before stonewall documentary transcript

You know, we wanted to be part of the mainstream society. Fred Sargeant:Someone at this point had apparently gone down to the cigar stand on the corner and got lighter fluid. I am not alone, there are other people that feel exactly the same way.". I just thought you had to get through this, and I thought I could get through it, but you really had to be smart about it. So anything that would set us off, we would go into action. Yvonne Ritter:And then everybody started to throw pennies like, you know, this is what they were, they were nothing but copper, coppers, that's what they were worth. Narrator (Archival):This is a nation of laws. This produced an enormous amount of anger within the lesbian and gay community in New York City and in other parts of America. The lights came on, it's like stop dancing. Fifty years ago, a riot broke out at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village. Jay Fialkov I was a man. The film combined personal interviews, snapshots and home movies, together with historical footage. They were afraid that the FBI was following them. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:Saturday night there it was. And the rest of your life will be a living hell. All rights reserved. Then during lunch, Ralph showed him some pornographic pictures. The events that took place in June 1969 have been described as the birth of the gay-rights movement, but that's only partially true. There's a little door that slides open with this power-hungry nut behind that, you see this much of your eyes, and he sees that much of your face, and then he decides whether you're going to get in. They raided the Checkerboard, which was a very popular gay bar, a week before the Stonewall. This Restored Documentary Examines What LGBTQ Lives Were Like Before There were occasions where you did see people get night-sticked, or disappear into a group of police and, you know, everybody knew that was not going to have a good end. So you couldn't have a license to practice law, you couldn't be a licensed doctor. Why 'Before Stonewall' Was Such a Hard Movie to Make - The Atlantic And it's that hairpin trigger thing that makes the riot happen. There was no going back now, there was no going back, there was no, we had discovered a power that we weren't even aware that we had. Activists had been working for change long before Stonewall. Before Stonewall pries open the closet door, setting free dramatic stories from the early 1900's onwards of public and private existence as experienced by LGBT Americans. BBC Worldwide Americas TV Host (Archival):Ladies and gentlemen, the reason for using first names only forthese very, very charming contestants is that right now each one of them is breaking the law. And she was quite crazy. Somehow being gay was the most terrible thing you could possibly be. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:The mob raised its hand and said "Oh, we'll volunteer," you know, "We'll set up some gay bars and serve over-priced, watered-down drinks to you guys." And the Village has a lot of people with children and they were offended. You know, it's just, everybody was there. Like, "Joe, if you fire your gun without me saying your name and the words 'fire,' you will be walking a beat on Staten Island all alone on a lonely beach for the rest of your police career. He said, "Okay, let's go." John O'Brien:I knew that the words that were being said to put down people, was about me. Marjorie Duffield Trevor, Post Production "We're not going.". Raymond Castro:Incendiary devices were being thrown in I don't think they were Molotov cocktails, but it was just fire being thrown in when the doors got open. Now, 50 years later, the film is back. It eats you up inside not being comfortable with yourself. The events of that night have been described as the birth of the gay-rights movement. Quentin Heilbroner Danny Garvin:We had thought of women's rights, we had thought of black rights, all kinds of human rights, but we never thought of gay rights, and whenever we got kicked out of a bar before, we never came together. From left: "Before Stonewall" director Greta Schiller, executive producer John Scagliotti and co-director Robert Rosenberg in 1985. We could lose our memory from the beating, we could be in wheelchairs like some were. The mayor of New York City, the police commissioner, were under pressure to clean up the streets of any kind of quote unquote "weirdness." Franco Sacchi, Additional Animation and Effects I learned, very early, that those horrible words were about me, that I was one of those people. You were alone. Andrea Weiss is a documentary filmmaker and author with a Ph.D. in American History. Mike Wallace (Archival):The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. Alexis Charizopolis This book, and the related documentary film, use oral histories to present students with a varied view of lesbian and gay experience. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:If someone was dressed as a woman, you had to have a female police officer go in with her. Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives Dana Gaiser They pushed everybody like to the back room and slowly asking for IDs. Eric Marcus, Writer:The Mattachine Society was the first gay rights organization, and they literally met in a space with the blinds drawn. Geoff Kole Oddball Film + Video, San Francisco I'm losing everything that I have. Dick Leitsch:There were Black Panthers and there were anti-war people. If there had been a riot of that proportion in Harlem, my God, you know, there'd have been cameras everywhere. And it would take maybe a half hour to clear the place out. Available via license: Content may be subject to . I met this guy and I broke down crying in his arms. Gay people were never supposed to be threats to police officers. All I knew about was that I heard that there were people down in Times Square who were gay and that's where I went to. You throw into that, that the Stonewall was raided the previous Tuesday night. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:And by the time the police would come back towards Stonewall, that crowd had gone all the around Washington Place come all the way back around and were back pushing in on them from the other direction and the police would wonder, "These are the same people or different people?". Ellen Goosenberg Because its all right in the Village, but the minute we cross 14th street, if there's only ten of us, God knows what's going to happen to us.". Mike Nuget They can be anywhere. Every arrest and prosecution is a step in the education of the public to the solution of the problem. Hunted, hunted, sometimes we were hunted. And as I'm looking around to see what's going on, police cars, different things happening, it's getting bigger by the minute. Raymond Castro:If that light goes on, you know to stop whatever you're doing, and separate. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:TheNew York TimesI guess printed a story, but it wasn't a major story. [7] In 1989, it won the Festival's Plate at the Torino International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. Jerry Hoose:The bar itself was a toilet. Virginia Apuzzo:What we felt in isolation was a growing sense of outrage and fury particularly because we looked around and saw so many avenues of rebellion. Somebody grabbed me by the leg and told me I wasn't going anywhere. I never believed in that. In the Life I would wait until there was nobody left to be the girl and then I would be the girl. So gay people were being strangled, shot, thrown in the river, blackmailed, fired from jobs. One of the world's oldest and largest gay pride parades became a victory celebration after New York's historic decision to legalize same-sex marriage. William Eskridge, Professor of Law: The 1960s were dark ages for lesbians and gay men all over America. And, it was, I knew I would go through hell, I would go through fire for that experience. Martha Shelley:We participated in demonstrations in Philadelphia at Independence Hall. They'd think I'm a cop even though I had a big Jew-fro haircut and a big handlebar mustache at the time. They are taught that no man is born homosexual and many psychiatrists now believe that homosexuality begins to form in the first three years of life. Mike Wallace (Archival):Dr. Charles Socarides is a New York psychoanalyst at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine. Slate:Activity Group Therapy (1950), Columbia University Educational Films. Pamela Gaudiano Katrina Heilbroner John O'Brien:It was definitely dark, it was definitely smelly and raunchy and dirty and that's the only places that we had to meet each other, was in the very dirty, despicable places. I told the person at the door, I said "I'm 18 tonight" and he said to me, "you little SOB," he said. And it's interesting to note how many youngsters we've been seeing in these films. And I hadn't had enough sleep, so I was in a somewhat feverish state, and I thought, "We have to do something, we have to do something," and I thought, "We have to have a protest march of our own." I never saw so many gay people dancing in my life. You knew you could ruin them for life. John DiGiacomo Dick Leitsch:And the blocks were small enough that we could run around the block and come in behind them before they got to the next corner. And I knew that I was lesbian. It was one of the things you did in New York, it was like the Barnum and Bailey aspect of it. And that crowd between Howard Johnson's and Mama's Chik-n-Rib was like the basic crowd of the gay community at that time in the Village. So I run down there. Bettye Lane The events. Pennebaker courtesy of Pennebaker Hegedus Films Once it started, once that genie was out of the bottle, it was never going to go back in. It was first released in 1984 with its American premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and its European premiere at the Berlinale, followed by a successful theatrical release in many countries and a national broadcast on PBS. Raymond Castro:You could hear screaming outside, a lot of noise from the protesters and it was a good sound. So if any one of you, have let yourself become involved with an adult homosexual, or with another boy, and you're doing this on a regular basis, you better stop quick. Scott McPartland/Getty Images Jerry Hoose:I remember I was in a paddy wagon one time on the way to jail, we were all locked up together on a chain in the paddy wagon and the paddy wagon stopped for a red light or something and one of the queens said "Oh, this is my stop." A sickness of the mind. They were getting more ferocious. And that, that was a very haunting issue for me. Her most recent film, Bones of Contention, premiered in the 2016 Berlin International That was scary, very scary. Windows started to break. But after the uprising, polite requests for change turned into angry demands. John O'Brien:There was one street called Christopher Street, where actually I could sit and talk to other gay people beyond just having sex. You gotta remember, the Stonewall bar was just down the street from there. And I raised my hand at one point and said, "Let's have a protest march." America thought we were these homosexual monsters and we were so innocent, and oddly enough, we were so American. John O'Brien:Heterosexuals, legally, had lots of sexual outlets. It was a down at a heels kind of place, it was a lot of street kids and things like