When Roland Emmerich’s movie about the iconic Stonewall gay rights riots was preparing for its US release last year, it came in for a lot of criticism for whitewashing the events. Many felt that by concentrating on a young, white, ‘twink’ (played by Jeremy Irvine), it was sidelining the importance of trans people and people of color to the events.
The very angry condemnation helped ensure the movie bombed horrifically at the box office.
However, the director isn’t backing down. Now that he’s on the press trail for Independence Day: Resurgence he’s decided to double down with a comment that can’t help but sound racist, even if he didn’t mean it that way. He told The Guardian, “My movie was exactly what they said it wasn’t. It was politically correct. It had black, transgender people in there. We just got killed by one voice on the internet who saw a trailer and said, this is whitewashing Stonewall. Stonewall was a white event, let’s be honest. But nobody wanted to hear that any more.”
Over the last 45 years there has been much discussion about the contribution of different groups to the riots, and at this remove it is difficult to precisely say who threw the first rock or how many members of different parts of the LGBTQ community were represented and exactly what they did. Photographs of the riots show many different people involved though.
Some people undoubtedly feel the contribution of trans and people of color has been overstated, while others believe that emphasising the white men there is an attempt to play down the fact it may well not have been them who were key to what happened. It is certainly true though that for the first 20 or so years after the riots it was almost exclusively depicted as about mainly white men fighting back, with other people’s contribution almost totally ignored and sometimes deliberately silenced.
While the criticism of Emmerich’s movie was hyperbolic – partly because the vast majority of it was based on the trailer rather than the actual movie – he still doesn’t seem to get what the criticism actually was, which is that while insisting events are seen through white eyes may make commercial sense, it still has a tendency to marginalise others.
Nico Tortorella has been turning many a gay man’s head since he popped up in the likes of Scream 4 and The Following. Now the actor, who’s currently starring in TV’s Younger, has revealed that he is sexually fluid.
To support the home entertainment release of Boulevard, we have a copy on DVD to give away.
It’s a real shame with Looking, as the fact it didn’t become a real success has probably made it more difficult to get gay-themed series made in the US. Perhaps most tragically is that I have a feeling that in years to come it will be viewed a lot more favourably than it is now.
Until the British decided that fear and racism (while pretending it isn’t racism) surrounding immigration were the way things should go and decided the UK should exit the EU (sorry, but you cannot believe how annoyed and disappointed in my fellow Brits I am), it’s felt that gradually the Western world was moving in the right direction. That’s certainly true of marriage equality in the US, something that only 12 months before it happened, even many liberal people though was years away.
Synopsis: ‘After 23 years growing up in the rural south as an undocumented gay man, Moises Serrano is forbidden to live and love in the country he calls home. He sees only one option—to fight for justice. When Serrano was just a baby, his parents risked everything to flee Mexico and make the perilous journey across the desert in search of the American dream. Forbidden humanizes these issues, decriminalizes the adult immigration story and asks us to reconsider what it means to be an American.’
Tom Hanks and director Ron Howard are back in the world of Dan Brown adaptations, with a movie that will hopefully sort out the mess that was Inferno (and that’s coming from someone who quite enjoyed the other Robert Langdon novels). The new trailer certainly isn’t too bad though.
If you’re going to make your directorial debut, there are easier project than an adaptation of an acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, by a man considered one of the great American living men of letters (especially if you’re British). However, that’s what Ewan McGregor has done with American Pastoral, based on Philip Roth’s novel, which he may have taken on partly due to the fact it was stuck in development hell due to a never-ending parade of directors coming and going.
When a movie based on the Ouija board was announced, some took it as evidence that Hollywood had officially run out of ideas. However, when it was released the low budget (much lower than originally envisioned) grossed over $100 million worldwide, which was enough to get a sequel going. Now the trailer has arrived.
As 30 Rock, Jon Hamm is a pretty good comedy actor, something he’ll hopefully get to show off in Keeping Up With The Joneses, alongside Wonder Woman herself, Gal Gadot, as well as Isla Fisher and Zach Galafianakis. The trailer for the movie has now arrived, which you can take a look at below.