Think for a moment on all the topics and events that Hollywood has covered in historical dramas. The Moon landing has been covered countless times, the signing of the Declaration of Independence has informed so many movies there’s even one with singing, and the hunt for the Zodiac killer and other murderers has led to a whole subgenre. Meanwhile, the creation of Nike shoes, the maker of a self-wringing mop, and the mind behind the windshield wiper have all warranted major motion pictures. Hollywood loves leaning on familiar tales of yesteryear to inform costly movies of today.
You know what historical topic cinema often ignores? The 1969 Stonewall Riots. This formative LGBTQIA+ event has, among feature-length narrative films, only been chronicled in 1995’s Stonewall and 2015’s Stonewall. Both films are framed through the eyes of a white cis gay man new to New York — the most recent film even has him throw the first brick. So far the only pop culture properties to represent this moment with any attention given to the people at its center are an episode of Drunk History and the short film Happy Birthday, Marsha! A proper feature-length movie, though, has evaded the Stonewall Riots.
This erasure has always been disgraceful. Now it’s an ominous harbinger of 2025 events like erasing trans people from the National Park Service web page for the Stonewall Monument. There’s never been a timelier opportunity to ask…what’s behind the dearth of Stonewall Riot movies?
For starters, it’s best to examine some practical elements informing why Stonewall Riot movies are scarce. This is a difficult event to realize in the indie movie space. The Stonewall Riots occurred over six days from June 28 to July 3, 1969. Each day concerned mobs of people, including swarms of queer people actively fighting and rioting against police officers. This expansive material doesn’t require an Avatar-sized budget, but the crowd work alone would require a significant amount of money. Sometimes, indie studios can pick up the slack on stories major studios and streamers ignore, but the inherent costs of realizing the Stonewall Riots on film make that proposition difficult in this specific case.
There’s also the fact that the Stonewall Riots were a spontaneous form of activism. The police raided the Stonewall Inn one fateful June 1969 night, as they’d done so many times before. It just so happened that, on this day, the queers inside this establishment had had enough. This wasn’t something they planned out for weeks in advance. It was just a spur-of-the-moment response to ceaseless oppression.
Major American movies prefer a tidy build-up to famous historical events. 2004’s The Alamo was as enamored with showing the “origins” of that titular Texas battle as the event itself. Air was all about the contained domino effects that led to Michael Jordan signing a historic shoe deal with Nike. The list goes on and on. American features about significant events spontaneously intruding on mundane reality, like Ryan Coogler’s 2013 masterpiece Fruitvale Station, are rare. The chaos of the Stonewall Riots are more challenging to package into the standard Hollywood historical formula.
However, there are more political reasons for the lack of Stonewall Riots movie. For starters, it’s there in the event’s name…the Stonewall Riots. Even when Hollywood makes movies about historical figures who espoused ideas that make upper-class white people uncomfortable, they make sure those concepts never make it to the silver screen. Bob Marley: One Love erased the radical politics of its titular musician to make the figure more palatable to white America. 2002’s Frida pushed Frida Kahlo’s communism to the margins of her life. 42, a Jackie Robinson biopic, wastes an amazing Chadwick Boseman performance on a movie erasing Robinson’s more radical impulses. “The filmmakers don’t seem to care what Robinson—a deeply political human being—believed,” observed Dave Zirwin of The Nation.
Major biopics about historical events turn Frida Kahlo and Jackie Robinson into palatable action figures. They’re never realized as the radical trailblazers they were. And sanding off radical history’s edges informs the two feature films that have chronicled the Stonewall Riots. 1995’s Stonewall garnered criticism not just for centering the narrative on white people, but for suggesting Judy Garland’s death was the uprising’s primary motivation, a long-debunked urban myth. Once again, tidy narrative cinema impulses creep into adapting a historical event defined by spontaneity.
