Before Stonewall | Robert Rosenberg, Greta Schiller

[Applause] [Robert Rosenberg] I mean, obviously we want to hear from you. [Rosenberg] But, it was, this is the first time I've watched the film in com, like, completely, for like, fifteen years, from beginning to end. [Rosenberg] And there's so many, there's so much more beneath the surface, so much more that's not there, so many connections, [Rosenberg] and I'd love to hear from you guys, you know. Questions, comments. [Shannon Kelley] Um, I, I, I, something occurred to me tonight, that hadn't before. Ah, which is the importance of maybe the film having been done and executed, [Kelley] right smack in the middle of the Reagan years. [Kelley] Um, and whether this was any part of the impulse. So, like, let's get this film done now. [Greta Schiller] I think there was, well, first of all, we were really young, we were in our twenties when we made it. So, [Schiller] you know, um, we didn't have a long view of history. Really, I think we were just really interested in understanding, sort of like, [Schiller] well, certainly for me and probably for Robbie too, it was, ah, sort of, excavating your own family history, in a strange way. [Schiller] You know, because nobody had ever looked into the story of, of gay and lesbian, the genesis of, of our identity and whatever. [Schiller] Yeah, I mean, yeah, well, that's why we opened with Reagan. Isn't he the, isn't that the first clip, or very early? [Rosenberg, partially off mic] No, in the movie, at the end. the army film at the end. [Schiller] Did you know that Tim? Reagan is the, um, the officer in the thing. And then of course he comes on later as it's an illness and everything. [Rosenberg] Well, just in terms of funding, the, the, half the budget from the film came from the Public Broadcasting Network. [Rosenberg] And I think, it was kind of like, at the moment it was the last gasp of money coming down for this kind of thing. [Rosenberg] Before the more conservative reaction against public TV and the National Endowment for the Arts and that [Rosenberg] really decimated some of the public funding for the arts for a long time. [Rosenberg] That was part of the Reagain era. So we kind of slipped in under the wire. [Rosenberg] But I don't think we made it so much in reaction to that, I mean I know, I, this is, I can tell a very specific genesis for me of how the film started. [Rosenberg] I was probably twenty three years old, living in Boston. [Rosenberg] And I read an article in a great Canadian gay newspaper, called, "The Body Politic," it was very important, um, in the gay liberation movement. [Rosenberg] And they had serialized a series of articles, um, by John D'Emilio, [Rosenberg] wonderful, amazing, gay historian, who wrote a book called, "Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities," [Rosenberg] that, a lot of the original research for that book, went into this movie. [Rosenberg] And he wrote a series of articles about Harry Hay, and the Mattachine Society. And Harry's in the film and Mattachine is too. [Rosenberg] I read that and it was like, my, my light bulb went off in my head. [Rosenberg] I never thought about what it was like to be queer, before 1970, before I came out around, concurrent with, with actually, Stonewall. [Rosenberg] I never thought about that there were people working with political ideas, challenging the status quo, that early on, in that kind of direct way. [Rosenberg] And I thought, this would make a great movie. I remember saying to my assistant thinking that I wanted to make documentaries and eventually, [Rosenberg] I moved to New York and I hooked up with Greta and we also should say, [Rosenberg] John Scagliotti, became the executive producer of the film after we started working on it. [Rosenberg] But it was very much a, very specific, like I was exposed to a history that I didn't know about. [Rosenberg] And that made me want to know more and I'm sure for all of us that was the case. [Kelley] Yeah. [Schiller] I was just going to say, the riff on that is that, um, [Schiller] you know, I made, I made a lot of historical documentaries films since then, so, but I have a hard time putting myself into an historical context. [Schiller] But when we, ah, had the film in Berlin recently, an old friend of mine, who's a, you know, a programmer in the business, whatever, [Schiller] he from the floor said, well the film was of the time, ah, of the Eighties, when sort of, leftists and um, feminists were doing films. [Schiller] Well, do you remember like "Rosie the Riveter," was a model for us. [Rosenberg] Yeah we were totally inspired, but, [Schiller] And like, "Lonesome Brigade." [Rosenberg] Of course. [Schiller] And those films. So, we were like, yeah, but we've never, there's never been something that, [Schiller] but we, but when you said the funding was cut for these kinds of things. There was no these kinds of things. [Schiller] Remember, this was the first film to ever, to get money from public television. [Rosenberg] I just also want to give a shout out to, for dealing with the archive and history, prior to, "Before Stonewall," [Rosenberg] the big, the only really big, ah, LGBT documentary was, "The Word is Out." [Rosenberg] Um, which you've got? It's in the archives too, obviously. [Rosenberg] "The Word is Out," was an amazing film, that I saw a few years before that. [Rosenberg] I think there's a couple of overlapping people in this film. [Schiller] I don't know. [Rosenberg] I don't know. But it really dealt with some of the same issues, but in a more personalized way. [Rosenberg] There were definitely more people who came out before Stonewall and I had wanted to expand on that idea as well. [Rosenberg] A big shout out of course, to the people who made that film. Rob Epstein, he's a California based, wonderful gay film maker. [Kelley] Um, it's, um, it was a really interesting experience to see the film this time, because I was thinking, [Kelley] um, it was a great for anybody who needed an inculcation of what is some of the language. You really have to know about victories and achievements and, [Kelley] and um, ways that people are kind of defining the way of entering the movement, you they're kind of listed here in a really useful way. [Kelley] But, also, interestingly enough, in a very kind of personal way. [Kelley] You kind of, you're way in looking through a side door as the way someone remembers how it was that night. And this kind of thing. [Kelley] And also, it's never the [?] feeling, boom, boom, boom, it's more just like a lot of experience. [Schiller] Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, I think both of us were really interested not in, [Schiller] first of all, there were probably only two or three historians who had even done any work on this whole thing. I mean, there was like Lilian Faderman, [Schiller] Alan Berliner, not Alan Berliner, um, [Rosenberg] Alan Berube. [Schiller] Yeah, thank you. And um, [Rosenberg] And Joan Nestle at the Archives. [Schiller] And the archives. But they weren't really historians. They were just gathering. they were like, we have to gather our stories, [Schiller] So that we have a history so historians have something to write about. [Schiller] But we were really concerned with, um, that whole idea that, you know, remember the person, with personal history so it was like, [Schiller] We'll take a broad swatch of American history and we'll put gay and lesbian experience into it through personal stories. [Schiller] And I kind of have maintained that throughout most of my historical documentaries. I'm much more into, [Schiller] and in all my films, I'm much more into, seeing the people doing the work and living the stories, then in the historians telling them. [Schiller] And, and I realized as I was watching the film how much that, that, tone of interest, in that way. [Schiller] Um. But