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September 22, 2015 1:12 PM   Subscribe

"There Aren't Enough Bricks in the World to Throw at Roland Emmerich’s Appalling Stonewall" - The first reviews of Roland Emmerich film about the Stonewall riots are in. They are not favorable.
posted by Artw (74 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
See, I actually have some hope that the mounting backlash against this horrible little movie will actually lead to more people learning about the real history of Stonewall.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:16 PM on September 22, 2015 [26 favorites]


to paraphrase Connor Goldsmith on Twitter: The worst thing about the Stonewall movie is we're all going to talk about it for months and Roland Emmerich is poolside with youth named Elephbian peeling grapes into his mouth.
posted by The Whelk at 1:18 PM on September 22, 2015 [7 favorites]


Grow the fuck up, Hollywood.

Again, yes.
posted by Melismata at 1:21 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Like, actually, to reflect for a sec - I think we're in a time right now where it's more ok than ever to BE gay, so nowadays when a person comes out, it's a bit less likely to be this Big Fucking Deal that you have to research in order to make sense of things. But the idea of actually learning about the gay rights struggle in school the way we learn about earlier civil rights movements still seems a bit far away. Which is why my 20 year old sister, who had been out as bi since her teens, had no idea where we were when I took my family to visit the Stonewall Inn a couple of years ago.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:24 PM on September 22, 2015 [13 favorites]


The only joy in terrible movies is the snark, e.g. in the link: Stonewall teaches you about as much about being gay as the Aristocats taught you about being an aristocrat.

But though I love good snark, it's a tragedy an event this important and as little known to the general public as Stonewall got a film treatment this bad.
posted by bearwife at 1:26 PM on September 22, 2015 [7 favorites]




WTF did anyone expect from Roland Emmerich? Seriously? Ever since I saw a typo in the subtitles of the original Stargate, I was unable to take him seriously. What makes you take a "world-spanning disaster" movie veteran, and have him do a movie about something more human and intimate like this??

Shame on you, Hollywood.
Shame.
On.
You.
posted by Samizdata at 1:32 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Wait, Roland Emmerich made a bad movie that ignores actual history and/or science?
posted by octothorpe at 1:33 PM on September 22, 2015 [17 favorites]


Huh. There's little that money can't fuck up.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 1:33 PM on September 22, 2015


Buzzfeed: There’s no sign that Ray or his street friends are in any better condition than when Danny met them, though at least Danny has learned from his experience and grown to be a better person, as cis white people tend to do after spending time with the downtrodden.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:36 PM on September 22, 2015 [13 favorites]


There already was a movie called Stonewall that starred a gay Latino man and put transsexuals and drag queens on the front line, instead of as supporting characters, and was based on a memoir by a gay historian.
posted by maxsparber at 1:41 PM on September 22, 2015 [12 favorites]


Wait, Roland Emmerich made a bad movie that ignores actual history and/or science?

I'm as shocked as you are. Anyway, the only way I'll see this movie is if it has space-gays, gigantic rampaging gays who trample NY, or a catastrophic storm of gayness that buries the nation in gay.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:43 PM on September 22, 2015 [43 favorites]


the only way I'll see this movie is if it has space-gays, gigantic rampaging gays who trample NY, or a catastrophic storm of gayness that buries the nation in gay.

did you see Jupiter Ascending
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:46 PM on September 22, 2015 [83 favorites]


Did this guy direct the brief movie they show at the 9/11 memorial, too? Just wondering...
posted by Chuffy at 1:47 PM on September 22, 2015


the only way I'll see this movie is if it has space-gays, gigantic rampaging gays who trample NY, or a catastrophic storm of gayness that buries the nation in gay.

Emmerich actually is gay, and it's not hard to find gay themes in his films. So you can sort of find what you're looking for. I mean, in the criminally underrated although genuinely terrible 10,000 BC, Emmerich has space gays using cavemen and woolly mammoths to build the pyramids.
posted by maxsparber at 1:51 PM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


I did not know this movie existed until I read the Gawker review earlier today, and when I saw the words "Roland Emmerich’s Appalling Stonewall" they registered the same way "Michael Bay's Appalling Jane Eyre" would have.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:57 PM on September 22, 2015 [26 favorites]


finally a movie that shows how straight acting white people are the real heros
posted by klangklangston at 2:03 PM on September 22, 2015 [20 favorites]


I have seen this marketed before indie/art films and such as a proper Oscar film so the "Roland Emmerich" bit was the surprise to me.
posted by Artw at 2:05 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


11% on Rotten Tomatoes
posted by blue_beetle at 2:07 PM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]




criminally underrated although genuinely terrible

I love this.
posted by asperity at 2:10 PM on September 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


The movie sounds awful, and I suspect the review is spot on.

