a&e features
A ‘Joy’-ful outlook
Isabella Rossellini muses on her accidental career and gay credibility
Isabella Rossellini with Robert De Niro in ‘Joy.’ (Photo by Merie Weismiller Wallace; courtesy Twentieth Century Fox)
Isabella Rossellini is leading me into the light.
There, in front of an almost full-wall window in a hotel suite at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in New York City, we stand beaming as her assistant snaps a pic. Good lighting is everything, as Rossellini notes in her thick Swedish-Italian accent — otherwise, “it’ll get all black.”
She should know. Rossellini embarked on a career in front of the camera when, at the age of 28, the classic Rome-born beauty fell into modeling, hawking Lancôme as the company’s spokeswoman for 14 years and posing for an array of eminent celeb photographers, including Annie Leibovitz and Robert Mapplethorpe.
“When I worked with him, he was quite sick with AIDS,” Rossellini says. “I remember how sad I felt, because he was very handsome and he celebrated in his photos the male body, the human body and to see him paying such a toll, not even just physically. But he seemed to be in good spirits. I wondered … of course he knew he was dying. It was a very difficult time, the ’80s. And it was the last book that he made. They wanted him to photograph women and he did beautiful portraits of several women.” (Also featuring Yoko Ono and Susan Sarandon, “Some Women” was published in 1989, the same year Mapplethorpe succumbed to AIDS-related illness.)
Rossellini’s striking appeal wasn’t only dark room-worthy, however.
While modeling, Rossellini also began mirroring the career of her iconic mother, Ingrid Bergman (Rossellini’s father is Italian director Roberto Rossellini), reaching beyond the glossy pages of Vogue to become a film star. As abused nightclub vocalist Dorothy Vallens in David Lynch’s 1986 trippy thriller “Blue Velvet,” a role that required Rossellini to sing, Mapplethorpe’s muse demonstrated more than a pretty face — she could really act.
Rossellini also happens to know a lot about animal sex. In 2008, she directed, produced, wrote and starred in a series of short films for Sundance titled “Green Porno,” illustrating the various mating acts of insects and other non-humans with, of course, cardboard and foam rubber. And if you ever wondered how dolphins do it (who hasn’t?), the actress also created the 2014 web series “Seduce Me,” wherein she discusses “blowhole sex” as she pseudo swims in a diorama-inspired scene among some very frisky Flippers.
Rossellini’s latest is certainly less niche. In director David O. Russell’s “Joy,” the veteran actress is back on the big screen as Jennifer Lawrence’s affluent, finger-wagging stepmom, Trudy, a tough-love foil to the based-on-real-life titular character.
“It’s empowering to women,” Rossellini says, nuzzled into the corner of a sofa, “and it’s also about the struggle of success. Generally when a person is successful people imagine, ‘Oh, overnight success, luck,’ instead of how arduous it is. The film portrays it very well. Family encourages you and discourages you because they are protective.”
Though Rossellini recognizes Joy’s unwavering ambition to seize businesswoman status — a path she blazes after inventing a fancy mop — her own life, she says, has been “completely different,” a truth she attributes to her European background as well as her famous film industry family.
“You know, I was more successful than I thought I’d be,” she says. “I’m old enough to have belonged to a group of women who thought, ‘I’m gonna get married and be a housewife.’ Instead, a career came, and it was really modeling — modeling is almost like winning the lottery.”
Rossellini’s modeling career continued to blossom in the ’80s, when she graced the covers of countless women fashion mags: Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair and Elle. She could’ve been a stay-at-home mom. She could’ve cleaned and cooked and called it a day. And she thought, for many years, she would. But in her 30s, she changed her mind.
“I understood that being financially independent meant also to be independent,” she says. “You don’t really do anything to become a good model. You’re either chosen or not chosen, liked or not liked. If you are a bitch, they’re not gonna hire you anymore. And modeling really teaches you the discipline of work. So modeling for me was a wonderful revelation. Though my mother worked — my mother was Ingrid Bergman, had a big career — it was seen as she had a gift, she had a talent, that it was extraordinary. It was a kind of a call for her, but it wasn’t percolating down to the family that all the women should have a career, no.”
