A call from Amy Grant started as these promo chats usually do. Hellos were exchanged, small talk was made and questions about her first studio album of all-new material in 10 years, How Mercy Looks From Here, were answered.

Then we shifted into territory the most successful Christian music artist of all time, now 52, has never spoken about publicly since hitting the scene in the ’70s with her spiritual pop, before Heart in Motion turned her into a crossover success.

During her first gay press interview, and for an entire hour, the Grammy winner reflected – with her usual sincerity and thoughtfulness – on her loyal gay fan base, how she reconciles Christianity and homosexuality, her “compassion” for gay marriage and the unforgettable dinner she shared with out ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero.

How are you, Amy?

Honestly, my brain is so rattled today.

There’s a lot going on in the world right now, especially with the Boston Marathon bombing and the Texas plant explosion. 

There is a lot going on, yes. I just want to go somewhere and sit and be very still. I just did, with the band, a kind of unplugged performance for SiriusXM Radio. It was the first time I have sung some of those songs for an audience and, you know, you can create muscle memory with a song. You just work on your technique and then it becomes like muscle memory. But the first couple of times you do it, it engages all the emotions around the song – and I just kept getting choked up.

Which songs from the album were you performing?

The first one was “How Mercy Looks From Here,” and with all the stuff going on I could hardly get the song out. I was going, “Well, great, they’ll be playing this over and over on XM.” So, there were the nerves of this being the first time performing those songs for anybody. I guess I have felt emotionally drained, but you’re right – it’s because of what’s been going on. We’re all connected.

How does this new album reflect your life at this point?

It’s funny, being 52 and putting a record out, I have felt this incredible freedom. It feels like this is going to be the least required of me as a person to sell the songs. As a woman, when you’re younger, so much of it has to do with looking pretty, doing a video and wearing the right clothes, because a lot of music is visual. But there is real freedom in going, “I never have to worry about what I’m going to look like in a bikini again.” Not that I ever looked good in one, but I would feel weird even just putting one on, because I’m old … er. Older! (Laughs) You sort of go, “Whew. That pressure’s not going to be there.” And I feel that way about the music. To me, it feels essentially about the message of the songs and not even a reflection of me. It just feels like collective life experience.

I know you have a thing for eating chips in the studio because the oil coats your throat. How many bags of Lay’s potato chips did you go through while recording How Mercy Looks From Here? 

It was funny, because (producer) Marshall (Altman), who I had never worked with before, we did a lot of preproduction work. I knew him from (working with) Natasha Bedingfield. And when we started comparing notes, and when I made a request to make sure we have Lay’s potato chips, he came around the corner wide-eyed and he said, “I didn’t think about it until you said that. This is part of urban legend that this started with you.” I said, “Well, I don’t know if it started with me, but all those early days up at Caribou Ranch, where it was so dry, that’s when I started doing it.” Marshall said, “You don’t go to a studio if they don’t have a bowl of potato chips.” And I laughed my head off. I said, “Well, it works; the whole world should do it!”

When the biggest Christian music artist of all time is doing gay press, you know we’ve come a long way. Were you kept at bay from gay press beforehand, earlier in your career?

It never came up.

But you have obviously had a big gay following for quite sometime. Why have gay people connected to you in such profound ways?

All of us sometimes feel disenfranchised or, for whatever reason, like we’re just on the periphery or marginalized. People feel that for all kinds of reasons, and by the time you’ve lived any amount of life, I think anybody has had that experience somewhere. I remember doing concerts back in the early ’80s and going shopping with some of the singers that I was working with and one of them, Donna McElroy, had to get some makeup – and she’s African-American – and I said, “Hey, I’ll meet you back here.” I ran my errands and I came back and said, “Are you done?” She said, “No one’s waited on me.”

Everybody is outside of some circle, but what I’ve always wanted to do is have a message of honesty and welcoming, and being willing to say this is the good, bad and the ugly. This is who I am. And if I’m saying that about myself, it’s like, jump in, the water’s fine. So I love that. I love that people connect to my music.

At this point in your career, are you at all concerned about people passing judgment on you for talking to gay press?

We all ultimately need to know that we’re loved, and I think it would be really crazy if you said, “I’m not going to talk to this group of people because someone’s looking on that’s not a part of the conversation and might have an opinion about it.” I mean, my whole life has been that. (Laughs) It takes all of our energy to navigate whatever road we’re on. What’s interesting is, this last year I was invited on Monday mornings to go to a woman’s house – also a songwriter, also a singer – and just have some time of quiet stillness all together. But her house wasn’t even quiet. There were workers there sometimes, or there was nowhere to get that was quiet.

