Friends of the Festival — a fundraising organization for the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival — hosts its monthly screening event this Saturday. The featured film is 2006's offbeat coming-of-age comedy Fat Girls. Twenty-year-old Ash Christian — writer, director and star of the film — plays Texas small town gay Rodney Miller, an awkward high school teen obsessed with Broadway stardom and the belief that he's a fat girl stuck in a small (male) body. Rodney suffers from all the conventional problems of being not-quite-out-of-the-closet in a Christian community, which includes having a plumber father who pretty much ignores him and a church receptionist mother who remains resolutely ignorant of her son's burgeoning sexuality. Fortunately, Rodney finds comfort in his friendship with 300-pound Sabrina, a fellow social reject and proud daughter of a lesbian couple. Fat Girls focuses on Rodney's journey of self-discovery, and the various humiliations he experiences and people he meets along the way. Think Napoleon Dynamite, but with a gay, marginally less geeky protagonist. Fat Girls, Sat., July 21, 8 p.m., Channelside Cinemas, 615 Channelside Drive, Tampa, $9 adults/$7 students ($1 from every ticket benefits Equality Florida), 813-879-4220, tiglff.com.
This article appears in Jul 18-24, 2007.