BRIGHT COLORS AND BOLD PATTERNS Premiers at OUTFEST

Outfest has truly kicked it up a notch with its diverse lineup of films this year. Comedian, writer and director, Drew Droege’s Bright Colors and Bold Patterns was a perfect pick as it is unique in genre, style and touches on diversity in the queer community.

Droege wrote the script for the stage and successfully toured it in Los Angeles and New York before BroadwayHD brought it to the silver-screen. Bright Colors and Bold Patterns premiered at this year’s Outfest Film Festival. The stage show was director by Ugly Betty’s Michael Urie but its film adaptation was directed by renowned director, David Horn.

Droege’s character, Gerry, a highly opinionated, flamboyant and talkative gay man, arrives in Palm Springs, CA to attend a gay couple’s wedding. However, unlike his colorful character, the couple have noted on the invitations that guests should avoid wearing bright colors or bold patterns at the wedding. Disgruntled, Gerry rants and goes on tirades about gays being forced to adapt to politics of respectability in a heteronormative society. But unlike some films, Droege does not use typical and cliché punch-lines to get cheap laughs from the audience. In fact, the script is very dense and intelligent, without being intellectual. Although Gerry is very pretentious and sometimes judgmental, Droege’s humanity and modesty is evident between the lines. The film played to a full-house at Directors Guild of America’s largest theater and had the audience laughing the entire time.

Outfest runs through Sunday, July 22^nd in Los Angeles. For more information about the festival, films, schedule, tickets and how to support the organization, please visit Outfest.org.

Vic Gerami

A noted columnist, Vic Gerami is also a journalist and media contributor who is also publisher and editor of The Blunt Post. His show, 'The Blunt Post with Vic' on Public Radio KPFK 90.7 FM, part of Pacifica Network, launched in 2018. Today reaching national international audiences, Gerami first built a foundation of knowledge and skills by learning the media industry during his years at Frontiers Magazine, followed by positions at LA Weekly and Voice Media Group. For the second time, Gerami was selected as a finalist in the Los Angeles Press Club’s National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards “Columnist of the Year” category in 2019, having first made the final round of consideration in 2017. His celebrity Q&A column, '10 Questions with Vic', is syndicated internationally. The Wall Street Journal featured Gerami as a “leading gay activist” in its landmark 2008 coverage of opposition to Proposition 8, the ballot measure that for years denied same-sex couples in California the freedom to marry. In addition to his years of volunteer work as a leading advocate for marriage equality, later Gerami went on to serve as a Planning Committee member for the historic Resist March in 2017. Vic Gerami is also a founding board member of Equality Armenia. In 2015, Gerami was referenced in the landmark Supreme Court civil rights case, Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Court held in a 5–4 decision that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process and the Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Vic Gerami is a contributor to the LGBTQ San Diego County News, Windy City Times, Montrose Star, DC Life Magazine, Out & About Nashville, Q Virginia, GNI MAG, QNotes, GoWeHo, Asbarez, California Courier, Desert Daily Guide, Armenian Weekly, GED, The Pride LA, IN Magazine, OUT Traveler, The Fight and The Advocate Magazine among others.

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