From this point on, the film shifts back and forth between Danny’s new reality among the gay hustlers - his friends sleep twelve to a room after turning tricks all night - and the all-American Midwestern town he left behind. After getting beaten by some anti-gay policemen, he finds support and friendship in Ray (Jonny Beauchamp), a young street hustler drawn to wearing shiny clothes and lipstick, who develops a fondness for Danny’s blond, wholesome good looks, as does practically everyone he meets. Stonewall proves to be much less about the riots than it is about the coming-of-age of its main character, Danny, a promising young man from Indiana who’s forced to arrive in New York a few months before he’s set to start his first year at Columbia University.ĭanny senses that the center of gay culture in New York City is Christopher Street, so that’s where he ends up. We’re comrades, even “sisters,” when our numbers and our willingness to put ourselves on the line for the LGBT cause are needed, but we’re also the first to get tossed aside to pave the way for more “respectable” queer people.Ĭontroversy has dogged Stonewall since the first trailer indicated that the film, inspired by the real-life riots of 1969, would be led by a fictional white gay protagonist, Danny Winters (Jeremy Irvine) as he navigates life in the big city while surrounded by a racially-diverse gang of femme street urchins.
![new gay movies 2015 new gay movies 2015](https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/wasp.jpg)
Roland Emmerich’s Stonewall, however unwittingly, perfectly symbolizes how the mainstream gay rights movement has treated trans and gender-nonconforming people ever since the fateful Stonewall Riots more than four decades ago.