Roland Emmerich has recently released Stonewall, the latest feature about the meaningful event for the gay community that transpired on 1969. His work, however, earned criticisms which he recently defended and added that he hopes to inspire people with the film.
As reported by BBC, Emmerich's self-funded film was recently released and earned some undesirable reviews. According to Emmerich, the negative reactions started when the trailer was released which he thinks to be a mistake since as he believes the film itself is racially and sexually more diverse than what people think.
Emmerich said that the film is close to his heart, and would want it to appeal to everyone. "Above all, I wanted to make a movie that felt personal - the ones I normally do, not that I hate to do them, but they are not very personal. They have to appeal to nearly everyone and this is a different approach", he said.
Also according to Emmerich during his interview with Buzzfeed, the inclusion of the real-life characters from the event to the film was a long discussion he had with the film's screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz. In the film, Marsha P. Johnson's character is one of the trans characters that are perceptible as according to Emmerich, his talks with the historians and veterans concluded that "there were only a couple of transgender women in the Stonewall ever. They were like a minority.", Emmerich said.
According to Variety, Emmerich also revealed that he aims to inspire people with the film. Emmerich said that the idea of the film is to "show how brutal their lives were, but the Stonewall riots more or less spawned the first gay march, and we always thought it was great to inspire people."
The film sees the coming of age of a young man named Danny Winters played by Jeremy Irvine who moves to the streets of New York after being kicked out by his father from his home in Indiana. The film is set days and weeks before the Stonewall Riots which inspired the first Gay Liberation March the year later.
Stonewall stars Ron Perlman as Ed Murphy, Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Trevor, Joey King as Phoebe, Caleb Landry Jones as Annie, and Jeremy Irvine as Danny. It hits US theaters on September 25, 2015.
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