Strand and deliver - Strand Releasing succeeds with unusual films - Brief Article

WHEN IT COMES TO EDGY, INDEPENDENT GAY MOVIES, MARCUS HU AND TEN-YEAR-OLD STRAND RELEASING ARE OUT IN FRONT

Back in 1989 Marcus Hu and his partners Jon Gerrans and Mike Thomas were running their fledgling, no-frills, gay-friendly independent film company, Strand Releasing, out of Hu's one-bedroom Los Angeles apartment. "It was above a garage," Hu says with a roll of his eyes. Tune flies, albeit economy class in this case. Sure, Strand's brick-walled Santa Monica, Calif., offices seem the height of bohemian chic, and today Hu may be noshing at a trattoria a few tables away from Anthony Hopkins, but the firm and the man behind it still come as close to guerilla filmmaking as it gets. "I've always felt you could make films on a shoestring budget and still convey a great story," he says. "And you can make money."

Indeed, while its coffers aren't as large as Sony's, Strand has managed to turn acquiring edgy low-budget art-house films into a cottage industry. Quintessential Strand success stories, such as the clunky but groundbreaking lesbian love story Claire of the Moon and the coming-of-age trilogy Boys Life (along with its sequel), have earned Hu preferred seating at trendy eateries, while the company's more peculiar side--see Russ Meyer's breasty cult trip Faster Pussycat, Kill/Kill!, the bizarre Francis Bacon biopic Love Is the Devil, and For a Lost Soldier, which seemed to be all for pedophilia--has branded him a bad boy.

"Marcus makes and revives the kinds of movies no one else would, and he's not afraid of [being] `gayly incorrect,'" says John Waters. The fearless Pink Flamingos director isn't the only one who's appreciative; starting June 17, New York's Museum of Modern Art celebrates Strand's tenth anniversary with a month-long retrospective of the firm's standout offerings.

"Many film companies like to go with the tried and true, but these are people keenly interested in unusual works," says Laurence Kardish, curator of MoMA's Department of Film and Video. "They've made many important films."

The task of narrowing down the company's catalog of over 100 movies and documentaries to 25 entries wasn't a Sunday in the park. "This was more difficult than I thought it would be," admits Kardish, who managed to squeeze in personal favorites like the passionate French coming-of-age tale Wild Reeds; the seminal, semifictional gay fights opus Stonewall; and the tragic interracial gay love stow The Delta. Other Strand milestones making the cut include Office Killer, photographer Cindy Sherman's sinister water-cooler comedy; East Palace, West Palace, considered the first gay feature from China; and even director Bruce LaBruce's kinky porn mockumentary Super 8 1/2. Sighing, Kardish says, "I expanded the show; now I wish it were even longer."

The curator can credit Hu, an archetypal showman, for the embarrassment of riches. A Chinese-American born in San Francisco, Hu, 36, says he started buying Variety at age 11. "I was absolutely in love with the business of film," he says. After coming out in high school and starting what would be a 12-year relationship in college ("My parents didn't blink an eye," he says of those days. "My next boyfriend even lived with us at home"), he worked his way up to manager of a local art-house theater and later wound up marketing films like Godzilla 1985 for Roger Corman's camp-minded New World Pictures.

Moving to Los Angeles, he joined forces with Thomas, who was owner of San Francisco's Strand Theater (and who now runs his own indie film-releasing company, Jour de Fete), to distribute obscure films under the Strand name. Soon Hu was attending the first queer-cinema seminar hosted by Robert Redford at the Sundance Film Festival--and lining up advice on how to produce movies.

He was a quick study. In 1991 he completed Gregg Araki's controversial HIV-positive lust stow The Living End after raising the movie's scrawny $23,000 budget himself (his mom anted up $10,000 in seed money). The film went on to gross $3 million worldwide. "Just like black audiences flocked to 'blaxploitation' films, I knew gay audiences wanted to see images of themselves on-screen," says Hu. Today Hu has a reputation for having an uncanny knack for marketing, typified by Strand's hip, sometimes pecs-popping posters for films like Latin Boys Go to Hell. And Strand's efforts like Steam, about love blossoming in a Turkish bath, "would seem like a really tough sell," says Waters. "But Marcus has developed a brand name. If it's a Strand release, I know it's something I'd be interested in seeing."

The Strand banner doesn't always wave a triangle or read TOTALLY F***ED UP. The firm has increasingly thrown foreign films into its mix, like the touted French film A Self Made Hero. And for every unsettling gay-themed effort like Frisk--a movie about a gay serial killer that caused one San Francisco viewer to tell Hu he wanted to spit in his face--the indie mogul seems to serve up a sweeter slice of homosexual romance, like the current Edge of Seventeen. Hu even popped up as an associate producer on the hyped virtual Doris Day flick Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss.

"I like every kind of well-told story," says Hu, who admits to falling asleep to The Nanny some nights. Strand's upcoming hopes bear out his whiplash-worthy tastes. Head On, for example, is a cringe-inducing diary of a swarthy young Greek-Australian who hops from one sex partner to the next in a druggy daze. And moviegoers in the heartland are apparently open to the Strand brand of flints as well. "Edge of Seventeen is playing in Cleveland and Sandusky--who would ever expect it?" gushes Hu.

But don't count on Strand falling prey to a mainstream merger any day soon. "That's always looming, but it has to be the right fit," says Hu, who's bold enough to turn down freebie film-print requests from the likes of Barry Diller and David Geffen. "I'm like, Yeah, right," he says, rolling his eyes again. "Go to a movie theater and screen it yourself!"

COPYRIGHT 1999 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group