actually, when at the end, when, ah, I mean, [Schiller] when, Craig Rodwell says, it's hard for young people today to imagine, I found my self thinking, that often, like, I'm like, [Schiller] it's hard for young people today to imagine there was a time when. [Schiller] you know in relationship to all sorts of, ah gay, lesbian and other political things. [Schiller] Or, even the idea, like, those images in World War II, of the exercises. No one has ever said, there had to be queers in those, that footage. [Schiller] Could a been a gay man who shot it. It's so like, homo erotic. You know. [Schiller] So, we started to look at visual imagery in a different way. Working with that. [Kelley] Had the film not been made until now, we'd still celebrate it. Um. The thing about it having been made [Schiller] Thank you. [Kelley] when it was, um, that makes it kind of special, is that, you people are speaking with the, with the power of authority, and so forth. [Kelley] And yet, they were still very vital at the moment of the film's making, you know, [Kelley] speaking about the memories of the Twenties and Thirties and World War II and everything. But, in a very lucid and a very powerful way. [Kelley] And I remember meeting Jim Kepner and Morris Kight, maybe ten years after this, when they were still fighting the fight, and everything, [Kelley] but to see them like this, still kind of in their powerfully, was quite, quite beautiful. [Schiller] And what about Liza Ben? [Rosenberg] She's the folksinger you see singing. [Schiller] Lisa Ben, that's an anagram, by the way, Lisa Ben. [Rosenberg] For lesbian. [Laughter] [Schiller] She's a card. She was amazing. [Rosenberg] Talk, talking about history, probably very few people caught this but, in the Joe McCarthy hearings, during the Red Scare stuff, that section, [Rosenberg] the person, one of the people sitting next to him, always at his left hand or right hand, is Roy Cohn, who was his lawyer, [Rosenberg] famously involved in a lot of persecutions, [Rosenberg] who turned out was gay, but was involved in the persecution of gay people. I just read this big article about, in The New York Times, I think, [Rosenberg] how Roy Cohn, in his later years, the last five years of his life, [Rosenberg] was, one of the key mentors, if you can believe this, of Donald Trump. [Rosenberg] So, I, I, I, watching this thinking, wow there really is continuity in this world. In that there is good people going back generations, passing on the legacy, and this work. [Rosenberg] And then there's bad people doing bad things, that are all connected to the present so I thought that was interesting. [Kelley] A lot of stuff did feel very immediate. And, yeah. [Schiller] I mean, one of the, I leaned over to Robbie, when, during the thing when they say, [Schiller] at the time there was, you know, the radical right and the radical left was, ah, [Schiller] was growing in Europe. And I mean, I'm like, oh my God, Deja Vu. It's exactly what's happening, here and then, there. [Schiller] You know, how history is not linear. History is circular. [Kelley] Maybe it's saying the same thing I said before, but something about the dynamism of the way this film is conceived and constructed is amazing. [Kelley] I think it's nice because it's not an inert history. [Kelley] Ah, you know, like this is very accurate. There's a lot of imagination at play. The stakes are very high. These experiences, you know, like, [Kelley] there's a way of looking back at old photographs, through, sort of like, rose colored glasses, and how beautiful the past is maybe. [Kelley] But, here are people who really underwent severe trauma, and are now, you know, brave enough to still talk about it maybe. [Schiller] Yes. [Kelley] The story of the foreman who was, who was compelled to or convinced to incriminate somebody else and damage them, and so forth. [Kelley] Really, really painful and a really important part of it. And I thought your title, especially when I read it, tonight in introducing the film, very precise. [Kelley] Um, talking about the making of the movement. Because, who knew that they were making a movement, you know. That they were making a mass movement. [Schiller] Yes. [Kelley] And yet, people were all over the place. [Schiller] Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Rosenberg] It, it's interesting, I, I, um, I told you this before, that I find it fascinating to show the film, [Rosenberg] and hear from people who are much younger, get a very different perspective on it. [Rosenberg] And one of the criticisms that come up, if you look at Amazon, where you can buy it, you can see it on the Amazon comments. A minority, but, [Rosenberg] complaining that we kind of created this seamless narrative from persecution, to sense of one's self as a minority, to a political movement, [Rosenberg] of this, of everybody coming together. Now, I'm watching the thing, and hearing, Audre Lorde, [Rosenberg] who's a wonderful black, woman writer, and activist, talking about the different pieces in the movement, [Rosenberg] and the gay girls and the black gay girls and I think well, there's lots of diversity there but, I've heard this before, about that, that criticism, and I think, [Rosenberg] what it is, is this was sort of like, Queer History 101. [Schiller] Yes. [Rosenberg] In a feature film. [Rosenberg] We were laying down this marker. It would be there forever. These people are mostly, the vast majority, are dead. I'm not sure who's still alive. [Rosenberg] It's there. It's almost an archive in and of itself. And then filmically, after this documentary, [Rosenberg] someone made a documentary about, Harry Hay. A wonderful documentary about Harry Hay. [Kelley] Another about Audre Lorde. [Rosenberg] Audre Lorde. Daughters of Bilitis. So, lots of ah, the World War II one, from what's his name, [Kelley] Oh, Arthur Dong. [Rosenberg] Thank you. [Schiller] Arthur Dong. [Kelley] He was just here recently. [Rosenberg] There are lots of other films, let alone books, [Schiller] That came from the film, the idea of the film yeah. [Rosenberg] There was room then, once you have this marker down, to dive into the details in lots of ways and bust those things open. [Rosenberg] But, I, I don't see this film as sort of claim this weird connection of one kind of group. But it's interesting, I've heard that criticism before, so. [Schiller] But, you should never read your reviews, Robbie. [Laughter] [Kelley] I have so many more questions, but I thought we'd open it up to the audience and take, there should be a microphone or two in the house. [Kelley] And if you want to put up a hand, we can all hear the question. And, um, or, in the front. How about right here in the middle. And here comes that mic. [Audience member] I wanted you to know, this was the first time I've seen this film. Um, it was amazing. You guys did an incredible job. [Audience member] And um, I was just wondering what the response was from the general public when it came out. [Audience member] and did it have an [?] impact on the movement after it came out. [Schiller] I'd like to respond and I'm sure Robbie had a different experience. Um, being we were, but I think, it was, but I think it was incredible. [Schiller] Like the mainstream press, like the New York Times, the TV Guide, all were like this is a must see, highly recommended, [Rosenberg] We were shocked by that. [Schiller] Yeah. [Schiller] And it, and it played in, um, it played in Sundance, which was before Sundance, it was, [Rosenberg & Kelley] U.S.A.? [Schiller] Independent, [Rosenberg] U.S.A. [Schiller] What year? It was like, [Schiller] It was in Park City, but it was before it was called Sundance. [Rosenberg] called Sundance. [Schiller] And then, Independent, the L. A. Independent, in Spring, I think. We were there. And, um. [Schiller] Ah, but, but a lot of PBS stations refused to carry