Roland Emmerich’s hideously infamous 2015 film Stonewall, meanwhile, whitewashed to an even greater degree by showing cis white boys as the primary instigators and players in the Stonewall Riots. Turns out the main twink from War Horse, not Marsha P. Johnson, is who we have to thank for queer rights! In both films, the Stonewall Riots are made “cozier” for general audiences through erasing active rebellious Black voices. This 1969 moment only happened because of the violent uprising of queer Black people and other non-white individuals. We wouldn’t have the modern LGBTQIA+ community without these everyday trailblazers and their forceful reaffirmation of their humanity.
One Love and 42 are just two of many examples of major studios turning radical Black historical figures into apolitical souls who smile and wave when experiencing racism. This is the mold of Black activism Hollywood likes. No aggressiveness, nothing challenging, and devoid of material alienating the wallets of white ticket buyers. This already makes any true representation of Stonewall Riots persona non grata among topics for the Hollywood treatment. Additionally, any Stonewall Riots movie would contend with America’s innately toxic and broken police institution, Not only were Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and others actively fighting against police officers, but the same police brutality informing the Stonewall Riots continues to this day.
Is it even comprehensible for any American feature — whether it’s a major studio release or made with major independent backing — to be so staunchly anti-cop? American pop culture is a place where even a Sonic the Hedgehog movie features a police officer protagonist. The airwaves are clogged with copaganda reaffirming that cops always know best. Marginalized working-class voices, meanwhile, are either untrustworthy or best left as corpses.
Even mainstream movies about police brutality like The Hate U Give feature a “nice” police officer arresting a ne’er-do-well in the third act. Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit, which focused on a real-world case of racially motivated police brutality, depicted most of the horrific white men police officers eventually feeling remorse for and wanting to come clean about their hideous behavior. The ringleader of those officers, Philip Krauss (Will Poulter), shoulders the blame as a mere “bad apple” in this department.
All kinds of major media in American pop culture sugarcoat harsh aspects of realities related to the inherent toxicity of policing. On top of all that, doing any faithful adaptation of the Stonewall Riots would require centering the story around sex workers and trans people of color. These are two groups that the American entertainment industry has no real time for. Back in 2023, D. Smith’s documentary masterpiece Kokomo City (which chronicled various Black trans women sex workers in modern-day America) couldn’t pick up major distribution from even indie heavyweights like A24 or Neon, let alone from major outfits like Focus Features and Searchlight Pictures. Magnolia Pictures eventually picked Kokomo City up and could only get it into more than a handful of theaters.
This infuriating turn of events reflects the disinterest both smaller and high-profile arthouse studios have in lives that aren’t cis and white. These labels supposedly crusade for “challenging” material…so long as white and cis artists are behind the camera! If a low-budget documentary about Black trans women couldn’t get major U.S. distribution, of course major backers aren’t ponying up cash for a proper Stonewall Riots movie.
These realities are endlessly discouraging, especially since the Stonewall Riots would make such a searing, transfixing movie. Putting Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and other people involved in the Stonewall Riots on screen in a great, anarchically rage-fueled movie could be especially profound for viewers. After all, watching trans people working together to fight back against oppression, rather than being passive figures only existing to motivate cis people, could inspire a new generation of LGBTQIA+ activists or just make trans viewers feel less alone for a few hours. The ongoing erasure of trans people from all walks of American life makes it more critical than ever to reaffirm the history of the Stonewall Riots. Only one photograph exists of the first night of the riots, so a successful feature film rendering of the uprising could create a visual documentation of the event in our historical imagination.
Representation on-screen alone won’t save us. Activism, community, mutual aid, strikes, and further uprisings are what we need most and the way to keep the spirit of the Stonewall Riots alive and well. But knowing our history can help make these tangible actions possible. Hollywood — for better or worse, usually worse — shapes our understanding of that history. A proper Stonewall movie wouldn’t just be representation. It would be a reclaiming of our place in history, a way to let future generations know what’s possible through the accomplishments of our ancestors.
