The New Stonewall film -Princes, not Queens

[Stavros]

The director Roland Emmerich has created a new version of Stonewall, the defining moment in the history of LGBT rights because after this incident in Greenwich Village a political movement emerged that has literally changed the law on sexual identity and behaviour across the world -if not all of it (yet).

The controversy surrounds the deletion of transgendered people from this version of the events that happened in New York in 1969, and is not to be confused with the 1995 film by Nigel Finch in which transgendered people are the ones who kick started the movement for LGBT rights. As this angry article on Emmerich's film puts it:

It would seem from the trailer that this new guy is even going to be the legend who decided “enough is enough” and threw the first brick. Clearly the Stonewall team came to the conclusion that they didn’t need real people to tell this story. No, they needed a cute blue-eyed hero in order to sell tickets. The outcome? A whitewashed film that sells itself with the spirit of the Sixties (revolution, a rock'n'roll soundtrack, vintage-y sepia filter) but pushes people of colour, lesbians and trans people out of their own history.

Someone on HA made a point in a thread I cannot recall that there was a riot in San Francisco led by our Queens a year before Stonewall, either way, if what is being said about this new Stonewall is true, it is a sad reflection of an enduring dismissal of transgendered people that continues long after it should have become redundant.

The link is to the article (which includes a trailer) and the IMDB link for the earlier film.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/stonewall/gay-rights-true-story-controversy/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114550/

[JenniferParisHusband]

Have you seen the film? I was thinking about it, didn't know anything about the controversy around it. Isn't the riot in SF, the Harvey Milk riot? The one where the murderer got some sort of lighter sentence or something.

[Ben in LA]

I already have friends who are going to boycott the movie because of the whitewashing.

[Stavros]

Have you seen the film? I was thinking about it, didn't know anything about the controversy around it. Isn't the riot in SF, the Harvey Milk riot? The one where the murderer got some sort of lighter sentence or something.

I have done an internet search, the riot in San Francisco is known as the 'Compton Cafeteria Riot' -the Wikipedia entry states:

Compton's Cafeteria was one of a chain of cafeterias, owned by Gene Compton, in San Francisco from the 1940s to the 1970s. The Tenderloin location of Compton's at 101 Taylor Street (at Turk)—open from 1954 to 1972—was one of the few places where transgender people could congregate publicly in the city, because they were unwelcome in gay bars. In addition, the cafeteria was open all hours until the riots occurred. Most of the fights occurred from 2-3 am so they were forced to close at midnight. Because cross-dressing was illegal at the time, police could use the presence of transgender people in a bar as a pretext for making a raid and closing the bar.

Many of the militant hustlers and street queens involved in the riot were members of Vanguard, the first known gay youth organization in the United States, which had been organized earlier that year with the help of radical ministers working with Glide Memorial Church, a center for progressive social activism in the Tenderloin for many years. A lesbian group of street people was also formed called the Street Orphans.

There is also a Wikipedia survey of LGBT protests/riots/actions which begins with a mini-riot at Coopers Donuts in LA in 1959-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LGBT_actions_in_the_United_States_prior_to _the_Stonewall_riots



Orphan

[tao1kiku]

There is a documentary called "Screaming Queens". Well worth the watch!

"Documentary about transgender women and drag queens who fought police harassment at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco's Tenderloin in 1966, three years before the famous riot at Stonewall Inn bar in NYC."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0464189/

[RallyCola]

just an FYI...the actor (Jonny Beauchamp, a Puerto Rican) who played the CD on Penny Dreadful, Angelique, has second billing as Ray Castro.

Now...RE is a gay white man...Hollywood does not tend to promote minority characters...and the trailer is meant to appeal to the masses independent of sexuality therefore, I am not shocked at all just yet especially because the movie is NOT ABOUT STONEWALL!!! From RE's comments, Stonewall is just the backdrop for a story of a mid-western white kid that is booted from his family home because he is gay and comes to NY where he is "involved" with the riots and Stonewall. I think most people assumed too much about this movie that it was going to be a real docu-drama about Stonewall, but instead, it is just fan fiction in the end.

I never intended on seeing this movie because I do not like RE as a director. I really only like 3 movies he has ever done and 1 (13th floor) he was only a producer. So for me, he hasn't directed a good movie (told a good story) since 1996. He peaked with Stargate and Independence Day so there was nothing...absolutely NOTHING motivating me to see this movie in the first place.

[Stavros]

There is a documentary called "Screaming Queens". Well worth the watch!

"Documentary about transgender women and drag queens who fought police harassment at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco's Tenderloin in 1966, three years before the famous riot at Stonewall Inn bar in NYC."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0464189/


Thanks for the tip, the whole film is on youtube and as it is not otherwise available in the UK (except as a book) I shall watch it there.