When gay people said, “Enough”

Stonewall movie comes to theaters Sept. 25

Staff Report

“In essence nobody really knew or knows today who started [the riot],” said Stonewall director and producer Roland Emmerich. “Different people have different names for the person who started it all by resisting and that was really the starting point of the riots. But the riots had already started a little bit earlier because too many people had congregated in front of the Stonewall [Inn]. It was surprising how many people were there. It was a super-hot night. It was a Friday night going into Saturday, so it was the weekend and that helped to create this explosive atmosphere, which then ended up being a riot.”

Emmerich first became interested in making a movie about the Stonewall riots when he was taking a tour of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center with co-producer Michael Fossat. Learning the statistic that 40 percent of homeless youth in the United States are LGBTQ made him “awestruck.” He knew he wanted to help the cause and began thinking about how he could use his skills as a filmmaker to bring more attention to this problem.

“Out of that came an interest,” Emmerich attests. “I began reading about Stonewall.”

“It [Stonewall] was the first time gay people said, ‘enough!’” explains Emmerich. “Stonewall was the first time gay people stood up and they did it in their own way. Something that really affected me when I read about Stonewall was that when the riot police showed up in their long line, these kids formed their own long line. That, for me, was a gay riot, a gay rebellion.”

Emmerich and co-producer Michael Fossat had long been planning to do a movie about the Stonewall uprising, but the project seemed to keep getting put on hold for one reason or another. It was after the second inaugural speech of Obama, where “Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall,” was mentioned that they finally decided “we're doing it.”

At the time, Hollywood found the subject still too daring and controversial. “People are still afraid of subject matter that isn't obviously commercial, with action heroes and huge stars,” says Fossat. “It’s a gay subject film in general, even though there are many side stories. We decided to move forward regardless.”

However, Fossat added, “There were a number of people who reached out when we went into production who wanted to get involved in any shape or form because they thought this was a very important story to tell.”

Emmerich is best known for his blockbuster feature films, like White House Down, Independence Day, Godzilla, Day After Tomorrow, but Stonewall was a project that was very close to his heart and he was willing to make sacrifices to get it made.

As much as things have changed for the better for many gay people in contemporary society, particularly in big cities, Emmerich realized that the problem these kids faced in 1969 wasn't so different from what gay kids have to face today.

“The problem then was the same problem we still have today,” explains Emmerich. “Kids who grow up in religious homes, in conservative homes, have a hard time coming out. If they come out, and when they come out, they get thrown out of their homes, which to me was unthinkable. Where I come from, with my family that would have never happened. So that was the starting point. Why not create a character that goes through that, who comes to New York and befriends these kids?”

“On the one hand it's a coming-of-age story in the classic sense,” explains Emmerich. “On the other hand, it's the story of unrequited love. That was the center of the story for me, then it tells how it came to be that the Stonewall got raided so much.”

Fossat ended by saying, “Everybody asks what triggered the Stonewall riots. I don't know if there's really an answer as to one event. The fact that it was the middle of a really crazy heat wave…Judy Garland also died that week and the riot happened the day of her funeral (on the Upper East Side). The Stonewall bar had been raided several times in recent weeks, that week already by the Sixth Precinct, which was raiding the bar on a regular basis, and all of a sudden the police raided it and it was not the Sixth Precinct. It was the Public Morals Police for Interpol.

“It was the circumstances; a perfect storm, but I don't think any single one of these events triggered anything. It just happened…one of these moments in time.”

The Gayly – September 18, 2015 @ 1:30pm.