As we were sitting there trying to get quiet, she said, “It never gets still, and so I’m not gonna get all rankled in my head. I’m just gonna say, ‘Well, there’s the noise of the person next door blowing off their driveway with that really load motor. There it is. There’s the sound of sirens going up and down the street. "She said, “When we learn to observe without judgment, then we have the ability to observe and learn, or to observe and be.” And I said, “Do you know how exhausting it is to observe with judgment all the time? It’s just exhausting.” I have thanked her many times. We could all stand to hear that.

You came from a fairly strict religious upbringing, but it sounds like there’s been an evolution in the way you see people.

Well, I don’t know. When you say strict, that’s interesting. What do you mean by that? (Laughs) I mean, we went to church every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, every Wednesday night.

You’re right. I should say diligently religious.

Yeah. I remember when we moved to Texas and my parents went to this really, I guess, conservative church – a Church of Christ – and something incredible was happening within that church community. I remember seeing this transformation in my mom and dad. I was old enough to remember that. What I remember about our home after that was that it was welcoming … to everybody.

To black people? To gay people?

Just to people.

Did you ever feel that you had to reconcile your Christian faith with your acceptance of homosexuality?

That’s not my life experience. In the same way, if you put my shoes on, you would go, “I thought this experience was going to be one way and it was totally different.” None of us has any idea what somebody’s life experience is like.

Do you remember the first gay person you knew? Did you have a close gay friend?

Absolutely. But my first: maybe college. Someone might have just seemed theatrical or, I don’t know, effeminate, but when I was in high school – I graduated in ’78 – I had friends in high school who eventually said, “I’m living a gay lifestyle,” but they didn’t say it then. People were very private about their sexuality, period. Maybe not everywhere, but I just don’t remember, “I’m exploring this, I’m exploring that.”

When did you first know you had a gay fan base?

Probably by the time I was 18.

How did you know? Did a fan tell you his or her coming-out story?

No. Just from meeting people. I don’t know. I guess I’m kind of going, that was a long time ago. I’m 52. (Laughs) I’ve never even thought about it. It’s like saying, “There’s gray-haired people in the crowd, too.” If people come to my shows, this is what they say: “Wow, there are people of all ages and lifestyles in your crowd.” That’s what they always say. But then someone will come up and say, “You know, I saw a guy with a boa on,” and I’ll say, “Oh yeah, yeah, I’ve always had a big gay following.” (Laughs) To me, I don’t give it a second thought. I remember the first time someone from the crew said, “I smell pot in the back of the crowd,” and I went, “Well, fantastic! Yay!” I’m so glad that just people are coming.

From photos I’ve seen and conversations I’ve heard, you seem to have established some close relationships with people in the Gay Friends of Amy Grant group on Facebook over the years. Can you describe your relationship with them?

When you’ve done something for a long time, there is a great familiarity that comes over the years. I will say that I have a couple of friends that I made – just because they came to shows for a long time – and I figure we must have some things in common because, of all the music we’re all attracted to, at least we share this music in common.

Weren’t you invited to perform at the wedding of one of your gay fans but couldn’t due to your schedule?

I was invited. I was honored to be invited. I have to tell you: Anytime somebody asks me to perform at a wedding, I say, “I do not have a good track record.” (Laughs) A lot of the weddings I’ve performed at, the marriages have ended poorly.

I recall seeing you perform with Melissa Etheridge for Lifetime’s Women Rock! special in 2000 and thinking, as a teenager struggling with his sexuality, “She’s performing with an openly lesbian performer; she’s throwing her gay fans a bone.”

You know what’s so interesting, even when I was discovering my own sexuality and meeting people that had a different experience, I didn’t categorize then, and I don’t categorize right now. It makes me realize that I don’t have any idea of what it would feel like every moment of my life to go somewhere and feel judged.

But you have felt judged, right? Judged for getting divorced. Judged for your pop crossover, even.

