Emotional Rescue (2012) 
The Flying Machine (2011) 
Vengeance: A Love Story (2010) 
lesbianation.com – Theatre Crawl – ‘Gray Matters’
By Tracy E. Gilchrist
In an age when gay visibility includes The L Word and uber-out Rosie O’Donnell on The View, first-time director Sue Kramer delivers a lesbian-themed film that hearkens to Tinsel town’s golden age of movie musicals and romantic comedies.
Sticking closely to musical genre conventions, Kramer opens Gray Matters with sweeping vistas of a Manhattan that offers seemingly endless opportunity. The film cuts to an attractive couple ballroom dancing to the standard Cheek to Cheek — immortalized by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. While this “little movie” with the stellar cast and the snappy script conforms to 1940′s-era genre, it turns convention inside out, resulting in a thoughtful and prescient “coming out” film.
A traditional American musical begins with seduction through song and dance that ends in marriage but not so in Kramer’s re-imagining. No “I do’s” are in store for the twinkle-toes couple, Gray, played Heather Graham — who is eat-her-with–a-spoon cute — and Gray’s brother Sam, played by off-beat charmer Tom Cavanagh — best known for the TV show Ed. Rather, the duo lovingly bumbles through their dance number, sans sexual chemistry.
Kramer throws a wrench in that standard plot when she creates a lead couple comprised of co-dependant siblings performing in a ballroom dance-class recital for the AARP set. A humble Cavanagh — who’s remarkably smooth on the dance floor — said during a Los Angeles press junket that dancing with Heather Graham on his arm made him look good.
Although dancing wasn’t the only physical contact Cavanagh had with Graham. “We developed a real brother and sister rapport from the start,” he said. The two stars got into a real sibling rivalry, with Graham trying to suckerpunch Cavanagh. “Girl, you can’t hurt me. This isn’t like ultimate fighting,” he would tell her, although he did cop to Graham wielding a strong punch. “She’s a pretty strong girl,” he laughed.
Kramer, who wrote the film for her girl-next-door lesbian sister — doesn’t just tinker with genre; she delivers a smartly packaged argument favoring gay marriage. For Gray, a hotshot ad executive, who comes out as a lesbian in the film but late in life, marriage isn’t ever on the table. And in this instance art does imitate life. When they were younger, Kramer’s sister developed a crush on Kramer’s best girl friend, she said. “Why wouldn’t she like who I liked,” Kramer said. So, Kramer turned the story into a love letter to her sister and a feature film.
Casting someone to essentially play her sister, was no easy task for Kramer, she said. The actress needed to have name recognition, and a girl-next-door vibe. When Graham signed on for the film, the pieces fell into place for the director.
In Gray Matters, brother and sister blissfully serve as each other’s ostensible beards until Gray decides to hook Sam up with Charlie an enigmatic hottie,played with candor and universal sex appeal by Six Degrees’ Bridget Moynahan. Trouble is, the single-and-loving-it Gray’s hot for her brother’s soon-to-be shot-gun bride, which causes hijinks galore when Gray baby sits Charlie the night before her Vegas wedding. The three leads had to have chemistry, Kramer said, admitting she hit the jackpot with Graham, Cavanagh and Moynahan. “Tom and Brigitte were in awe of each other,” she said about their working relationship.
The trouble ensues in Vegas when like most girls in Sin City, the gals take a bath together, drink like sorority girls playing “I Never”, belt out “I Will Survive” with disco-legend Gloria Gaynor and eventually make out. And like many gay gals on the fence, once Gray plants her lips on the chestnut-haired beauty — smack in the middle of Charlie’s alcohol-induced blackout — her bells go off.
No real spoiler here but Charlie and Sam go through with the wedding, even if just for a minute, it seems that Gray has a shot of whisking away her brother’s bride. When asked if he’d ever had a hot lesbian friend block him from landing a date with a woman, the affable Cavanagh laughed riotously. “I think I’d remember that,” he said.
When the object of her newly discovered affection ties the knot with Sam, leaving Gray to nurse a broken heart and coming out — Gray calls in the reinforcements: her wacky shrink Sydney—Oscar-winner Sissy Spacek in an uncharacteristically comic turn and her best friend Carrie, played by genius funny woman and SNL alumna Molly Shannon. The budding lesbian also throws the fish back a few times to prove to herself she’s straight when she flirts with a few boys. Pansexual darling and Tony-Award winner for Cabaret, Alan Cumming plays a sweet soul of a cabbie, named Gordy, who rises above his puppy love for Gray to help find her a good woman. And could Gray’s Knight-ess in shining armor be none other than The L Word’s British siren Rachel Shelley, who plays Julia Bartlett, a hard-ass ad client with an affinity for Gray’s sketches?
When questioned about the shows L Word factor of casting such a gorgeous, feminine actress to play Gray, Kramer said she wrote and cast what she saw. Her sister was the pretty girl next door. And as a litmus test with lesbian audiences, the film screened at Outfest in L.A. last summer. “Everyone came up to me and thanked me afterward,” Kramer said. A few naysayers derided the Hollywood aesthetic but Kramer’s just telling a personal story, she said. But feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, she said.
In a spot-on genre-bending film that’s smartly acted and poignant, Graham — who caught the keen-eyed lesbian’s attention as a cutie-pie baby-dyke cowgirl in 1994′s Even Cowgirl’s Get the Blues — creates a convincingly conflicted Gray while she brandishes her comic chops. With Gray Matters, Kramer’s created a tasty little nugget that could draw a wide audience of 1940′s-era film lovers into pondering its gay marriage themes.
Source: LesbiaNation