In the Life: Ep. 1712, "A Festival of Film"

on this month's in the Life a trip to Miami for their 10th Annual gay and lesbian Film Festival a hard look and don't ask don't tell a great director remembered it didn't present someone that was an easy stereotype and that was what I was after cooking up love it's still Elementary we have to challenge the culture in the schools and a little rock and roll all this and more on this edition of In The Life in the life is funded in part by the h-man amering and foundation and by Arcus Foundation and by the annual support of in the Life members like you [Music] foreign [Music] New York San Francisco Los Angeles Philadelphia throughout the U.S and the World Gay and Lesbian film festivals have become the place to present queer Cinema perhaps the nation's sunniest LGBT Film Festival occurs in Miami and this past April they celebrated a very special anniversary complete with their own flock of pink flamingos [Music] this is the 10th year of the festival the festival started in 1998 and has grown over the course of the last decade to now become one of the five or six most important film festivals in the game lesbian Community here in the United States this year with a combination of feature films and short films we have I think 97 films over the years with actually become the launch pad for the Chris Cinema circuit not just in the US but actually in North America or also the kind of fun film festival so every night we try and theme films and parties we don't do a lot of screenings in the day so it's a place where there's lots of socializing and networking so people can do deals behind the scenes and go to the beach if they want to [Music] was the first winner of Project Runway we also had Jennifer Tilly here who looks absolutely gorgeous and stunning [Music] and she was here with the 10-year screening retrospective screening of relax it's just sets with Forefront films and sneak preview entertainment we actually have Michelle Nichols in town is here with the world premiere of True Love the films that you see in a festival such as ours are going to be fresh they're going to be new they're coming directly from the hands of The Producers or the Distributors they are going to be the latest and greatest in need to see new films you need to see filmmakers talking about the craft of their work you need to be with an audience it's a whole experience sitting with an audience and eating popcorn and having concessions and I know many many people who've met their soul mates at the film festival because that's become the new dating pool so in addition to celebrating 10 years of the Miami gay and lesbian Film Festival Carol Coombs and Keith cromley also welcomed audiences to the first annual Fort Lauderdale gay and lesbian Film Festival no this year in the Parker Playhouse today we are kicking off the Fort Lauderdale gay and lesbian Film Festival officially this is the Parker Playhouse and the Parker Playhouse is a romantic style building here in the heart of Fort Lauderdale Fort Lauderdale has gone through a transition and has now become the most popular gay destination in the country Fort Lauderdale is Film Festival being five years time the documentary that's kicking off the Fort Lauderdale Festival this evening is a movie called ask not about what the impact of the don't ask don't tell policy has been both on our community and on the individuals Lives who have been affected as well as the impact on the military and on the country [Music] we are here today in Times Square New York to say to the American people this is an unjust ban that must end yeah don't ask don't tell to me is the worst form of public discrimination in society today it's the government saying to me that I can't serve in the military because I was born gay and I refuse not to be open about that so I decided to make astronaut coming out of my my previous film Daddy and papa which looked at the whole experience of gay men doing something in a very traditional institution and I thought about the whole idea of being a soldier that it seemed particularly relevant to me to make this film now because of the wars that we're fighting and also because nothing had really been done in a very comprehensive way about a policy that had been in place for 15 years now I came up with this compromise don't ask don't tell I'm not an advocate of lifting the ban in its totality I think the double standard makes more sense that is current heterosexual straight behavior is is allowed as it you don't change that and there'd have to be a different standard for gay Behavior we have a fair amount of archival footage that talks about how the policy came to be what was kind of going on behind the scenes with President Clinton and the various members of people in power on the right at that point who put pressure on him but I was really clear that I didn't want it to be a film that looked backwards in time I wanted it to feel very current I had a very open and and obviously gay life and since boot camp I've been hiding it for the last eight months there's three main stories in the film I found a soldier who was making a very serious and difficult choice to leave his openly gay life and community and go into the closet and go to Iraq and serve on the front lines and so he did that and brought a camera with him and documented his experience [Music] I'm saying goodbye to all this that I want to see this for a long time that I might never see this all again I know you know one of the challenges was