In 1976, Rossellini shot her movie debut, playing a minor role in her mother’s film “A Matter of Time.” Ten years later, Rossellini became an icon in her right, achieving cult status after starring in “Blue Velvet.”
It was “Death Becomes Her” in 1992, though, that secured the actresses’ queer cred with a dream trifecta: Rossellini, Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn, an ensemble cast who punched up the film’s camp commentary on pre-Botox-fad superficiality. “Now, a warning,” her potion-touting character, Lisle Von Rhuman, cautioned Meryl’s Madeline Ashton to the delight of supremely geeked gays everywhere.
She says “Death Becomes Her” was always meant to be one of the gayest films about beauty you’ve ever seen even if she and director Robert Zemeckis, didn’t know it at first.
“When the film came out, Robert Zemeckis was so successful after ‘Roger Rabbit’ and the films that he did at the time were big, big, big. Also, they were family films, so when he did ‘Death Becomes Her’ he also thought it was going to be a family film, but then they did all this marketing research and said” — Rossellini unleashes a whooping laugh — “‘Oh, it’s a gay film.’”
It took almost no time for Zemeckis and the cast to realize they weren’t making the next “Roger Rabbit.” “Within three, four months he said, ‘You know, our audience is a gay audience,’” Rossellini says.
Rossellini has become accustomed to swooning gay adoration. She’s inspired drag queens, and not just with that vampy nip-hiding-necklace coverup she wore in “Death Becomes Her.”
“They do me in drag in ‘Blue Velvet,’” she says. “I had a friend who was gay who died, unfortunately, and he would go out on Halloween and dress up like me. I had a ‘Blue Velvet’ robe, and I had my wig for a while, and he would borrow it every year.”
Rossellini is smitten with the idea of men resurrecting her most iconic screen characters in drag. She calls it a “compliment.”
“Oh, it’s fun. I know there are certain women like Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand who are particularly liked by the gay culture. I know that strong women are liked and I wonder why strong women and not weak women.” She laughs. “I don’t know what it is in the gay culture. What is it that makes the gay culture to be so supportive of Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, images of these iconic women? Why did you like so much stronger women instead of, like, a housewife?”
Rossellini famously appeared in Madonna’s “Erotica” video and also photographed for her controversial “Sex” book, both out in 1992. The latter, she says, was not what she had hoped.
“I didn’t like it totally,” Rossellini says. “In a way, I found it a bit moralistic in the sense that Madonna is playing the sadomasochistic, Madonna playing the gay. It was teaching us to be open-minded, and she didn’t really reveal anything about herself. It wasn’t vulnerable. Vulnerability is not what she exudes and what she did was powerful and unique. There was something about the book that was not erotic, and not moving either. It was aesthetic. It was guarded. It wasn’t empowering. But she is an incredible lady. I’m looking at her, because she’s now in her 50s and I’m 63, and I would like to have a role model of a woman who is older. I want to see these powerful women. How do they fight ageism? What do they propose to fight ageism?”
Regarding Hollywood ageism, not much has changed, she says.
“I see that, at 40 now, you’re still considered beautiful, but I don’t see it defeated. They stretch the younger age longer, but I haven’t seen acceptance.”
Rossellini celebrates Streep and Helen Mirren, actresses who have “given old age an energy that is beyond that” without sucking down an age-defying potion. At the same time, she notes, “there are fewer roles (for older women), and they go to them.”
It’s a reality she’s come to terms with, and instead of sulking over Streep and Mirren’s lock on roles for women over 60, she’s blazed her own quirky path. The titles alone are telling (and this is not counting her horny dolphin doc): “The Saddest Music in the World,” “My Dog Tulip” and 2011’s “Chicken with Plums.”
It’s no surprise, then, that she’s also voiced a hamster. In the gay-themed coming-of-age drama “Closet Monster” from out producer Niv Fichman and first-time director Stephen Dunn, who’s also gay, Rossellini takes on a rodent. Her involvement, she says, is partly due to the fact that she’s friends with Fichman, and also, she says, “maybe because I study animals, or maybe just because I have a foreign voice.”
