Video Beaverhausen Visits Stonewall

German director Roland Emmerich, who directed Independence Day and that awful '98 Godzilla remake, takes on Stonewall with his usual heavy-handed approach. Not a good thing when a movie about the start of the LGBT rights movement manages to piss off its LGBT audiences worldwide. Popular activist-blogger Joe My God called for a petition of this fiasco.

Met with such hostile reception and poor reviews, the film folded quickly at theaters on limited release. I was hoping to see it at Chelsea Cinemas in Manhattan when it was released, but the theater quickly dropped it like a hot potato.

I pre-ordered the dvd from Amazon in mid-November and it arrived yesterday. I must say it is, indeed, just awful. How Jonathan Rhys Myers and Ron Perlman got involved in this mess is anyone's guess. I hope they walked away with big paychecks.

Stonewall bar on Christopher Street in Manhattan is still around, still going strong and still a gay bar, now even presenting live entertainment. It is legendary and its longevity is such a comfort. The riot happened in '69, the night after Judy Garland died, the summer after I graduated high school. It was summer, it was hot and the patrons just were not taking any more abuse.

But this movie rendition of Stonewall has a bad script, clumsy direction and camerawork, and trivializes events. Better you should spend your time watching the 1995 British film of the same name.