giving directorial advice to someone who was closeted overseas I first met Perry a few years ago and I immediately took a liking to him but I also felt that I could be somewhat of a big brother or mentor to him we're always pretty careful in our conversation yeah I mean sometimes we've been talking code because all the emails and Communications are probably being logged everything is locked everything so everything's being logged so even once said to me like if I send stuff to send it out from Oakland or not from San Francisco just because of the fact that it's like the gay city of America I didn't want to do anything that might expose him in the process really fast situation it's a pretty bad mess and I don't know what the Iraqis are going to do to solve it and I don't know how we can help them anymore I mean there's only so much we can do we can do the only thing that's natural to me is response trigger response trigger that feels natural to me now and I really don't think about I'm gay anymore I don't even know what that is my main concern is survival [Music] will I come back alive come back with all my limbs while I see my friends again and my family in addition to that we also have two different groups of people who were actively working to overturn the policy through activism one of them a group of young gay and lesbian veterans who many of whom have been discharged who make a decision to go around the country to colleges particularly red state colleges and engage students in dialogue I grew up in rural South Carolina I'm from a small town with two thousand people in two stop lights and one of the reasons I'm doing this is because I know what people that live in that small town think not only about gays and lesbians but about what a gay Soldier must be like they have no clue when I was 19 you know off the boot camp I went I wanted to serve my country I wanted to be part of this organization that I've always held an esteem made the decision that I was willing to go back into the closet to serve my country it's a very lonely existence to be in constant fear of someone finding out it's really bad because you can't go to chaplains you can't go to psychologists you can't go to psychiatrists you can't technically talk to any of your friends because technically anyone you tell you're gay can out you and have you discharged I ended up talking to my supervisor about it and my supervisor subsequently turned me into my command the donuts don't tell policy is clearly problematic from a civil rights standpoint it's a discriminatory policy but I think as the film shows it's also a policy that is harmful from in terms of National Security one of the primary reasons behind the intelligence failure is leading the 911 was that the Department of defense's National Security Agency did not have enough Arabic linguists to translate the backlog of intelligence from Arabic into English before 9 11. and one of the ones that really struck me was a small phrase in Arabic which means tomorrow is zero hour any one of the 54 Arabic linguists discharged or Donuts don't tell could have easily translated that phrase and others from Arabic and English in a timely manner before 9 11. so the question we need to ask ourselves is do we really care anymore if the person who translates the next piece of crucial intelligence is gay or straight a third story in the film follows a group of young activists who are not uh not soldiers themselves for the most part but who decide that this is a really discriminatory policy and as a way of bringing attention to that they go and attempt to enlist at recruitment centers in 30 cities across the country he disclosed that he was indeed homosexual if an applicant discloses that if they have or intend to engage in homosexual conduct under the current policy they cannot enlist in the military foreign [Music] we want to see young people making this something National we're going to make it happen in so many states across the country that you get it that this is Nationwide this isn't just some section of the population that happens to care about this whether this ban gets lifted as a result of my efforts or not [Music] at the very least I can look back and say I did something in the making of This film I learned a lot about why people serve their country in the military it's not something I knew much about before I don't come from a military background and a lot of people in the course of my making it particularly people in the gay community said well you know I just don't get it I don't understand why we would want to serve anyway I think there's a lot of reasons why people join the military and it's they're often complicated but it gave me access to a whole group of people that I didn't know very well before and an appreciation for the type of service that they that they provide for all of us [Music] foreign [Music] for more than 20 years filmmaker pratiba parmar has been making documentaries chronicling the unique experiences of gays and lesbians throughout the world now in her feature film debut Nina's Heavenly Delights parmar celebrates food family and love between women Nina was only away for three years Nina you're looking well London must agree with you the Prodigal Returns it's been a long time wanted to make my debut feature film about a young girl a young woman who falls in love with another woman in the most kind of surprising and least expected ways my character Nina Shah is a girl from a Indian glass region family and um her Story begins with the