David: Your new film GBF is very funny in how direct it addresses the gay culture teens live within now. Were there any moments making it when you had to stop yourself and think, "Whoa, have I crossed the line?" Or did you just go for it?
Darren: What attracted me to the script – beside the fact that it read like a big studio teen high school comedy that happened to have a gay protagonist – was the fact that the humor was so un-PC. The film skewers the ridiculousness of teen girls wanting a GBF (Gay Best Friend) like an accessory or trend, but it also skewers ethnicity, religion, clique culture. I wanted the scenes where the closeted Mormon Topher seduces Tanner and Brent to be sexy and provocative; I've never thought it was fair that it's fine to have a romantic or sexual male-female kiss but when it comes to two boys kissing, it's so chaste and unsexual. The beauty of the film is that it's style and humor are very mainstream and accessible but it's content is pushing boundaries and there's a message about wanting to have a normal life just everyone else from the gay protagonist's point of view.

David: It is amazing to me how much things have changed since I was a teen. Imagine your teen self watching GBF. What do you think his reaction would be?
Darren: I would have been fully obsessed with it. I used to have to seek out films like everyone else in our generation – I'd go to the video store and rent John Waters movies, Mommie Dearest, early gay films like Parting Glances and Longtime Companion. We really had to search out those characters that we identified with - even if it was Madonna in Truth or Dare! With Netflix streaming, teens literally have instant access to films like GBF and can watch it over and over. It's funny how many kids on Twitter talk about seeing the film 10, 20, 100 times. Maybe they're just trying to outdo each other! But what's really interesting is that teen LGBTQ media consumers are quite vocal about the evolving world of identity and the labels they get assigned. Has the greater interactivity through social media affected your work?
David: I certainly have more access to stories than I ever would have imagined. It's sometimes inspiring and sometimes daunting. But the inspiring parts make up for the daunting parts. For example, a few years ago I got an amazing email from a student called Matty, who said that he and his friend Bobby had just done this crazy, newsworthy thing, and he wanted me to know that my novel Boy Meets Boy had come to mind while it was happening. It ended up that Matty and Bobby had broken the world record for longest continuous kiss – 33 hours! And their action – a kiss meant to change the world – inspired the central act of my new novel, Two Boys Kissing. So I was inspired to write Boy Meets Boy, which inspired Matty to break this record, which inspired me to write Two Boys Kissing, which has inspired other people in turn. I love how that works. And social media makes it work much more easily than it did in the past.

Darren: what do you think is the most exciting thing happening for LGBT fiction right now?
David: The exciting thing is how many of them there are, and how many different stories they have to tell. (For great examples of this, check out Nina LaCour's new novel, Everything Leads to You, or Alex London's Proxy.) I don't think there's the pressure anymore to tell "the" LGBTQ story, and instead the focus is on telling "a" LGBTQ story. There's not the assumption that there's a single story to tell; instead it's about finding all of the interesting facets, and illuminating them. As in life, being LGBTQ is a part of the character and part of the story, but it doesn't have to determine the entire plot.

Here are some of our favourite gay characters from page and screen:

1. Frankenfurter (Tim Curry) in The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Frank was the ultimate queen bitch. A sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania. I had to look up so many of those naughty-sounding T words and Frank was my first glimpse into a divine gender bending character which was incredibly exciting to me – up until that point I was fascinated by Kiss and Alice Cooper, but Frank was the first who really spoke to me. I remember going into my Mom's closet looking for fishnets but only finding beige stockings. Of course those sufficed.
2. Joe Orton (Gary Oldman) in Prick up Your Ears
He was a brilliant, successful writer while still being cheeky and sexually provocative. I really thought Gary Oldman did a wonderful of bringing him to life, especially right after playing Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy. The film featured a very erotic three way kiss that my young eyes were very pleased to see on cable TV as a teenager. 3. Hedwig (John Cameron Mitchell) in Hedwig and the Angry Inch
She was just so endearing while being such a force of nature. I loved her sensitive relationship with Tommy Gnosis, the way she mentors him, mothers him and also loves him romantically. The movie was a glam spectacle while being evocative and bittersweet. I used to play the song "Origin of Love" several times a day for a decade. 4. Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) in The Hunger
The style was just ferocious and the seduction scene to Delibe's "Lakme" was one of my cinematic touchstones as a kid. I even went out and bought the soundtrack! I was attracted to the style but it was also the sensitivity of the sexuality in the context of vampirism. I always love the collision of glamour or sex and horror, with horror being such a delicious expression of otherness. 5. Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank) in Boys Don't Cry
It was my first exposure in cinema to an F-to-M trans character and Hilary played Brandon with such tenderness and pathos. I was really moved by that film and really believed the love story with Chloe Sevigne's character. It was a doomed romance which is always hugely romantic. 6. Ste (Scott Neal) and Jamie (Glen Barry) in Beautiful Thing
This movie meant everything to me. I see now how depressing parts of it are. But the first time, all that mattered to me was the ending. I had seen gay teen characters on screen before, but it had never been so romantic – and romantic in that real, painful way, not a fairy-tale way. These characters gave me the kick I needed to write what I wanted to write, and I don't think any of my books would exist without them.

7. Joe in Totally Joe by James Howe
There are many gay characters I love, but I probably love Joe the most. He's only twelve, but he is out to his family and friends, has his first crush, loves his pop divas, and is telling his life in alphabetical order. He has his blue moods, but mostly he lives in Technicolor, unrepentantly. I love that when James Howe created him, he seemed like a radical invention for children's literature. Now he's a kid you see every time you visit a school.

8. Duck and Dirk in Weetzie Bat and Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block
I also don't think any of my books would exist without the influence of Francesca Lia Block, and the way she makes words dance on a page. Duck and Dirk were the first intensely in love gay couple I ever found in YA literature – and their love is still a marker for me, in how they have to navigate pain and confusion in order to find their harmony. 9. Luna in Luna by Julie Ann Peters
Much like Hedwig above, Julie Ann Peters's Luna is a very flawed, very trapped, very compelling character who is struggling valiantly to come into her own … while at the same time making some of the same mistakes most teenagers make. The story is told by Regan, Luna's sister, but Luna steals the show. 10. The cast of Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
This is the gayest novel I have ever edited. It is about a planeload of beauty pageant contestants that crashes on a desert island. Mayhem – some of it Sapphic – ensues. I don't want to give anything else away. But I love them all. Even the bitches.