Dawn of a Revolution: Stonewall Revisited

Just over a year ago Advocate contributor Matthew Hays traveled to Montreal to visit the set of the film Stonewall, where he spoke with director Roland Emmerich about the production.  The openly gay German filmmaker, best known for his blockbusters Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012, tells The Advocate, “This is very personal for me.  I wanted to do it now, as I’m very active in the marriage equality movement. I thought now is the time to do this.” Though Emmerich couldn’t have known it then, one year later the United States Supreme Court would rule in favor of marriage equality.

Emmerich and screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz (Brothers and Sisters, The Slap) decided the landmark moment should be told through the very personal lens of one character.  British actor Jeremy Irvine (War Horse) plays Danny, a lost young man, longing to find other people like himself.  Emmerich is especially proud of the cast, which also includes Jonathan Rhys Meyers (who plays Danny’s older love interest), Ron Perlman (as Ed Murphy, based on the actual crooked manager of the Stonewall Inn), and Jonny Beauchamp (as Ray Castro, as a streetwise and effeminate young man who was a participant in the riots).

Though Emmerich was eager to illuminate this step toward liberation, he also wanted to remind people just how different things were for queer people in 1969. “When I look back at what these kids did,” Emmerich says of the young rioters at Stonewall, “I’m in awe of them. They had nothing to lose. Now being gay is not such an issue, of course. And that’s progress. There were so many people who were just bystanders. There is this famous quote from a Black Panther who went down and saw what was happening, and he said, ‘The fem boys were the ones who were fighting the hardest.’ That quote stuck in my mind. Because traditionally, we as a gay people tend to look down on the fem guys. I wanted to make them—the fem guys, the loudest guys—the heroes.”

Emmerich also talks about how others gay films have influenced his work on Stonewall. “I looked at all the gay films that were made and that had done well—Philadelphia, Brokeback Mountain, Milk. Always someone dies in those films. There has to be some sort of somber attitude. There are some somber moments in our film, but ours is more of a celebration of being gay and coming out into the open. This is about street kids who don’t care if they’re being called gay. They just hate that they get beaten up, that society really is against them, and that their favorite clubs are being raided. They just want the simple freedom to be themselves.”

In early August 2015, more than a year after visiting the Stonewall set in Montreal, the first trailer for the film was released. In short order, online publications and commenters accused Emmerich of “white-washing” the Stonewall story. Emmerich responded on his Facebook page: “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. We are all the same in our struggle for acceptance.”