that. People started throwing pennies. It is usually after the day at the beach that the real crime occurs. Michael Dolan, Technical Advisors I famously used the word "fag" in the lead sentence I said "the forces of faggotry." But the before section, I really wanted people to have a sense of what it felt like to be gay, lesbian, transgender, before Stonewall and before you have this mass civil rights movement that comes after Stonewall. They were the storm troopers. Interviewer (Archival):What type of laws are you after? And these were meat trucks that in daytime were used by the meat industry for moving dead produce, and they really reeked, but at nighttime, that's where people went to have sex, you know, and there would be hundreds and hundreds of men having sex together in these trucks. John van Hoesen Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:We had maybe six people and by this time there were several thousand outside. Geordie, Liam and Theo Gude And as awful as people might think that sounds, it's the way history has always worked. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:All of straight America, in terms of the middle class, was recoiling in horror from what was happening all around them at that time, in that summer and the summer before. We'll put new liquor in there, we'll put a new mirror up, we'll get a new jukebox." 1984 documentary film by Greta Schiller and Robert Rosenberg, "Berlinale 2016: Panorama Celebrates Teddy Award's 30th Anniversary and Announces First Titles in Programme", "Guest Post: What I Learned From Revisiting My 1984 Documentary 'Before Stonewall', "See the 25 New Additions to the National Film Registry, From Purple Rain to Clerks", "Complete National Film Registry Listing", "Before Stonewall - Independent Historical Film", Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community (Newly Restored), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Before_Stonewall&oldid=1134540821, Documentary films about United States history, Historiography of LGBT in the United States, United States National Film Registry films, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 19 January 2023, at 05:30. Martin Boyce:Oh, Miss New Orleans, she wouldn't be stopped. Yvonne Ritter:I did try to get out of the bar and I thought that there might be a way out through one of the bathrooms. Other images in this film are I could never let that happen and never did. But that's only partially true. I mean I'm only 19 and this'll ruin me. That was our world, that block. Saying I don't want to be this way, this is not the life I want. Not able to do anything. Narrator (Archival):Do you want your son enticed into the world of homosexuals, or your daughter lured into lesbianism? Beginning of our night out started early. Few photographs of the raid and the riots that followed exist. Martin Boyce:I wasn't labeled gay, just "different." Because as the police moved back, we were conscious, all of us, of the area we were controlling and now we were in control of the area because we were surrounded the bar, we were moving in, they were moving back. This is one thing that if you don't get caught by us, you'll be caught by yourself. Martin Boyce:It was another great step forward in the story of human rights, that's what it was. Eventually something was bound to blow. Samual Murkofsky Absolutely, and many people who were not lucky, felt the cops. Sign up for the American Experience newsletter! Ed Koch, mayorof New York City from1978 to 1989, discussesgay civil rights in New York in the 1960s. I made friends that first day. It was the only time I was in a gladiatorial sport that I stood up in. In 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, leading to three nights of rioting by the city's LGBT community. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:A rather tough lesbian was busted in the bar and when she came out of the bar she was fighting the cops and trying to get away. It was narrated by author Rita Mae Brown, directed by Greta Schiller, co-directed by Robert Rosenberg, and co-produced by John Scagliotti and Rosenberg, and Schiller. Clever. Marc Aubin And then there were all these priests ranting in church about certain places not to go, so you kind of knew where you could go by what you were told not to do. And, I did not like parading around while all of these vacationers were standing there eating ice cream and looking at us like we were critters in a zoo. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:What was so good about the Stonewall was that you could dance slow there. Stonewall Forever is a documentary from NYC's LGBT Community Center directed by Ro Haber. 'Before Stonewall' Tracks the Pre-Movement Era | International Queer was very big. Ed Koch, Councilman, New York City:There were complaints from people who objected to the wrongful behavior of some gays who would have sex on the street. Martin Boyce:I had cousins, ten years older than me, and they had a car sometimes. Martin Boyce:There were these two black, like, banjee guys, and they were saying, "What's goin' on man?" WGBH Educational Foundation What finally made sense to me was the first time I kissed a woman and I thought, "Oh, this is what it's about." And they were lucky that door was closed, they were very lucky. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:Ed Koch who was a democratic party leader in the Greenwich Village area, was a specific leader of the local forces seeking to clean up the streets. Raymond Castro:Society expected you to, you know, grow up, get married, have kids, which is what a lot of people did to satisfy their parents. 