it, so we organized a campaign where we would go out and organize screenings, [Schiller] and letter writing campaigns to pressure the local PBS stations to air the film. [Schiller] But, what happened was that, it, in some places, like, one I remember really well, we went to Norman, Oklahoma and um, [Schiller] they screened the film in a, in a surburban movie theater, in a shopping mall. [Schiller] And the people had blocked out the, the, mall owners had put a black bar over the words gay and lesbian on the poster. [Laughter] [Schiller] Well, it was uneven. It was whacky, you know. But, when I was in, I was in, Ark, Little Rock, Arkansas, a few years ago, [Schiller] with a totally different film about creationism and science. [Schiller] And um, what, a guy came up to me and said, "I was at the Little Rock PBS station and they wouldn't show your film. [Schiller] "So we made copies and gave it to everyone." [Schiller] I was like, I'm not sure, is that a compliment or like, [Laughter] I'm not sure, it was so weird. [Schiller] So, it was very uneven. But there were a few festival showings weren't there? There were a few. [Rosenberg] Very few. I mean, we showed it, we, we, we, it was one of the first public screenings was at the Castro theater in San Francisco. [Rosenberg] We were both there. It was sold out. It was the first time I'd seen it with that size of an audience. And it was sort of euphoric. [Schiller] Robbie, my sister's here. She helped organize the reception. [Rosenberg laughs] [Schiller] [?] probably. [Rosenberg] I, I think generally, like you said, it was very, very well received by the general public, by TV critics. [Rosenberg] Um, you know, we did do a theatrical release and it was seen by, by, you know, thousands of people. [Schiller] It was in [?] yeah. [Rosenberg] But, the thing is, our, our ratings on public TV, millions, handful of millions of people watched it. I can't remember what the number was. [Rosenberg] But, it was definitely widely seen. I don't think you could , I mean, I can't put my finger on, that it had a specific impact on the movement or community, [Rosenberg] but the many screenings that I went to the festivals, I went to the Castro. [Rosenberg] There was, I said this to a friend in, in um, L. A., um, I think it was, at the film festival, the L. A. Film Festival. [Rosenberg] And he had cried his way through it. He'd come out in the midst of seeing it. He just sobbed his way through it. I was like, I didn't know how to respond. [Rosenberg] But there was a lot of intense reaction from audiences. So, I'm sure, [Schiller] Yes. [Rosenberg] it made a difference with people. [Schiller] Yes, yes, there was, yes, I forgot that part of it. There was definitely a lot of emotion. [Rosenberg] Also, now, subsequently, starting around, maybe for ten years afterwards, I meet adults who would say to me, [Rosenberg] and this is, definitely a lot of heterosexual adults, "You made that film, that was required, you know, we had to watch that in my Gender Studies class, [Rosenberg] in my Sexuality class. And realizing that it had become a classic of those kind of classes at universities. [Schiller] Those classes didn't exist when we made the movie. [Rosenberg] Right, right. [Schiller] It's like such an amazing idea, that like, [Schiller] ah, ah, a year ago my niece who, a couple of years ago, one of my nieces, she goes to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, [Schiller] called me up on the phone one day, "Oh my God, they're showing your film in my Gender Studies class!" [Laughter] [Schiller] And I was like, "Do you get extra credit for knowing the director?" [Laughter] [Schiller] So, I mean, it's the idea that those classes didn't exist at all, I hadn't even thought of that, yeah. Interesting. [Kelley] Um. How about another one? Also, the lady in the back? [Audience member] Thank you for making this film, by the way, for having the courage to make it when you did, it was a little less fashionable then, than it is now. [Audience member] Um, the, the media landscape today, and the political landscape has changed enormously since this film was made. [Audience member] But then recent events have reminded us that there is still a lot of homophobia under the surface that we need to address. [Audience member] So what sorts of stories do you think need to be told today, at this moment in history? [Schiller] Well you're, you're a programmer, you probably know more, I mean, I have to say, I am, ah, with some of my other films, I'm in a distribution collective, [Schiller] that has this whole group of like, young, um, gay and lesbian film directors, who are making films, [Schiller] people of color who are making films about their own lives and their own stories, so they're like coming out of, ah, [Schiller] their own stories from their own communities. I find that really powerful. And like, I feel like I'm kind of passing, passing the torch. [Schiller] And it's really nice. How about Hollywood and feature films, Robbie you know more about that than me. [Rosenberg] You know it's funny, I, I also, ran, founded and ran, the Miami gay and lesbian film festival for awhile and I, I know for myself, [Rosenberg] and most of the audience members, who are forty and older, people were like, [Rosenberg] I don't want to see another coming out story, I don't want to see another documentary about how bad things were or are. [Rosenberg] So, I, I, it's an interesting question. What do people want to see. [Rosenberg] Um, you know, for one thing, talking about stuff today, watching down in Miami. Ah, what's happening in Orlando with the massacre and stuff, [Rosenberg] I thought, there's still stories to be told. For instance, about gay latino lives. You know, this whole gay Puerto Rican community in Orlando. [Rosenberg] Which is kind of unknown to the rest of the country where we were listening to them talking about, you know, gay Lat, Latin nights, a gay club, [Schiller chuckles] [Rosenberg] And its such a common thing for us down in Florida. [Rosenberg] But I think there are stories, still to be told and the after effects of things like Orlando. [Rosenberg] I think people, someone hopefully will dive into some of those things and let those stories [?] in a bigger way than they do in the news. [Kelley] Thank you for the question. And oh, there's one right there. Ah. There we go. [Audience member] Well, it was very interesting to see a lot of people in the film, like, ah, Harry Hay, who are no longer with us. [Audience member] And I'm sure, probably what's interesting for me and probably for you as well, is that, um, [Audience member] a lot of the elements of the film were for you contemperaneous when you made it, are now themselves historical documents. [Schiller] Mm, hmm. [Audience member] Um, my question is, ah, given that the title is, "Before Stonewall," you could've, ah, started anywhere, [Audience member] so how did you decide, or what was your reason that you decided to start your narrative in the, ah, early 1920s as opposed to somewhere earlier. [Schiller] Well, for one thing, we wanted to make, like, a ninety, under a ninety minute film. [Laughter] [Schiller] That was for one thing. But also, I think it was, like, the turn of, seems strange to say, the turn of the century was when the, [Schiller] even though, of course, homosexual acts and, and lifestyles were found throughout history, the def, self definition really formed around the turn of the century. [Schiller] Is that right? [Rosenberg] Yeah. We, we, we were specifically looking at a primarily American moment, American history, in this film. Um. [Rosenberg] That, and we, also, we were trying to work, ah, we were trying to work with living people we could interview. [Rosenberg] There's a limit to how old those people were, what they were talking about. [Rosenberg] Sure, you can talk about, you know, famous