Once upon a time in Hollywood, big-budget studios decided they could fill their coffers by creating gay-themed films aimed at mass audiences. They’d cast A-list actors like Kevin Kline and Tom Hanks as asexual leading men who came out and/or bravely battled AIDS while winning acceptance from friends and family and giving the big bad homophobe his comeuppance. Some gay audiences saw themselves on the big screen for the first time (Wesley Snipes is a drag queen like me!) while straight audiences learned, we hope, that gay is normal.

Years have passed and as the ad execs might say, we’ve come a long way, baby. At Reeling: the Chicago Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival opening Thursday 8, AIDS and coming-out films no longer predominate. Filmmakers are casting a wider net on the queer experience.

Shelter

“It’s covering all genres now,” festival director Brenda Webb says. “In the early days it was pretty much all coming-out films.” In much of the Reeling programming; especially when a queer director is at the helm, gay isn’t even an issue, it’s a given. For example, in the twisted thriller Socket, there is no coming-out process or even straight characters, for that matter (unless you count trans actor Alexandra Billings’s well-meaning doctor). Instead, director Sean Abley’s compelling yarn about pansexual electricity fetishists serves as a metaphor for addiction.

The same is true in the fantastic dyke comedy Butch Jamie. In the tradition of The Player, director Michelle Ehlen spins a spot-on satire of the movie industry, while examining butch/femme dynamics and the politics of lesbian relationships. Butch Jamie is about a wanna-be actor who can’t land a role in Hollywood until she pretends to be a man. It echoes Tootsie (and is sly enough to reference it), but focuses almost exclusively on queer characters.

The Walker

Still, coming-out films do pop up at this year’s fest, and Webb thinks that’s a good thing. “I argue for it,” she says. “I think it’s such a universal theme and still holds a lot of emotional weight.” The difference is that these films have become far more nuanced. A perfect example is the opening-night flick Shelter, a beautiful and understated gem that captures both the dreamy surfer lifestyle and the underbelly of SoCal culture. It centers on a closeted young surfer named Zach who’s juggling a dead-end job and a failing relationship with his girlfriend while helping to raise his unstable sister’s son. But coming out is a big anticlimax for Zach, whose real dilemma is whether to put family first or follow his own dreams.

The same is true for The Walker. Screenwriter Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, American Gigolo) wrote and directed this polished Washington, D.C.–set political thriller with a twist. The twist in question is Carter Page (Woody Harrelson), a closeted Southern gent who spends all of his time escorting a posse of politicians’ wives (Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin and Kristin Scott Thomas) to social functions. His world starts to unravel after he becomes an accomplice in the cover-up of a murder. Page’s homosexuality is a given, but in a city where sexual hypocrisy is mandated (just ask Mark Foley or Sen. Larry Craig), it’s an unspoken one. The Walker is about the secrets everyone keeps, gay or straight.

The Curiosity of Chance

Of course, these films are all from the U.S., and two documentaries set in the Middle East paint a different picture of the gay experience altogether. The Birthday is a fascinating look at state-sanctioned gender-reassignment surgeries in Iran. While homosexuality is forbidden according to the laws of Islam, gays and lesbians can avoid disgrace by living as transsexuals. It’s a bizarre and heartbreaking look at religious homophobia. Jerusalem Is Proud to Present is an equally emotional doc about the events leading up to World Pride 2006, a global pride march and rally that was to take place in the Holy City of Jerusalem. As the event nears, ultra-Orthodox Jews, Christians and Muslims protest and eventually riot to ensure its failure.

That’s not to say that gay clichés have gone away entirely. Closing-night film The Curiosity of Chance is a comedy set in the ’80s about a fey gay boy who beats the homophobic school jock at his own game and wins the admiration of his straight peers. Alas, some things never change.

Reeling: The Chicago Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival opens Thursday 8.