I’m sure there are a few people out there feeling a bit of schadenfreude today, as after huge amounts of criticism, accusations of white-washing and erasing trans people’s importance to the 1969 Stonewall riots, Roland Emmerich’s movie about the events, simply titled Stonewall, has tanked at the US, scoring a measly $112,414 in its first weekend.

It means the film barely scraped into the top 30, and even though it was only released on 129 screens, it scored an extremely low per-screen average of $871.

To be honest it’s not too much of a shock it barely found an audience, as this sort of movie (although with a $17 million budget it cost significantly more than more indie movies) need good reviews and audience support to succeed.

Unfortunately for Stonewall, it has recieved some pretty awful reviews. Even those who didn’t take it to task for the way it treat people of color and trand characters generally felt the film was tone deaf and emotionally manipulative. Currently it’s scoring just 10% on RottenTomatoes, although to be fair the movie did get one pretty good major review, with the Los Angeles Times saying that ‘the film is a vital, evocative reminder of a turbulent time that paved the way for hard-fought freedoms. For that alone, it’s of value for younger audiences, gay or straight.’

However the overall sentiments are summarised by Vulture, which says of the movie, ‘It’s a self-financed passion project, from a man who might be the most financially successful out gay filmmaker ever. We should be celebrating this, but man, oh man, does he make it difficult.’

It is worth noting though that while many will be pleased Stonewall didn’t succeed at the box office, it’s not something that should be seen as a victory, because unfortunately in the warped logic of Hollywood, every gay-themed film that fails is taken as evidence that they are box office poison. Luckily there are several other LGBT-themed movies coming out in the next few month that may help to counteract that, such as Freeheld, Carol and The Danish Girl, but the failure of Stonewall certainly won’t help more mainstream gay-themed films get made (whether the fault is Roland Emmerich’s or not).

Roland Emmerich has been explaining his reasoning for having a white, cisgender lead in his Stonewall movie, responding to criticism that the film whitewashes the real-life importance of people of color and trans people to the 1969 riots.

However, his comments to Buzzfeed are more likely to further anger those railed against him than to mollify them.

He says, “You have to understand one thing: I didn’t make this movie only for gay people, I made it also for straight people. I kind of found out, in the testing process, that actually, for straight people, [Danny] is a very easy in. Danny’s very straight-acting. He gets mistreated because of that. [Straight audiences] can feel for him.”

Perhaps even more problematic is that the articles notes. ‘Emmerich, for his part, thinks that Ray and the other street hustlers benefit from Danny’s presence, even after Danny leaves the Village to begin his freshman year at Columbia. “They learned something from Danny — that you can make it, that you can study, you can maybe have a more regular life,” Emmerich said. “I also don’t have the feeling at the end that they are so much on the streets anymore.”’

Well it’s nice that in Emmerich’s world, the lessons of assimilation and an oddly imperialist attitude are alive and well, and it’s not even worth suggesting that if the ‘street’ people can learn something from Danny, he should probably be learning an awful lot more from them.

However it does seem the gay director is perhaps reflecting his own conflicted attitudes, which he’s then transferring onto the whole LGBT community. He says, “When a gay person is attracted to somebody, that doesn’t mean that they love somebody. That doesn’t mean that he gets loved back. Even me, all my life, I would love somebody, and that person would be … straight, and he couldn’t love me back. Or he was not as courageous, maybe, as I was, in fulfilling sexual needs. There’s a lot of people who are just afraid of society and how they get ostracized.”

It’s a strange attitude, which seems to want to be as close to straight as possible, while also rejecting it – or at least accusing people who don’t share what he wants as not being ‘corageous’ enough to go against societal norms.

I’ve been advocating sitting on the fence about Stonewall, as much of the anger started being vented before anyone had seen the film. However while I still haven’t viewed the movie, I’m starting to accept Emmerich wasn’t the man to handle the tale, as the more he talks, the more problematic his views (which get extremely close to self-hating) seem.

Unfortunately though, when he talks about having a ‘straight-acting’ lead as a east ‘in’, he’s reflecting the perceived economic realities in Hollywood (that’s not to say it’s right, but it is how it’s seen by far more than just Emmerich), if they’re hoping for mainstream success. It is sadly true that it’s incredibly difficult to get anything made that reflects true diversity if you want more than a micro-budget, as fearful money men won’t stump up the cash, whether they have any right to be fearful or not. On this score, Stonewall is more symptom than cause.

While LGBT actors still have to face various issues in Hollywood, not least due to many executives (some of whom are gay themselves) still feeling it’s ‘easier’ to cast a straight or closeted person in case having a gay actors affects the project’s money-making potential in some parts of the world.

However, it doesn’t seem that’s as much of an issue for those behind the camera, with directors such as Bryan Singer and Roland Emmerich being handed massive projects with no one really caring about their sexuality (although it did become a bit of an issue for Singer last year).

2012 and The Day After Tomorrow director Roland Emmerich has been talking about how easy it’s been for him, telling The Guardian at the Toronto International Film Festival, “For me, being gay in Hollywood was easy. I never made a big deal out of it. I was just openly gay. It happened late because I never wanted to have the words ‘gay director’ in front of my name. I wanted to make such different films. It’s not befitting but now I can be openly gay and still make these films.”

He’s also promised that he’s included gay characters in his upcoming Independence Day seuqel, Resurgence, something that’s still incredibly rare in mega-budget movies.

Emmerich was in Toronto for the premiere of Stonewall, his movie about the 1969 riots in New York that are seen as the beginning of the modern gay rights movements. There’s been plenty of controvery over the film, with many accusing it – based solely on the trailer – of white-washing and erasing trans people, as it focuses on a white, cisgender gay man (played by Jeremy Irvine), but it’s only in Toronto that the first people have been able to see the full movie and judge whether the accusations are justified.

The director doesn’t seem too bothered about the controversy though, calling it “strange” and saying, “A friend of mine was executive for Tristar at the time of Philadelphia. They got so much shit from the gay audience and when this whole controversy over my trailer started, he actually just sent me a couple of quotes people had said about Philadelphia just to make me feel that there’s a precedent for this.”