cases, like Oscar Wilde. [Rosenberg] We could have gone into all kinds of, you know, um, European stuff that we didn't really go into, but I think it was partly telling, [Rosenberg] the story based on, on actual people we could interview, so that was another, another arc. [Rosenberg] Um, and then we finally looked at, ahh, the developing sense of individual people feeling persecuted or having individual ways. [Rosenberg] You had to make people happy in private. To developing a sense of consciousness of themselves as maybe a community, [Rosenberg] back in the Forties and the Fifties, and then that community thinking about, [Rosenberg] hey, maybe we can do something in a political way about the troubles that we have. [Rosenberg] Like that arc we're trying to follow and that, go back to, the Greeks and Sappho and all that other kind of wonderful stuff for other movies. [Schiller] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. [Kelley] Ah. Take another one. [Kelley] Ah, oh. That wasn't a hand I saw. [Kelley] Um, I had a question, just a little bit about, um, John Scagliotti was here representing, um, "In the Life." [Kelley] We, the legacy project has also taken in all the episodes of, "In the Life," which is monumental. [Kelley] Um, and the first, LGBT television program of it's kind. And now, actually, ah, you can see them on line on our website. [Kelley] Ah, but that relationship is interesting too, because, um, importance to [?] and to the telling of the LGBT story, and so forth, and, [Kelley] I wonder how that partnership came into being, how you and John, all got together. [Rosenberg] Well, as I kind of implied, I had this idea for making a film. I met Greta through, we kind of had an LGBT film making circle in New York. [Rosenberg] We started working together on the project. When PBS, um, wanted to give us money they, you know, I sort of implied, we were both much younger. [Rosenberg] And they, they asked us to bring, ah, they put us on with John, um, I'm not sure if they, [Schiller] You know, it's really strange. I never knew exactly why they recommended John. [Schiller] But, I found out, like three years ago, when I was on a panel like this with John. [Schiller] And someone asked that. And he said he had been developing a series with PBS that got canned. [Schiller] He thinks that it was, like, the beginning of the Reagan era, [Rosenberg] Right. [Schiller] and they sort of gave it, gave him, "Before," [Schiller] he asked, they asked him to co produce "Before Stonewall," film as sort of you know, the booby prize. [Schiller] Little did he know, it would launch his career. You know. [Laughter] [Rosenberg] In, in, the, just so, "In the Life," you know, it was the first television show, it was independently made, but it was syndicated on a lot of PBS stations, [Rosenberg] cable channels, it went on for quite a few years. [Schiller] It was a magazine show. [Rosenberg] Yeah, it was a magazine, an hour long, [Kelley] Um, and had some relationship to this to. Because they did deep history at times, they'd bring in people to either give testimony or. [Schiller] And you know, I wonder if part of, I mean, I know, I think part of the reason that they stopped carrying it, was almost like, it's own success killed it, [Schiller] because, gay stories were starting being covered in main stream news and mainstream magazines and so, you know, it was really hard to justify. [Rosenberg] Well, and we were talking at dinner about, you know, Outfest and LGBT film festivals and what their role is now, and I was thinking, [Rosenberg] 'cause when I went on ? fifteen years ago, it seems strange, and to me the marker is, there are, are, are streaming TV shows like, "Transparent," on Amazon, [Rosenberg] which is, you know, probably one of the best LGBT ? shows I've ever seen, in a movie or TV show. And that's already out there, and it's so mainstream. [Rosenberg] But it's really accessible, what does it mean to have this kind of media, these kinds of films. [Rosenberg] Which we knew this was a groundbreaking thing, but now there's an explosion happening out there. It's very different. [Schiller] Well, you know, but in the world context, um the film, I mean, how we got started with making a restored film, [Schiller] was the film was invited to be part of the 30th anniversary of the Teddy Awards. [Schiller] Which as you know is, the biggest gay, gay film, biggest gay lesbian film award in a major international film festival. [Schiller] This film was there before there was a Teddy Award, actually. [Schiller] But anyway, the point is, so they have like, like you know, ten thousand people and it's broadcast on German TV, but one of the things they do, is they bring, [Schiller] festival organizers from all over the world together and they do a lot of work with people who are trying to work with gay films and making them, in countries where you can be imprisoned, murdered, um, severe penalties, and they like, learn how to, like, encrypt files, they do this like, underground thing. [Schiller] It was just fascinating. [Schiller] So you know, it's just as I said, history isn't linear, everything, things go up and down. [Kelley] Oh good. Question, right here. [Audience member] Well, first I just want to make a comment. Thank you so much for making this film. And, ah, it's so precious to have these memories, [Audience member] you know, preserved. Ah, you know, these people are all gone now, for the most part. [Schiller] Yes. [Audience member] So, I really appreciate seeing it. I'm sure, the way you structured it, it was, um, I know a lot about gay history and I've lived a lot of it. [Audience member] But, it felt different in the way you pieced it together, so I really appreciated that. [Audience member] Ah, I just had one question about the restoration. What did that entail? [Schiller] What'd it entail? Ah, well, the, the, um, [Schiller] CRI. Right? I think it was CRI, is in the UCLA Archives here. And is the people from Paris here, are you here? [Schiller] The guys who did the post? [Schiller] Anyway, there's ah, they, they, they, [Schiller] I don't think. I don't know all the language of this technology. They scanned it. They scanned it to something. Some computer thing. [Schiller] And then they did digital cinema something, [?] who's our German distributor. [Schiller] And then they did whatever you have to do to make it a DCP. Robbie knows more than me. [Rosenberg] That's perfect. This is, this is a 2K file that we're showing. A 2K digital file with two thousand lines of resolution. [Rosenberg] Actually, as far as I understand it, probably captures more information than could be, than we had in the original 16mm print. [Schiller] Yeah, yeah. [Rosenberg] I'm watching this and it looks so antique, this little square we're seeing on the screen. But obviously it was shot for television in 16 mm which is, [Schiller] I love that part of it. [Rosenberg] Right. [Schiller] I love the scratches and the little marks. [Rosenberg] Yeah, but [Schiller] ? [Rosenberg]This is a 2K, this is a 2K, 2K file which is the kind of a scan that can be shown in regular movie theaters and for hi definition TV as well.. [Rosenberg] But, it's still looks tiny and square in an antique way. [Schiller] Yeah. [Schiller] But, but there was, but there was, oh yeah, Robbie and I were whispering a little bit about our favorite bits. [Schiller] And but, one of the things, at least, in terms of history coming back, [Schiller] Frank Kameny being interviewed in front of the White House and about how he appealed and appealed, but actually, the Obama administration pardoned him. [Rosenberg] Yeah, right. [Schiller] Just before he died. Invited him to the White House and pardoned him. I wish we had been there. [Schiller] I mean it's just an incredible idea in one lifetime, how much we've shifted. Just by how much is not shifted. [Schiller] I think