1977年电影"说出来"重返荧幕

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.

MELISSA BLOCK, host:

And I'm Melissa Block.

"Word is Out" is out again. The 1978 documentary, one of the first made by gay people about gay people, was a theatrical hit. It was also a landmark in the way it let its subjects tell their own stories at a time when those stories were for the most part not told. But finding the film has been difficult in the years since. Now it's back in theaters.

Here's NPR's Neda Ulaby.

(Soundbite of documentary, "Word is Out")

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NEDA ULABY: It was a wild slice of time. It was Stonewall pre-AIDS.

(Soundbite of documentary, "Word is Out")

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Unidentified Man #1: (Singing) See the way he walked down the street. That's the way he shuffles his feet.

ULABY: For some gay people, the 1970s meant vamping it up in white disco suits and really bad hair at the local gay community center. But "Word is Out" paints with a broad brush. The film interviews 26 different gay Americans, from grandmas to drag queens; most careful not to speak for entire groups.

ACHEBE: Even as a black lesbian, I wouldn't want to be seen as, this is how black lesbians are.

ULABY: The collective of six gay men and lesbians who made "Word is Out" interviewed a working-class Latina couple, early gay rights activist Harry Hay, an out white corporate executive and a bunch of flannel-shirted lesbians chopping down trees in the woods.

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ULABY: The documentary presents one of the last moments in American history when the love that dared not speak its name mostly still didn't. The film's earnest, gentle tone actually irritated some gay activists.

Mr. JEFF WEINSTEIN (Former Arts Editor, The Village voice): I remember thinking, why isn't it sexier? And I remember thinking of it as spinach. I've changed my mind.

ULABY: Jeff Weinstein is the former arts editor of The Village voice. He remembers seeing "Word is Out" when it was released in New York and a few other big cities in 1978.

Mr. WEINSTEIN: It's only grown in its importance. I think that people have to see this, to see how difficult it was, how brave people were.

WHITEY: I prayed a lot 'cause I believed, well, if I have enough faith, I will get over this sickness or whatever.

Mr. WEINSTEIN: One of the women who was interviewed was hospitalized by her parents.

ULABY: The woman, identified only as Whitey in the film, was committed for almost all of her teenage years.

(Soundbite of documentary, "Word is Out")

WHITEY: It was a horrible, horrible experience.

ULABY: Whitey was in some ways lucky. Unlike another interviewee, she never endured shock treatments.

(Soundbite of documentary, "Word is Out")

Unidentified Man #2: The machine would be wheeled into the room from where it had just been being used in some other room on some other person. That would be the last thing that I would recall, would be just spinning wildly out of control.

Unidentified Man #3: How many were you given?

Unidentified Man #2: I really don't know. It would've been somewhere between 10 and 50.

ULABY: Everyone interviewed in "Word is Out" tells their stories quietly in living rooms, offices, backyards. One very young man sitting in a sunny meadow, says for the longest time he thought he was unable to feel emotion.

(Soundbite of documentary, "Word is Out")

Mr. DAVID GILLON: And when I fell in love with this guy, it was just, I mean, it meant so much to me. It meant I was a real person.

ULABY: The young man was talking to an even younger filmmaker. Rob Epstein was still a teenager when he started working on the documentary.

Mr. ROB EPSTEIN (Filmmaker, "Word is Out"): It was my first movie and it was my film school.

ULABY: Epstein went on to make the acclaimed documentaries "The Celluloid Closet" and "The Times of Harvey Milk." Epstein says "Word is Out" informed everything he's done since.

Mr. EPSTEIN: Really, what it came down to was a discussion of very basic human emotions; feeling love for the first time, feeling self-actualized. These are things that we all go through as human beings.

ULABY: The young man Epstein was talking to in the film is now 57 years old. David Gillon lives in Connecticut and says he's still friends with the man who was his first love.

Mr. GILLON: Being in the movie made me squirm. At the time it was a phenomenon.

ULABY: Gillon never expected "Word is Out" to be anything bigger than a student project. And he was shocked when he started to get hundreds of letters from people telling him he'd given them hope of finding love too. Gillon says he saw it as his duty to answer every single letter.

Mr. GILLON: And I'll always say, if you're in the neighborhood, stop in. I didn't think that was going to happen. But it seemed like everybody I sent that kind of a letter to showed up at my door practically the next day.

ULABY: Gillon says that's evidence of how isolated so many gay men and lesbians felt.

The "Word is Out" DVD is scheduled to come out in June, and it includes a follow-up about the film's subjects. About half of the men have died from HIV-related illness. One of the women is now straight. Two of them are still together.

Unidentified Woman #1: We have nine grandchildren.

Unidentified Woman #2: Nine grandchildren.

Unidentified Woman #1: And two great-grandchildren.

Unidentified Woman #2: And two great-grandchildren.

ULABY: It might be hard for those great-grandchildren to conceive of how differently gay people lived in the 1970s. And for that, cultural critic Jeff Weinstein credits, in part, "Word is Out."

Mr. WEINSTEIN: Other people were always defining who gay people were. This movie pushed people into understanding that gay filmmaking could be made.

ULABY: That people could control how other people saw them by telling their own stories.

Neda Ulaby, NPR News.