Word Is Out

Documentary which has 26 gay men and lesbian discussing growing up gay and how they dealt with it. Some of the stories are horrific--one man was institutionalized and given shock treatment to "cure" him! Another women lost custody of all her children when she started to live with her lesbian lover. That never happens today. Still--this isn't all doom and gloom. All of them made it clear that they went through hell--but they made it and weren't backing down.

For 1978 it was a groundbreaker. I think all the 26 people were very courageous to do this. This came out when I was a closeted high school student. I couldn't see it (it was R rated and I was only 16 and looked 12!) and missed it when it played on PBS a year later. Finally--after 30 YEARS--I finally saw it. Yes it's dated and has plenty of dull spots but I was never really bored. Also this film tries to show all nationalities--there are white, black, Asian and American Indian participants. There was also a shot of an interracial couple which must have been shocking in 1978. It's tame by todays standards (it would get a PG-13 easy) but is still compelling. I think everyone should see this--ESPECIALLY GLBT youth. Some of them take for granted what us older people went through. A 10 all the way.

I remember seeing "Word is Out" when I was in college in the suburbs of Chicago. The film was shown on the PBS station there (WTTW, Channel 11) and I watched it secretly with one of the few gay men I knew at the small Catholic college I attended. When it was rerun six months later, we celebrated watching it again, reacquainting ourselves with the men and women on the screen that we thought of as friends.

As a documentary film, there is a very nice flow between the stories, the generations, and the personalities. What shocks me now is how the film-making team was so skillful at getting the interview subjects to open up so much, to dig so deeply into their psyches, and to share their feelings with the audience. This is more than a fascinating view of LGBTQ people in 1977; it is a historical document on our lived experience in the second half of the 20th Century.

As much as I fell in love with the people who shared their stories, I also came to better terms with myself. Due to the film, I became real. I became a real person. I finally shared an experience with other people --even in far away, exotic places like San Francisco-- and I was a little bit less alone in the world than I had been before I saw the film.

I have thought about the film all my life since I first saw it. I have thought about how daring and powerful the people were who allowed themselves to appear in the film back in 1977. I have wondered if everyone has been able to find satisfaction and a measure of happiness in their lives after the film was made, and the anniversary edition of the DVD does a very nice follow up on the original cast.

Word Is Out (1977) was directed by Nancy Adair, Andrew Brown, and Rob Epstein. This film is an outstanding documentary about the lives and experiences of LGBT people, who look back on their past and look ahead to their future. The directors chose to show us interviews with about two dozen "ordinary" people, all of whose lives were greatly affected by their sexual orientation.

The film was made less than ten years after the Stonewall Rebellion, and equal rights for the lesbian and gay community appeared then to be moving forward in a linear fashion. This belief in progress to come gave the film a hopeful quality. The movie also has a poignant quality, because so many of the people interviewed had suffered terrible discrimination, especially those who had been in the military.

Now, over 30 years later, we know that LGBT rights have moved ahead at a two-steps-forward-one-step-back pace, and almost all LGBT people are still facing discrimination, especially, of course, in the military.

Word is Out can stand on its own as an excellent documentary. If you care about the rights of LGBT people, it's a must-see film.

We saw the movie at the Dryden Theatre, as part of the splendid ImageOut: Rochester Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. The festival had obtained a newly restored 35mm print. Word is Out will work well on DVD and, apparently, the DVD version of the restored film is now available. Be sure to find it and watch it--it's an excellent film.

Commendable documentary that makes the very cogent (and, for 1977, revolutionary) point that the only meaningful difference between a gay person and a straight person is that the former is sexually attracted to members of his or her own sex and persecuted for it while the later is physically turned on to members of the opposite sex and is pretty much left alone. Apart from that a random homosexual is likely to be every bit as quirky, neurotic, boring, gifted, physically strong and mentally weak as your average hetero.

If this doc had gotten the above point across at half the length with half the interviewees it would have been more hard hitting and interesting. As it is, with twenty six people talking at me for nearly two and a half hours, I began to suffer from Talking Head Syndrome somewhere in the middle. Give it a B.

PS...Has America progressed very far on this issue? Depends on whether you think Andy Cohen is a greater or lesser force in American life than Tucker. And of course trans is the new 70s gay. So color me pessimistic.

Times have changed and movies like this are why. It's a very important movie historically rather than because it was particularly great. But it celebrates and humanizes people who weren't at that time and is a valuable time capsule. Would like to see some kind of update on what happened to those in this movie. I'm sure a few died tragically during the AIDS epidemic.