1969: The Stonewall Uprising - Library of Congress We had been threatened bomb threats. David Carter, Author ofStonewall:Most raids by the New York City Police, because they were paid off by the mob, took place on a weeknight, they took place early in the evening, the place would not be crowded. Remember everything. Narrator (Archival):Richard Enman, president of the Mattachine Society of Florida, whose goal is to legalize homosexuality between consenting adults, was a reluctant participant in tonight's program. I mean, I came out in Central Park and other places. Other images in this film are either recreations or drawn from events of the time. In the trucks or around the trucks. Before Stonewall | Apple TV So I attempted suicide by cutting my wrists. Doug Cramer Alexandra Meryash Nikolchev, On-Line Editors Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:It really should have been called Stonewall uprising. It's very American to say, "You promised equality, you promised freedom." Before Stonewall (1984) Movie Script | Subs like Script Charles Harris, Transcriptions Danny Garvin:People were screaming "pig," "copper." Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:There were gay bars all over town, not just in Greenwich Village. They put some people on the street right in front ofThe Village Voiceprotesting the use of the word fag in my story. Meanwhile, there was crowds forming outside the Stonewall, wanting to know what was going on. Kanopy - Stream Classic Cinema, Indie Film and Top Documentaries Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:We told this to our men. Then the cops come up and make use of what used to be called the bubble-gum machine, back then a cop car only had one light on the top that spun around. And all of a sudden, pandemonium broke loose. Martin Boyce:For me, there was no bar like the Stonewall, because the Stonewall was like the watering hole on the savannah. [00:00:58] Well, this I mean, this is a part of my own history in this weird, inchoate sense. The very idea of being out, it was ludicrous. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Teddy Awards, the film was shown at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2016. John O'Brien:The election was in November of 1969 and this was the summer of 1969, this was June. Dick Leitsch:Very often, they would put the cops in dresses, with makeup and they usually weren't very convincing. Barak Goodman hide caption. Danny Garvin:He's a faggot, he's a sissy, queer. That never happened before. Lilli M. Vincenz And we were singing: "We are the Village girls, we wear our hair in curls, we wear our dungarees, above our nellie knees." It's like, this is not right. Getty Images Revealing and. Narrator (Archival):We arrested homosexuals who committed their lewd acts in public places. I hope it was. John Scagliotti I mean I'm talking like sardines. And so we had to create these spaces, mostly in the trucks. For those kisses. Dan Bodner "Daybreak Express" by D.A. It was terrifying. The ones that came close you could see their faces in rage. You know. The severity of the punishment varies from state to state. Raymond Castro:There were mesh garbage cans being lit up on fire and being thrown at the police. We knew that this was a moment that we didn't want to let slip past, because it was something that we could use to bring more of the groups together. Doric Wilson:And I looked back and there were about 2,000 people behind us, and that's when I knew it had happened. And the police were showing up. Dick Leitsch:Mattachino in Italy were court jesters; the only people in the whole kingdom who could speak truth to the king because they did it with a smile. Martin Boyce:I heard about the trucks, which to me was fascinated me, you know, it had an imagination thing that was like Marseilles, how can it only be a few blocks away? William Eskridge, Professor of Law:All throughout the 60s in New York City, the period when the New York World's Fair was attracting visitors from all over America and all over the world. When you exit, have some identification and it'll be over in a short time." They would bang on the trucks. It was right in the center of where we all were. Marcus spoke with NPR's Ari Shapiro about his conversations with leaders of the gay-rights movement, as well as people who were at Stonewall when the riots broke out. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:We would scatter, ka-poom, every which way. Fred Sargeant:The press did refer to it in very pejorative terms, as a night that the drag queens fought back. Gay bars were to gay people what churches were to blacks in the South. Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community is a 1984 American documentary film about the LGBT community prior to the 1969 Stonewall riots. For the first time the next person stood up. Because he was homosexual. As kids, we played King Kong. I mean it didn't stop after that. TV Host (Archival):Are those your own eyelashes? Dana Kirchoff I was wearing my mother's black and white cocktail dress that was empire-waisted. Fred Sargeant:The tactical patrol force on the second night came in even larger numbers, and were much more brutal. Slate:Perversion for Profit(1965), Citizens for Decency Through Law. In a spontaneous show of support and frustration, the citys gay community rioted for three nights in the streets, an event that is considered the birth of the modern Gay Rights Movement. It was nonsense, it was nonsense, it was all the people there, that were reacting and opposing what was occurring. A New York Police officer grabs a man by the hair as another officer clubs a. The New York State Liquor Authority refused to issue liquor licenses to many gay bars, and several popular establishments had licenses suspended or revoked for "indecent conduct.".

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