Activists ‘Dis-Invited’ to ‘Basic’ Screening

The battle between the makers of the thriller “Basic Instinct” and activists in the gay and lesbian community is heating up again, as the sexually charged movie about a bisexual woman who becomes a serial murder suspect nears its nationwide opening on March 20.

TriStar Pictures, the distributor of the R-rated Carolco Pictures film, “dis-invited” members of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) from a screening of the movie they were to have attended Monday night.

A TriStar spokesman said the studio received a copy of a GLAAD press release late Monday, which the studio said expressed “a strong, negative opinion” about the film. “TriStar felt this was . . . an action in bad faith (because GLAAD members hadn’t seen the movie),” the studio said in a statement Tuesday. “As a result, we asked the GLAAD representatives not to attend the screening. TriStar felt GLAAD had judged the film, based not on its content, but, rather, on their own public relations agenda.”

In the press release and a letter to movie critics, GLAAD takes the position that “Basic Instinct” reinforces stereotypes of lesbians. The group also plans to announce that it will hand out educational leaflets to people attending “Basic Instinct” in major cities.

On Tuesday, GLAAD’s Los Angeles executive director, Christopher Fowler, said the press release was “only a draft version” and he could not explain how TriStar had received a copy. He said the wording was based on reactions that GLAAD New York chapter members had when they had seen the movie earlier.

“If we had seen the film and found it not offensive,” Fowler said, “we would have redrafted the statement.” He called TriStar’s dis-invitation “upsetting,” but he said two of the L.A. chapter’s members got into the screening, despite the ban.

GLAAD New York executive director Ellen Carton, who had seen the film, said the movie continues Hollywood’s history of depicting lesbians as killers. “They’re reinforcing ignorance about homosexuality--the thinking that women who love women want to kill men.”

GLAAD members and other, more militant, activist groups took to the streets last April to protest the movie, filming in San Francisco. The disruptions were such an annoyance to the filmmakers that they received a court injunction to keep protesters away.

Most recently, “Basic Instinct,” which stars Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone, was in the news about its rating. The Motion Picture Assn. of America ratings board at first indicated the movie would receive its strongest, no-children NC-17 rating--a rating that limits commercial appeal. But the studio agreed to make trims so that it would receive an R rating, meaning that anyone under age 17 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.