However, I really question the received history that it was "drag queens" who led the riots. I mean .. . the photos of the riots mostly show skinny cis white guys. And for every account I read (like the link above) that says the bar was Latino, black, and some Anglo, I read another that says it was known as a 'white bar' that tolerated a limited number of transfolk and persons of color.

It's hard to know what the actual history was.
posted by kanewai at 2:18 PM on September 22, 2015


a production design that makes late 1960s Christopher Street look like Sesame Street.

From the sound of these reviews, we'd have a better shot at a faithful and respectful treatment of events if the movie featured actual Muppets.
posted by asperity at 2:21 PM on September 22, 2015 [9 favorites]


It's hard to know what the actual history was.

Not really, though. I mean, there are many people who were alive then and there then who are alive now and will tell you what actually happened.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:22 PM on September 22, 2015 [26 favorites]


Ever since I saw a typo in the subtitles of the original Stargate, I was unable to take him seriously.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back? Improper pronoun capitalization and a missing apostrophe in the subtitles? That's like taking a 1977 Pinto out for a test drive, and then saying you're never going to take Ford seriously again because the dashboard cigarette lighter didn't work properly before, during, or after the gas tank exploded.

You're absolutely right about the "Why Emmerich?" question. Whoever it was that said "this is a good idea" probably would have pushed for Hal Needham to direct My Dinner with Andre.
posted by chambers at 2:27 PM on September 22, 2015 [10 favorites]




Not really, though. I mean, there are many people who were alive then and there then who are alive now and will tell you what actually happened.

And everyone contradicts each other, which was more my point.
posted by kanewai at 3:12 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


And everyone contradicts each other, which was more my point.

Meaning we can't understand anything that happened, ever, because there are always people to contradict each other? We seem to have accepted that we licked that problem for so many other historical events.

(Insert aliens-building-pyramids truthiness here. Emmerich could do a great movie about that, I bet.)
posted by scaryblackdeath at 3:18 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Stargate
space-gays

My alternate reality Stargate script features a charming courtship between Daniel and Ra in which Sha-Uri plays the beard for the benefit of O'Neil and his close-minded Space Marines. Hijinks, understanding, and a tactical yield ensue when Earth's demands for results brings everyone together to redefine 'mission success.'
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:50 PM on September 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


I'm still trying to figure out exactly what drug a studio executive was on to greenlight the guy that brought you The Day After Tomorrow to handle a movie about the flashpoint of the global gay rights movement.

Executive:
/snorts undetermined powder
"Will the gay people have to battle bears that escape the Bronx Zoo?"

Emmerich:
/snorts more undetermined powder
"Well, there will be bears, but they won't come from a zoo, per se."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:51 PM on September 22, 2015 [7 favorites]


it’s mostly derided as a mob-run dive whose main clientele was hustlers and johns, and whose cocktails could not be consumed safely since there was no running water behind the bar.
To be fair, that sounds like some 60s verisimilitude. (When I walked into a stock exchange as a little kid, the ticker-tape ran into a basket that was also serving as a cuspidor for the checkered-suit snoose-chewers.)

took drugs that made everything look blurry and as though it were running at a reduced framerate.
The drugs weren't specifically too good either (particularly the brown acid).

Danny is also “straight-acting,” which is a term that I can’t believe any gay man uses anymore
OTOH this is a movie set in the 60s. A time when the State would cauterize your brain for free for looking too cute.

If you can’t do justice to history, don’t tell a historical story...the advances the gay community has made...
Where is the definitive history he should have gone by? This is story set 50 years ago, -before- the advances. If it's historically incorrect, then that's a solid basis for bitching. But this author was too busy spit-showering for that.
posted by Twang at 3:55 PM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


You know, that's almost the same review levied against Hudson Hawk, and that film is a great cult popcorn classic... Hudson Hawk is shit, but its a really good shit, the kind you feel better after having. The kind that you tell your friends about, and they respond something about 'TMI'... I don't know if this movie is that kind of good shit, whether it will stand on its own, but ... I'll take it as a movie I might watch if it is randomly on TV, and not one I'll rush out to see. Hudson Hawk was like that, and I gleefully leave it on whenever I come across it on some random network.
posted by Nanukthedog at 3:56 PM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Looks like a remake of the "Hair" movie, without the music.
posted by monospace at 4:08 PM on September 22, 2015


> There already was a movie called Stonewall that starred a gay Latino man and put transsexuals and drag queens on the front line, instead of as supporting characters, and was based on a memoir by a gay historian.

