What a night!

Outfest organizers sure know how to kick off a film festival. The opening night film, "Puccini for Beginners" was a real crowd pleaser with a lot of genuine laughs and plenty of heart. Well-written and smart, it moves along at a nice pace with terrfic performances from Elizabeth Reaser (pictured below), Justin Kirk and Gretchen Mol.

Writer-director Maria Maggenti (director of the beloved "Unbelievably True Adventures of Two Girls in Love") shot the movie in 18 days saying "I crawled over glass to get it done." New York City-based Maggenti hopes the movie leads to some bigtime directing gigs: "I hope the lavender mafia, whoever you are, are here tonight because I came to L.A. to get a job!"

Pioneer queer filmmaker Kenneth Anger, recipient of a special achievement award, bounded onto the stage of the Orpheum Theatre in a yellow suit and white tennis shows. He started making movies as a kid with his parents 16 mm camera and said: 'I love making films and I've always been out. My grandmother accepted me, my father did not...I was the black sheep. But I wouldn't be anything else." (Loud applause followed)

Now, I'm not one to name drop (well, maybe I am), but we had terrific seats directly behind Justin Kirk and some of his friends and he couldn't have been nicer. Justin (below) told me he felt "pretty damned good" to be at Outfest
this year with such a terrific movie.

Seated to my right was writer-director Craig Chester ("Adam & Steve) who is serving on the jury for best feature film. "Outfest is really like THE gay film festival in America now," Craig said. He gives all the credit to the festival's amazing executive director Stephen Gutwilleg who spoke passionately before the movie about the preservation of LGBT films from decades past, and to Kirsten Schaffer, the festival's popular director of programming and operations.

At the post-bash, chatted up Dreya Weber, star and one of the producers of "The Gymnast," one of the films I recommended in my earlier Outfest Early Picks post. Found out that Weber (below) is not only a terrific actress, but makes her living as acrobatic performer as well. So the amazing acrobats she performs in the film are all her, no stunt double folks.

Stay tuned for more adventures from Outfest 2006!