death of her father and her return to Glasgow having spent a few years away from home we're here today to say goodbye to a very special man Shah who is a devoted husband and a loving father to all of his children especially his knee knives out of sight but never out of her father's heart for me the three major themes of the film are family food and love I also wanted to really make a film about Indian food and family and the way in which you know just celebrate Indian food in all its Glory [Music] now Nina's cooking up a storm how dare you come back here and start disrupting spicing up the competition so I'm a foodie I wanted to make you know I love women I love food I'm Indians I wanted to bring all those elements together and I wrote the story the story centers around Nina's quest to save her father's restaurant by winning a cooking contest for Queens what if she entice the judges with that Tangled B a big long job so ladies and gentlemen let bottle commence foreign Nina's family every single member in the family has a secret because in most families there are secrets and that not often talked about and I didn't want Nina to be the only one with the secret [Music] my younger sister who's a closet Highland dancer and you know the brother has a secret about who he you know I'm not going to give the plot away um and the mother has also a secret you're my first today I'm honored I think I just wanted to kind of really show this family at a moment of transition I'm not the one who bet the Taj on a bloody Horse no you're right you didn't you had nothing to do with any of this you didn't humiliate him you didn't break his heart and what about my heart being at home and being among her family and the people that she loves um and she cares about sort of throws up for Nina a lot of issues that she probably hasn't dealt with about herself and I think she realizes that she's lost a bit of direction in life and the film sort of takes on how she it follows her how she how she comes to solve those issues and and face those challenges the theme is about the push and pull between personal desire and Duty and family Duty she is being pulled in on in One Way by her desire by her heart as she's falling in love with Lisa but on the other hand she's feeling that she doesn't want to risk losing her family again and she's assuming that her mother would never be able to accept her falling in love with another woman you wanted me to shrivel away with a man I didn't love how could it do that Ma we all do things we don't want why there is no way for many years I lived a very um sort of closeted lifestyle with my family do what you want Nina you always do where as you know I was really active in the gay in lesbian movement and living this kind of very split existence and really that was because of the fear of losing my family I felt that if I had come out to my family they would have rejected me and then I would have lost them and you know that was just too big at risk for me to take and so I kind of wanted to bring that in in with in the film with Nina's Journey why didn't anyone tell me what was going on how are we supposed to do that you phoned a couple of times a year if we were lucky half the time we didn't even know where you were no I wanted to make a film in which um Nina's sexuality wasn't a huge big deal I wanted to make a film that celebrated lesbian love and so I made Nina somebody who had always had crushes on girls you know Nina's first reaction to Lisa is who the hell is this you know what are you doing here this is my family this is my business this is my life but um is also instantly attracted to her so there's a sort of dichotomy going on there between with their her feelings for Lisa and it's a bit of a push and pull which continues throughout the whole film um but you know there the sparks fly a little place and that's all preparing good there you're getting it okay no I'm gonna show you how it's really done good evening sorry to be a try within Nina's Heavenly Delights there's Nina's best friend is Bobby Bobby is a Bollywood drag queen and I want to be Bollywood heroin [Music] and he has you know his dancers who he they're called the Chutney Queens alive [Music] I don't know [Applause] I use some songs from Bollywood films which are actually songs that uh South Asian queers have appropriated as their anthems because there's the lyrics and the words so not everyone gets that but you know it's there and there's one particular song which is a classic Bollywood song um which you know it's all about forbidden love and my film is about forbidden love and different kinds of forbidden loves I've been making films and documentaries now for about 20 years I really wanted to make films that um what I felt could could make a difference that was my ambition to make films and to intervene in the mainstream media with stories and experiences that we don't normally get to see on television and I was really kind of passionate about making uh people from different kinds of minorities and their experiences be seen on mainstream TV so you know that was kind of my motivation for getting involved in films and and in the media now I think that there's that kind of queer sensibility is so widespread and you know we're everywhere making all kinds of work and bringing our queer sensibility to it snow or never Nina [Music] I'm Nina I'm Lucas I'm Morgan I'm Jen and we're in the clicks and you're watching in the life [Music] please welcome [Music] [Applause] [Music] I was on tour with them all