to help us out. “I don’t know how many of the other cast members know this,” Dante continues, “but me and Kip felt that we should kiss on screen for the first time,” referring to his on-screen relationship with Clayton Dunn. We would do suburban teenage stuff like go to the mall and eat at Applebee's together. “When we got out there in the cuts, all we had was each other. The outtakes of him schooling us on being gay off camera were hilarious.”įilmed in the sleepy town of Palmdale, California, the entire cast also became a tight-knit gang. He was going off on a monologue about really explicit sexual things off-screen it was so hard to keep a straight face. During a montage scene, they were shooting me and Kip Pardue, Joel Michaely and Doug Spain listening to RuPaul talk. “RuPaul was our straight coach and we were these teenage boys trying to become straight by chopping wood and running around trying to be guys,” Dante laughs. The rehab sets out to convert the campers, but ironically Megan ( Natasha Lyonne) falls in love with fellow camper Graham (Clea DuVall) and realises that being a cheerleader and liking girls isn’t mutually exclusive. “I really took it as a badge of pride.”įrom the very beginning, But I’m A Cheerleader’s own conversion camp is a shambles: lead ex-gay counsellor Mike (played by a plainclothes RuPaul Charles) spends his day trying to repress his drooling over the headmistress’ son Rock (Eddie Cibrian). “When I went to Sundance and got an F in Entertainment Weekly, I knew I had touched a cultural firestorm if I was eliciting such negative reviews from men,” she says. Some reviewers felt that the film relied heavily on stereotypes - missing the fact that it was really a film about breaking them down. There’s power found in ripping evil to shreds with humour. Meanwhile, Jamie Babbit and screenwriter Brian Wayne Peterson encourage us to laugh in the face of cruelty. Recent films like Boy Erased and The Miseducation of Cameron Post (the latter which directly references But I’m A Cheerleader both end with their lead characters escaping in a pick-up truck) tackle the subject by taking a sombre approach. In reality, gay conversion therapy is a gravely serious matter.
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