Reel Affirmations: The Nation's LGBT Film Festival 2008

Glenn Gaylord's latest endeavor is a fond look back at beloved sitcoms from our childhood - if they were populated with butch lesbians, hunky gay bartenders and a cast of straght-from-the-70s characters.

Lez Be Friends serves up a butch lesbian heroine, Ricca Pike, and her straitlaced gay male sidekick Jamie, who arrive in Greenwich Village on the day after the Stonewall riots in search of an apartment. Offered a room by the Stonewall Inn's hunky bartender Blake, Ricca must pass as a feminine straight girl so as not to incur the wrath of the lesbo-phobic landlord Truman Dubois.

Like an inverted "Three's Company" for those who thought "That '70s Show" lacked a certain je ne sais gay, Lez Be Friends is a rollicking homage to the sitcoms that shaped many of us, for better or worse.- in which crab lice infests the residents of Casa DuBois, prompting a witch hunt for Patient Zero - this two-episode, feature-length package harks back to a more innocent era, serving up laughter and bad outfits and reminding us that while things seemed much simpler post-Judy and pre-AIDS, gay drama couldn't hold a candle to the outrageous shenanigans inherent in gay situation comedy.

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