summer on the true colors tour and they were amazing [Music] I started the band four years ago I decided I need a band name and it needs to be sexy and it needs to be cool and it has to start with the because you the Beatles The Pretenders these are all my favorite bands so I was having this conversation with my ex-girlfriend and she said um the club as a joke can we all laugh of course not We're Not Gonna name the band that so then the other part of the anatomy sort of came into mind and we put that and that together and made the clicks I found Morgan who's the best drummer on the planet and I felt so lucky that I had to proceed to find the other best musicians on the planet we added Nina because she Rock and rolls and then when our other bass player left the band because she didn't want a tour we found Jen miraculously I love you we're very open about the fact that we are queer but I think when it comes down to it you know we don't think about it in those terms we just write music we go out and we play it and it just so happens that we're queer I identify as transgender male and queer it's funny because a lot of people always come to me and they're like so you prefer women and I'm like yeah I like I like girls they're like so that means you're you're straight male and I'm like no no no no no I love the term queer because it doesn't put you in this little box it's so good to have that freedom I don't know maybe one day I'll like boys who knows things happen Prince could come along you can just lose it oh I lose it already [Music] the content of the music is pretty much about heartbreak and breakups right now and emotions that really don't have any kind of sexual identity attached to them as a songwriter my goal is always to connect or find or have somebody connect with what I'm saying and make it their own it's really tough when you're just starting out because there's not you don't have like a lot of history behind us it's not like there's three albums and there's already a big fan base right now we're really working at bringing ourselves to everybody else the true color store was our very first plunge into that level of live performance so it was the first time that we together as a band played to amphitheaters and just bigger venues [Music] it was so interesting because you have these ideas of what it's going to be like to meet somebody like Cyndi Lauper or Debbie Harry and then you meet them and you're just like human being Margaret show is really really funny you're gonna turn red I'm just so in love with Lucas he is hot the second performance that we did um was in Red Rocks in Denver and we were just about to go on stage and Margaret came up to me and just kind of grabbed me by the arm and she was like so the kiss um after you're set I'm gonna make out with you and I was like you know she's a comedian that's what they do and by the way she said oh no I'm serious and I still thought she was kidding so I go and I unplug my guitar right after we're done our set and I'm about to walk off and I hear her and see her passing by she goes ladies and gentlemen that clicks and then proceeds to grab me but head and stick your tongue down the throat it was a very enjoyable moment for me [Music] one of the most amazing moments that I ever had on the road was this 14 year old kid walks up to me and uh just looks at me and goes I have a kind of very really shy and goes I have a question are you guys a gender queer band and I was like well I'm I'm transgendered male and you know the ladies are queer I'm like why he's like well because you know um that's that's like how I am and I he's like on trans and he's like all fiddling around and then his mom comes and she was like we drove four hours just to see you guys and you have no idea how important it is to him to have people like you because there's nobody out there to make him feel normal by us just being open about who we are and what we like to do and concentrating on what we do and taking that out on the road how many people are starving for that openness for me it's always amazing to look out like last night we were playing in Boston and I looked out and there was like six people in front of me all singing the words to my songs and I'm like you know I wrote those in my apartment in my bedroom by myself now here I am in a different country at a little bar and these people connected with me somehow what I created made it here and that's that's exactly what we're here to do [Music] foreign [Music] as we celebrate gay and lesbian Cinema we also recognize one of the great filmmakers of our time director John Schlesinger is known for such films as darling Sunday Bloody Sunday Marathon Man and of course Midnight Cowboy for which he won an Oscar in 1969. in a 1996 in the Life newsmaker interview Charles Bush sat down with the openly gay director to discuss his life and career now five years after Schlesinger's death in the Life presents the complete never before seen interview I I find in so many of your films like midnight cowboy and um darling so many films there you're so eloquent about just loneliness and there's so many of your films are about to serve as a solitary person and uh is this something very personal to you I guess so I mean I'm I'm a perfectly well adjusted human being and on the whole very happy but I go through very depressive periods and I really am happy it's when I'm working I'm not very good when I haven't got a project now you've gone in your career going back and forth between uh large studio films and