Movies Nowhere As Cool As Their Real-Life Stories

"A movie about the drag queens, trans kids, and people of color who rioted against the homophobic oppression of the '60s? Sounds great. "

"How about we make it all about a whiny white boy instead?"

"Even better!"

A conversation similar to this must have taken place during the greenlighting process of Stonewall. Director Roland Emmerich, the mind behind the 1998 Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow, decided to make a film of the historic Stonewall riots that started the gay rights movement. Unfortunately, he took out everything interesting about the event and made it all about a white gay guy who cries the first time he gets a BJ.

The film posits that the riots started because the police raided the bar on counts of prostitution, Judy Garland dying made all the gays pissy, and the white boy sees his old crush be a sleaze, so he decides to throw the first brick. In real life, the bar wasn't just full of prostitutes and hustlers—it was a place for the gay community to come together without fear. But gay bars were raided constantly since public homosexuality and cross-dressing were illegal. Gay patrons were routinely beaten, abused, and arrested for being out of the closet in a small, nondescript bar. On the night of June 28, having nothing to do with Judy Garland's death, the patrons at Stonewall didn't want to take it anymore. Kids from the streets, drag queens, and people who couldn't pass for straight fought the hardest because they had the most to lose.

The riots lasted a few days and started a national conversation about gay rights. In less than 50 years, we've gone from getting arrested for being gay to national legal gay marriage. That's incredible, and Stonewall was a huge part of that. But the movie focuses on a gay kid in the Midwest for half the film, then makes gay sex seem awful. After that, the white kid starts the whole movement then peaces out to let the people of color do the work. It's not a huge surprise Stonewall was a flop, but it was a crazy huge flop, only making $187,674 during its run. Maybe Emmerich will throw a brick through a window because his movie died.

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