Guinevere Turner

Described by critic J Hoberman as looking like a 1940s film star dressed as a Little Rascal, the delightful Guinevere Turner made her acting, screenwriting and producing debut with Rose Troche's indie "Go Fish" (1994). Centering on Chicago's Wicker Park lesbian community, "Go Fish" marked an expansion within the "New Queer Cinema" movement to girl-oriented themes. Turner starred as the confident if lovelorn Max, a hip, verbally attuned "Generation X" lesbian who ends up in the arms of a gay veterinarian, and her script, stronger in its ripe, knowing ripostes then in its simple yet meandering girl-meets-girl plot, revealed urban lesbian life in an almost documentary fashion. Initially shot on weekends in 1991 and 1992, the project ground to a halt when funds ran out, but a call to Christine Vachon helped secure completion money from Islet. Vachon and Tom Kalin were stabilizing influences as executive producers, and the no-budget, black-and-white feature, which was the first film at that year's Sundance Film Festival to land a distributor, found a crossover audience in limited release.