Was it any good?
posted by 4th number at 4:10 PM on September 22, 2015


The script has the subtlety of a sledgehammer, telling instead of showing each teachable moment in a movie-long series of teachable moments. “I take whatever I want and can, ‘cause if I didn’t, I’d have nothing at all,” says a black character at one point. “Nobody wants me. Not even you. I don’t have anything,” says a Latin sex worker character at another. “These kids have nothing to lose,” says an onlooker during the far-too-brief climactic rioting scene

Your script lacks subtlety! You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!
posted by langtonsant at 4:10 PM on September 22, 2015 [7 favorites]


Oh man, that Vanity Fair review: "Stonewall is ultimately yet another cartoonish fantasy about white saviors and square-jawed heroes; it should be called Independence Gay."
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:20 PM on September 22, 2015 [14 favorites]


This is a Roland Emmerich flick we're talking about here. The question that's been burning in my mind since I heard about this is, do the Gays blow up the White House? I've found that the White House's destruction is a pretty good indicator of a... well, not good, but at least a watchable Emmerich flick. They blow it up, I might still go see it.
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 4:32 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm as shocked as you are. Anyway, the only way I'll see this movie is if it has space-gays, gigantic rampaging gays who trample NY, or a catastrophic storm of gayness that buries the nation in gay.


I'm presuming that there's a scene referencing The Day After Tomorrow, where the protagonists are pursued by shaaaade.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:00 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


You know, that's almost the same review levied against Hudson Hawk, and that film is a great cult popcorn classic


Wait- was Hudson Hawk based on real events?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:07 PM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Hudson Hawk was a documentary, and filmed in real time.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 6:14 PM on September 22, 2015 [13 favorites]


And everyone contradicts each other, which was more my point.

But this is why we have historians. One of the jobs they do is to sort through documentary evidence, photographs, oral histories, the memories of survivors, and make some kind of sense out of it. You can't just throw up your hands and say, "Well, this person says this and that person says that, so every story is equally true and valid." There are at least a few full-length books that focus on Stonewall; these might be a good place to start to get a sense of what really happened. Heck, I'm inspired by this movie to do some of this reading myself, because I only know the received wisdom of my years in the queer community so I don't know what I'm right and wrong about, and now I'm curious to find out.

Even if Stonewall wasn't primarily driven by people of color and drag queens and lesbians, there's a valid critique to be made about a movie that puts the personal growth midwestern white guy at the center of the story, treats flamers and queens as de facto unloveable, and is a generally bad movie to boot.

I did not know that there was a PBS American Experience documentary about Stonewall. I think I'll watch that while I wait for this movie to go away.
posted by not that girl at 6:20 PM on September 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


The Card Cheat: " "Michael Bay's Appalling Jane Eyre" "

Look. Is there any one of us who wouldn't watch that?
posted by schmod at 6:33 PM on September 22, 2015 [15 favorites]


Could you imagine a Stonewall movie with a Rashamon-style multi-look at what started it, using each of the proposed theories and showing them as if they were the definitive tale? That would be... actually rather awesome.
posted by Deoridhe at 6:38 PM on September 22, 2015 [11 favorites]


Even if Stonewall wasn't primarily driven by people of color and drag queens and lesbians, there's a valid critique to be made about a movie that puts the personal growth midwestern white guy at the center of the story, treats flamers and queens as de facto unloveable, and is a generally bad movie to boot.

A fictional midwestern white guy, created out of whole cloth by the fantasies of the middle-aged, white director.
posted by xingcat at 6:40 PM on September 22, 2015 [9 favorites]


Anyway, the way American movies work, if you're telling a "historically" "inspired" story, a white dude's (okay, sometimes a white lady) always got to be the default audience stand-in character.

I really liked that the Vanity Fair review calls out this whitewashing specifically:
What this really is, I think, is the filmmakers tending to their personal preferences and prejudices, and then blaming the system. Darn it, this is how it has to be, because that’s how the world is. . . . We simply must redirect as much history as possible through a white, bizarrely heteronormative lens, or else, the thinking goes, no one will care. People like Emmerich throw up their hands at this supposed inevitability and say, “That’s just the way it is.”

