Roland Emmerich’s film about the 1969 riots has been labelled an offensive whitewash by many critics and campaigners. So what do some of those who were actually there at the time make of it?

Gay rights activists give their verdict on Stonewall: 'This film is no credit to the history it purports to portray'

In 1969, the Stonewall riot in New York sparked the birth of the mainstream gay rights movement. Roland Emmerich’s big-screen depiction of the event has, so far, sparked only controversy.

A trailer for the film released last month worried many with what appeared to be a “whitewashed” take on a diverse group of people. Activists highlighted the important role played by transgender black woman Marsha P Johnson (who appears briefly in the trailer and plays a minor role in the film) and called for a boycott.



Roland Emmerich: gay rights drama Stonewall needed 'straight-acting' hero Read more

The controversy has only intensified since the film premiered earlier this month at the Toronto film festival, with reviewers surprised by the focus on a fictional white character, Danny (Jeremy Irvine), and the lack of airtime devoted to the riots themselves. Danny is shown struggling with his sexuality in smalltown Indiana before moving to Greenwich Village.

There, he encounters a crowd he feels at home with, including an androgynous character, Ray (Jonny Beauchamp), who falls in love with our hero. Jonathan Rhys Meyers features as Trevor, a representative from the real-life Mattachine Society – one of the earliest gay rights bodies formed in the US, who were criticized after the riots for not being confrontational enough – and Danny’s love interest.

Promoting the film, Emmerich defended both his narrative decisions and choice of lead, saying that he’d made the movie for as wide an audience as possible, and that “straight-acting” Danny was an “easy in” for heterosexual viewers.

The LGBT community, he said during an interview in Toronto, are like the “democratic party of America”, adding: “Everybody has their own agenda and everyone wants to have their say.”

With that in mind, we took some Stonewall experts and historians, as well as other members of the community, to a first-night screening in New York. Here are their verdicts.

David Carter

Stonewall historian and author of Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Mark Von Holden/WireImage

I was looking forward to a literal rendition of the excitement of a riot. I constructed that carefully in my book to show the drama, and if they had just stuck to the actual facts, it would have been much more powerful. To me, this was a very lame and inaccurate portrayal.



I liked the character of Ray in the film. But he’s supposed to be based in part on Raymond Castro, who was nothing like that. Ray Castro was a very masculine guy, a generous guy – and very conservative-looking. He wasn’t effeminate – he never went in drag. He didn’t prostitute himself, either.

Ray Castro’s story is he was the one who had the big fight with the police as they were trying to get them inside the police wagon [on the night of the riot]. He was handcuffed in the patrol wagon to a lesbian and he got her a lawyer – he wouldn’t let her pay for the lawyer. What led to his arrest: he had gotten out of the Stonewall Inn after the raid, and then came back to see what was going on and tried to help a friend. If you just kept to the story as it was, it would have added a lot to the script.



The film is also extremely unfair to the Mattachine Society. The Trevor character is mainly based on Craig Rodwell, who was actually the one who first shouted “Gay power!” on the first night [as Danny does in the film]. In Stonewall, he’s seen trying to stop Danny from participating in the uprising. Yet Rodwell was not only an ardent supporter of the uprising, he was the event’s chief propagandist. So the film stands history on its head.

The worst people in the film, besides the open homophobes, are shown to be the [Mattachine] movement before Stonewall. The real-life Frank Kameny [co-founder of the Washington DC branch of the Mattachine Society] was nothing like the Frank in the film. He wouldn’t have told a young man coming out: “You can never be an astronomer.” He never discouraged anyone’s dreams.



The film also put forth some negative portrayals of gays that we had back in the 1960s. The Sister Tooey character is very awful-looking and bizarre. The same thing with the overweight guy in the red dress. The guy who picks him up at the basketball court is sort of weird-looking as well.



And it was very disappointing to me to see the death and funeral of Judy Garland used yet again as part of an explanation for the Stonewall uprising. That has been thoroughly discredited by historical research. And this film is no credit to the history it purports to portray.

Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt



Only surviving member of the Stonewall street youth

This story really needs a series, because each character needs to be developed more. There are a lot of stupid things in it. Like when the white kid from the countryside is offered a free home-cooked meal and turns it down. No street kid would turn down dinner! You just didn’t do that. Say no like some middle-class kid? It didn’t work that way.