No, no. Do people from a distance have an opinion? Yeah, that’s human nature to have an opinion. Whatever was going on in a rag magazine, or whatever someone was saying behind my back or in a heated conversation, I was never in that circle. I wasn’t part of that conversation. I never, ever pursued one chat room. If there was an article or some argument – “I can’t believe you’re doing this” – I just never pursued it because I thought, “We don’t understand each other.” There are a lot of times that I wind up in situations that I do not see eye to eye with somebody. And it doesn’t help to throw gas on the fire. Clearly they’re going to have their opinion. Carry on. And I’m gonna go do what I’m gonna go do.

I know you are not a political person. 

Yeah, I’m not.

So how do you respond to people when they ask you about your feelings on gay marriage?

In the same way that I did not tell one person who I voted for. I don’t. I never talk about anything like that. I did tell Vince (Gill, her husband) the day after the election. (Laughs) But I think my response is, I have had so many occasions in my life where I have felt really strongly about something – but that feeling has changed. Those feelings change about different situations, and so because I’m a public person – and because I want always to bring people together – I really do say this is a world that’s unfamiliar to me and I am always trying to observe with compassion.

This isn’t a cut-and-dry issue for you, then.

Well, nothing is cut-and-dry. You know, one of the most fascinating dinners I’ve ever spent sitting next to somebody I had not met was at a large function with my family. We were all seated with place cards; it was a large group and I introduced myself to the fellow next to me. It was Anthony Romero (executive director of the ACLU). I mean, we didn’t line up our views; I just said, “Oh my goodness.” And he said, “I think they probably thought this was going to be very funny having us sit next to each other.” (Laughs) I just said, “Tell me about your life.” He asked me the same thing. He told me good things about his job and hard things about his job. It was two human beings that have had very different lifestyles sitting next to each other and sharing life. Given 10 choices, would Anthony and I choose the same things? Maybe so. Maybe not. But I felt so changed by that. And what I really felt was, well … I … (pauses)

What did you feel?

Well, I kept his card for a long time, and I hoped that our paths would cross again. I felt a lot of compassion for his parents, first-generation immigrants, and he described his childhood and what it was like. I went, “This makes total sense that he has invested his life coming to the aid of the people in his world that are disenfranchised because, for a whole different set of reasons, his parents were marginalized.”

And you found that inspiring?

Yes. You know what, we all face challenges in our life that we didn’t anticipate, and the most important thing is that we not face them alone. To me, if there’s anything that comes out of this conversation, in the same way that a relationship cannot be nurturing if it’s competitive, it’s this: When you don’t understand something, you can either default to judgment or you can default to compassion. Those take you down completely different roads.

Are you speaking about yourself?

Yeah, and that’s really … ahh, I’m just talking about life in general. This is interesting because I have never done an interview where it feels every question is saying, “Tell me I’m OK.” That’s what feels like the underlying energy behind the questions, and I’m just going, “That’s a powerful kind of energy” – and for different reasons. Maybe not sexuality. Because that’s what every person’s crying out for. Anyway, sometimes a good night’s sleep helps for more concise answers. It’s just that we’re living lives that are different from each other. It’s like two people sitting at a dinner table having a long conversation. If you and I were facing each other at a different table and we walked away and somebody asked us to describe where we were, my entire view was behind your head. I mean, I’m gonna describe the place differently than you. That’s just true about all of life and really, I’m trying to listen and learn and in a way have a great opportunity to try to understand the fan base that comes to a show. I’m even more glad they feel welcome. Even more glad after this. Can I say one thing?

Of course.

I know that the religious community has not been very welcoming, but I just want to stress that the journey of faith brings us into community, but it’s really about one relationship. The journey of faith is just being willing and open to have a relationship with God. And everybody is welcome. Everybody.

Divorce can be ugly. In the case of Benedict XVI, the ugliness began long before he married the Papacy, then left that marriage rather than face the possibility of jail time. 

Catholic Marriage: It's Complicated

In the Roman Catholic Church, marriage is not a one-size-fits-all garment. Two different sacraments are dedicated to it.

• The first is Holy Matrimony, the union of a man and a woman. 
• The second is Holy Orders, the marriage of a priest to Holy Mother Church. 
• Nuns enter a third kind of sacred marriage that is neither Holy Matrimony nor Holy Orders: the marriage of a woman with Jesus. 
• A fourth is personal and universal: the marriage of the soul with God. 

These marriages include sacred monogamy (Holy Matrimony) and sacred polygamy (union of all priests with the collective souls of every Catholic in the world, the union of Jesus with every nun, and the union of God with each individual soul). In each case, there is a union between male and female, even when God is married to a male believer, because the human soul to which God is married is female. 

