By Nicholas Snow
Film Festival attendees around the world have enjoyed the short film “GAYKEITH,” but few know that the director is a star in her own right with many credits to her name (including the role of Jack Bauer’s wife in the first season of “24”). Leslie Ann Hope has in fact acted in countless film and TV projects (search her name at imdb.com) including the recurring role of Kristina Frye in the hit TV series “The Mentalist.” I first met Leslie because we worked on the same film, “Formosa Betrayed,” directed by her husband Adam Kane. Nope, Leslie is not lesbian, but she is Canadian!
“I was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and am always proud to say so,” said Leslie. “With a dad in the military, I was raised all over Canada and also overseas. I moved to California from Montreal two weeks past my 18th birthday, and although it’s hard for me to believe, I have actually lived longer in the States than I ever did in Canada, although I still consider myself Canadian.”
You be interested to know that Leslie only found out the fate of her character on “24” six weeks before the season finale. “The tricky part was doing press overseas when the show was an emerging hit and I knew I was ‘dead,’” she revealed. “I had to carefully navigate questions like ‘aren’t you so excited for Season 2?’ and ‘what do you think is next for Teri Bauer?’”
Leslie met Scott Edgecombe, the writer/star of “GAYKEITH,” through a friend.
“We fellow ex-pat Canadians tend to find and gravitate toward each other in LA,” she said. “Scott was a struggling actor and I often hired him as a ‘manny’ for my young son. Scott accompanied me on several acting jobs and we made a funny trio – Scott the big boy babysitter, my kid and me, traipsing off to locations to form a makeshift household wherever the work took me. My son is now almost 18 and still adores Scott. In fact, it was my son who did a lot of the music research for ‘GAYKEITH’ and found the tune that inspired the dance music written by Jeff Danna.”
“GAYKEITH” is described as “a short romp through the outrageous terrain that is Scott’s head – Luchadore, feather dusters, leather boots and internet porn.” As Scott explains about what became initially a monologue for his acting class, “This story is about how last Christmas, for 40 minutes in North Hollywood, I was gay.”
“When I read his monologue and was laughing out loud, I decided to turn it into a movie script,” explained Leslie. “I bought the rights and wrote the script. I knew Scott would play Scott, and the rest of the script was determined by the rule of writing whatever I wanted, i.e. if I saw Scott’s head exploding, I wrote it. If I saw Scott in tighty-whiteys and a Santa hat, I wrote it. I was very lucky to actually direct what I wrote in its entirety – that rarely happens. The movie was edited by John Roberts who was simultaneously working on ‘Glee’ at the time.”
Making the movie was a family affair as Leslie explained, “My husband was the producer, my dear friend Charlie Stratton was
the co-producer, and my best girlfriend Cornelia Kiss was the property mistress. That being said, I think most of my pals were supportive and forgiving, but not entirely sure if they would love it. But you know what? In the truest sense, I don’t care. That is to say, of course I want those closest to me to like what I like. But I am happy to say that ‘GAYKEITH’ in all its glory is all my fault, and I love it.”
In keeping with the themes of this column, I asked Leslie what she would like to say to the homophobes of the world. She responded, “What I would like to say is unprintable. What I will say is ‘Stop that nonsense and be your better self.’” She continued, “What I would like to say to my gay friends is exactly what I would like to say to my straight friends – I love you and am so glad you are in my life.” You must check out www.gaykeith.com.
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