Barbara Gooding summed it up so succinctly, "It's not our problem. It's about changing the attitudes of other people." [Schiller] And we're never going to change everybody's attitudes. All we can do is be sure that, under, protections under the law are equal. [Rosenberg] But, [Schiller] But, you can't always change people. [Rosenberg] You pointed out something that we both thought about. With the Orlando shootings, it was like almost the first thing I thought about, [Rosenberg] besides being shocked, were the people who died and whose names were displayed in newspapers and TVs. How many of them weren't out? [Rosenberg] Their families or their friends or work some of them may not be, [Rosenberg] Imagine back in the past, when they were talking about, it was a way of attacking them by putting their names in the vice raids. [Schiller] Right. [Rosenberg] Because, pretty much every single one of those people, were not out to most of their families, to their friends, to lose their jobs, and they lost their jobs. [Rosenberg] And today, you know, we're watching CNN and the coverage over and over, [Schiller] reading all the names. [Rosenberg] It was like, They were reading the names like a role of honor and remembrance. Rosenberg] And there was very little talk about it being potentially, potentially disgraceful or problematic. [Kelley] Right there. [Audience member] First of all, I wanted to thank, thank both of your for making the film. I remember seeing when it first came out. [Schiller] Ha, ha. Thanks. [Audience member] And it's great to see this. And I was reminded, because of what's in the film, [Audience member] I went and did something that I've done about two or three times since then. [Audience member] I don't know how familiar people here are with the Paley Center, which used to be the Museum of Television and Radio. [Schiller] Uh, huh. [Audience member] They actually have a file on hand of regular and mainstream American programming, prior to Stonewall, where, you know, prime time drama shows, [Audience member] featured stories about gays that were very surprisingly avant garde and progressive for their time. [Audience member] You know. And also there's that special that Mike Wallace did called, "The Homosexual," that came out in 1957. [Rosenberg] We could never use that in the film, there were too many [?] [Schiller] [?] couldn't get the rights. [Rosenberg] But that's a great, I just want to say, that none of the stuff was organized, in any of these archives, including this one, in a way for us to find, [Rosenberg] and I think, this is a good moment to thank, Andrea Weiss, who was our archival research person who did everything, to find all this material. [Rosenberg] when it wasn't organized and it's amazing that it is now. [Audience member] Yeah, no I agree. [Schiller] That, that, that, that's so important, what you just said. How that, and also like the Legacy Project within the Archive. [Schiller] 'Cause, I mean, she would, like, go into the things, like, one of my favorite stories is how she found the drag queens and that stuff. [Schiller] It wasn't under drag queens, it was under like, um, what was the word for, like, illicit behavior, no it wasn't, [Rosenberg] Was it vice? [Schiller] Vice squad. It was vice squad. It was like, [Schiller] You know, you had to think with a whole different kind of, kind of, [Schiller] approach. A whole different, the thinking was completely different. I can't even, it's hard for young people today to imagine. [Laughter] [Audience member] I just want to again thank you for, this film has really sparked my interest in learning more about gay history, [Schiller] Thanks. [Audience member] and you found all this stuff. [Kelley] And this is a good story too, isn't it? This history? [Schiller] Yeah, I think, I'm always amazed at how it flows actually. I said to Robbie during the thing, damn, Bill Daughton was a great editor. [Rosenberg] A, a, a wonderful editor, Bill Daughton. He passed away. [Schiller] He died. I mean, ah, the people, the people who worked on the film were, either died of AIDS or now they're, cancer, I don't think anyone, [Schiller] I think, Ivy Bottini might be alive. [Rosenberg] Ah, ah. [Schiller] Yeah, yeah. Right. We should have invited her. [Schiller I thought of that when we came. Oh shit, I think she lives in Los Angeles. Oh well. [Rosenberg] And I mean, it is so important, most of these people are dead. It's great to have their stories on camera, kind of forever. [? off mic] [Kelley] I just pinned on a question, I didn't realize I was going to ask, but we don't talk much about AIDS. We don't talk about AIDS in this film. [Rosenberg] It, it's pretty, [Schiller] [?] AIDS. [Rosenberg] Well, [Schiller] We did, it was called the gay can, it was called the gay cancer. [Rosenberg] While we were filming the, during production it was already going on. [Schiller] But the film ends in '69. [Rosenberg] Yeah, yeah, yeah, but. [Schiller] I mean, we had to have a beginning, we had to have a marker. [Schiller] But what we were doing, I remember like being, [Schiller] I remember, especially, like at one TV station, the woman would not shake my hand. [Schiller] Because of AIDS. And I was just like, what? [Schiller] You know, that's how whacky people were about it. Yeah. [Rosenberg] '83 was when we were potentially in production for the film and I remember discussions in the office about stuff, [Schiller] Whether we needed, yeah. Well, we were worried, [Rosenberg] I didn't want to admit where I was going on a Wednesday night to, to John, who was in a [?] relationship, [Schiller] Right. [Rosenberg] and I was playing around still. So, you know, there were things going on. [Schiller] Yeah. [Kelley] And there's people in the film remembering things, who are now living in [?]. [Kelley] This is probably the last documentary of it's kind that would have been possible to do. [Schiller] Yes. [Kelley] Without them making, [Schiller] Yeah, interesting. And then [Rosenberg] And some of them died. [Schiller] When did Vito die? [Rosenberg] After the film. [Schiller] I know that. But not much longer. He was, [Rosenberg] No. [Schiller] Like, the late Eighties? Late Eighties right? [Audience member, inaudible] [Schiller] '97? Okay. Okay. [Rosenberg] But, some, some of the gay men in the film, mostly the younger ones, some of them died of AIDS, [Rosenberg] but most of the people in the film just died of old, diseases of old age. I mean, that was [Rosenberg] The youngest people in the film are just slightly younger, about the age we are now. [Rosenberg] So, we're talking about. That we could be interviewed for a film about some past, like in 1980's kind of thing, but, so, [Schiller] We are being interviewed right now. [Laughter] [Rosenberg] Some of the youngest people, some of them, a handful might still be alive, [Rosenberg] but most of the people, you know, would be over a hundred who were in the film at this point. [Kelley] Question? [Audience member] Ah, I just want to thank you again, and I can't tell you enough. [Schiller] Thanks. [Audience member] As a young gay person, this is something that, although I'm aware of the history and because I purposely researched it on my own, [Audience member] there was a lot in the movie that I was not aware of, that I was not, I didn't even know it went back that far. [Audience member] I mean you hear, Stonewall, the time of Stonewall, Stonewall and for a lot of young gay people, it really doesn't go beyond that, I find. [Audience member] You know that's sort of the limit of what, yeah, exactly, and that's sort of my question, is, yes I am aware of my history and my culture. [Audience member] But I know a lot of people who are my age or younger, who aren't aware of that history, and are I mean, [Audience member] some people who aren't even aware of how enormous the AIDS crisis was. [Audience member] Where