The most complex matrix of marriages is reserved for one man, the Pope, whose female soul is married to God while his male identity as a priest is married to all Catholics, plus his identity as pope, married to his office as the Vicar (the one who stands in the place) of Christ. 

Whenever we argue that being Gay is not a choice, someone always points out that no one in their right mind would choose to be part of a group that has to deal with so much discrimination and harassment. While it’s not a choice and we do have to put up with a lot of unnecessary flack, I wouldn’t want to be anything, but the big Lesbian that I am! 

Born a male, Jazz began to lie as a girl at a young age. Thanks to supportive parents, she was well-adjusted and happy – except for one thing. For more than two years, the Florida Youth Soccer Association prohibited her from competing as a female player.

Her birth certificate said she was a boy. Her passport called her a boy. FYSA would not budge.

Jazz and her parents took their case up through various administrative levels. When it got to the US Soccer Federation, the board of directors almost unanimously agreed to let her play as a girl.

Then, US Soccer set about devising a formal policy, to cover future transgender players, too.

It sounds like a straightforward case of a clear-thinking, objective board making a decision based both on 21st-century realities, and what’s right for athletes who have not had a voice or advocates in the past.

And it is. But US Soccer’s decision is very rare.

In fact, it may be the only national sports governing body with a blanket policy covering transgender athletes.

Shortly after voting to allow Jazz – then 11 years old – to play as a female, US Soccer appointed a committee to study the broader issue of transgender soccer players. The chair was Dr. S. Robert Contiguglia. A former president of the organization, and a noted Colorado nephrologist, he and the committee pored through an enormous amount of literature and scientific data.

They studied what other sports bodies were doing about trans issues. Most were silent.

The United States Olympic Committee, for example, has no policy.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC), meanwhile, has what Contiguglia calls “draconian” rules.

Then Contiguglia brought three outside experts to an all-day meeting in Chicago. Led by Helen Carroll – sports project director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights – the trio helped the US Soccer task force understand the broad spectrum of sexuality.

It was not difficult. “By the time we got in the room, they were already pretty well versed on everything,” Carroll says.

The result was a draft of a policy that, Contiguglia says, can be boiled down to a few simple words: “We don’t discriminate. We accept who you say you are, so long as you follow the rules.”

The policy lists a variety of ways for players to identify themselves. Those include government documents like passports (which the United States issues to trans-identified individuals), and notes from doctors.

If there is a challenge to a player’s gender identity, it is heard immediately by a US Soccer-appointed committee. There are no intermediate steps, involving club, state and regional levels.

“It’s a self-determination policy,” Contiguglia says. “The bottom line is, we want all athletes to be able to play.”

The policy does not apply to national team members. As a member of both the IOC and FIFA – soccer’s international governing body – US Soccer must abide by their rules.

IOC policy says that an athlete must have undergone surgery to compete as a different gender. “The trend in the U.S. is toward chemical transition,” Contiguglia notes.

After US Soccer passed its policy – with only a few concerns from youth representatives – it was posted on the organization’s website. The next step is formal ratification by the national council at the upcoming Annual General Meeting. Contiguglia expects little opposition.

“As a physician, having had transgender patients, this was all pretty clear to me,” the committee chair says. “There were some misperceptions that someone born a male would have an unfair competitive advantage playing against girls. But that’s not true.”

As the coach of an Under-13 boys team, Contiguglia says, he regularly sees girls the same age who are “6 inches taller than our guys.”

An important part of US Soccer’s policy is educating its members about transgender issues. “We haven’t taken that step yet,” Contiguglia notes. “That comes next.”

“US Soccer did this the right way,” Carroll says. “They set up a task force and are going through the legislative process. 

“They’re the first large sports organization to put a policy into place that includes all recreational athletes, in every state. I hope this is a model for all other organizations, and that when they look at it, they’ll see how well it works.”

Soccer’s national governing body was not looking to be a leader in transgender sports, Contiguglia says. But when the issue arose – thanks to Jazz in Florida – the organization responded.

So far, no other groups have asked for US Soccer’s advice. “This is not the only thing we do,” Contiguglia explains. “But I think it’s important we’ve done it. And we’re happy to share what we know with anyone who asks.”

