Jeffrey Schwarz, the Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker behind Vito, I Am Divine, and Tab Hunter Confidential, returns to Outfest this month for the world premiere of his latest feature, Boulevard! A Hollywood Story. The fascinating film unearths the little-known attempt by Gloria Swanson to stage a Broadway musical based on the movie she is most associated with, and was Oscar-nominated for, Sunset Boulevard, decades before Andrew Lloyd Webber’s adaption opened in 1993.
As we see Schwarz uncover archival material, striking parallels between the screenplay of the Hollywood classic and Swanson’s real-life ambition to create a stage show emerge, with her hiring two romantically involved, down on their luck young songwriters, Dickson Hughes and Richard Stapley, to create the musical, bringing them to live with her in New York, and falling for one of them.
Here, Schwarz speaks about the film exclusively with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann ahead of its Outfest world premiere, both in-person at the DGA in Los Angeles on August 17th and screening virtually August 18th-20th 2021.
For Outfest LA 2021 highlights head to TheQueerReview.com and for passes, tickets, and the full festival lineup head to OutfestLA2021.com.
