Last year Independence Day and 2012 director Roland Emmerich announced he was stepping away from disaster epics to make something more personal – an independent film about the Stonewall riots.
However even with a director who’s had a lot of success, it’s a big difference between them saying they want to make a smaller project that’s personal to them and actually getting the backing and support to do it. But it seems in this case it’s all panned out, as on his Facebook page he’s announced Stonewall will shoot this spring.
He says, ‘I wanted you to be the first to know that I will begin shooting “STONEWALL” this Spring.
‘For those of you who aren’t aware, the legendary Stonewall Inn is the birthplace of the modern Gay Rights movement. I plan to keep you updated along the way with casting information and lots of pictures and behind-the-scenes videos.
‘Next up: Independence Day Forever!
‘Stonewall will be produced by Michael Fossat, Marc Frydman and Roland Emmerich. Executive Producers, Kirstin Winker and Adam Press. Line Producer, Carsten Lorenz. Written by Jon Robin Baitz. Cinematographer, Markus Förderer. You can read more about the Stonewall Riots here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots You can like the page here: Stonewall‘
There have been suggestion recently that it’s not a simple retelling of the 1969 riots, but that Jon Robin Bates’s script is a larger story of how modern gay rights activism emerged and how how that boiled over onto the streets at New York’s Stonewall Inn. He’s previously described it as being, “About these crazy kids in New York, and a country bumpkin who gets into their gang, and at the end they start this riot and change the world.”
He added at thetom, “I’ve got more and more involved in the Gay & Lesbian Centre in Los Angeles, and I learned that 40% of homeless kids are gay. So things haven’t changed very much. But I put this together and said, I should make a movie about that, so it starts with a kid who gets thrown out of his home and ends up on the streets of the village, and becomes friends with all these kids. In a weird way, it shows that it’s still something that happens today.
“I read a lot about it and was so surprised. It was the first time that gay people had shown the police that they should take them serious. And when the riot police came – this has always been fascinating for me – these kids formed a chorus line and sang ‘We are the village girls, we wear our hair in curls!’ It was such a cool thing.”
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