For the film’s protagonist, a sexually confused boy named Oscar, the hamster is an illusion, his muse for comprehending life tropes like “mortality, lying … that life is tough,” Rossellini says, laughing.
Though it won Best Canadian Feature Film at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, the indie isn’t meant for mainstream consumption, like “Joy,” and that’s just fine by Rossellini.
“Since I was always interested in animals, I went back to university to study animals and then I made my own film and I do monologues,” she says. “The work that I have done doesn’t have the exposure of ‘Joy.’ I am still working and doing a lot of work but more in an artisanal way.”
After all, someone has to enlighten the world on the sexual habits of sea animals.
Chris Azzopardi is editor of Q Syndicate, an LGBT wire service. Reach him via his website at chris-azzopardi.com and @chrisazzopardi.
a&e features
Queery: Meet artist, performer John Levengood
Modern creative talks nightlife, coming out, and his personal queer heroes
John Levengood (he/him) describes himself as a modern creative with a wide‑ranging toolkit. He blends music, technology, civic duty, and a sharp sense of wit into a cohesive artistic identity. Known primarily as a recording artist and performer, he’s also a self‑taught music producer and software engineer who embodies a generation of creators who build their own lanes rather than wait for one to appear.
Levengood, 32, who is single and identifies as gay and queer, is best known as a recording artist who has performed at Pride festivals across the country, including the main stages of World Pride DC, Central Arkansas Pride, and Charlotte Pride.
“Locally in the DMV, I’m known for turning heads at nightlife venues with my eye-catching sense of style. When I go out, I don’t try to blend in. I hope I inspire people to be themselves and have the courage to stand out,” he says.
He’s also known for hosting karaoke at Freddie’s Beach Bar in Arlington, Va., on Thursday nights. “I like to create a space where people feel comfortable expressing themselves, building community, and showcasing their talents.”
He also creates social media content from my performances and do interviews at LGBTQ+ bars and theatres in the DMV. Follow the Arlington resident @johnlevengood.
How long have you been out and who was the hardest person to tell?
I have been fully out of the closet since 2019. My parents were the hardest people to tell because my family has always been my rock and at the time I couldn’t imagine a world without them. Their reactions were extremely positive and supportive so I had nothing to fear all along.
I remember sitting on the couch with my mom, dad, and sister in our hotel room in New Orleans during our winter vacation and being so nervous to tell them. After I finally mustered up the nerve and made the proclamation, I realized my dad had already fallen asleep on the couch. My mom promised to tell him when he woke up.
Who’s your LGBTQ hero?
My LGBTQ heroes are Harvey Milk for paving the way for gays in politics and Elton John for being a pioneer for the fabulous and authentic. My local heroes in the DMV are Howard Hicks, manager of Green Lantern, and Tony Rivenbark, manager of Freddie’s Beach Bar. Both of them are essential to creating spaces where I’ve felt welcome and safe since moving to the DMV.
What’s Washington’s best nightspot, past or present?
Trade tops the list for me because of the dance floor and outdoor space. It’s so nice to get a break from the music every once and a while to be able to have a conversation.
We live in challenging times. How do you cope?
I’m still figuring this out. What is working right now is writing music and spending time with family and friends. I’ve also been spending less time on social media going to the gym at least three times a week.
What streaming show are you binging?
After “Traitors” Season 4 ended, I was in a bit of a show hole, but “Stumble” has me in a laughing loop right now. The writing is so witty.
What do you wish you’d known at 18?
At 18, I wish I would have known how liberating it is to come out of the closet. It would have been nice to know some winning lottery numbers as well.
What are your friends messaging about in your most recent group chat?
We are planning our next trip to New York City. If you can believe it, I visited NYC for the first time in 2025 for Pride and I’ve been back every quarter since. Growing up in the country, I was subconsciously primed to be scared of the city. But my mind has been blown. I can’t wait to go back.
Why Washington?
It’s the closest metropolitan area to my family, but not too close. I love the museums, the diversity, the history, and the proximity to the beach and mountains. It’s also nice to live in a city with public transportation.
