TRAINING RULES: Q&A with Dee Mosbacher

Winner of the audience award for best documentary at the 2009 edition of San Francisco’s gay film festival, Frameline, Dee Mosbacher (right) and Fawn Yacker’s Training Rules — screening at Outfest tomorrow, July 11, at 4:30pm at the FAIRFAX 1 (on a double bill with Elizabeth Hesik’s Lady Trojans) — tackles the issue of anti-gay bigotry in women’s sports, particularly at the Pennsylvania State University.
For nearly three decades, Penn State’s Lady Lions basketball coach Rene Portland (above, lower photo), known as "The Mommy Coach," insisted that in her team there would be absolutely no drugs, no booze, and no lesbians — purportedly with the intent of removing the stigma of lesbianism from women’s sports. In 2006, [...]

Outfest 2009: TRAINING RULES Screening

Winner of the Audience Award for best documentary at San Francisco’s Frameline 2009, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Dee Mosbacher and Fawn Yacker’s Training Rules, about anti-lesbian discrimination in women’s sports, will be screened at Outfest, the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, on Saturday, July 11, at 4:30 p.m. at the Fairfax 1 in West Hollywood. Mosbacher, Yacker, and the film’s narrator, long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad, will take part in a discussion following the screening.
The 60-minute Training Rules focuses on the women’s basketball program at Pennsylvania State University, where in 2006 student athlete Jennifer Harris filed a lawsuit against the university and Lady Lions basketball head coach, Maureen “Rene” Portland (above, lower photo). [...]