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'Stonewall' Movie Sparks Backlash From Gay Community

By Danielle Tcholakian | August 7, 2015 6:46pm | Updated on August 10, 2015 8:50am
Stonewall Trailer
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GREENWICH VILLAGE — The trailer is out for director Roland Emmerich's attempt to tell the story of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, and it has sparked some controversy of its own.

Emmerich, whose resume includes big-budget action flicks "The Day After Tomorrow" and "White House Down," has said that the movie was a "labor of love" for him. Getting funding was such a struggle, he ended up with a fraction of what he usually raises for his blockbusters.

"It was an uphill battle, but we finally did it," he told Vulture. "It was a huge challenge to make this movie, and if I had not absolutely wanted it, it would not have happened."

Emmerich attributed some of the difficulty raising money for the film to his commitment to honoring the fact that there was no main leader of the uprising.

"If you can cast a central character with one or two famous actors, you have a good chance to get the movie financed, but in my case, I knew there was not really one central character in the Stonewall riots," he told Vulture.

The trailer suggests that the movie's hero is Danny, a young gay Midwestern man who finds himself homeless in New York after being kicked out by his parents because of his sexuality, and is taken in by a sort of ad-hoc family of drag queens at Stonewall. 

It has incurred the wrath of people in the LGBT community who have accused Emmerich of "whitewashing" the true history of the rebellion by casting a white man as the movie's hero.

 

 

 

 

 

The Hollywood Reporter highlighted online petitions that have racked up thousands of signatures from people vowing to boycott the film.

On his Facebook page, which has been peppered with outraged comments from people who say the first brick thrown in the rebellion — which Danny seems to launch in the trailer — was thrown by a transgender woman of color, Emmerich urged his detractors to give the movie a chance.

He added that the character of Danny was inspired by his work with homeless youth in Los Angeles.

"I understand that following the release of our trailer there have been initial concerns about how this character’s involvement is portrayed, but when this film — which is truly a labor of love for me — finally comes to theaters, audiences will see that it deeply honors the real-life activists who were there — including Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Ray Castro — and all the brave people who sparked the civil rights movement which continues to this day," Emmerich wrote. "We are all the same in our struggle for acceptance."

 

When I first learned about the Stonewall Riots through my work with the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, I was struck...

Posted by Roland Emmerich on Thursday, August 6, 2015