then more intimate films in England when you direct something for television are there's pros and cons that about it well yes I mean the problem about television making a film for television is that um even though you may have a vast audience more than probably the Run of a movie would you don't feel that you know you encounter so many reactions saying oh saw the last 20 minutes of your film it's not good but I hope this revive it sometime or oh no I missed it and uh um and the recorder didn't work you know you get all sorts of excuses and it's very frustrating I like shelf life and I like audience attention and I think television has ruined forever the reactions of the audience remote control is such a terrible drag I mean I use it I'm as guilty as the next person and yet television particularly in Britain has allowed you to tackle some interesting subject matter which other films are very provocative oh yes absolutely I mean I was able to do the two Englishmen abroad Englishman abroad question of attribution about our two notorious gay spies yes um with wonderful scripts by Alan Bennett the BBC does seem to be at least up till now uh rather um responsive to to gay subject matter um tells the city with such a was made through them and in this country became a big controversy no but this country I mean let's face it um the first AIDS film that I remember seeing was on television here now you were involved for quite a while in a AIDS movie project that I understand is sort of tabled for now yeah we never licked the script we just never I went through endless drafts with two writers and we never got a script that I really felt was really good enough I would imagine there would be a great pressure to sort of tell the definitive story and then and no story can be definitive on on a subject like that I remember talking it started at the United Artist um and Arthur Crim who who was married to Matilda cream um it's a great sort of Aid specialist and Pioneer um he said we'll back the treatment but you'll never my wife says you'll never be able to to answer all the questions I said well I don't think we've got we can possibly uh attempt to I think what now was is important is not to do a film about dying from but um living with AIDS because I think that is what we're facing yes there's no easy answer yeah so many of your films have had uh in a very effortless kind of way had gay characters in supporting supporting roles I remember what I just recently saw darling again and and the wonderful character of Malcolm is just so I don't think that since there's ever been a character that's been attractive and funny and just so kind of matter of fact yes who goes off of the way to the same way to the junior Christy goes off in 1965 was that hard to to um pull off it no it wasn't hard to pull off I mean um it was part of the the the lifestyle of that girl and um uh essential really to the film um we had no qualms about doing it it wasn't as if it was as shocking as the male kiss in Sunday Bloody Sunday a few years later I haven't had to pull that off because now today that would have been a whole big uproar still is yeah I saw it the other day they were doing a retrospective of my stuff and they showed that scene and there was still a sort of reaction in the audience um uh we just did it uh I I mean it was part of the um I remember the writer saying resisting having a dinner tour do they have to get physical I said absolutely they do well do it in silhouette and in long shorts I said no that's making a special case of it all it should look absolutely effortless mid-shot come in Embrace kiss go on with the scene was Peter Finch apprehensive about it no neither of them were it was quite extraordinary when Peter Finch was asked why he did he said I did it for England but um no they funnily enough not they were and he's perfectly well his wife was the one that complained his wife at festivals and premiers and things of the film would shriek when she saw it very loudly oh so when it came up on the screen she got ah and I said oh for Christ's sake shut up you know you're ruining it for everybody else oh I can't bear to see him do it I said well get used to it that's one wonderful performance It's a Wonderful performance from Peter Finch have you ever had trouble um finding actors to play gay roles that they've blocked or been apprehensive well that role was offered to a number of people who turned it down including of all people Harold Pinter who was a very good actor is a very nice actor and I thought he might actually help the script as well she needed a little help at the time do you know why he turned it down I think he was frightened of that aspect of the character he regrets it he said well you made a very different film at the end I said no it doesn't it's not that different what was on the printed page yeah it's already as if he was a matinee Idol who would be afraid of um breaking the illusion exactly Peter Finch wasn't our first choice for it another actor was playing it who got unable to cope with it let's say and so after a month shooting I had to make the change and Peter Finch was well one of our first choices originally wasn't available the time we started the movie and came in and read the script and said yes the same night when we desperately needed to replace the other actor and suddenly when that happens and it's happened twice in my career when you replace something it's an uncomfortable thing to have to do um suddenly the whole film took on a kind of ease when