Monday, December 15, 2008

Word Is Out is out on DVD. Watch the Trailer!

Required Viewing for Gay Adults (or those ready to become one!)

I just attended the Legacy Project at the Los Angeles Outfest 2008, and this is the first time I had ever even heard of this movie. I am almost 40 years old, and I am in the age group that was just too young for Stonewall, survived the circuit party scene and living through the AIDS epidemic.

It brings such a wide range of emotions into the forefront of ones conscientiousness, it should be considered a movement unto itself and repeated for every generation of gays to come. They say that a good movie is one that is talked about when you leave the theater. What about one that is talked about for days or weeks after you leave the theater. I will be sharing my experiences with everyone I know because everyone I know will be able to identify with some part of this movie.

Even though I am a gay man, who could not have identified with the hispanic lesbian in the first scene. The discomfort that she shows, the lack of complete eye contact, and her scratching at her arms. That discomfort is something that we all have faced at one time or another due to our lack of understanding of what it means to be gay, or who might know we are gay. Further on into the movie, when she sees that her blouse is unbuttoned, she buttons it up, but then unbottons the top botton instead-Brilliant! Her accceptance of who she is, and who we all are, can be summed up in those split seconds. It might have provided some comic relief initially, but the realization of not knowing why or who we might be and then becoming comfortable with who we really are can be profound.

Bravo to all the filmakers!
Brent Viklund, bv91505@sbcglobal.net

Easy to Understand

I am part of the straight audience for whom I expect much of the educational element of the film was aimed. I remember seeing this film sometime after 1978, on TV, when I had just moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. I knew almost nothing about homosexuality at the time.

I remember particularly the young man who said he had never been in love, and then in college suddenly developed a crush on another young man. I had had heterosexual crushes on various people in my teen years, and the lightbulb went on, "oh, THAT'S how it works!" I suddenly realized two things -- that gays couldn't select who they were attracted to any more than I could, and that I didn't want the young man in the documentary to have to live without love in his life. The message was so easy to understand, I was just sorry that the film didn't have wider distribution during the following 30 years.

Laurel, dogwalker47-mb@yahoo.com