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Ask any lesbian film buff of a certain age to name her favorite sex scene in any movie and odds are she will answer Desert Hearts. The famous love scene between stars Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau was a milestone of romantic heat and breathless realism at a time (1986) when positive lesbian images in films were much rarer than they are today and the ones that did exist (Personal Best, Lianna) sprang from the imaginations of men. "I feel good about that love scene. I felt good then, but I feel even better now because I see how easy it is to fail," says Donna Deitch, Desert Hearts writer/director. "At the time, fear was not part of the equation ... it's hard to pull off a love scene with heat. [In Desert Hearts], it is a real scene that builds with sexual and emotional tension." For younger lesbians who missed the experience of seeing Desert Hearts in a theater packed with awestruck women, the rental of the video has endured as the ultimate dyke date movie. But for nearly two years, the film was unavailable on video due to a glitch in the merger of the Samuel Goldwyn Co., which later became Orion, which later was bought by MGM. Along the way, a batch of films including Desert Hearts were not reissued on video. To the delight of video stores whose customers have consistently requested the title, it will be re-released on video in May. Based on the highly regarded novel Desert of the Heart by Jane Rule, Desert Hearts stars Shaver as a college professor who goes to Reno, Nevada, in 1959 for a quickie divorce. At a colorful boarding ranch run by a cranky proprietor (Audra Lindley), she meets a dark-haired free spirit named Cay (Charbonneau) and the women's growing attraction culminates in the love scene that leads to romantic complications. Unlike other "lesbian films" of the 1980s, Desert Hearts ends with neither a man in the picture nor with its heroine facing grim relationship prospects. Even though the future of the women's relationship isn't certain, the film ends on a hopeful, highly romantic note. Deitch, who has gone on to a successful career in TV, directing The Women of Brewster Place (1989) and episodes of NYPD Blue, ER and Murder One, says Desert Hearts was a product of such a different time in the culture that it was even hard to cast the lead roles. "I cast Patricia first and then flew her out to read with the top three contenders for [the role of Vivian]. One, obviously, was Helen and it really clicked between Patricia and Helen." Deitch has since lost touch with Charbonneau but remains in touch with Shaver, who played a small-town, closeted lesbian in Common Ground, which Deitch directed for Showtime. Of Desert Hearts' supporting players, Audra Lindley and Gwen Welles (Cay's sexpot girlfriend) have since died. Welles' battle with cancer and death in 1993 was chronicled by Deitch, her close friend. Deitch last year edited the footage as a feature-length documentary, Angel on My Shoulder, which recently won prizes at several film festivals in the U.S. and Europe. Deitch's next project is a script called Stella about a Jewish woman living in Nazi Berlin, for which Deitch has done research in New York and Germany. Deitch says she briefly considered making a sequel to Desert Hearts. "The idea of a lesbian story in 1960s New York appealed to me," she says, "but I didn't want to stay with those characters. I wanted new characters." Deitch considers Desert Hearts a groundbreaking film in many ways. "I'm still amazed that I managed to raise one million dollars in 1985. But raising the money was so time consuming; that was the toughest part [of making the film]," she says. "Someone came up to me recently at a screening of If These Walls Could Talk 2 and said, 'Look at what you started.' But it wasn't me. It was going to happen, alongside everything else." Fourteen years later, Deitch is pleased that younger audiences will get to see what all the fuss was about back in '86, before the term "queer cinema" was part of the film-going lexicon. "It's like an out-of-print book; it just takes so much energy to find it. Now it's back out there and can be seen again.... That's important," she says. "Sometimes I'm next to a couple of twenty-something lesbians and I want to ask them, 'Have you ever seen a movie called Desert Hearts?' But I don't, in case they say, 'What's that?' It's just like other aspects of culture. There are people of another generation who don't remember Easy Rider. People typically don't study historical origins of another era; they think suddenly they found the water in the well.... But I think Desert Hearts is a landmark film. As an artist, you want to leave something behind. I suppose that would be it; it's my personal time capsule." * Read the PopcornQ review of Desert Hearts! PQ MOVIE NEWS: PQ Video Hot List | Interviews | Advance Guide to Queer Film | Movie News Archive | PQ Video Hot Lists Galore MORE NEWS ON PLANETOUT: PlanetOut News & Politics | PlanetOutRadio | Entertainment
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