the right person plays the right role it was quite extraordinary how did a Midnight Cowboy come about and how did that who decided to end up becoming a movie and uh and and your involvement in it I have a very good American painter friend who lives in England who has a very good sense of what books were made good films and he one day said to me I've just read a book I think you should read I mean Midnight Cowboy so I read it and I thought hmm wonderful stuff if I'm ever going to go to America to make a movie This Is It and I took it to a producer who Jerry Hellman who said well it's not wouldn't be my subject that I would pick but if you want to do it let's do it together and we went to United Artists who at that time were a wonderful place for anybody that wanted freedom to make a film you know it was possible to do it there and we took it to them and there were a few raised eyebrows but we we did the film was there in the late 60s sort of a climate though for just more for riskier choices to be made oh I think so there were 10 there's a 10-year period between the 60s and 73 74 75 whatever it was when we hadn't got into the big Blockbuster special effects stuff and and there was an audience for these films um I never went into Midnight Cowboy thinking it would have the kind of success that it's enjoyed for so many years I just loved the subject I love the characters and I thought it is a fantasy about someone going to New York and imagining one set of circumstances which I could easily put myself into that position and I thought right I think I'm able to do this bill do you think that we've progressed in showing the gay life and gay experience on screen in the past 45 years since yes I mean I think that the best sequences in long-time companion are deeply moving and deeply affecting and will affect any audience regardless of their sexual orientation um I think what I'm in Philadelphia for all the criticism that we could aim at it was an important film to have made because it was mainstream big stars and successful so do you think I'm like like the bird cage which is enormous Commercial Success with that you think uh commercially that might be helpful in getting other projects made bird cage is a Kind of Wonderful French pass it was better in its original form I thought I think they do it very well I think it's funny but it's the element of traditional can be fast and very funny I enjoyed it but um I don't think it's going to do anything more than the original film did doesn't um sort of encourage producers to think of a mother yes I think that way yes I think it probably will but I I hope it doesn't stereotypical there's results thing about Sunday Bloody Sunday which um shocked United Artists when they first saw it um I mean I think they they didn't read the script very thoroughly and they were absolutely I think they were really shocked I remember being at that first screening and it was very embarrassing a lot of foot tapping and lighting up of cigarettes and when they felt more comfortable they got to the Jewish bits there was a some executive said well now we know where we are and at the end it was very very difficult because I just made Midnight Cowboy for them and they were expecting another one like that sort of more Sensational and the fact that Peter Finch was playing a non-stereotypical gay person a doctor Jewish all of them I remember my father who was a doctor saying what's this next film about and I told him and he said does he have to be Jewish as well as everything else and um I think that that was their reaction they were very embarrassed by it because it didn't present someone that was an easy stereotype and that was what I was after and we've seen very little of that since not a lot yes well thank you so much for thank you joining us today thank you [Music] Ten Years After the release of her documentary its Elementary filmmaker Deborah chasnoff revisits some of the students who participated in the film in her follow-up it's still Elementary she makes the case for why it is still essential that LGBT issues be addressed in school curricula [Music] in the mid 90s really throughout the country there were efforts among more conservative right-wing people and organizations to take over school boards really throughout the country and and the wedge issue the issue that was being used was this effort to stop the homosexual agenda from getting their curriculum and their evil ways into schools and the votes are in but the controversy continues in Maryland we had people running for precedent on the Republican platform Pat Robertson Patrick Buchanan that were virulently anti-gay and they were basically running on this campaign platform saying what's wrong with America are the homosexuals represent the most pro-lesbian and pro-gay ticket in history and so they do my first son was about four or five years old and he was about to enter kindergarten and I knew that he was going to be hitting school and that suddenly he was going to be hearing bad words to describe his two mommies the people he loved the most in the whole world these two things came together for me the big political reality and the very personal reality of wanting to do something to protect my own child I came up with this idea of what do we need to do as a culture to challenge this you know prevailing homophobia and what I realized is that if we're really serious about eradicating homophobia we need to help people to grow up from their earliest ages not being prejudiced against gays and