You know how sometimes you haven’t heard from somebody in a while and you just kind of assume that they’ve crawled under a rock and disappeared from public life for the good of humanity?

Well, someone’s gone and unearthed Alan Keyes, former presidential candidate and current nutcase, and put a microphone in front of his face because apparently this world just doesn’t have enough crazy in it. And Keyes doesn’t disappoint. 

In an interview with conservative radio host Stan Solomon, Keyes made clear that legalizing marriage for gays and lesbians would inevitably lead to the destruction of civilization, in a very literal way.

I should mention that Keyes has a daughter who identifies as gay, although he identifies her as not existing. Not exactly father of the year material.

Keyes claims that “homosexual rights … returns us to the dark ages of human oppression.

“The aim is not compassion for homosexuals, respect for homosexuals and all of this, the aim in the mind of these hardheaded, calculating, leftist, Communist, totalitarians is to destroy the family and to establish the notion that once you have seized power there is no limit whatsoever to what you can do,” Keyes said.

He’s right, of course. Gay rights are really just the gateway drug of rights.

Once gays are considered equal human beings under the law the real agenda is going to be uncovered and by then it will be too late to stop us (insert evil laughter here).

Keyes continues, because apparently he has no filter, “If you want to tolerate abuses then those abuses can be imposed upon the people. Once you establish that, the abuses are then not going to be confined to egregious outrages like this; those abuses are going to be committed against the whole society and they will in the end include the murder of the masses as has occurred in all Communist regimes that existed. That includes as well the expropriation of all property because if you don’t respect the primordial God -endowed belongings that are associated with family life, then why on earth would you be constrained to respect any other form of human property claim.”

Ah, the slippery slope argument. If gay marriage is legal, well, then anything goes! I think the proper response to Keyes claim here is “no duh and obviously.” I mean who doesn’t believe that marriage equality will lead to a Communist regime and “the murder of the masses” and the abandonment of private property laws? Oh, wait, nobody who is sane. 

And who is to blame for all of this upheaval? Why, Satan, of course.

“We need to keep in mind that the Devil is not playing, he’s deadly serious about the destruction of America’s character, spiritual nature and the foundations of that way of life,” Keyes warned. 

In other words, Satan is hell-bent for the destruction of all mankind with the help of his loyal minions, the gays.

But how do we do it? Why, via the Tee Vee, of course. 

“All of that is being destroyed and a key vehicle for doing that is what you might call the popular culture of entertainment: music, television shows, movies,” Keyes claims. “I’ve noticed for instance that every form of entertainment now is being programmed to promote the acceptance of homosexuality, every form of it.”

In other words, Keyes sees homosexuality everywhere he looks and he can’t stop obsessing over it. But somehow gays are the ones with the problem. 

Steven Soderbergh knows who’s significantly responsible for the major success of his male-stripper romp Magic Mike: gay men eager to ogle the barely-covered bits of Channing Tatum and his hunky posse. The Oscar-winning director’s upcoming feature will obviously court the same audience – and not just because Matt Damon lets it all hang out, too.

Behind the Candelabra is so gay that major Hollywood studios would have nothing to do with the Liberace film. Premiering May 26 on HBO, the revealing biopic stars Michael Douglas as the shiny showman who died of AIDS complications at age 67, and Matt Damon as his much younger beau, Scott Thorson.

In our interview, Soderbergh spoke in depth about their real-life relationship, the “flamboyancy scale” used to guide the actors’ gayness onset, diversity in film and why Damon wanted to flaunt the junk in his trunk.

Steven, you’ve made the gayest movie of your career.

That was my intent.

Was it?

In a way. It was an opportunity to make use of all the hours that I’ve spent watching melodramas like Sunset Boulevard - anything connected to a certain aesthetic that we associate with camp or just glamour.

I had spoken to Michael about it conceptually when we were doing Traffic, but when I started researching Liberace, I was really having trouble figuring out what the angle should be. I didn’t want it to be a traditional biopic.

It was a friend of mine in New York who made me aware of Thorson’s book Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace. Once I read that, it solved all my problems. That was six years ago. So we’re sort of experiencing everything through his eyes. He’s Alice going down the rabbit hole.

What did you know about Liberace before reading Thorson’s book?

I’m old enough to have seen him on TV when he was still performing. I was, however, young enough to not really be able to articulate what was distinctive about him. (Laughs) But I remember my parents always made a point of turning on that channel if they knew he was going to be on somebody’s show or if he had a special. I had this vague sense of him being a very flamboyant entertainer.

