Pride Month: Stonewall (1996)

I can say with pretty good confidence that this is the first series I've ever done on The Audient, of any length, where two films had the same title. 

What can I say, once I decided I was all in on the Stonewall theme for my four Pride Month viewings in 2026, I was all in.

Nigel Finch's Stonewall from 1996 predates Roland Emmerich's Stonewall from 2015 by 19 years, and that may not be entirely a coincidence, because there are a lot of plot elements in the 2015 version that we first see in the 1996 version. And no, it's not just because they're about the riot outside the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in June of 1969, which unofficially launched the gay rights movement in the United States, at least in terms of the public conversation. 

For starters, they both feature a central relationship between a new clean-cut kid from the country, just arrived in New York, and a rail-thin young Latino -- or maybe we should say Latina, since both protagonists are drag queens, to the extent that pronouns get discussed. 

Then in both cases, the new kid from the country also has a relationship with a more straight-laced man from the Mattachine Society, where the activism hoped for mainstream acceptance achieved by homosexuals themselves becoming more mainstream -- for example, wearing suits and other sophisticated attire, rather than dressing in drag. 

We know that Finch's film was based on a memoir with the same title by gay activist Martin Duberman. Wikipedia does not attribute any source material to Emmerich's version, so perhaps we can include among the many demerits for that version that it's a light theft of Finch's material. 

The reason I wanted to watch another fictionalized Stonewall story that was underpinned by real events was that I heard this one was supposed to be a musical. I thought that sounded really fun and like a really spirited way to leave off my Pride Month viewings in 2026. 

Well, it turns out that wasn't quite right. There are "musical sequences" in this film, but they mostly involve drag queens lip-synching songs from the 1950s that might have appeared on a jukebox in 1969, sung originally by women. These sequences are entertaining, but they aren't even full numbers, usually about 30 seconds of material apiece. Then there is also a protest song or two sung by folky guitarist Matty Dean (Frederick Weller), the fresh-off-the-bus transplant to Greenwich Village, who differs from his counterpart in Emmerich's version because he's a lot stronger with a lot more agency. 

So no, it wasn't the full musical I was expecting. But was it worth watching? Most definitely yes.

Which would be no guarantee from the chintzy promotional materials you see above. Even for 30 years ago, that poster art is really cheap. And I wouldn't be surprised if they'd make no one want to see this movie. 

But would you believe I could actually identify more actors from this movie than from Emmerich's better budgeted version? Weller is someone I know but whose name I didn't know. More easily recongizable to me was the lead, who goes by La Miranda, and who is played by Guillermo Diaz -- who I thought was a regular collaborator of Spike Lee's, until I looked up his filmography and realized he hasn't appeared in a single Lee film. Well, I recognize him anyway. John Doman and Bruce McVattie also appear here, but the most easily identifiable in all the cast, though in a small role that couldn't get predict his future stardom, was Luis Guzman.

The big advantage this version has over Emmerich's is its sense of honesty. The polish someone like Emmerich can bring to a film is clearly a substitute for truth. You just believe these characters more. You believe the things they're saying and the things they're doing. Now, you may remember I was more positively inclined toward Emmerich's movie than most people, though still not positive on it overall, but it's clear to me how much it suffers in terms of the depictions of its characters. This depiction always feels charitable toward them, while the movie that you'd think should be more 20 years more enlightened is considerably more tone deaf overall.

I don't want to make this whole post a comparison of these two movies, but I do want to give one more. Both essentially have to fill a movie's worth of material prior to the riots, because those were a fairly self-contained event, even a they spread out over a few additional nights after the original riot. Finch's version seems to be even a bit more character focused than it's interested in lying the precise historical groundwork for the riots, which would understandably interest Emmerich's version more because of its larger budget and larger sense of historical importance. Finch's Stonewall feels more important overall precisely because it doesn't think of itself as important. It thinks of itself as an eccentric little Stonewall movie with true-to-life characters, some of whom serve as a Greek chorus while lip-synching 50s pop. 

I was disappointed by this version in one small way: Marsha P. Johnson does not make an actually appearance. The titular character in my first film, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, showed up almost immediately in Emmerich's version, and I'm quite sure could be seen in the footage of last week's Before Stonewall. Here, I thought for sure one of the characters was her, but the character is then introduced as Princess Ernestine. Oh well.

That concludes another Pride Month on The Audient. And I do want to remind myself as I leave: I don't have to wait for Pride Month to come around to watch these movies and further educate myself on the LGBTQI+ experience. Of course I do come across these films during my ordinary viewing, but usually only for new year releases. I should fit in the older ones whenever I can.