lesbians and that means we have to challenge the culture in schools where there has been an absolute silence around addressing LGBT issues when we made the original film we were making the case it's Elementary it's Common Sense we really need to address lesbian gay issues with kids and so what we wanted to do was show people on camera what does it look like when a teacher goes into a classroom and does a lesson in an age-appropriate way that talks about gays and lesbians with their students and lo and behold what you find out is that kids of all ages already come into school with a lot of information about gays and lesbians unfortunately most of it is negative or misinformed stereotypes and that they respond really well to Skilled teachers facilitating conversations in a neutral constructive way that really challenge a lot of those stereotypes I gave you I told you the word Indian and I ask you to paint whatever came to mind when you heard that word do you remember that yeah it's the same thing what I want you to do when you when you go in just a minute and work in small groups you're not going to be painting okay you're going to be writing down whatever comes to your mind when you hear the word gay or when you hear the word lesbian so nothing's right or wrong either that's right there's no right or wrong answer homosexuality is an essential quality of humanness and that its expression is the right of every human being the question is do we really want our youngsters subjected to that wouldn't be better let them decide that at some point later in life we want to educate them to it just to make sure that they have a good shot at becoming lesbian or homosexual I suppose that's the rationale If You Wanna Stop gay doesn't know what gay is all about and why people are gay as a six or a 12 year old if I brought home something like that I'd be punished for it and I can assure you I didn't get it from my teacher or from my curriculum I don't think that it's bad I mean Prejudice or people who are against gay people or lesbian people that they're not terrible horrible people that's just their opinion we can and we must protect the taxpayers by keeping this kind of trash out of our schools and that's exactly what it is it's trash this is the first time I've ever talked about gay and lesbians in a group I went to the Maynard school for three years and nobody ever really talked about it but a lot of people would call each other other each other names and call each other gay and everybody was really mean about it ten years later it's still Elementary what we wanted to do in the film was because it's part of re-releasing its Elementary on DVD what we wanted to do was to go back and find some of the original students that were happen to be in the classrooms where we filmed and asked them well what was the impact on your life of having a second third fourth grade teacher you know do this do a lesson about gay and lesbian people and it was very very moving I think to go back and find of the six students we found five of them identify as heterosexual today all of those students can really pinpoint those lessons as turning points for them where they learn to be allies or learn to courageously speak out on these issues they came to my school to shoot our particular class because my teacher at the time was a lesbian and she made it known to our class so she I wanted to see how we felt about that but before we even knew that she was like our best teacher so it didn't take anything away from her when she did say it and she just wanted us to be more open about it and she wanted to actually see how her students feel about this issue once she had brought it to our attention I heard this on the news once because I think a gay person it was a boy well a man walked into um a bar and it was um really strict people that really strict on gay people and he got beat up do you think that was an okay thing to do or not no how did they find it because that's how real life is that their game so what that's how the life is I don't think people should be strict about them because if they were gay they ain't going to want to be getting beat up or stuff it was definitely easier to talk about it I mean I wasn't one of the main subjects that I spoke about to my friends but when the issue coming up I was never ignorant about the situation I actually knew more about it than others because of this movie the one young man who turned out to be gay really is able to remember how having a teacher in fifth grade talk very matter-of-factly about gay people was enormously relieving to him at that time because he was just beginning to question well maybe am I gay and so having a teacher say talk about these things in a neutral way was incredibly reassuring to him at that age did anybody ever made fun of any of you for any reason whatsoever well somebody made fun of us yeah for us any reason people say that I act like a girl and sometimes I sometimes do for some kind of artistic and dance a lot and do stuff yeah when I actually saw the film it was just like wow I said that you know and it just made me think about my life back then and how miserable I was when I was being filmed it started to sink in this maybe who I am you know and I think I really started to kind of figure myself out a little bit I was really scared of coming out at an early age I did have some support at school you know from teachers or friends but I I still felt like I was being targeted because I was different in the way that I talked trust you know