Stonewall - A Film about the Stonewall Riots

I wish people would stop complaining about Stonewall being inaccurate, etc. The director is Roland Emmerich. Were you expecting a good movie? He's European Michael Bay without the BroDude personality.

Next, Uwe Boll remakes Philadelphia.

I'll stop complaining when we actually get a movie about Stonewall.

Sorry, if you're going to have a histiorical film about GAY AND TRANS RIGHTS and ERASE TRANS PEOPLE AND TRANS PEOPLE OF COLOR from that history, screw you.

Quite simply, this isn't stonewall. This isn't LGBTQ History.

Try again.

Way to start a fucking thread. Complaining about complainers and then complaining some more. In before this gets locked down like it should be. No flamewars better start on this site.

ETA: For those like me who didn't even know about this movie, it's about the Stonewall riots of 1969. And apparently doesn't roll with the truth. We should have known about this with the first fucking post in this god damned thread. I thought it was about Stonewall Jackson considering that was the only Stonewall I knew about.

PS. It's not even out yet, so chill your asses.

edited 6th Aug '15 9:26:15 PM by Journeyman

I also thought this was about Stonewall Jackson.

I know, so instead of bitching about controversy the folks who are pissed should be getting down to educating the rest of us about why this event was important in the first place.

I also thought it was about Stonewall Jackson and was trying to wrap my head around what Stonewall Jackson had to do with Gays and Trans.

To be fair, while I've never heard such things about Stonewall, I've heard at least one lesbian give a defense for thinking Abraham Lincoln was gay based on some letters he wrote to another man. That's something that's been discussed for years, I think. If it can be said about him, I don't know enough to say it can't be said about Stonewall. And with that being the Civil War, you never know what African American people could be involved.

Obviously not true, but you can understand the confusion.

Stonewall Riots. It's the Stonewall Riots of 1969. The moment the Modern LGBT movement began.

edited 6th Aug '15 10:26:40 PM by DS9guy

We know that now, I looked it up and posted it already.

Sorry. You are correct. I should have explained.

Basically, a lot of the people involved with the Stonewall Riots were Trans people and People of Color. In fact, the riots were originally started because one of said women of color threw her high heeled shoe. The movie's trailer implies that White!Gay!Cis Male!Protagonist threw a brick instead...

Let's just say that when you're hiring white actresses to play POC without changing their names even, it gets nasty.

I was angry when I made the above comment an I apologize. I've decided, for the moment, to give this film the benefit of the doubt, but I'm still REALLY on the fence; one more bad PR move and the entire film could crumble.

edited 7th Aug '15 4:02:36 AM by InkDagger

This is a film directed by Roland Emmerich. I don't have high expectations.

I'm pretty pissed off, too. Relegating the actual people responsible for starting the Stonewall riots and becoming such a big touchstone of the modern LGBT rights history as background characters and making up a fictional white guy as the lead protagonist who starts the riots in the movie instead—it's rewriting history AND whitewashing at it's finest.

Great job!

edited 7th Aug '15 7:29:06 AM by higherbrainpattern

There we go, now that we can work with. And I second the whole "Roland Emerich isn't a good director" opinion. He made two movies I like, but I think that's more down to the skill of the actors and the subject matter than anything actually plot related.

Now that same sex marriage has a blanket acceptance by the courts in the U.S. maybe we'll see some real movies about the movement.

Agreed.

At the same time, I don't exactly HATE the idea of a Gay "Outsider" getting pullled into everything since, naturally, that makes him a good Audience Stand-In and also an easier audience stand in for audiences who may be experiencing the history of Stonewall and LGBTQ for the firsf time and it gives an excuse to explain things directly.

I am wondering if its possible the Marketing Trailers are just really playing up the protagonist in an attempt that him and the Love Triangle are going to be easier to sell, and thus we just aren't seeing the majority of ACTUAL Stonewall. (i.e. Maybe the Brick being thrown ISN'T what starts the Riots, but the trailers are going to play it up like that to say 'Look at our hero! He's brave! He throws stones at Bigot's Glass Houses')

And I really hate how true it is, unfortunatly, Trans POC are a lot harder to sell a film on compared to hunky 'Straight Gay' protag.

So... Its possible this is bad marketing. But I'm still MASSIVLY on the fence.

When I first heard about it, I imagined that it started out with a more historical perspective, and then it went through multiple layers of "Look, you can't have someone gay start violence. You can't have a woman or someone of color start violence. That's just hateful speech. Now if you have a white, heterosexual male doing it, we won't have riots. Hell, we'll have people praising us for having a white male enacted massive amounts of violence without any talk about how his childhood or medications made him do it".

Aw. Oh, well...chalk up another one to the 'thought it was about Stonewall Jackson' board.

Maybe we should change the title of the thread?

OP, do you want me to holler the mods to change the title?

No, the movie is bad because it's whitewashing history. The Stonewall riots were started by trans women of color. This movie is going to be teaching people, incorrectly, that it was started by a cis white dude, thus insulting the memory of what those women experienced.

It's like making a movie about the Montgomery bus boycotts and replacing Rosa Parks with a white dude.

edited 9th Aug '15 8:57:25 PM by Mukora

Ol' Kyle is right. And for reference, this is the previous history film Emmerich made.

TBH, I'm not sure WHAT to change the title of the tread to since that IS what the movie's title is.

Uhhhh....

Stonewall "The Birth of PRIDE" or something? Since that seems to be their Tag Line and PRIDE is kind of become the slogan of LGBT.

Stonewall: The Movie About the Stonewall Riot?

Which might encourage people to look up the riot themselves and learn something.

I bet Emmerich could make a pretty entertaining movie about Stonewall Jackson, though.

lol

Why the hell would people want to watch a movie some Civil War racist anyway?