Gay news: Wolfe vedio company celebrates its 25th birthday

Sitting in her cozy office in New Almaden, the rural Shangri-La near South San Jose, where quicksilver was once mined in the hills and where American flags line the sleepy streets, Kathy Wolfe explains how she came to be CEO of the largest exclusive distributor of lesbian and gay films Queer As Folk DVD in North America. Her company turns 25 years old this week, and, yes, it's based right in New Almaden, where Wolfe is one of the judges of the annual September community parade. Because, yes, she is a good citizen. And, yes, she is accepted by her neighbors in this close-knit bastion of small-town American values. "And it's funny when we get visits from folks in Hollywood," she says. "They see where we are, that we all walk to work and live in this quiet little paradise, and they can't believe it. They go, 'Nooooo!' " And now, for the back story: Wolfe, 62, reminisces about how, in 1993, when Wolfe Vedio, had a workforce of two, comedian Lily Tomlin decided to pump some fresh blood into the marketing of her video catalog. From out of the blue, Tomlin agreed to an exclusive distribution deal for that catalog with this fledgling company she'd heard about, Wolfe Vedio "It launched us," Kathy Wolfe says. "It was monumental." And now here she is, celebrating a quarter-century in the business and running a victory lap around the country. This month and next, lesbian and gay film festivals Queer As Folk DVD boxset in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York and San Francisco— where the Frameline international festival opens Thursday — are handing out awards to Wolfe and her little company, 11 employees strong, in honor of its big impact. The consensus is that Wolfe Video almost single-handedly has brought gay, and lesbian films — we're talking comedies, dramas and documentaries, not porn — into the American mainstream. "And I wouldn't even call myself any kind of a movie freak," Wolfe points out. "More than anything, movies are a way to an end. When I started, the whole point was to make the lesbian and gay, lifestyle more visible — and not only for the world, but for gays and lesbians to feel good about themselves, to live a true life." From its beginnings in the basement of Wolfe's home, her company has grown to be a patient advocate for what some would call radical change: building a go-to source of entertainment for lesbian and gay audiences,Queer As Folk DVD while slowly folding knowledge of gay lifestyles Queer As Folk DVD into the wider American consciousness. "Kathy's contributions are almost impossible to fully quantify," says Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which last month gave Wolfe its Outstanding Community Partner Award. "Early on, and single-handedly, Kathy set about making real who we are — creating a vehicle for telling our stories to ourselves and to the broader culture." Wolfe Video has ridden successive technology waves, striking distribution deals for videos and DVDs and now for video-on-demand streaming. With an active retail website and a mailing list of 175,000, the company has annual revenues of about $4 million. Wolfe likes to say to her customer base, "Don't just be gay, buy gay." Queer As Folk DVDBeginning in the late '90s, Wolfe Video collaborated with national retail chains — Virgin Megastore, Hollywood Video, the Wherehouse and others — to put gay and lesbian entertainment sections in their stores. It has since worked with Amazon and Netflix to establish "virtual" gay, and lesbian sections in their online stores. The company partners with theaters and studios, too: Wolfe Video worked with the Showtime channel to market "Queer As Folk " the popular 2000-05 series about gay relationships. It sold the DVD, to "Back to Eden" — the first-ever PG gay film, about a young man struggling with his orientation, but finding acceptance in his small town — on its own Wolfe label. "We did pretty well with it, sold about 85,000 copies," says Wolfe, who describes that 2000 release as a game-changer for many gay people. "You could show this movie to a friend or your family or your mother, and they'd get it. They'd still love you. It's the kind of movie that really helped a lot of people. And it was on our label." Wolfe tears up: "I don't have to look outside this office for meaning in my life," she says. Wolfe grew up in Menlo Park, attended Woodside High School and says, "I think I've always been a lesbian." Her father worked for the water company and would take his daughter on house calls around the region, which is how she learned that New Almaden existed — and, in a way, why she moved there 36 years ago. She and her partner of 18 years, Barbara Verhage, a home-school teacher in Boulder Creek, share a home just doors away from the old adobe in which Wolfe Video is headquartered. Queer As Folk DVD setWolfe's grandfather was an accountant and an artist, who loved woodworking, and Kathy grew up building toys and go-carts. She majored in art at San Jose State University, from which she graduated with a master's degree in 1972, and where she taught glassblowing for a while. In order to finish putting herself through graduate school, she and a friend named Bill Plate, a business major, founded a graphics business: Arrow Graphics. It took over her life. By the early '80s, it had 150 employees in 13 offices in five states. Wolfe was making a lot of money. But she didn't have a mission. On a hunch, she began hanging out at De Anza College's new public access television studio in Cupertino. "I worked on the crew for the 'Video Vet' show," she remembers, laughing, "then on a series called 'Fix it Now,' about women contractors." Briefly, she also began making her own documentaries — "West Coast Crones" was an early title — and around 1985 found herself applying for a business license and being asked for the name of her business. "Um, Wolfe Vedio" she blurted out. The rest is history. So what is a lesbian or gay films Queer As Folk DVD set? It's hard to pin down, Wolfe says. "Brokeback Mountain" fits the bill, with its story of a gay love affair Queer As Folk DVD set between a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy. So does "Precious," which isn't specifically about lesbians and gays, but has a lesbian hero. Wolfe Vedio, is a distributor of both, and also of "The L Word," the Showtime series about lesbian and bisexual friends and lovers. Sex scenes in "The L Word" are about as explicit as in R-rated movies. And Wolfe says they're about as far as the company goes in terms of distributing films and TV shows, with explicit sex. Pornography, she says, is off-limits: "Porn doesn't interest me at all. It's a business decision. It's a political decision. It's an emotional decision. Our goals are more associated with people feeling good about who they are, and I think we can do that without going into the porn realm. We distribute lots of titles to libraries. We couldn't do that if we were a porn company." (By the way, "Pornography: The Thriller," which Wolfe will release on DVD Queer As Folk seasons 1-5 DVD boxset in July, isn't porn. It's a thriller about the disappearance of a porn star.) Right now, Wolfe is also excited about snaring exclusive North American distribution rights for "Undertow," about a male love affair in a Peruvian fishing village. It is Frameline's centerpiece presentation this year, showing at 7 p.m. June 22 at San Francisco's Castro Theatre. (Before the show, Wolfe and Maria Lynn, Wolfe Video's president, will accept the festival's Frameline award.) Flying around the country and getting feted isn't all that Wolfe is about these days. She is looking to exercise political muscle through the DVD Queer As Folk seasons 1-5 DVD boxset rollout of "8: The Mormon Proposition," a documentary indicting the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the 2008 ballot reversal of gay marriage in California. And she hopes to ride "the next technological wave" by making the company's entire catalog available for streaming to millions of home computers. "We do feel powerful, and we have great outreach," she says. "And I'd like to work less hours, but I don't see myself retiring, because we're having so much fun, and we're actually accomplishing what we set out to do. We're seeing the fruits of our labors."

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