walked but I remember it was soothing to hear teachers and faculty at school letting me know that it's okay my mother's mean so so so so so so so much to me I have two mothers two moms is pretty nice well it's more than pretty nice it's really nice you can't imagine although having two mothers is a problem to others I respect that that's the way they think and I can't do anything about it I still think that those people think stupid like this once happened with a boy in my class who could not come to my house because my parents were lesbians one night I called his house and his mother told me their version of the Bible and so then I became aware that like not everyone was really accepting so I thought I mean I don't know if this is why I wrote the essay or anything but I definitely knew that like sharing my story would would help people see that I'm totally normal the religious right pulled out all the stops to try to censor the film and they went to every station in over 300 stations in the network and Siege them with letters and phone calls and emails don't air this film and so what happened was is that in many many communities across the country there was a big battle and station managers and program directors really had to Grapple with what was the right thing to do you reach that point in both your career and your personal life where you have to take a stand on something and this is a program that gave us the gave me personally the opportunity to say okay you know I could cave I can we can decide now you know let's pass on on the hassle that this will be but you looked at it and you said you know this there's nothing there's no reason why this program shouldn't air and the issues that are raised and are important issues that we need to be dealing with as the film's audience grew over the last 10 years lesbian and gay-headed families have become some of the best Advocates the parents in those families for LGBT inclusive schools because they're demanding that the school's not censor discussion of of our families I think it's really easy to forget our history and we really wanted to remind people what the conditions were you know 10 12 years ago when this film was being made and how there was absolutely no discussion of LGBT issues in schools is very new you know the gay lesbian straight education network was just getting off the ground there were only two or three gay straight Alliance fences in the whole country I mean things have changed dramatically so we wanted to document that evolution so there's so many different issues that have come together over the last 10 years and you know I think it's Elementary has been right there in the middle of it all as a as a source of support to people and finally Margaret Cho tells us about a surprising little moment in gay history Make Love Not War I'm hoping that's what motivated the United States Air Force to propose a 7.5 million dollar investment to develop a gay bomb a gay bomb a bomb that would transform soldiers into lustful homosexuals I swear I am not making this up the Air Force believed that exposure to this chemical-based aphrodisiac would turn enemy soldiers gay and make them more interested in having sex with each other than fighting now this Theory thrives on the assumption that there are no gay soldiers to begin with right forward don't ask don't tell okay so let's talk this through what if we were to go to war with say pollen because those menacing Dutch have really been pushing our buttons so in turn America pushes the rainbow colored button it lands on the vicious enemy in Amsterdam now it's quite possible that at least half of the Dutch Army is already gay so what happens to them do they become incredibly incredibly gay so let's talk this through let's go on the assumption that this plan has backfired and we've got an army of now super gay soldiers who are really really miffed repercussions are terrifying in stealth mode they could infiltrate cruise ships and commercial flights to the U.S completely undetectable as Hospitality workers and flight attendants once air and Seabourn the Menace becomes real to all God-fearing Americans they're coming to invade your home Duck and Cover there's one behind you he's fixing your window treatment he's making it fabulous stop drop and roll they're buying houses left and right and gentrifying the neighborhood the women and children in the basement they're having brunch watch out America perhaps I got a little carried away but I swear the part about the gay bomb is true the Air Force did propose this the Department of Defense actually did consider it and you're probably thinking oh this happened maybe in the 50s no 1994. thank you for watching in the life and please tune in for the October season premiere as we take an in-depth look at the battle over same-sex marriage in California to sign up for monthly air date alerts or to download past episodes 24 7. please go to our website at inthelifetv.org or call 1-800-627 on TV we'd love to hear from you I'm Michael Billy we'll see you next time [Applause] [Applause] [Music] we're going to get married we're going to get married what a day [Applause] [Music] today Hall looks just like a wedding cake after being together for 32 years we can now get married the best day of my life was when Diane and I met and so this is the second best day of my life [Music] in the life is funded in part by the h-man emmering and foundation and by arca's Foundation and by the annual support of in-life members like you thank you [Music]