Which, of course, is nonsense. When Straight Outta Compton is earning $60 million on its opening weekend, it’s nonsense. When Tangerine is earning rave reviews and art-house dollars, it’s nonsense. When a show like Transparent is winning Emmys, it’s nonsense. But Stonewall demands that we accept Emmerich’s evasive, self-serving sociology and then has the audacity to ask that we be moved by it. We’re not.
posted by gladly at 7:08 PM on September 22, 2015 [7 favorites]


Wait- was Hudson Hawk based on real events?

It was based on an improvised Bruce Willis harmonica performance which reportedly really happened.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:12 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


brb, engaging in a flurry of I TOLD YOU SO with a bunch of white (natch) cis (obvs) gay men.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:13 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Even if Stonewall wasn't primarily driven by people of color and drag queens and lesbians, there's a valid critique to be made about a movie that puts the personal growth midwestern white guy at the center of the story, treats flamers and queens as de facto unloveable, and is a generally bad movie to boot.

I'm 100% in agreement with you here, just to be clear. I wrote that it is hard to know the truth, which is different than throwing up my hands and saying 'we can never know.'

Not to prosecute you particularly, Kanewai, but didn't we all just recently have this discussion on the blue?

... and deleting the rest of the post I was in the middle of writing. I was offline much of August, having fun, and wasn't aware of that other discussion.
posted by kanewai at 7:14 PM on September 22, 2015


I may or may not have spammed that Vanity Fair article all over people's Facebook profiles with a smug "ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING" attached.

But honestly, trans* folk called this out first a long-ass time ago. It's not okay that it took critical review from more "official" channels for more people to be like "...ohhhhh snap yeah this is actually pretty bad!"
posted by Ashen at 7:31 PM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


> There already was a movie called Stonewall that starred a gay Latino man and put transsexuals and drag queens on the front line, instead of as supporting characters, and was based on a memoir by a gay historian.

Was it any good?
posted by 4th number


I still remember it fondly, though I haven't seen it since it first came out.

The 1995 Stonewall film also featured a fictional white cis guy coming to New York - but then promptly focuses on the other characters who are (as noted) trans and/or drag queens and mostly black or Latino.

I really liked the character of Miranda - and especially the scene when she goes to the draft office.
posted by jb at 7:47 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


octobersurprise: "Wait, Roland Emmerich made a bad movie that ignores actual history and/or science?

I'm as shocked as you are. Anyway, the only way I'll see this movie is if it has space-gays, gigantic rampaging gays who trample NY, or a catastrophic storm of gayness that buries the nation in gay.
"

Or, for that matter, a national outbreak of non-heterosexual/gender normative behaviour due to global warming...
posted by Samizdata at 8:01 PM on September 22, 2015


chambers: "Ever since I saw a typo in the subtitles of the original Stargate, I was unable to take him seriously.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back? Improper pronoun capitalization and a missing apostrophe in the subtitles? That's like taking a 1977 Pinto out for a test drive, and then saying you're never going to take Ford seriously again because the dashboard cigarette lighter didn't work properly before, during, or after the gas tank exploded.

You're absolutely right about the "Why Emmerich?" question. Whoever it was that said "this is a good idea" probably would have pushed for Hal Needham to direct My Dinner with Andre.
"

Agreed on the Andre. I just saw the typo as a sign of shitty, no fucks given filmmaking. Which, in my opinion, pretty much suits his repertoire.
posted by Samizdata at 8:03 PM on September 22, 2015


feckless fecal fear mongering: "brb, engaging in a flurry of I TOLD YOU SO with a bunch of white (natch) cis (obvs) gay men."

#NotAllCisGayMen
posted by Samizdata at 8:06 PM on September 22, 2015


I'm a white cis gay man and I am having a great deal of fun saying "Oh we have to wait to see the movie eh" and "I fucking told you so now get your head out of your ass"
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:11 PM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


Anyway, the only way I'll see this movie is if it has space-gays, gigantic rampaging gays who trample NY, or a catastrophic storm of gayness that buries the nation in gay.

A plucky yet also deadbeat dad ineptly yet also expertly flies a single-prop plane just ahead of the rapidly-expanding fissure of gay.
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:33 PM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


I am now picturing a plane flying out of goatse and I am unhappy, turbid dahlia

I am profoundly unhappy
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:03 PM on September 22, 2015 [7 favorites]


For some reason, I couldn't find the Buzzfeed review, so ended up on Reddit tracking it down and now I need a bleach shower.

