Review: Stonewall (2015)

First screened at TIFF. This article was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

This one's for Judy!"

… so went a legendary scream (along with brick throwing) as the Stonewall riots began. We can’t know exactly what happened that night, but as the famous saying goes, “when legend becomes fact… print the legend.” Judy Garland, The World’s Greatest Entertainer, had died a week earlier on June 22nd, 1969. Her remains were brought to New York City on June 26th where tens of thousands of people lined up to pay respects, and her funeral, which barred the public, took place on June 27th. The theory goes that the gay community, which had always idolized her (as any sentient human with taste should, then or now) was even more on-edge than usual when the police came to raid Stonewall on the night of June 28th, 1969.

Fact: All hell broke loose. The rest is (much argued about) ‘history’...

Judy grief as combustive fuel is one of the legends at any rate. And one that I heard a lot as a baby-gay whenever people brought up Stonewall. Stonewall was not the true beginning of gay liberation (political groups had been forming since the 1940s to pursue our future rights), but it remains a super handy symbolic one. 

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Interview: 'Stonewall' Star Jeremy Irvine on LGBT Youth, Method Acting and That Infamous Trailer

Jose here. When I show up at the Stonewall Inn to speak to Jeremy Irvine I see him hanging from the scaffolding outside the historical locale with his co-star Jonny Beauchamp, they’re all smiles and jokes, their camaraderie is evident and I’m slightly surprised they’re not acting more solemnly given they’re carrying the weight of representing one of the most-talked about movies of the year. I expected to find them seated Congressmen-style, preparing grandiose statements about social issues. Expectations are indeed the operative concept at hand when discussing a film that has generated so much controversy even before opening, so I’m glad Irvine is able to find some levity. When I meet him again inside, he’s devouring a scone, “it’s a muffin actually”, he explains, as we sit in one of the booths of the legendary tavern. “That’s what you do in New York isn’t it? You drink coffee and eat muffins” he says with a smile.

Irvine became an overnight star with his leading role in Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, and went on to appear in adaptations of famed novels Great Expectations and The Railway Man, I was surprised to see him land the lead in Roland Emmerich’s period piece, but it’s evident that he has an extremely likable quality, that leads filmmakers to think of him as a perfect audience surrogate, who they use to traverse through oft dense plots. Despite his succession of leading roles, Irvine has kept a very low profile and has confessed to prefer spending time in a pub with his mates, than attending big Hollywood premieres. Perhaps that’s why he seems so at ease at the Stonewall, where he proves to be quite candid and open about touchy subjects like the film’s infamous trailer and how he approaches people’s expectations.

JOSE: War Horse, The Woman in Black: Angel of Death and now Stonewall. What’s your fascination with period pieces?

JEREMY IRVINE: I don’t know! Apparently I like costumes (laughs). I don’t go after specific genres really, if I read a script and I’m still thinking about it a few weeks later, then that’s a pretty good sign. When there’s something that connects with you, you just know. Actually when I got the script for Stonewall, I’d just done three movies back to back. I had just finished shooting a movie in Budapest and I said to my agent “I need a break”, and then a couple of days later they sent me the script and said “you have to read this”.

[More...]

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Yes No Maybe So: Stonewall

The director Roland Emmerich left his preferred world of dumb fun cheesy explosions behind briefly a few years back for the crass Shakespeare conspiracy theories of Anonymous. But at least it was something different for him and we applaud stretching.

He ventures out of action movie land again for Stonewall which is about an explosion of a very different kind. Here's the poster and our Yes No Maybe So on the trailer is after the jump...

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Superheroes, Shakespeares, Stonewalls, and Series Endings

Lukewarm off the presses: Here's a collection of things we didn't get around to talking and/or linking to for your enjoyment or conversation prompting. We always hope for both. And I'm always hoping to empty out my "things to write about immediately" desktop folder... which is never emptied out.

• Terrence Malick's new movie (the one right after Knight of Cups) will be called Weightless (no cracks about how skinny Portman, Blanchett, Fassbender, and Rooney Mara, who star, are) but it's about music and its set in Austin. Apparently there's Madonna, Bob Dylan and Arcade Fire songs or something? Who knows. In truth I don't know why I'm sharing this info. Fact: Malick movies are only interesting in the watching of them, not in the hearing about their development since that's always totally vague.

• Glenn Kenny wrote a lovely piece about his mother's love of Alfred Hitchcock movies (she recently died) and he brings up an interesting point about how older audiences of either gender remember and loved his work. Do you know what your parents favorite Hitchcock's were?

• Look! It's Jeremy Irvine in action director Roland Emmerich's first gay drama Stonewall (2015) -- that and plenty of other things are after the jump...

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Roland Emmerich To Make His First Gay Movie "Stonewall"

Roland Emmerich will direct Jeremy Irvine in "Stonewall"Roland Emmerich is a size queen. I had the world's shortest interview with him while he was promoting Anonymous, a rare trip away from the ginormous epic blockbuster spectacles he prefers to make. But that was, in its own peculiar academic-enraging way, also supersized with CGI and a lusty embrace of conspiracy theories. In fact he ended our interview defending the size of his pictures.

It has to be big or I don't like it."

My mind raced back to that interview today when the news broke that Emmerich plans to make a drama about the Stonewall riots which poured gasoline on the then tiny embers of the gay rights movement. He'll film Stonewall before embarking on the long gestating Independence Day sequels. Young beauty Jeremy Irvine (War Horse, The Railway Man) has the lead role as a man who has a political awakening with the riots as backdrop.

That sounds quite a lot like the other movie about the Stonewall Riots which was also called simply Stonewall (1995). It followed a young gay looker (Frederick Weller) who got more politicized by dating a drag queen (Scandal's Guillermo Díaz when he was young and a tiny slip of a thing) with the Stonewall riots as backdrop.

Stonewall (1995) with Guillermo Díaz and Frederick Weller

I'm honestly a bit surprised though because when I interviewed Emmerich he didn't seem likely to do something that direct. Here's what he told me at the time.

NATHANIEL: You're an out director, you've donated to gay causes. But you do all these huge mainstream sci-fi movies. Would you ever do a gay film? 

ROLAND EMMERICH: If the right one comes along. I would love to put more openly gay characters in my mainstream movies which is something I'm really working on. Honest to god, I'm constantly trying, like, "who can i make gay?" [Laughter]. But i also don't want to do it blatantly. That's not good. It's all about integration, show it as a totally normal thing without making a big deal out of it. 

NATHANIEL: So what you're saying is that Universal Soldier is going to remain your gayest movie.

EMMERICH: [Laughs] 

I guess Universal Soldier (1992) will finally have to step down once Stonewall (2015) is a reality.