Aging RFK Stadium has come down, but the RFK grounds are still getting lit up. Welcome back to the stage Project GLOW, D.C.’s homegrown electronic festival, on May 30-31. Back for its fifth year on these musically inclined acres, Project GLOW returns with an even more diverse lineup, and one that continues to celebrate LGBTQ antecedents, attendees, and acts.
Project GLOW 2026 headliners include house and techno star Mau P, progressive house legend Eric Prydz, hard-techno favorite Sara Landry, and bass acts Excision b2b Sullivan King, among the lineup of trance, bass, house, techno, dubstep, and others for the fifth anniversary year.
President & CEO Pete Kalamoutsos — born and raised in D.C. — founded Club GLOW in 1999. In 2020, GLOW entered into a partnership with global entertainment company Insomniac Events to produce live events like Project GLOW, which kicked off in 2022.
As in past years, Project GLOW not only makes space, but is intentionally inclusive of the LGBTQ community, one of its most dedicated fan bases. The festival’s LGBTQ-focused Secret Garden stage blooms again — a more intimate dance area that stands on the strength of DJs and musicians who draw from the LGBTQ community. D.C.’s LGBTQ nightlife mastermind Ed Bailey is the creative mind behind Secret Garden again. He joined Project GLOW in 2023.
“Kalamoustos says that “he’s proud of his partnership with Ed Bailey, along with Capital Pride and [nightlife producer] Jake Resnikow. It’s amazing to collaborate with Bailey at the Secret Garden stage, especially after the curated lineup we worked on at Pride last year.”
The Secret Garden will be a bit different from other stages: Eternal (“At the Eternal stage, time stands still. Lose yourself in the dance of past, present, and future, surrendering to the eternal rhythm of the universe”) and Pulse (“Feel the rhythm of the beat pulse through your veins as the heartbeat of the crowd synchronizes into one. Here, every moment vibrates with life as it guides you through a new dimension of euphoria”). The Secret Garden stage is in the round, surrounded by 16 shipping containers. The containers play canvas to muralists from around the world, who are coming in to paint them in a vibrant garden-style vibe. “We gave this stage some extra love with this layout,” K says, “ we finally cracked the code.”
K says that this will be the biggest lineup yet for the Secret Garden, featuring Nicole Moudaber b2b Chasewest, Riordan b2b Bullet Tooth, Ranger Trucco, Cassian, Eli & Fur, Cosmic Gate and Hayla. The stage is also the largest yet, featuring an expanded dance floor and 360-degree viewing.
Across all stages, K says that his goal for the fifth anniversary is “More art and fan interactive experience, more like a festival, strive to be like a Tomorrowland, as budget grows to add more experience.” Last year’s Project GLOW alone drew 40,000 attendees over two days.
K, however, was not satisfied with one festival this spring. GLOW recently announced a “pop-up” one-day event. Teaming up with Black Book Records, GLOW is set to throw a first-of-its-kind dance-music takeover of Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., headlined by electronic music star Chris Lake. Set for April 18, this euphoric block party will feature bass and vibes blocks from the White House. Organizers expect as many as 10,000 fans to attend. Beyond music, there will be food, activations, and plenty of other activities taking place around 6th St and Pennsylvania Ave NW – a location familiar to many in the LGBTQ community, as this sits squarely inside the blocks of the Capital Pride party that takes place in DC every June.
Over the past two decades, Club GLOW has produced thousands of events, from club nights to large-scale festivals including Project GLOW, Moonrise Festival, and more. Club GLOW also operates Echostage.
a&e features
New book celebrates 1970s dance music icons
‘A Night at the Disco’ features interviews with Donna Summer, Debbie Harry, more
If you’re a fan of 1970s-era dance music, don’t miss the irresistible new book by Christian John Wikane and Alice Harris, “A Night at the Disco,” which revisits more than 90 interviews conducted with some of the biggest names in pop culture.