do you find that, that drops off in the last couple of years, like, where do you find, in researching gay history, [Audience member] where do you find that sort of, dropped off in the next generation? [Schiller] I don't think, I mean, I think that Audre Lorde sort of said it in the film, when she says, you know, "Gay people," [Schiller] I'm going to say gay because GLBT, because I'm old enough to be able to do that, and I mean you all, um, [Laughter] [Schiller] the um, they, that, the "gay people are just a reflection of the society that we live in." [Schiller] And, and so, when the culture in general is, has a sense of, an historical context then, you know, gay people are, are more involved too. [Schiller] But, I mean, also, I'm guessing also, I'm not sure even if in, [Schiller] I don't know. I asked my sixteen year old, is gay history included in regular school curriculum now in American history? [Schiller] Is there any reference to gay history? [Schiller] Yeah, okay, so we still have a problem there. [Schiller] And she goes to a really rockin' public school in New York City which they out gay teachers. So, this is interesting. [Rosenberg] Well, I mean, like, we, we live in, I think, a very historical society and culture, where people don't see things in context. [Rosenberg] You know, people don't, I was shocked when we had this whole excavation of Donald Trump and Roy Cohn. [Rosenberg] which takes you back to Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare but in general people don't know about the history in any way shape or form. [Rosenberg] And I know young Latinos in Miami, who don't know who Cesar Chavez was. [Rosenberg] I mean, they just really disconnect, I think, for younger generations from that. And then also, [Rosenberg] the shifting sense of what identity means in the LGBT world, that people don't necessarily identify that strongly as I'm part of the gay minority. [Rosenberg] So this film has a different kind of reflection as well. But I just think, where people are very, there's a lot of amnesia, cultural amnesia. [Rosenberg] In our society and our culture, about all kinds of things, not just gay issues. [Kelley] This is great. We're on a roll. [Audience member] Yeah, just one thing that I really found interesting was, the headline in the, "New York Times," ah, after Stonewall. [Audience member] It's like, you show it in the film, it's like, ah, you know, "Two Cops injured in bar raid." [Schiller] Yeah. [Audience member] I mean, [Laughter] [Schiller] Yeah. [Audience member] Was that page one or whatever it was, I don't know. [Rosenberg] That was ridiculous. [Schiller] Well, I mean, it wasn't until much later that the significance of that riot, that, that, I mean, even the idea, I was thinking of that, like, [Schiller] when I, that and also, this idea that a riot is now, a place of a riot, is now celebrated as a national monument. I mean that's a pretty weird idea too. [Rosenberg] Well, just to be clear, for anyone who doesn't know, the history. Post Stonewall, within one year, so by the next June, [Rosenberg] there were already people, at least in New York, and starting around the country, celebrating the Stonewall Riot as an important milestone. [Rosenberg] So, within the burgeoning LGBT community, people began to recognize it very, very quickly, but it still, the mass media, [Rosenberg] I mean, that culture, was very far behind, in terms of recognizing that, at that moment. [Rosenberg] But that's what shocked me, was how quickly that was like a match being lit on a bunch of tinder ready to go into flame. [Rosenberg] People, it just changed over night. One year is an overnight kind of thing. Just suddenly, people started establishing gay political groups, [Rosenberg] and gay liberation organizations. And the women's movement, lesbian groups, just overnight were blowing up around the country. [Schiller, partially off mic, over questioner] I'm sorry. [Audience member] and the review in the, "New York Times," too, was also probably a landmark in the Times because they had actually refused to use the word, gay. [Schiller] Yeah. [Audience member] Until around that time. [Schiller] Yeah, yeah. [Rosenberg] We were shocked by that review, I have that review. I have the actual clipping of the review, yellowing in my files. It was shocking. [Rosenberg] And the reviewer, I forget the guy's name,was actually known to be conservative and [Schiller] So, what was this? In what paper? [Rosenberg] In the "Times." The "Times," review. [Schiller] Oh. [Rosenberg] It was a shockingly positive review, so I don't know, it was and things changed. [Kelley] I just find it, the movie is so irresistible, and the people, the things that, that, when you meet these people, they feel particular. Like, who knew, [Schiller] Oh you know what we did, [Kelley] a generic lesbian could be so personable, or, [Schiller] Well, we didn't, we weren't, I mean, we, we, we, though, there, um, [Schiller] organization of finding the people to be inter, I mean, we were working first of all on 16mm film. [Schiller] Which meant that it was too expensive, it was like two hundred dollars for eleven minutes of stock and processing. [Schiller] So, like, you had to think, and that was two hundred dollars then was a lot more than two hundred dollars now. [Schiller] So, we thought a lot about who to interview and how we were going to interview them. [Schiller] We had already a sense of where they were going to go in the story. Ah, ah, you know, before we went into the interview. [Schiller] And what we did is, we, um, did preinterviews on half inch. [Schiller] We had like, um, Weiss, Andrea, and, I think Amy, I think it was Amy Chen, huh, [Schiller] and Andrea organized the local researchers, I'd have to look in the notes. [Schiller] But anyway, we had local regional researchers, like ah, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, [Schiller] what, Atlanta, New York, whatever, [Rosenberg] Seattle. [Schiller] and Seattle, yeah, Seattle, yeah. [Schiller] And we, at that time, there was a whole underground free press. And we put ads in there. [Schiller] And we said, we're doing this film, we're doing this research, we're trying to tell our story. [Schiller] We want to look at personal archives. Which is the first time anyone had looked at personal archives of gay and lesbian lives, as history. [Schiller] And so people were like, "Why do you want to see my home movies?" You know, or my, my, ah, my photographs. [Schiller] And then, and so, we would have local people tape them and then I think we gave all the entries and then if we thought they were, [Rosenberg] We did both. [Schiller] Yeah, if we thought they were interesting enough, we would do half inch, I mean, VHS tapes. [Schiller] I mean, we did a lot of, it wasn't just, like the way you, kind of like, the way a lot of research is done now, where you just kind of, [Schiller] have an assistant go out, [Rosenberg] Just as a ballpark, I think, it's about 25, you know, witnesses, people being interviewed in the film. [Schiller] Is that it? [Rosenberg] Yeah, about, I think we did 75 total pre. We identified about 75 people we wanted to get to know better. [Rosenberg] And somebody, we split it up, I remember, I did San Francisco and Seattle. I think, we went out and did video tape and audio tape interviews. [Rosenberg] And then I, I, it's weird to watch in terms of the home movies. Because, for me, I remember the people so distinctly sitting in their living room, [Rosenberg] finding, you know, you know, going up to their homes, where they live. I mean. [Rosenberg] The people in San Francisco and Seattle were the ones I spent the most time with. [Rosenberg] They were so intimate, the time I spent with them, before we came back, when we told them we already had, know what the stories were going to be. [Rosenberg] At the very end, Ted Rolfs, one of my