A 'straight-acting' problem: why mass market gay films increasingly fail us all Read more

They could have a done a lot better job with Ed Murphy [the Stonewall Inn manager, who the film alleges exploited gay homeless youth for financial gain]. Murphy was a very dull-looking character who had no charisma. So to make someone with no charisma look like a killer is a ridiculous. He was so good at being invisible – and he could have you killed like that. The guy they had playing him [Ron Perlman], they did that for effect I guess.



The movie was a very bad representation of the Stonewall Inn. The bar was made to be invisible. If you passed by there you wouldn’t notice it. It looked like a closed-down nothing. They didn’t have those big lights on [as they do in the film]. There were no lights the night of the riots.



The place wasn’t glamorous. The inside was mostly plywood and dark. The best thing in there was the jukebox. The walls were wet in there because the air conditioning didn’t work too well. And the place had a kind of stale beer smell going through it.



The movie is pretty accurate in terms of the street kids being the main engine of things. In one criticism of this film, someone was saying they were angry because there were so many gay stereotypes. Gay stereotypes are what made it happen. The people who passed for straight hid and didn’t want to be active at the beginning. The straighter-acting people ran away.



Stonewall review: There's a riot going on! Pity Roland Emmerich missed it Read more

I thought the choice of lead character was a moronic, old-fashioned thing to do – pick a generic white character who’s supposed to be corn-fed . That’s outdated form; they shouldn’t have done it. And that whole cornball thing of him being the one to throw the first brick. I don’t think there was a first brick; there was so much happening at once.



In the movie, Danny is put there to represent all humanity – and it’s crazy that they chose a white kid to do that. Any person can represent all of humanity. They played it too safe in a ridiculous way. Even in the rest of the country, people aren’t that white anymore.



The cops were as homophobic as they’re portrayed in the film. All that beating up, that’s how it was – getting smashed for no reason. I was lucky that didn’t happen that much to me, but the cops wanting sex happened too. That felt accurate.



Dick Leitsch

Executive director of the Mattachine Society of New York and the first gay journalist to write and give perspective about the riots

It was terrible to center the movie on the white kid. It was a silly trope that plays with a lot of audiences, but at this point historically that theme is overplayed. Having him throw the first brick was bad. That was all crap – that was all drama. But then it’s just a Broadway show – it’s not real.



Bill McDermott

Chief development officer at the Los Angeles LGBT Center; formerly director of development for the Stonewall Community Foundation

I have to say that after seeing the premiere of the movie last night, I was brought to tears by the performances of the transgender and youth of color. The portrayal throughout the movie of their abuse by almost everyone – parents, police, bar owners and employees, abusive johns etc made me feel their rage and understand many of the experiences of those involved in the riots.

I for one am sorry for the controversy, but happy for the dialogue it has ignited. I just hope people don’t miss the opportunity to actually feel the rage and the abuse that led up to the riots.

So I say thank you to the many youth who gave great performances and hope the movie in its own way can further an understanding of the rejection, oppression and hatred that many of our LGBT youth still experience today. And I hope it allows us the space to talk about all the heroes of Stonewall.

Lester Fabian Brathwaite

LGBT writer for Out, NewNowNext, The Tenth Zine and Queerty

Photograph: Guardian

While Stonewall wasn’t as gut-wrenchingly terrible as I expected, it was a disappointment in many ways, mostly because Emmerich felt he had to have a generic, “straight-acting” white dude from Indiana as the protagonist so straight people could “feel for him.” But thanks to the Stonewall Riots, most straight people know a gay person and can sympathise with a gay character. As the movie’s production values painfully make clear, this isn’t 1969 – mainstream audiences can (and should) deal with the kind of complex, diverse LGBT characters television has been churning out for the past few years. In seeking mass appeal, Emmerich has sacrificed not only history, but the telling of a compelling story, in the process appealing to no one.

Danny was the cheesiest, tackiest decision in a film already ripe with cheddar. I find it hard to take offence at [the brick-chucking moment] because it’s just such a useless, unnecessary moment in the film that gives undue significance to one person who never existed to begin with. The real offence is that Stonewall focuses so heavily on this stock leading man that it sacrifices the stories of the homeless LGBT youth to whom this film was dedicated, and in so doing simply perpetuates the whitewashing of the LGBT community.

• Stonewall is released in the US on 25 September