From the Emmerich interview: “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.”

regular life

posted by Gin and Broadband at 12:01 AM on September 23, 2015 [11 favorites]


The real problem with homeless gay teens and sex workers is that they just didn't study hard enough.
posted by nicebookrack at 12:38 AM on September 23, 2015 [7 favorites]




the uncomplicated soups of my childhood: "Hudson Hawk was a documentary, and filmed in real time"

And they got the timing of everything right by singing classic pop tunes.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:08 AM on September 23, 2015


Hudson Hawk is shit

I think you forgot "the".
posted by JaredSeth at 7:59 AM on September 23, 2015 [3 favorites]


Mod note: A few comments removed. If your issue is you're just looking for some movie reviews, please go look for some movie reviews instead of asking people in an only tangentially-related thread to find them for you.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:37 AM on September 23, 2015 [3 favorites]


This is why intersectionality matters.
posted by prefpara at 10:04 AM on September 23, 2015 [4 favorites]


If this is Independence Gay, will the sequel be The Gay After Tomorrow?
posted by klangklangston at 12:02 PM on September 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


will the sequel be The Gay After Tomorrow?

THIS, YEAR ... THAT SWEATER JUST WON'T DO!
posted by octobersurprise at 12:52 PM on September 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


qcubed: "Anyway, the way American movies work, if you're telling a "historically" "inspired" story, a white dude's (okay, sometimes a white lady) always got to be the default audience stand-in character"

In the long-ago world of 1982, Gandhi won a slew of Oscars, made a ton of money, and propelled Sir Ben Kingsley, born Krishna Pandit Bhanji, from "famous in the UK" to superstardom. The studios love to blame Hollywood's racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic status quo on their unsophisticated audiences, but we ate that movie up back in the substantially less-enlightened '80s. A really good movie about Stonewall could do just fine even without a fictional white lead, never mind that Roland Emmerich isn't equipped to give us that film.
posted by gingerest at 9:55 PM on September 23, 2015 [4 favorites]


Except that even the makers of Gandhi felt it necessary to stick Candice Bergen and Martin Sheen in there as white American witnesses to the goings on.
posted by octothorpe at 5:43 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


"Michael Bay's Appalling Jane Eyre"

Look. Is there any one of us who wouldn't watch that?


Comely heroine pulls unseen item out of her bodice. Thunderclap. Camera slowly pushes in on her glowering face. "THESE HEIGHTS [pulls pin out of grenade with teeth] WILL WUTHER!"
posted by psoas at 3:55 PM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


Stonewall Gets What It Deserves, Tanks at the Box Office

I've got about as much interest in seeing The Intern as I have shoving knives in my eyes, but bless Nancy Meyers and all who sail in her.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 11:49 PM on September 27, 2015




Emmerich explains his goals with the movies in this Buzzfieed piece:

“You have to understand one thing: I didn’t make this movie only for gay people; I made it also for straight people,” Emmerich told BuzzFeed News. “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.”
posted by Twang at 1:07 PM on October 1, 2015


Speaking as a straight person, I find stories aimed at me often seemed to replicate things I already knew but put them in the mouths of people not-like-me, and so it becomes harder to tell what exists to pander to me, and what is actually accurate. Because of this, I tend to specifically gravitate toward things NOT aimed at me in order to learn, because otherwise the source is suspect.

Making Danny a white, male, "straight acting" person gives the illusion that the real motivators of change in a society are people in the center, not people at the edges, and in all my study of various movements I find this to not be true at all. People like me are, by and large, comfortable. We are unlikely to agitate for change, and what changes we agitate for are unlikely to help very many other people. For this reason, I personally prefer to defer to people who are closer to the margins and less comfortable - presuming they have a more accurate read of the situation than I do.
posted by Deoridhe at 4:39 PM on October 1, 2015 [3 favorites]


As a side note, I happen to know a reader who saw this script multiple times before it got picked up by Emmerich and she says that from what she can tell, Emmerich filmed it almost verbatim, including "Danny" — she also noted that 1) it was clear that it was a playwright behind it, because the script included all sorts of specifics about the characters (e.g. haircuts) that are usually left up to the director in film scripts, and 2) that each time she saw it basically zero had changed about it, giving the indication that the writer was one who thought each word was precious and would be a pain in the ass to work with. Sounds like they finally found someone who shared their vision in Emmerich.
posted by klangklangston at 6:04 PM on October 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


How dumb does Emmerich think his straight audience is? Good grief.
posted by gingerest at 10:39 PM on October 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


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