In 2000, as I started to learn more about him and gather material, what was great was discovering that he was an amazing technical musician, an incredible keyboardist. I found it fascinating that somebody with that sort of skill set was very happy to hide it behind a real genuine desire to put on a very popular and entertaining show. He wouldn’t have been as interesting to me if it turned out that he was a so-so keyboardist.

How did Michael pull off the piano-playing parts?

Then you fooled me, because at one point he’s playing 16 beats to the bar for “Boogie Woogie” and you can clearly see Michael’s hands on the piano.

In my mind, that was a very important scene. Because if we don’t sell that, then we have a problem. There was a lot of effort expended on that particular scene. Michael had to spend a lot of time making sure that he was doing the right thing so that the effects would work properly. He couldn’t just sit there. He had video of the pieces and he had to make sure his hands were very close to being perfectly placed so that we could make it work.

Did you discuss with Michael how flamboyant he could go with Liberace?

Sometimes I’d use a number. I’d go, “Oh, I think he should be at a 7 here.”

A 7 on the flamboyancy scale?

Yeah. But more often than not, he and Matt would both tell you that once you put on the outfit and the hair and everything, you’re kind of there. I don’t remember having to really talk about how gay I wanted them to be. (Michael) would just show up in that outfit with that hair and it was happening.

Was there a scene where you told them to take it to a 10?

The first meeting where Lee (the name close friends called Liberace) first meets Scott backstage, I would’ve said to Michael, “OK, this is about as far as I want you to go.” Take it as far as you feel comfortable.

The sexual tension was so palpable my screen was sweating.

(Laughs) One of the things I liked about it is this sort of Sunset Boulevard dynamic in terms of the age difference and the fact that Scott shows up and Lee’s giving him elevator eyes.

Matt had said that it’s a challenge creating chemistry with someone you wouldn’t normally be attracted to. As the director, was it a challenge to make this relationship seem real?

The key, which they understood intuitively, was: The chemistry was going to come from the comfort level, and the more comfortable they felt with each other and the more that it seemed, “Oh, this is how people act when there is not a camera around,” that’s what would sell it. Just being totally inside of it and never stepping out of it and looking back at it. You have to just jump into the hot tub, and that’s what I think really sells it when I see the movie. They seem so comfortable with each other.

And only one take for the sex scene where Matt is on top of Michael – really?

(Laughs) I said, “OK, Mike, you’ve gotta be able to reach the amyl nitrates, so you should be here. Matt, you’re gonna be on top of him here. I’m gonna drop the camera down here.” We did a take, there was a long pause and I was just like, “I don’t have any notes. That’s that.”

Not that I was counting, but there were three Matt Damon ass shots. When is an ass shot necessary and when is it gratuitous?

In this case, it would’ve been more awkward and distracting if you somehow didn’t show it. But none of that was planned. Matt’s in his robe and he gets into bed, and in another scene he’s getting out of the hot tub. It’s all stuff that was motivated; I guess that’s really what it comes down to.

“Gratuitous” means they’re doing something they wouldn’t normally do to create an ass shot, and that’s not how we were thinking. Though I certainly had it in mind when Matt came to the set and said, “You’re not gonna believe the Brazilian tan line I got from the spray guy. The world has to see this.” (Laughs)

Studios turned down the film because they said it was “too gay.” What exactly is “too gay”?

They weren’t convinced that anybody who’s not gay is going to want to see it. That was really their attitude. It’s not like, “We don’t like gay people.” They had concerns about how to sell it. And when you’re just looking at it on paper, and then when you see what Michael and Matt did, I get why they couldn’t see it. I was just frustrated that they didn’t believe that we could see it.

What do you think it says about Hollywood and society when a movie about two gay men won’t get picked up by a major studio, but a movie that exploits violence does?

That’s more about the culture at large than it is about the studios. They don’t give a shit. If movies like this were making a lot of money, that’s all they’d be making. The reason you don’t see more movies made with non-white protagonists as leads is because, in our culture, non-white audiences go in significant numbers to see movies with white protagonists, but white audiences do not return the favor. It’s not reciprocal, and that’s the only reason that movies lack so much diversity.

Did you know going in that a movie about Liberace would be a tough sell?

Yeah, I knew it would be tough, but I didn’t think it would be impossible. If it wasn’t for HBO, I don’t think we would’ve been able to get it made.