favorite characters, the guy who says, "from Stonehenge to Stonewall." [Rosenberg] He could repeat that line on a dime, that was one of his framework lines. He says to me five different ways. [Laughter] [Rosenberg] in two different interviews prior to that. So, I was like, can you do that Stonehenge line now? "Oh, yeah!" He had a little story, led up to it. [Rosenberg] So, I mean, yeah, he was like eighty something so he had his story. Do you remember? I guess I had to tell Rolf's story. [Rosenberg] I had a chiropractor in New York, do you remember? Karen, what's her name. [Schiller] Vaguely, vaguely. [Rosenberg] Her recommendation. And this chiropractor, was this sort of like, [Schiller, off mic] she recommended, Ted Rolfs, [Rosenberg] No, no, no, no. She was like this, Danish, butch, dyke, who was like, you know, [deep, gravely] gruff voice, [normal] who was working on me, [Rosenberg] I was telling her, about the experience, the premiere, at the Waverly in New York, I don't know how we got onto who was in the film. [Rosenberg] and I mentioned Ted Rolfs, and she goes, "Riff Raff Rolfs?" And I said, "I don't know if that's," They were in the Merchant Marine together in World War II. [Rosenberg] And I gave her his number and they reconnected after like forty years. [Schiller, over] Wow, wow. Oh, I think I remember that too. [Rosenberg] It was the chiropractor you sent me to. [Schiller] Oh. [Rosenberg] So, but, anyhow. [Schiller] Isn't that amazing. [Rosenberg] It's a very small world. [Schiller] Yeah, well, that, I was thinking, sometimes we tried to put people in interviews that somehow reflected who they were? [Schiller] So, like, George Buse has like, Gloria Gaynor in the poster. [Schiller] And then Ted Rolfs is standing in front of, like, a Merchant Marine ship. [Rosenberg] Yeah, right. [Schiller] But in the film, we don't mention that he was in the Merchant Marines. [Rosenberg] Yeah, right. [Schiller] So, that was interesting. That was pretty funny. [Kelley] Ted Rolfs is a natural. [Schiller] Yeah, yeah. [Kelley] Um, I had a feeling there was some, other question? Um. [Kelley] What I'd, well something came to mind to about this, the clips research and everything that was done, [Kelley] but you got some amazing stuff licensed. Was this hard to do, expensive or did you use films in the public domain? [Schiller] Some of them, I mean, some of them were in the public domain. Some of 'em where we just, um, [Schiller] really, I don't know who negotiated the rights, Robbie. Now, I can't remember. [Rosenberg] It was all a different combination, depends what it was. Really, [Schiller] But did we ever, like, now I would hire someone to negotiate archival footage. [Rosenberg] No. It was us. All within the Archive. [Schiller] All right. Yeah, true. [Rosenberg] David [?] and I have something that is um, community based research. We found treasure troves of peoples, those drag queens with, like, a little, [Schiller] Oh, yes. [Rosenberg] That was somebody's home movies. [Rosenberg] The, the, the film of the lesbian wedding was somebody's home movies. [Schiller] Oh, they were amazing. [Rosenberg] So, we found people who had home movies of their lives, obviously more from the Fifties and Sixties and, [Rosenberg] you might not always see it but there's actually also photographs of the individual people as young people, we tried to juxtapose them. [Rosenberg] People have stuff, [Schiller, off mic] little index cards, little boxes. [Rosenberg] We weren't using computers back then. [Kelley] I was checking to see if the web, one of the last cards in the film, that, um, some footage comes from the UCLA Film and Television Archive. [Kelley, laughing] And now, this film becomes part of the UCLA Film and Television Archive. [Schiller] I know. It's nice, isn't it. Yeah, I you know, I'm sharing somewhere in my files, the, what do you call it, [Schiller] it's like a sheet where you have to write down the archive, where it is, where it comes from. [Schiller] To trace back, I can probably find out where, what came from the UCLA Archive. [Kelley] It'd be nice to know. [Schiller] Yeah. It was really fun. It's fun. It's amazing. To think of that. [Kelley] And, now to see it on screen again, because I don't, as many times as you may have seen it, [Kelley] I don't know how many times, like me, that you've had the opportunity to screen it and see it with an audience and so forth. [Kelley] How's that experience compare, can you remember the feelings maybe of the first public screening, a festival screening? [Rosenberg] I mean the first one, the first big screening, where we had a big audience, that was at the Castro, that was before we opened it theatrically. [Rosenberg] Do you remember the Castro screening? [Schiller] Well, of course. [Rosenberg] Okay. That was, that was overwhelming. [Rosenberg] That was, I mean, if any of you have been up to San Francisco, the Castro holds, like, fifteen hundred people, at least. [Rosenberg] I don't know the number. But it was, [Kelley] It's typically really vocal. [Rosenberg] Yeah, it was, it was, [Schiller] Yeah, yeah. [Rosenberg] That one and the one, the one in L. A., at the L. A. Film Festival, I don't remember the seating but that also was sold out. [Rosenberg] Those were very, very overwhelming, emotional peaks. That kind of event. [Rosenberg] I've seen, I saw this on screen maybe ten or twelve years ago in Miami. It, there was a screening of it there. But, um. [Rosenberg] This is the first time I sat through it. I wasn't going to. I told you I was going to go out and, and do something else. And I sat through it kind of riveted. [Rosenberg] I think, you know, as a film maker you always, I mean, I don't know what you think, but I watch things and I think I wish we had done this, [Rosenberg] I wish we had done that, things I want to change. And now I've got some distance from it, I was able to get through the emotional arc of the film [Rosenberg] and, you know, that was just wonderful. [Schiller] Yeah. No, ah, I don't, I, I don't really, I have the same, pretty much exact same feeling. [Schiller] I saw it recently in Berlin, with an international audience and that was really interesting because, um, it was actually in the same cinema where it was, [Schiller] the exact same cinema, the Ufa Palast, where it was first screened in Berlin. [Schiller] With, with the programmer who became, like, the godfather to my daughter. So it was a very good friend. [Schiller] And we both were sitting in the back and we were like, crying. So, it was just so, it was our youth, because it was, like, thirty one years ago. [Schiller] But you're showing it to a new audience and so it was pretty amazing. [Schiller] It's been really nice. I wanted to say, thank you so much for hosting us. Because this has been, it's just wonderful to see it on a movie screen. [Schiller] Plus you get to see so many movies in the movie. You know. [Kelley] Oh yeah, you get a lot of value for your dollar in this film. [Laughter] [Kelley] I saw a question right here. [Chuckles] [Audience member] I was just wondering how long it took you to make this movie. And what kind of a staff did you have. [Schiller] Um, I'll try. I think, I think we raised money for several years, right? [Rosenberg] Yeah, I mean, we, we, [Schiller] I mean, we probably got the grant, first one, in '81 or '82? [Rosenberg] We, we, we, [Schiller] Or '80? [Rosenberg] We, we, you and I from when we were raising money, trying to do some of the research for almost two or three years. [Rosenberg] We went into full time production for almost a year. [Rosenberg] We didn't have enough money to finish it. And so it dragged out the editing and post production process for like another year and a half or, [Rosenberg] yeah, another year and a half or so. I mean, so if you condense all that, maybe it would only have been like two and a half years, [Rosenberg] but