Lance Bass talks new documentary, upcoming wedding
When the documentary "Kidnapped For Christ" screened at the Slamdance Film Festival earlier this year, the footage was so troubling that some audience members left the theater.
"This documentary reads like a horror film," said singer Lance Bass, executive producer of the film, which exposes a darker side to a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic.
The documentary comes from Kate Logan, a young missionary who set out to film a piece on Escuela Caribe, a small Christian boarding school that billed itself as a rehabilitation center for troubled teens sent from the U.S.
"For her college thesis she wanted to do a positive story on this school because she was an Evangelical Christian and she wanted to expose how great this school was with these kids," Bass said.
Logan soon discovered that she would be telling a very different kind of story.
"Just days into filming this young college student started to find out how terrible this school was and how much abuse was happening," said Bass.
Logan's work chronicled controversial behavior-modification methods, including attempting to convert gay children to straight.
As soon as the topic crossed his desk, Bass said he knew he had to get involved.
"It's a subject I've heard about, especially these reform schools that are like 'Pray the gay away' and I thought I was pretty well-versed in these schools and what was happening there. But I had no idea that these were still unregulated and there was so much abuse happening in these schools," said Bass.
Bass said he hopes the documentary about the school (which has since closed) raises awareness about the topic. Although some reform schools provide positive environments for students, others don't -- and it's important to know the difference, Bass says. It's why he's urging viewers to contact their local representatives about the subject.
"A lot of these parents they feel so ashamed after they find out what their kids went through because as you see in this film, they're just kidnapped in the middle of the night, hand-cuffed, put on a plane and sent somewhere. They don't even know where they're going...It's emotionally damaging...especially when they're going for a reason like being gay," said Bass.
As a gay man, Bass is particularly interested in the subject matter. The *NSYNC member came out in a cover story for People magazine in July 2006 and is about to embark on a milestone of his own: getting married. Last year, he got engaged to Michael Turchin, his boyfriend since 2011.
"It's going to be very special," said Bass. "We're walking down the aisle Dec. 20. We've had such a blast doing this. It's something you kind of grow up wishing you can do -- get married. You dream of those fun traditional things that go along with the wedding, like doing the registry. And there's a point in your life when you realize that will never happen for you because you're gay...But now that things have changed and you're allowed to get married -- it makes you feel like a real person. You feel normal, like a part of society...It's what you grew up with -- that family tradition that you have instilled in you."
Bass was knee-deep in planning during our phone interview; he was at a store choosing gifts for their registry.
Everything from the planning and ceremony to the reception will all be filmed for an upcoming television special on E! -- set to air in early 2015.
"I'm very excited to see a loving wedding go down between two guys," Bass said. "As a kid from Mississippi I would have loved to have seen that on my television growing up to know that there's nothing wrong," he said.
"Everyone loves a wedding...I've only been to one gay wedding in my life, and that was just this year," he continued. "This will be the second wedding I've ever been to. So to be able to let people around the world see two guys getting married, it really just starts the conversation happening in your own family if you don't know a gay person, and it will show that love is love -- and like, 'Wow, they're going through the same s**t I go through.'"
His "bestie," Joey Fatone, will be in attendance at the nuptials, as well as the other guys from *NSYNC.
"They're brothers of mine," he said. "I couldn't imagine doing that day without them there."
Besides planning his wedding, Bass is jumping back into music, recently releasing "Walking on Air" -- his first new single in 12 years. A music video is expected in a couple of weeks.
He's also going behind the camera again, gearing up to shoot the pilot for a scripted E! show called "The Machine," which he describes as a mix of "Nashville" and "Entourage." This is the pop music version of it.
"That's kind of like my baby this year," he said about the upcoming project.
Meanwhile, "Kidnapped for Christ" is out now. Check out the trailer below:
