Stonewall director: ‘straight-acting’ hero designed for straight audiences

The ongoing controversy surrounding Roland Emmerich’s Stonewall show no signs of abating, after the director claimed that the film’s fictional white male protagonist was written as straight-acting to appeal to a mainstream audience.

Ever since the first trailer for the big screen look at the 1969 Stonewall riots hit the internet earlier this summer, the film has been plagued with accusations of ‘whitewashing’, with viewers claiming it has played down the importance the black and trans people who helped lead the riots in favour of fictional white characters – something Emmerich has made repeated attempts to deny.

In a new interview with Buzzfeed he seems to have put his foot in it once again however, after admitting that the film’s fictional lead character Danny, played by Warhorse‘s Jeremy Irvine, was written as a straight-acting gay man in order to appeal to a straight audience at home.

“You have to understand one thing: I didn’t make this movie only for gay people, I made it also for straight people,” Emmerich said.

“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. He gets mistreated because of that. [Straight audiences] can feel for him.”

He added: “As a director you have to put yourself in your movies, and I’m white and gay.”

In another controversial quote, the Independence Day director went on to say that film’s minority characters actually benefit from the fictional Danny’s presence for proving that you can live a “regular” life.

“They learned something from Danny — that you can make it, that you can study, you can maybe have a more regular life,” he said. “I also don’t have the feeling at the end that they are so much on the streets anymore.”

Stonewall – which opens in US cinemas this Friday (September 25) – has been universally panned by critics at preview screenings, with Vanity Fair calling it “more offensive, more white-washed, even more hackishly made” than was originally feared, and saying it “illustrates how systems of privilege and prejudice within a minority can be just as pervasive and ugly as anything imposed from the outside.”

Ouch.

Meanwhile, in the new issue of Attitude, we look at what really happened at the Stonewall Inn in an extensive five-page feature. The issue’s in shops now, or you can download it from attitudedigital.co.uk or order the print edition from newsttand.co.uk/Attitude.

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