“A Night at the Disco” (ACC Art Books) was published on March 24, and distributed by Simon & Schuster. It celebrates more than 100 artists who sparked a phenomenon in dance music from 1970-1979 and features excerpts from interviews with everyone from Donna Summer to Debbie Harry.
Lost City Books (2467 18th St., N.W.) will welcome author Christian John Wikane for a book signing and conversation about “A Night at the Disco” on Thursday, April 16 at 6 p.m. Details at lostcitybookstore.com. Bird in Hand Coffee & Books in Baltimore (11 E. 33rd St.) )will also host a Q&A with the author on Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. Details at theivybookshop.com.
Below is an excerpt from “A Night at the Disco.”
“I’ll let in anyone who looks like they’ll make things fun.” Steve Rubell is guiding a New York Times reporter through Studio 54 as resident DJ Richie Kaczor dazzles the crowd with records by CHIC, Odyssey, and T-Connection. “Disco, that’s where the happy people go,” The Trammps sing as dancers spin and twirl underneath tubes of flashing lights. Seven months since Rubell and co-owner Ian Schrager opened Studio 54 in April 1977, it’s welcomed untold numbers of “happy people” … at least those lucky enough to pass through the doors.
“We were part of the chosen few,” says André De Shields, who immortalized the title role in The Wiz on Broadway at the time. “We could show up at Studio 54 and the doorman at the velvet stanchion would look over everyone and point to us from The Wiz to come in, that kind of thing.” As the lead vocalist in the GRAMMY-nominated Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, whose debut modernized big band sophistication for the discothèques, Cory Daye had carte blanche in the club. “The energy was like a New Year’s Eve party every night,” she says. “I would go up to the mezzanine and watch the mechanical light pillars go up and down, metallic confetti falling from the ceiling, the spoon and the moon. I was so fascinated and enamored by it.
“When a certain song came on, the people would just rush to the dance floor. There was no contact dancing — the hustle was pretty much on its way out — but it was just an amazing experience to see all the cultures together. It was a fusion of cultures, which described my life and my band, so I was right at home there.”
“Studio 54 was the place,” adds Linda Clifford. “Crazy parties. If you could think it, you would see it. It was like a circus. Just an amazing place to be. I worked 54 so many times. It was like a second home to me. The people there treated me so well. The crowd always seemed to enjoy my show. I always had a good time with them. That was the most important thing: making sure that they had fun.”
Well before Studio 54 opened, disco had become a business juggernaut. “A four billion dollar market and still growing,” Billboard announced in February 1977, with dance music offering more variety than ever. “There is no longer a single, readily identifiable disco beat, but a kaleidoscope of sounds that are melodic and danceable,” Tom Moulton told the magazine. In the clubs, records by veteran artists like Stevie Wonder and the Bee Gees were mixed in with a range of new acts like Grace Jones, Boney M., and The Ritchie Family, while everyone from ABBA to Marvin Gaye scored number one pop hits with songs that had club-centric storylines.
Beyond the charts, disco itself remained as idiosyncratic as ever, especially on several productions by Laurin Rinder and W. Michael Lewis, whose studio creations, El Coco (“Let’s Get It Together,” “Cocomotion”) and Le Pamplemousse (“Le Spank”), joined their own “Lust” from Seven Deadly Sins (1977) among the most tantalizing releases on AVI Records. Rinder & Lewis also produced acts for the newly hatched Butterfly Records in Los Angeles, where Saint Tropez (“On a Rien à Perdre”) and Tuxedo Junction (“Moonlight Serenade”) reflected the duo’s high gloss sound, spanning everything from European sophistication to a more literal translation of the ’40s sensibilities popularized by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.
12-inch singles had also grown as the preferred format to approximate the club music experience at home. Nearly a year after Atlantic Records introduced its series of promotional 12-inch singles for DJs, New York-based Salsoul Records released the industry’s first commercially available 12-inch single, “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure, in May 1976. A year later, T.K. Records was the first label to certify a gold record for a 12-inch single when Peter Brown’s “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me” tallied one million sales.— Christian John Wikane
(From “A Night at the Disco” by Alice Harris & Christian John Wikane. Published by ACC Art Books.)
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