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 SOAPBOX - Judith Light Gets The Last Word
With a new movie (Save Me), a juicy role on Ugly Betty and her continuing decades of tireless charity work for GLBT causes, we nominate JUDITH LIGHT to be fairy godmother of the gay rights movement
Gay marriage is historic. It creates a reference point for people for years to come. It’s essential. I hold the GLBT community in such high esteem. I’ve learned so much and I’ve been so inspired by the nature of its courage and depth of process that this community has gone through.
I hope for the best, and I know how strong the community can be, but I also know that the community has to do the work of holding itself in high esteem. Not asking anybody for anything, but saying, “We are doing this, these are our rights!” It troubles me when I see people having to ask for things.
The system we live in makes me very upset. I know what this community did during the height of the AIDS pandemic. What it was like for us to go to the hospital, bring the sick home, take care of them, go to funerals, write eulogies and create organizations because nobody in the federal government was giving us anything! I say “us,” because I consider myself a part of this community. I feel like I’ve been on the front lines, watching what everyone has done.
I’m still very concerned and I want it to be different for the gay community. Working with the Point Foundation, I see young people who are hungry for their history, as well as raising themselves to a place of leadership. And not just in the gay community, but in the world, which is where the power of this community will shine in major ways.
My new movie, Save Me, is about the triumph of love over the misguided idea of the ex-gay movement. Chad Allen came to me and said, “I have this script that’s never going to get done as a movie.” He was part of a theater company in New York that was taking films and turning them into plays. I met with Chad, Robert Gant from Queer As Folk and the rest of the producing team involved in the film and we said, “Why don’t we try to make this into a movie?” But it was a comedy. We really wanted to get the rights and make it a drama. We felt the drama would take us to a new level. We thought it was such a serious subject that we wanted to take it to that level. I wanted to take on this character in Save Me who thinks she can change people’s sexual orientation. People know my politics and know how ardently I support the gay community. I felt I could understand it from both sides. Everyone involved in the film feels that it is very important to use this movie as a tool to bridge a huge gap in this country. And that there is a wall that has been up forever, and we wanted to find a way over that wall.
When we showed the film at Sundance, people were surprised that they felt for my character, instead of just writing her off. Nobody is evil, but it doesn’t mean that they’re not misguided. It was important to show that this woman could have had good intentions but was misguided about where she put her energy. In my role on Ugly Betty, I love that we are talking about age. I get to play a woman who has this joie de vivre, who has garnered a great deal of wisdom through the years and has a mouth on her! I wouldn’t use the word “cougar” to describe her. I would say “woman of wisdom” or “woman of wit.” The fact that we’re talking about doing a magazine called Hot Flash on Ugly Betty is just heaven. I encourage the younger generation to know their history. What your people have done, who your friends and straight allies were. Know it so you can have real pride in your being: of who you are and where you came from. That’s your family. I urge you to draw courage and power from it.
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Save Me (First Run Features) is playing in theaters now. Visit savememovie.com for more info!
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