Greg In Hollywood chats with 2013 Outfest Achievement Award honoree Kimberly Peirce

Earlier this week, I was hosting a mixer for LGBT journalists in West Hollywood and an NPR reporter and a film producer got into an intense conversation about Boys Don’t Cry – just a completely passionate discussion about a film that came out 14 years ago.

Little did I know then that a few nights later I’d be talking to the director of that film, Kimberly Peirce, and be able to tell her about the discussions her movie is causing all these years later.

Miss Peirce was presented with the 17th Annual Outfest Achievement Award at the opening night gala Thursday night. She also directed the outstanding drama Stop-Loss about US soldiers being sent back into combat, and the upcoming movie Carrie which we were shown scenes from and it looks to be a must-see.

“It’s an incredible honor to be honored by Outfest,” she told me before entering the Orpheum Theatre for the presentation. “I’m a huge fan of the festival and I’m actually close friends with (Executive Director) Kirsten Schaffer who runs the festival and got a late night email saying we want to give you the Outfest award for career achievement and I thought, ‘That’s weird getting an award from a friend of mine.’ But I was really humbled and I was really honored so I wrote back and said, ‘Oh my God, that’s amazing.’ It’s been really extraordinary looking forward to this night.’

‘When I looked back and I saw who the past recipients are – John Waters, Christine Vachon, Gus Van Sant – that’s a huge really important group of people who have been making queer stories, queer media, mainstream stuff, alternate stuff and that’s really what it’s about for me is that we’re all out here. We love the medium, we love telling stories and that we are getting the stories out there and to follow in that history is great.’

Since her first two feature films, which she wrote and directed, were so important and memorable, i wanted to know what was next for this gifted filmmaker.

‘I’m going to be doing a ton of movies and I’m making Stephen King’s Carrie with Julianne Moore and Chloe Grace Moretz and Judy Greer and some people who you don’t know … I got to do what I’ve done before which is cast the movie star and also go out and find all this new talent who become stars. That’s fun for me to be able to.’

When accepting her award later that night, Kimberly told a hilarious story of trying to find an outfit to wear to the Academy Awards the year of Hilary Swank’s win for Boys Don’t Cry.

As a butch lesbian who dresses ‘somewhere between a girl and a boy,’ she was confused when a stylist took her to see a bunch of dresses.

‘Butches don’t wear dresses,’ she recalled saying. ‘I don’t care if it’s silk or taffeta or sandpaper!’

She settled on an outfit with pants that she said was ‘butch lesbian transsexual’ and her only concession was agreeing to carry a purse which she needed anyway to carry her phone.

Kimberly feared she’d really run afoul with the “fashion police” Joan Rivers who was doing the red carpet for E! but when it came time to chat with Joan, Miss Rivers stuck to only talking about the movie.

And what a movie it is!