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AE: You really worked as an extra in movies, didn't you?
BH: Damn straight. In fact, I just made you watch one of the movies I was in, Come See the Paradise, starring Dennis Quaid. I remember I was personally yelled at by Alan Parker, the director, who you may know from such films as Mississippi Burning and The Commitments. On the first day, I didn't know the difference between "rolling" and "action," so I screwed up a whole shot. I actually think that comes into Split Screen at one point. Anyway, if you freeze-frame your way through  Come See the Paradise, you can see my blurry, partially obscured face at least twice!

AE: So you insisted every time you replayed those scenes. Here's what I want to know. When will the movie version of Geography Club be out?
BH: You know I'm not supposed to talk about that! Let's just say, it's in the works, and there are a lot of really great people attached. I'm optimistic that if it actually happens, it'll make a big splash.

You know, before Geography Club was published, a lot of people said there was no market for a book like that. I'm sure a lot of people are saying right now that there's no market for a movie like this, and I'm sure they'll be just as wrong.

I've also written a stage version of Geography Club, which has had a bunch of readings at different theaters--all, ahem, very successful, I might add! Now there are a couple of full productions in the works, with some other big theaters considering it. There's even the possibility of a New York production.

AE: Very impressive. Can you believe it? You the popular novelist and playwright, me the editor of AfterElton. Forget Lance and Reichen—we're the new gay power couple!
BH: It's so true. If we weren't us, wouldn't you totally want to be us?

AE: What's that noise?
BH: I think it's the sound of our readers upchucking.

AE: Anyway, it seems like the gay teen lit thing has really exploded in the last few years. How do you explain that?
BH: Partly it's timing. The whole gay teen wave really broke in the mainstream media along with my book and with the books by Alex Sanchez. But I believe there's always been a market for these books—there have always been GLBT youth, right? It's that publishers didn't know about the market until they actually started publishing books for it. I mean, there have always been a few books about GLBT teens before, but a lot of them seemed more like they were written for straight people.

Anyway, I also know there are a lot of older gay folks who like these books, because they sort of give them a chance to relive their own teen years. They get to read about the high school romance--with the school jock no less!--that they could only dream about.

And I think people respond to the sincerity, and the normalcy, of a lot of these gay teen books. A lot of “adult” gay books…how do I put this?

AE: You can say it. They're damn depressing.
BH: Um, yeah. Screwed up people crapping all over themselves and their friends. Falling in love with hustlers, abusing drugs, having unsafe sex, and just generally acting like self-indulgent, self-destructive jerks. I honestly don't know what that's all about, why so many gay authors are drawn to the seamiest, most pathetic side of gay life. But I think it's a literary dead end, and I think it explains why gay fiction almost disappeared in the late 1990s. I literally know no gay men who are as wounded or as self-destructive as the characters portrayed in some of these books.

Anyway, yeah, in many ways these gay teen novels are an antidote to all that. The characters have their problems, but they're real, external problems, not whiny, self-imposed ones. I admit it: my books are not at all harrowing. But then again, I don't think being gay is all that harrowing for most people these days either.

Wow. I think I just alienated every gay literary writer in existence!

AE: Cat fight! Cat fight in the literary circle!
BH: Ha! You know, I'm not trying to be critical, I'm just trying to explain the break-out success of a lot of these gay teen books. And I think a lot of it really is their hopeful, optimistic tone, the fact that a lot of them are funny. That's an appealing contrast to a lot of adult gay books, at least the literary ones.

AE: People write fan fic about your books, don't they?
BH: Yeah, they do. Which is totally cool, even if I might have to sue the pants off them. Kidding!

I've also heard from about fifteen people who have written their own screenplays of my book. I had to reluctantly write them back and say, sorry, I've written my own screenplay. And I strongly suspect I'll like my version better!

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