it seemed like it consumed a large portion of my late twenties during the film. [Laughter] [Schiller] Well, you know, it's funny because I remember I was a co producer on the, "Greetings from Washington D. C.," which and that was the first National March on, [Schiller] Washington for gay rights in 1979. [Schiller] And this was, I think, premiered in the Spring of '84, right? Was it? Or was the Castro the Summer of '83? [Rosenberg] No, no, no, no. [Schiller] So, Summer of '84? [Rosenberg] '85. [Schiller] No, February of '85, it was in Berlin. Right? [Rosenberg] Yeah, but we, that was about the same time we showed it at the Castro. I mean, [Schiller] Oh, wasn't it in June? [Rosenberg] Maybe it was in, I don't think we had, [Schiller] Well, anyway, so that was say three or four years from the sort of beginning to work on it to the release. [Schiller] Which, in perspective was not that long, considering it's basically primary, principal primary use shot on 16, cut on 16, [Schiller] And we actually did prints, and shipped prints around. It's phenomenal when you think of it. [Schiller] You know, I mean, it was just such a physical thing. [Schiller] but we, I mean, we were basically, um, you know, three principal producers, two directors, an archival research director, [Schiller] an archival resear, I can't remember, was Amy a production coordinator, [Rosenberg] I don't, we had maybe like, almost ten people, eight, nine, ten people full time in New York. [Schiller] Well, [Rosenberg] For like six months. [Schiller] Yeah. [Rosenberg] And then we had another kind of ancillary people around the country, helping with all the sites. [Schiller] Yeah. [Rosenberg] But, um, it definitely dragged on for a long time. [Schiller] We had an editor, obvious, Bill Daughton. Who actually, [Schiller] now that I've edited many movies, I, my respect and appreciation for him, in this film, it gets deeper, deeper and deeper, because, there's, there's, the [Schiller] the movement, the pacing, the juxtaposition of imagery, it's just, um, you know, the music, the, the way we lead from one, one, ah, place in the movie to the next. [Schiller] So, I just find it so smooth. [Kelley] There's a lot of ground to cover. [Kelley] Um, I wonder, we'll do a sweep and see if we have any other questions? [Kelley] Oh, [?] Okay. [Audience member, unintelligible] [Schiller] Um. [Kelly] What's the question. What's the movies, [Rosenberg] Oh, God. This is the Army, thank you. [Schiller] Who are you? [Schiller] Thank you. [Audience member unintelligible] [Kelly] Did Vito Russo help with anything else? [Rosenberg] He was a, he was a really important resource for the film. [Schiller] Who? Vito? [Rosenberg] Yeah. [Schiller] Yeah. [Rosenberg] Yeah. [Rosenberg] But, I mean, we, we, some of that stuff, you know, we identified, we did not make this film in isolation, or alone. [Rosenberg] So, people like him, um, John D'Emilio, Allan Berube, Joan Nestle from Lesbian Herstory Archives. [Rosenberg] These people, have, I mean, some of them, even though they're doing written history have their fingers on, [Rosenberg] things that have happened in visual history as well. So, we used all their resources to help us make the film. [Schiller] Well, I don't remember them having any visual, very little visual, [Rosenberg] Well, I had a list from John and Allan, it was like, [Schiller] Uh, huh. [Rosenberg] TV shows or films, which, they didn't have the access to them, [Schiller] Right, they knew it, yeah. [Rosenberg] we had to find them. [Schiller] But, but we didn't, a lot of them weren't saved, right? [Rosenberg] Right. It was just, yeah, yeah. [Schiller] So, when we went looking they weren't saved. [Schiller] But, yeah, so. Vito was, um, Vito was Vito. He was amazing. [Schiller] In so many ways. Like with leading to, ah, [Schiller] visual representation. And interpretation and understanding of those representations, Vito was, [Schiller] the best. [Kelley] He wrote the book. [Schiller] She's doing that up there in the back. I think she means, wrap it up. [Kelley] Oh, yeah. Well, sorry, I was thinking, how do you sum up the way you feel about a movie that, you know, you take personally, like I take this one. [Kelley] But, um, it's interesting again, you know, it's telling a history, becomes then an object in history. You know, doing work with other films, and, and, [Kelley] and standing, you know, on it's merits. And, you know, open to revision and expansion by all kinds of other people. Um, but, ah, [Kelley] this is a last thought, you know, the place that this may occupy, [Kelley] the work of your lives, I was just wondering like, how, what is your relationship to the [?] film now. [Rosenberg] Well, I mean, I, for one thing, once you make a film like this, that's openly gay, I remember interviewing any kind of great mainstream film context. [Rosenberg] And I have great film makers. Oh, he made, "Before Stonewall." So, I realized, I could never not be a gay film maker in any professional film context. [Rosenberg] Even if I didn't work on other gay projects. But, I, I, I, [Rosenberg] I have done more programming curatorial work since then and I went on and founded the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and, [Rosenberg] it was very interesting when I brought this credential to this. I remember another job I had, um, with the Miami Film Festival and the board of directors, [Rosenberg] was interviewing me, and one of the oldest gay guys said, "Well, you've made a very important classic film, and to be, it's an honor to have you here." [Rosenberg] So it sort of does follow you around and inform the work that you do but I also, you know, sometimes in a more mainstream film context, [Rosenberg] I've always had to be really clear, to people, that I was not programming as a gay, you know, gay film person, [Laughter] [Rosenberg] but as a general appreciator of art film and film as art and that's always, you know, you can't, you can't escape this thing on your, [Rosenberg] on your, ah, on your resume. But it's a great, it was a seminal experience and an amazing experience. [Rosenberg] An amazing honor to meet these people and have them enrich my life. [Kelley] Yeah. [Rosenberg] Yeah. [Schiller] Um. What's the question exactly? [Laughter] [Schiller] I started drifting, where, I mean, I started day dreaming about Robbie, what he was saying. [Kelley] Yeah, I [Schiller] How did the film inform my life and career? [Schiller] Everything. I mean, I went to the, I went to the Berlinale with this film and met a whole, my whole, [Schiller] mentor people and ended up making a whole series of films on lesbian and gay culture and history around, in different places in the world and, [Schiller] I did that, and I have done that for thirty some years, so, you know, [Schiller] It, it, it launched my whole trajectory. [Schiller] Even though I don't make, my last two films are not gay lesbian and I've made other, ah, topic films, [Schiller] stylistically, as I said, I think, earlier, um, I, it set a tone for films where, [Schiller] I'm very, I'm interested in telling the story from the point of view of the people who do the work or live the story. [Schiller] And, even though I'm doing films on, you know, science and creationism and a film about ecological restoration, right now, right now. [Schiller] I'm, I'm, I'm following the story of the people who are actually, doing the work and living out the idea. [Schiller] So, in that way, and this, that film will have no archive. But I think that that starts a thread, is that a thread? [Schiller] Yeah, I think that, you know, I think that, that's, that's um, I think that, yeah, I think that. [Kelley laughs] I think so too. And, um, [Schiller] I'm glad we think that. [Kelley] Yeah. [Laughs] And, I thank you both for being here. It's been really wonderful, wonderful. [Schiller] Thank you. [Applause]