Chely Wright took another memorable step in her public coming-out as a high-profile lesbian by walking the red carpet at the Nashville Film Festival with fiancée Lauren Blitzer on Friday night (April 15). The occasion was a sneak-preview showing of 'Wish Me Away,' the documentary film which chronicles the events leading up to last May, when the country singer first announced to the public that she is gay.

The sold-out screening was attended by fellow country artists Carolyn Dawn Johnson (writer of Chely's No. 1 hit, 'Single White Female'), Rodney Crowell and SHeDAISY, and during Q-and-A session with Chely and filmmakers Bobbie Birleffi and Beverly Kopf after the film, the singer noted that she had received a supportive e-mail from Faith Hill, who was unable to attend.

"I consider Faith one of my friends," Chely tells The Boot. "In the morning, before the screening, I was having an emotional moment in the hotel, wrestling with nerves. My iPhone let me know I had an e-mail from Faith. It said, 'If I were in town, I would so be there, but I'm in Mississippi visiting my family. But I want to celebrate with you and I want to see the film. I love you, chin up, go get 'em.'"

Opening with a series of archival clips from the singer's two-decade career, including her 1995 win as the ACM Top New Female Vocalist, 'Wish Me Away' (named for a track from her 2010 critically-acclaimed album 'Lifted Off the Ground'), includes candid interviews with family members, friends and business associates of Chely's, as the personal and professional ramifications of going public, after years of hiding, leave her questioning that decision.

"This is not my film," Chely insists. "I obviously was the subject of it and I was as complicit as I could be in giving the filmmakers insight into my life. But I didn't say, 'You should go talk to this person or that person.' I made no calls along Music Row to find out if people were willing to participate in it. But I love that they told the story without disparaging the town and the music that I love."

Throughout the film, Chely is shown attempting to come to terms not only with how country music and its more conservative fan base -- and country radio -- will react, she also spends much of her time consulting with her spiritual adviser, Rev. Welton Gaddy, discussing what it means for her to be gay and Christian, and how her Christian fans will react when she comes out. It is, however, members of Chely's family who offer the most poignant moments in the film, including her father -- who appeared with her on the 'Oprah Winfrey Show' after she came out -- and her mother, with whom she has had a strained and difficult relationship. But it's Chely's exuberant and (and laugh-out-loud funny) sister Jennifer who is a constant source of encouragement and comic relief throughout the film.

"I personally have always been thrilled by the idea of Nashville. It's a cool, hip place," says Bobbie Birleffi of her thoughts at the outset of the project. "I grew up in Wyoming and I thought, 'I'd love to go to Nashville.' But when we got into it and started doing some research and reading, I started thinking about the marketing and the selling of Nashville, and the selling of the artists in Nashville. It's so huge and very definite in its statement about who is Nashville -- and when I say Nashville I mean the [music] industry. The way it was selling itself was, 'These are the men, and these are the women.' It was very clear that if you were different, you just wouldn't fit in to this Americana [view of country music]. Then when we met Chely and she was so beautiful, I thought, 'This is going to rock people's socks, because it doesn't compute for a lot of people that see the world in this way -- that this beautiful woman could be gay."

Although many in the music business were unwilling to go in front of the camera, according to the filmmakers, those who do -- including Tony Brown, the former head of Chely's one-time record label, MCA, and WSM radio personality Bill Cody -- know the potential consequences of going public with such a polarizing issue.

"I don't think we understood until we got to know Chely and started to learn her story, the difference between coming out here and coming out in another [musical] genre," says Beverly. "People would say, 'Well, what about k.d. lang [who didn't publicly come out until after she had achieved success in pop music], or what about Melissa Etheridge?' We'd say, 'No, this is different.'"

"It's very intense for her to come back to Nashville," Bobbie acknowledges. "We worked and worked and worked to get the people that we do have in the film. It was not easy to get anyone from Nashville. I feel grateful for the people who spoke, and I feel they were all completely honest. There was no manipulation, they really speak for themselves. You can sense from the film a kind of 'don't-ask-don't-tell' kind of feeling -- that it'd just be better left alone. She stirred up a lot of trouble."

"She did, she stirred the pot," Beverly adds. "We weren't trying to blame Nashville. Nashville is marketing to an audience, and we want to get that audience to think differently about who the stars are and what it means to be gay and what it means to be a Christian. Everybody can relate to hiding -- that feeling that if you ever really revealed who you are, it wouldn't be acceptable. You wouldn't be able to live your dream. It's deeper than just the gay thing. The other thing about the sheer chutzpah of bringing a film like this to Nashville is ... people who think they know Chely and have known her for so long, you don't. After you've seen this film, you have a different understanding of what she went through, what it took for her to keep [hiding] and, ultimately, why she couldn't do it anymore."

While the audience roared their approval after the screening, giving Chely and the filmmakers a standing ovation, one film-goer sent the singer an e-mail which she shared with The Boot the following day.

"I got a really beautiful e-mail from Rodney [Crowell] that said, 'I know you even better through watching the film.' He said, 'Being a country star was never anything that I held in high regard but as I watched it, I learned that that's something you dreamed about and loved and I could see how this cut you so deeply and why you were even more tortured than I ever knew. Because this was your dream and your dream came true and you did your best to protect it.' Nashville is not only the town that caused me a lot of anxiety, it's also the town that made my dreams come true. So I was really glad they presented the dichotomy, the push-and-pull that really happens for people like me in Nashville, on Music Row."

'Wish Me Away' is expected to world premiere later this year and will screen at additional film festival before airing on TV and being released on DVD.

Chely and Lauren are engaged to be married in Connecticut on August 20. Meanwhile, Chely continues her advocacy work and also has other concert dates and live appearances on the books. Keep track of her tour schedule here.

Beth Gwinn, Getty Images
Beth Gwinn, Getty Images
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