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Laughing all the way

Westenhoefer on her divorce, Birchmere return and Jodie Foster

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Suzanne Westenhoefer, gay news, Washington Blade
Suzanne Westenhoefer, gay news, Washington Blade

Suzanne Westenhoefer (Photo by Adam Bouska)

For one of her first shows this year, comedian Suzanne Westenhoefer cannot assure her audience she will stick to a certain theme or what kind of jokes she will make. She doesn’t even have a name for her current tour.

However, she does promise that straight or gay, boy or girl, attendees will laugh.

Westenhoefer comes to the Birchmere (3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria) Friday night, bringing with her personal stories that audiences can relate to and laugh about.

“Because the act I do is very truthful, very personal, my show is changing hourly,” she says. “If something changes in my life that makes the story not true, the show changes. It’s not like a written script.”

The blend of honesty and often self-deprecating humor is what brings audiences back year after year, says Michael Jaworek, Birchmere promoter, who has been booking Westenhoefer for more than 15 years.

“Her audience is very devoted and follows her,” he says. “She is funny. Her humor is insightful. A lot of her material deals with gay life, or rather lesbian life. She speaks to and for the majority of her audience.”

Suzanne Westenhoefer
February 1
The Birchmere
3701 Mount Vernon Ave.
Alexandria, Va
Tickets are $54.50

Westenhoefer does know that a bulk of her show will deal with recovering from divorce and entering the dating world for the first time in years. Through this process, she’s learned a few new things about herself.

“I suck at dating,” she says. “I don’t date, I don’t know how.”

A little less than a year ago, Westenhoefer divorced long-term partner Jennifer Houston, whom she married in 2008 before Proposition 8 was voted on in California. Through the transition, she’s learned a lot of new things about herself.

“I thought I would be fine, apparently not,” she says. “I didn’t know how to feed myself. I hadn’t cooked for myself since I moved in with my first partner when I was 21.”

But she says despite the bumps and challenges in her new life, there are so many great and new people to meet and that everyone should “go out, be nice, buy someone a cocktail and meet somebody.” She’s currently exclusively seeing a woman whom she calls “tall girl” in order to respect her privacy.

The stage to Westenhoefer is an open diary, and even when the story is tragic in nature, she always tries to make it comedic.

“I see what everybody is thinking, what needs to be said,” she says. “I’m getting everybody off the hook by saying it. I’m giving them a chance to laugh at tragedy that befalls them all.”

Growing up in the heart of Amish country in Pennsylvania, and coming out right when the AIDS crisis was starting in 1981, Westenhoefer has had plenty of stories to tell. But the act of sharing her personal narrative has its roots in something deeper and older.

“My grandfather was the same way,” she says. “He was that kind of person who goes to the store to get milk and bread, come back and have a fantastic funny story about it.”

On stage, Westenhoefer is not afraid to say whatever is on her mind.

“Once my sister told me she thinks she might be gay, but asked me not to tell anybody,” she says. “What did I do? I went right on stage and said ‘So, my sister thinks she’s gay.’”

This has not gotten her in trouble with her family so far, she claims, because they know it is “out of love.”

Westenhoefer began her stand-up career at the end of 1990, when a friend dared her to go on stage while she was working as a New York bartender. However, she did not need anyone to dare her to be honest and talk about gay life.

“My opening line was I am the only gay comedian you’re going to see tonight,” she says.

Though her first time on stage didn’t go well (by her own admission), her career took off through the ‘90s. In 1991, she became the first lesbian comic to appear on television, when she was on an episode of “Sally Jessy Raphael” called “Breaking the Lesbian Stereotype: Lesbians Who Don’t Look Like Lesbians,” and then went on to be the first openly gay comic to host an HBO Comedy Special in 1994.

Being on television created an opportunity to start a conversation, she says.

“It was a way to tell people not to panic, we aren’t killing babies,” Westenhoefer says. “This has always been and always will be.”

This is not the first time Westenhoefer has been a force for change. She says in high school she formed a group to ban dodge ball. She says activism is in her blood and that she and her family always were political

While still blunt and honest with her audience, Westenhoefer says things have certainly changed since she began. Westenhoefer no longer uses her original opening line.

