`Stonewall,” Nigel Finch’s first — and final — feature film, is an uplifting, often funny movie about terrifyingly oppressive times and the people who resisted and survived. It manages to be educational without being pedantic, touching without being melodramatic, subversively political without being threatening. It is always wholly entertaining.
But in certain respects, “Stonewall” wants to have it both ways: It wants to be fiction and non-fiction, historically accurate and commercially appealing at the same time.
“Stonewall” is based on Martin Duberman’s non-fiction book of the same name, a meticulously researched chronicle of the 1969 summer riots in New York City’s Greenwich Village that led to the modern gay- and lesbian-rights movement.
But the movie brackets its highly fictionalized narrative with a disclaimer. In “Stonewall,” a drag queen — LaMiranda, played with a tough vulnerability by Guillermo Diaz — starts the show by calling this version of the story her “legend” and finishes with an explanation that queens, after all, don’t deal in reality but in dreams.
The result is that while the line of kick-dancing queens during the riots is clearly a fictionalization, it’s hard to tell that the cop who warns gays during a bar raid that they’d better have three gender-appropriate articles of clothing on is not being sarcastic but practically reading from the 1969 New York State public code.
Of course, “Stonewall” wants to be historically as well as politically correct: By most accounts, the clash with police trying to raid the old Stonewall Inn began when the drag queens fought back. (Another account claims that the first punch wasn’t thrown by a queen at all but by a butch who fought her way out of the back seat of a squad car.)
“Stonewall,” rightfully, credits and highlights the black and Latino queens. And it is something of a breakthrough to see gay people of color given such dramatic and important roles in a film. Diaz takes advantage of the spotlight, turning in a riveting performance.
But Finch, who died the day after the film’s final edits, and producer Christine Vachon (“Swoon,” “Poison,” “Safe”) seem to think that a story about queens of color might not draw enough of the mainstream gay and lesbian community — or perhaps anybody else — so they hedge their bets by throwing in a white gay man: Matty Dean, who has just arrived in New York, serves as the viewer’s de facto guide.
Forget that “Stonewall” is actually narrated through old radio hits by the Shangri-las and the Ad Libs, which are lip-synched by drag queens in a kind of Greek chorus; the point of view here is Matty Dean’s. His introduction to the life, as homosexuality is often referred to among blacks and queens, is based on the producers’ perception of the audience’s learning curve.
Most peculiarly, Matty Dean — played by blond, blue-eyed hearthrob Frederick Weller — is a man from a different time.
To be precise, he’s a ’90s gay man: self-assured, he fully embraces his sexuality and the entire gay spectrum and is free of the slightest hint of internalized homophobia or shame. The producers would have us believe that Matty Dean emerged fully out of the closet, with nary a moment of questioning or processing.
That’s all well and fine for positive gay role modeling, but it seems historically way out of whack: That even gay male pornography from the late 1960s and 1970s acknowledged potential identity dilemmas, makes it clear just how much creative and political license was taken in the film.
The movie follows Matty Dean off the Greyhound to Times Square and the cruising strips of the Village, where he meets a trio of queens, led by LaMiranda, headed out for the night to the Stonewall Inn. Matty Dean sneaks into their entourage and by the bar’s Mafioso bouncer.
Naturally, there’s a police raid. But it’s not just arrests these cops are after. First, they get off on abusing the queens: They humiliate them and beat them. LaMiranda defiantly resists, for which she’s nearly drowned when one of the police officers holds her head in a bucket of dirty water.
Second, the cops want a bribe. The Stonewall’s manager is a little Italian guy named Skinny Vinnie (Bruce MacVittie) who comes off tough and heterosexual. But, in fact, Vinnie’s madly in love with Bostonia, a sculpted, regal queen with whom he’s having a secret affair. Duane Boutte, who plays Bostonia, gives one of “Stonewall’s” finest performances.
It’s with Vinnie and Bostonia that “Stonewall” is most faithful to history and most emotionally wrenching. Vinnie wants Bostonia something fierce — but he can’t picture himself as gay or life as an open homosexual. He is so desperate to force Bostonia into some sort of conformity that he schedules an appointment for her at a sex-change clinic.
Bostonia, who clearly adores the high-strung and vulnerable Vinnie, points out that she’s a woman with certain equipment and that she’s not so ready to get rid of it. “I’m not sure you are either, Vinnie,” she adds. Vinnie, the film’s tragic creature, shakes his head.
After the police raid, Bostonia bails out LaMiranda and Matty Dean, who fall in love — a tentative, touching relationship.
But Matty Dean isn’t satisfied with mere love. He wants civil rights. He attends meetings of the Mattachine Society, a play-it-safe real-life gay organization that tried to lobby for rights in the 1960s. The Mattachiners are overwhelming male, all white and excruciatingly well-behaved. They pass out fliers, listen to “experts” on homosexuality and plan a big march in Philadelphia.
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It’s during these events that Matty Dean meets Ethan (Brendan Corbalis), a handsome, boyish activist who believes in making change happen quietly, from the inside. He’s mad about Matty Dean but, even when he lures him away from LaMiranda to Fire Island — which he’s described as a gay heaven — he can’t allow himself to be kissed without looking over his shoulder, an involuntary response after a lifetime of fear.
The riots themselves are almost a postscript to the story. Rather than a snapshot of an event, “Stonewall” is a portrait of the times, when gay people couldn’t touch in public, couldn’t get liquor served legally, couldn’t run their own businesses, couldn’t dance together outside of their own drapes-drawn living rooms.
Finch’s story is a charming one, like a fable or a fairy tale (no pun intended). If it fails to serve a documentary purpose (although it has an odd little docu-section from real-life Stonewall veterans), its other purpose seems both clear and noble: To create a narrative for the gay every-person, to help post-Stonewall gays dream a little bit about how it might have been.
”STONEWALL”
(star) (star) (star)
Directed by Nigel Finch; written by Rikki Beadle Blair; photographed by Chris Seager; edited by John Richards; production designed by Therese DePrez; music by Michael Kamen; produced by Christine Vachon. A Strand release; opens Friday at the Music Box Theatre. Running time: 1:38. No MPAA rating.
THE CAST
LaMiranda …………… Guillermo Diaz
Matty Dean ………….. Frederick Weller
Ethan ………………. Brendan Corbalis
Bostonia ……………. Duane Boutte
Skinny Vinnie ……….. Bruce MacVittie