How did you perceive their relationship?

I took the relationship at face value, and I believed that it was a real relationship and that they did love each other. It’s a very weird environment in which to maintain any relationship, but I felt that it was a sincere relationship and that they were both broken but in different ways, and so there was a kindred feeling somehow.

And that last scene really brings authenticity to the relationship.

When I read the book, it convinced me that this was worth doing, because it really surprised me. The way the movie lands emotionally is really unexpected – and in the book, I just found that scene incredibly moving and sad.

Do you see this film and Liberace’s life as a cautionary tale at all?

No. I guess when I look at it, there’s just more of a frustration that there was this added pressure because of the time period – the pressure of hiding the relationship and then, of course, the threat of mortality that was circulating amongst the gay community during that period. I mean, I lived for nine months with my sister in San Francisco during the summer of ’80 through the spring of ’81 on Market Street. If I was gay, I’d be dead. That was ground zero.

What was that experience like for you?

It was interesting to be 17 and walk down the street and have somebody look at me in the way that I’d be looking at girls. (Laughs) That was the first time being exposed to that, but it wasn’t a problem. The friends I did have that were gay and sexually active were really, really paranoid and being super safe. They were scared.

It’s a classic case of everybody realizing everything too late. I always wish we could think 50 years in the future when we look at what’s going on right now in terms of equal rights. I’m just sitting here going, “50 years from now, we’re going to be wondering why we were even arguing about this.” Why can’t we just pretend that it’s 50 years later and just end it now? 

On behalf of the gay community, I would like to thank you for Magic Mike.

(Laughs) It’s so funny, because that was such a huge part of the success of the film – the attention it was given from that community from the minute it was announced. It was such a chatter magnet and, honestly, that was part of the reason why Warner Bros. came in while we were shooting and picked the movie up. This is not something they typically do.

This was an independently financed movie that they came and bought while it was shooting. I can’t even tell you the last time they did that, and that was because they had a feeling that this thing was going to have some cultural traction because of all the Internet attention it was getting.

With Magic Mike 2, have you thought about where you want the story to go?

We actually just had a meeting about it the other day. It’s getting pretty far along. They’ve got a good idea. There were some stories and events that Channing lived through that we just couldn’t fit in the first one. One of them is a really hilarious and very cinematic idea that we reluctantly didn’t put in the first film, because it was such a big idea you could build a whole film out of it – but we didn’t want to build that film out of it. It’s perfect for this, though.

How involved will you be?

I want to help. I have some proprietary feelings about it, obviously. I want to make sure it gets done and done well, so we meet every couple of weeks to talk about where it’s going. But it’s gonna be good. It’s a good idea. It’s not a retread. And there will be more time spent with the characters – all of them.

You’re not gonna tell me the idea, are you?

Yeah, I don’t want to share the details.

Is the original cast returning?

Oh yeah!

What did you make of the flack you received for the lesbian-killer character in Side Effects?

I knew that was coming. I thought, “Look, these kind of things swing in both directions.” You get people who are so on guard that it’s hard for them – especially, when they’re looking at a piece of art – to drop the ideology and look at the macro of it. They’re just reacting with their amygdala instead of their prefrontal cortex and they’re crying foul and you go, “No, actually, if you break this down, you only got halfway there before you started yelling.”

Yeah, there was a bit of a flash mob about it initially. I was trying to explain that – actually, she’s not a lesbian. She’s just a fucking opportunist! (Laughs)

Side Effects was supposed to be your last film. What made you put retirement on hold for Behind the Candelabra?

The movie was supposed to happen earlier and it didn’t. I decided that, actually, this is great if this were – and I’m not saying it will be – the last movie I ever made. I would be very happy. I feel like it’s connected in a lot of ways to the first film I ever made, and it’s also a progression.

Can you talk about the connection between this film and Sex, Lies, and Videotape?

The connection is that it’s completely relationship driven, and most of it is about two people in a room ... except the room is now a hot tub. (Laughs) It’s a progression in the sense that it’s a much more mature piece of work than my first film – obviously, it ought to be – but I’m able to do things, having done it for 24 years, that I wasn’t able to do back then.

Are you still retiring?

In terms of movies, it’s going to be a break. I don’t know how extended. I’m just taking a break from that specific kind of work for a while to see if I can tear everything down and rebuild it. See if I can come back different.