“I used to do shows in straight clubs and I literally would say I was lesbian in the beginning of every show,” she says. “It’s definitely gotten to be a different show. It doesn’t have to be gay gay gay gay.”

Recent events, such as Jodie Foster’s speech at the Golden Globes and Barack Obama’s speech at his second inauguration, she says mark the change in attitudes toward the LGBT community.

When she came out at 19, Westenhoefer says it was a scarier time period. There was more violence against the community. However, most of her friends and family were supportive.

Now she finds it amazing that people like Foster can go on international television and discuss their sexuality with the world.

“I am very excited for her,” Westenhoefer, who’s met Foster three times, says. “She is a very shy, very private woman. I am very proud of her. To get up in front of an international audience and tell this, it’s amazing.”

Despite leaving the much warmer West Coast to do so, Westenhoefer says she’s always glad to return to the D.C. area.

“I love D.C. for several reasons,” she says. “First of all people will come out for a show even if there is an ice storm. They have southern hospitality, they are political and they want to be entertained. It is the perfect storm for comedy.”

Jaworek is happy to have her back because, “Suzanne is a very funny woman period.”

Even though she shares the experiences of a lesbian, Westenhoefer insists that, “the boys are welcome. It is not just for girls. It’s a show for straights, for gays, and if they wanna come, I promise they’ll laugh.”

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Wes Anderson’s elaborate ‘Scheme’

Director ditches the quirk for an esoteric experience

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The cast of ‘The Phoenician Scheme.’ (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)

There was a time, early in his career, that young filmmaker Wes Anderson’s work was labeled “quirky.” 

To describe his blend of dry humor, deadpan whimsy, and unresolved yearning, along with his flights of theatrical fancy and obsessive attention to detail, it seemed apt at the time. His first films were part of a wave when “quirky” was almost a genre unto itself, constituting a handy-but-undefinable marketing label that inevitably became a dismissive synonym for “played out.”

That, of course, is why every new Wes Anderson film can be expected to elicit criticism simply for being a Wes Anderson film, and the latest entry to his cinematic canon is, predictably, no exception.

“The Phoenician Scheme” – released nationwide on June 6 – is perhaps Anderson’s most “Anderson-y” movie yet. Set in a nebulously dated (but vaguely mid-20th century) world, it’s the tall-tale-ish saga of Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda (Benicio del Toro), a ruthlessly amoral arms dealer and business tycoon with a history of surviving assassination attempts. The latest – a bomb-facilitated plane crash – has forced him to recognize that his luck will eventually run out, and he decides to turn over his financial empire (on a trial basis, at least) to his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), currently a novice nun on the verge of taking her vows, in hopes of mending their relationship before it’s too late. She conditionally agrees, despite the rumors that he murdered her mother, and is drawn into an elaborate geopolitical con game in which he tries to manipulate a loose cadre of “world-building” financiers (Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Mathieu Amalric, and Jeffrey Wright) into funding a massive infrastructure project across the former Phoenician empire.

Joined by his new administrative assistant and tutor, Mr. Bjorn (Michael Cera), Korda and Liesl travel the world to meet with his would-be investors, dodging assassination attempts along the way. His plot is disrupted, however, by the clandestine interference of a secret international coalition of nations led by an American agent code-named “Excalibur” (Rupert Friend), who seeks to prevent the shift of geopolitical power his project would create. Eventually, he’s forced to target a final “mark” for the money he needs to pull it off – his own half-brother Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch), with whom he has had a lifelong and very messy rivalry – or lose his fortune, his oligarchic empire, and his slowly improving relationship with his daughter, all at once.

It’s clear from that synopsis that Anderson’s scope has widened far beyond the intimate stories of his earliest works – “Bottle Rocket,” “Rushmore,” “The Royal Tenenbaums,” and others, which mostly dealt with relationships and dynamics among family (or chosen family) – to encompass significantly larger themes. So, too, has his own singular flavor of filmmaking become more fully realized; his exploration of theatrical techniques within a cinematic setting has grown from the inclusion of a few comical set-pieces to a full-blown translation of the real world into a kind of living, efficiently-modular Bauhaus diorama, where the artifice is emphasized rather than suggested, and realism can only be found through the director’s unconventionally-adjusted focus. 

