WAR HORSE Star Jeremy Irvine To Blow Up Homophobia In Emmerich’s STONEWALL

Roland Emmerich's next film is Stonewall, the true story of the gay bar that ended up being ground zero for the gay rights movement when NYPD tried to shut the place down and the patrons rioted in response. It's a pretty great, heroic story: The Stonewall Inn was a Mafia-owned bar in the West Village that ended up becoming a hangout for particularly marginalized members of the gay community, especially drag queens and very effeminate types. In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969 the cops tried to raid the place, a fairly common form of harrassment faced by bars that welcomed gays. This time, the usual routine of a raid - everybody against a wall, men dressed as women being taken into the bathroom to have their sex verified - didn't happen. Cross-dressed men refused to go with the cops to the bathroom and patrons who hadn't been held gathered outside the bar, drawing a crowd. 

Soon hundreds were outside. Tensions grew. A cop shoved a transvestite, who hit him with a purse. A handcuffed lesbian was knocked in the head with a baton for complaining. She looked at the crowd and implored "Why don't you guys do something?" 

And the gay rights movement was born as hundreds of men and women fought back in the streets against the police. Protests and riots raged for days. What the establishment didn't understand was that the Stonewall had become a place of last refuge for people who had nowhere else to go. Unlike the sorts of closeted gays they usually rousted, the Stonewall patrons - and nearby homeless gay kids - had no secret life to lose, nothing else to keep them in check. The way the system had driven these people to the outskirts of society is what gave them the final freedom to stand up. 

Stonewall has been a passion project for Emmerich, and he does seem like a weird director for it. I imagine his version will play up some of the violence and will probably be structured like a disaster film, with multiple characters coming together to explode that June night. But the story itself will center around one man who has a political awakening at the riot, and that character will be played by Jeremy Irvine, who was the kid with the horse in War Horse. Irvine's since made a couple of movies, including the upcoming Woman in Black sequel, although I ain't seen none of them yet. 

I did like him in War Horse - he had the right old fashioned look and feel - and he's an interesting choice for this sort of story. It's still Emmerich I'm worried about, though.