The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love is a touching and comic story of first love between two girls in their senior year of high school. Randy Dean (Laurel Holloman), a rebellious tomboy who lives with her lesbian aunt and her aunt's lover in a working class neighborhood, falls in love with Evie Roy (Nicole Parker), a smart and beautiful African-American who is one of the most popular girls at their high school. Convinced that something's wrong with her posh Range Rover, Evie meets Randy when she drives into the gas station where Randy has a mind-numbing afterschool job. Intrigued and charmed by each other, the two meet again at school and begin an unlikely romance that sets into motion a series of comic misadventures culminating in a showdown at a motel where family and friends converge to keep the young lovers from running away together.
Matter of fact about its lesbian subject matter yet light-hearted and funny, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love is a unique portrayal of the universal experience of first love. Although the film's plot may seem an unlikely story for a romantic comedy with commercial aspirations, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love is both comic and poignant in its dead-on depiction of the almost embarrassingly intense nature of teenage love, making it accessible to a wide range of audiences, including gay and straight.
Maria Maggenti's debut feature film, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, is produced by Dolly Hall and stars newcomers Laurel Holloman and Nicole Parker. Fine Line Features will release the film in this summer.
Maria Maggenti's original script for The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, written in 1993, began with the two protagonists already involved. While the response from those who read it was positive, everyone seemed to want to know how these two girls got together. So she revised the script, beginning the story earlier in their relationship.
Maggenti made the commitment to try and get the film made in the Spring of 1994. She received a loan of $35,000 from an anonymous admirer who had seen her short films and then began looking for a producer who was interested in tackling an offbeat, low-budget project. Through Associate Producer Melissa Painter, she was introduced to Dolly Hall, who had just finished producing Ang Lee's popular success, "The Wedding Banquet." Hall read the script and instantly signed on.
The film was shot during the summer of 1994 in parts of Westchester County, New York, and Newark, New Jersey. Principal photography was completed in an amazing 21 days. Says Maggenti, "We had a young crew, all women, and the energy was really good. Everyone who worked on the film had read the script and wanted to be a part of it. I was working with lesbians, straight women, bisexual women, polysexual women -- all kinds of women together and it was great."
Maggenti says that she wanted to make a film that conveyed the "weird, nervous, thrilling feeling of being seventeen and in love. I am very proud that this is a film about two girls who fall in love with each other. One girl definitely knows she's a dyke and the other girl definitely knows she's in love with her. I think the film deals with teen female sexuality in a frank way and portrays an experience I think everyone can relate to -- being young and in love."
Maggenti came to filmmaking in a roundabout way. After graduation from Smith College, she moved to New York and became very involved in AIDS activism. She recalls, "I was a member of ACT UP from its inception in 1987 and became involved in very guerrilla- oriented, politicized documentaries, trying to get the word out. In 1989, I lost a lot of friends to AIDS and at that time I thought 'what am I going to do with all this emotional experience?' Because I always loved drama and I always loved music and because I had such deep political convictions about the world as it is and as it should be, I thought making movies would be a great way to combine these passions. So I applied to NYU film school and, to my surprise, I got in. I was an aggressive student, trying to understand how to use the medium to translate real life experience into drama. I got older, too, and I got curious about what happens when things aren't always black and white -- that's where the drama comes in."
Although The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love is a film with lesbians in it and made by lesbians, Maggenti is unsure if it should be categorized as a "lesbian film." Says Maggenti, "What is a lesbian film anyway? My film is about first love and how being in love changes everything. It's also a conventional narrative story shot in a relatively conventional way. The content is what's subversive, not the form. This is part of what I think makes it both accessible and pleasurable to people who watch it. They watch it and think, hey, this looks like a 'real movie' and these people could be my suburban neighbors! Yet, this is a picture that comes from someone who knows what she's talking about. I have definitely lived in the whirlwind center of this particular and profound experience. Thank God I'm not 17 anymore!"
Maggenti has two projects she would like to realize in the next few years. One is a serious drama based on a true story set in Chicago in 1969 and the other is an urban comedy about a group of people aged 30 to 50. Says Maggenti, "all of my films will reflect my fascination with women, race, class and sexuality as well as that primal relationship between mothers and daughters, something I think none of us really ever get over."
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