Just 7 weeks short of its release Roadside Attractions has finally debuted the first trailer for Stonewall, director Roland Emmerich’s very fictionalized drama about the 1969 Stonewall riots that started America’s LGBT rights movement. 

Stonewall centers on Danny Winters (Jeremy Irvine), who is forced to leave behind friends and loved ones when he is kicked out of his parent’s home and flees to New York. Alone in Greenwich Village, homeless and destitute, he befriends a group of street kids who soon introduce him to the local watering hole The Stonewall Inn; however, this shady, mafia-run club is far from a safe-haven. As Danny and his friends experience discrimination, endure atrocities and are repeatedly harassed by the police, we see a rage begin to build. This emotion runs through Danny and the entire community of young gays, lesbians and drag queens who populate the Stonewall Inn and erupts in a storm of anger. With the toss of a single brick, a riot ensues and a crusade for equality is born”

From the look of it some re-creations copied from pictures of the era like the 1970 Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade are spot on.  But others look more like a re-imagining of the movie musical RENT are way off including the “wild” goings on inside the Stonewall bar. (In 1969 drag was not allowed in any bar in NYC.)

The fictionalization of the history and “Danny casting the first brick ” is akin to the false history of Sylvia Rivera throwing the first heel  and is not only a shame but an insult when the real history of Stonewall is more than interesting enough. 

Just remember.  This is only a movie.  Not a history lesson.

Stonewall will be released on September 25.

To read the REAL HISTORY of the Stonewall Riots CLICK HERE.