His work is no longer “quirky” – instead, it has grown with him to become something more pithy, an extension of the surreal and absurdist art movement that exploded in the tense days before World War II (an era which bears a far-too-uncomfortable resemblance to our own) and expresses the kind of politically-aware philosophical ideas that helped to build the world we are living in now. It is no longer possible to enjoy a Wes Anderson movie on the basis of its surface value alone; it is necessary to read deeper in the cinematic language that he has honed since the start of his career, informed by a deep knowledge of art, history, and intellectual exploration to which he pays open and unapologetic homage on the screen. Like all auteurs, he makes films that are shaped by his personal thought and vision, that follow a meticulous logic he has created himself, and that are less interested in providing entertainment than they are in providing insight into the wildly conflicted, often nonsensical, and almost always deplorable human behavior.

By typical standards, the performances in “Phoenician Scheme” – like those in most of Anderson’s films – feel stylized, distant, even emotionally cold. But within his meticulously stoic milieu, they are infused with a subtle depth that comes as much from the carefully maintained blankness of their delivery as it does from the lines themselves. Both del Toro and Threapleton manage to forge a deeply affecting bond while maintaining the detachment that is part of the director’s established style, and Cera – whose character reveals himself to be more than he appears as part of the story’s progression – begs the question of why he hasn’t become a “Wes Anderson regular” long before this. As always, part of the fun comes from the appearances of so many familiar faces, actors who have become part of an ever-expanding collection of regular players – including most-frequent collaborator Bill Murray, who joins fellow Anderson troupers Willem Dafoe and F. Murray Abraham as part of the “Biblical Troupe” that enact the frequent “near-death” episodes experienced by del Toro’s Korda throughout, and Scarlett Johansson, who shows up as a second cousin that Korda courts for a marriage of financial convenience – and the obvious commitment they bring to the project beside the rest of the cast.

But no Anderson film is really about the acting, though it’s an integral part of what makes them work – as this one does, magnificently, from the intricately choreographed opening credit sequence to the explosive climax atop an elaborate mechanical model of Korda’s dream project (a nod to Jean Renoir’s classic “The Rules of the Game,” which also examines the follies of the economic elite on the cusp of its own downfall). In the end, it’s Anderson himself who is the star, orchestrating his thoroughly-catalogued vision like a clockwork puzzle until it pays off on a note of surprisingly un-bittersweet hope which reminds us that the importance of family and personal bonds is, in fact, still at the core of his ethos.

That said, and a mostly favorable critical response aside, there are numerous critics and self-identified fans who have been less than charmed by Anderson’s latest opus, finding it a redundant exercise in a style that has grown stale and offers little substance in exchange. Frankly, it’s impossible not to wonder if they have seen the same movie we have.

“The Phoenician Scheme,” like all of its creator’s work, is ultimately an esoteric experience, a film steeped in language and concepts that may only be accessible to those familiar with them – which, far from being a means of shutting out the “unenlightened,” aims instead to entice and encourage them to explore and expand their knowledge, and with it, their perspective. It might be frustrating, but the payoff is worth it. 

In this case, the shrewdly astute political and economical realities he illuminates behind the “Hollywood” intrigue and artifice touch so profoundly on the current state of our world that, despite its lack of directly queer subject matter, we’re giving it our deepest recommendation.

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PHOTOS: WorldPride Street Festival and Closing Concert

Doechii, Khalid among performers

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Doechii performs at the WorldPride Closing Concert on Sunday, June 8. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

WorldPride 2025 concluded with the WorldPride Street Festival and Closing Concert held along Pennsylvania Ave., N.W. on Sunday, June 8. Performers on the main stage included Doechii, Khalid, Courtney Act, Parker Matthews, 2AM Ricky, Suzie Toot, MkX and Brooke Eden.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

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PHOTOS: WorldPride Parade

Thousands march for LGBTQ rights

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The 2025 WorldPride Parade (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The 2025 WorldPride Parade was held in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, June 7. Laverne Cox and Renée Rapp were the grand marshals. 

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key and Robert Rapanut)

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