The Agony of Gay Cinema: Stonewall
Now it is almost Pride, which we celebrate on the anniversary of the 1969 LGBTQ uprising at the Stonewall Inn in New York. And to mark the occasion, I’ll be revisiting the universally beloved classic 2015 film that everyone agrees is perfect in every way, Stonewall, directed by undisputed genius cinematic auteur Roland Emmirch.
HAHAHAHAHA! Just kidding! God, can you imagine??? No no no, it’s the other Stonewall. This one, directed by the late British filmmaker Nigel Finch, was released in 1995 and is based on historian and activist Martin Duberman’s book, also called Stonewall. I mean, this movie also kind of has a handsome cis white protagonist, but at least it also centers the stories and voices of several (fictional) transwomen of color and acknowledges that they were the ones who fought back against the cops and started the riots that sparked the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.
It’s 1969 and La Miranda (played by out actor Guillermo Díaz) is a fabulous young Latinx transwoman bopping around New York City and listening to lots of girl groups like The Shirelles and The Shangri-Las and maybe sometimes doing sex work. A girl’s gotta eat!
Then one day this white hillbilly rube with a bowl cut and a Gomer Pyle accent falls off a turnip truck right in front of The Stonewall Inn, a queer bar run by the mob I think. La Miranda happens to be going to The Stonewall too, so she and her friends take young Matty Dean under their wings. Matty Dean is very handsome and earnest and confident and idealistic and came to New York to fight for gay rights. So, when the cops come to shake down all the queen at the bar that night, he is like ready to fight! Which actually kind of sucks because all the drag queens and transwomen and people of color are like, Calm the fuck down, my guy. Because they just came to have a nice time and don’t want to get dragged off to jail along with this handsome white doofus in head-to-toe denim. I mean look at this grinning fool!
But then the cops fully dunk La Miranda’s face in the dirty dish water on the bar because she refuses to wash off her make-up, and Matty Dean stands up for her and gets punched in the face and fully hemorrhages a gallon of blood out of his mouth! They get taken to jail where they bond, before Bostonia, sort of the House Mother of Stonewall, bails them out. See, Bostonia is secretly dating the cartoon mob guy who runs the Stonewall (his name is Vinny, obviously), so she has lots of money.
La Miranda takes Matty Dean home and says he can move in with her and they basically start falling in love. Matty Dean is, like, fully 100% into La Miranda and doesn’t get all hung up about her gender presentation, which, like, transwomen don’t need cis gay men’s approval or anything, but it’s just nice to see trans bodies desired on film in an uncomplicated way, because trans bodies are beautiful and desirable. Period.
While Matty and La Miranda are falling in love and living their best unapologetically queer lives, Matty is also going off to meetings of the Mattachine Society, which is this super square gay rights organization that is very white and all about assimilation. They’re planning this big protest in Philadelphia of all places and when Matty learns of their very strict dress code, he’s like, “But all my denim! My floppy bowl cut!”
There’s also this cute cis white guy—I mean, all the Mattachine squares are cis and white—who Matty is totally flirting with on the side. “Fucking men,” Johnny Russell eloquently said.
Later, La Miranda gets a draft notice, because Vietnam is going on. So, she and Matty go to the recruitment center or whatever, where they send her off for a psych evaluation. One thing about La Miranda though is that she is terrified of shrinks, and this is because she was GIVEN ELECTRO SHOCK AVERSION “THERAPY” as a child for being queer which is LITERAL BARBARIC TORTURE. So, Matty somehow switches clothes with her like in a cartoon, and goes and does the psych eval. for her in full drag, bless his sweet handsome chivalrous dumb heart! Obviously, she gets rejected for service.
Then there’s a cute montage of how in love they are.
Also, HAHAHAHAHA Matty Dean is a folk singer now too? He’s trying to rewrite the lyrics to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as a gay protest anthem and all the queens are like, “STAAAAAHHHHHPPPPP THIS NOOOOWWWW! It is so terrible!” And they are right, it is earnest and awful and embarrassing! But what a dumb sweet hot rube that Matty Dean is! And he has a really cute butt too, especially for a gangly bean poll looking rube like him! (Aaaaarrrgh! But now “glory, glory hallelujah” is stuck in my head! Damn you, Matty Dean!)
One of the things the Mattachine squares are trying to do is a “sip-in,” which was a real thing where gay-activists went to Julius—a real gay bar in the West Village that is still open to this very day—and identified themselves as homosexuals. See, it was illegal for bars to sell drinks to gays back then, and they were protesting that law. Except in this version of the story, the sip-in goes hilariously wrong because all the bartenders everywhere they go are like, “Whatever, here is your libations, gentlefolks!” (Fun fact: the bar maid at Julius in the film is JANIS from The Sopranos! Yay, JANIS!) So, dumb white Matty Dean is like, “Let’s try at the Stonewall, which surely won’t cause any trouble at all for the Black and Brown and trans folks who go there!” Ugh, Matty Dean, you dumb, dumb sexy rube!
Another thing Matty Dean was too dumb to think of is that La Miranda is always at the Stonewall, and when she meets Ethan, that handsome Mattachine square who Matty is clearly into, she immediately sees what is going on and that he is embarrassed of her. They have a terrible fight and Matty says hateful things to her like, “It’s not my fault you don’t know how to be a cis boy!”
While, Matty and La Miranda are breaking up outside, Burt the head square of the Mattachines, is dancing with Bostonia. Burt has never danced “with a man” before, and he’s having emotions about it, and the two of them bond over The Struggle and how dumb kids these days are. It’s really sweet and I may have teared up a little.
Now that La Miranda has dumped Matty Dean for being a tool, he goes and has epic slow-mo shower sex with Ethan. Ugh, and Matty Dean’s butt is SO cute, but we can’t enjoy that now because of what a shitty cis tool he’s being!
Bostonia, meanwhile, is also having relationship problems with Vinny the mob guy. He’s all tortured about his attraction to her and wants her to have a gender confirmation surgery, but she’s like “No thank you please.” Also, he’s so violent all the time! RUN DIRECTLY AWAY FROM THAT MAN, Bostonia!
Later, the Mattachine squares get all dressed up even more squarely for their protest in Philly, which everyone kind of ignores. “Maybe it would have been better if we’d all been killed,” Matty Dean legitimately wonders dumbly afterward. Also, on the bus home, he plays his dumb song and of course all the squares love it. Hahahahaha!
At his apartment, Ethan says some shitty racist things about how La Miranda and other non-white, non-cis queens couldn’t possibly understand gay rights issues due to always wearing high heels, which is why they don’t go risk their actual lives for at protests. Then he decides that Matty Dean needs to go see some “Positive images of faggotry.” So, off to Fire Island they go!
Now, this is something I only partially remembered from seeing Stonewall in high school: this film hates Fire Island! I remember the scene where Ethan and Matty are on the beach and the cops come to make sure none of the gays are wearing “suggestive” swimwear. But I forgot about the dismal boring dance they go to later where no one is allowed to dance together, just side-by-side. Is this how Fire Island used to be before the 70s happened? Wait! Is this why The Invasion a thing??? See, this is why they need to teach LGBTQ+ history in the schools!!!
Anyway, Matty Dean has had it with Ethan, so he goes back to La Miranda, who has taken off all her finery for him and is in boy drag now. (Which like…has she just been sitting there waiting for him without a wig this whole time? I mean she did kinda disappear from this movie for 30 minutes…)
Suddenly, Judy Garland has died, and Bostonia is v. sad. So, Vinny takes her out to a fancy restaurant, where they unsettle all the fancy other diners and get kicked out. But not before Vinny flips over a table in Bostonia’s defense.
He tells her he loves her and seems like he’s finally ready to embrace their relationship. Except I guess the restaurant incident was all too much for him, because the next morning he fully shoots himself in front of her! Which honestly would maybe be more tragic if he wasn’t such a violent bad crime boyfriend.
So, the movie does this thing where it doesn’t directly say that the Stonewall uprising was because Judy Garland had just died, but it implies it by showing all this footage of her funeral. And then everyone is at Stonewall slow dancing to some Judy Garland song, when the cops show up. (Worth noting that everyone who was present at the riot denies that it had anything to do with Judy’s death.)
The cops start arresting people, including Bostonia. All the queens are vamping as they’re loaded into the paddy wagon and the crowd on the street is cheering them on. Then one of the cops starts saying some shitty things to Bostonia. “Poor little faggot doesn’t know whether to kill me or kiss me,” he taunts. Except she does know. Oh, how she knows! She punches him directly in his shitty face, and all the queens start fighting back and force the cops to barricade themselves inside the bar.
Now it is a RIOT! Everyone is fighting and throwing a parking meter through the bar’s front window. “It’s the fourth of fuckin’ Joo-ly!” Matty Dean shouts, which hahaha, no dummy, it’s June 28! Learn your history that you are literally in!
The riot squad shows up and the queens, including La Miranda back in full face and hair, meet them will a little chorus line. And…that’s the end of the movie!? We hear La Miranda’s voiceover about how this is her Stonewall legend, and she probably didn’t get it all right, and then the credits roll to a classic gay anthem by…the Barenaked Ladies??? Happy Pride!
ncG1vNJzZmiin527r8XWq6CtnaNjwLau0q2YnKNemLyue89oq6GdXZa0sLrYZqafZZeWxm6vyKecppldqMGwusSwmKWk