Word Is Out
(1978)
135 mins | Documentary | 20 April 1978
Cast:
Pat Bond, John Burnside, Sally Gearhart [ More ]Director:
Mariposa Film Group:Producer:
Peter AdairEditors:
Lucy Massie Phenix, Robert Epstein, Andrew Brown, Veronica Selver, Nancy Adair, Peter AdairProduction Company:
Mariposa Film Group
Documentarian Peter Adair, who died of AIDS in 1996, began the project independently in 1972, according to a 27 Jan-2 Feb 2010 Village Voice article. Two years later, Adair recruited his sister, Nancy, and fellow filmmakers to help conduct interviews with homosexual residents of the San Francisco, CA, Bay Area.
As stated in a 19 Nov 1975 Advocate article, the Adairs raised $45,000 from private donations after attempts at obtaining grants from non-profit organizations had been unsuccessful in 1973. With a proposed budget of $75,000, the project was scheduled to travel across the U.S. in early 1976, asking the question “Who are we?” with gay and lesbian citizens. According to the Advocate, the filmmakers were especially interested in subjects from “small-town America,” who knew “what it was like to be gay before 1960.” At that time, 150 interviews had already been videotaped in San Francisco.
A summer 1977 Adair Films press release in AMPAS library production files, promoting an “investors screening” at the Vanguard Theater in Hollywood, CA, stated that the final film was composed of “portraits of twenty-two lesbians and gay men, edited from forty hours of color footage shot across the country during the past eighteen months.” According to the press release, the $200,000 budget consisted of $92,000 from investors and an additional $50,000 from the sale of television rights to WNET, a public television station based in the New York City area, but $50,000 was still required to release the documentary. As part of the distribution plan, PBS was scheduled to air the picture nationally during the winter of 1977-1978 for four broadcasts. ...
Documentarian Peter Adair, who died of AIDS in 1996, began the project independently in 1972, according to a 27 Jan-2 Feb 2010 Village Voice article. Two years later, Adair recruited his sister, Nancy, and fellow filmmakers to help conduct interviews with homosexual residents of the San Francisco, CA, Bay Area.
As stated in a 19 Nov 1975 Advocate article, the Adairs raised $45,000 from private donations after attempts at obtaining grants from non-profit organizations had been unsuccessful in 1973. With a proposed budget of $75,000, the project was scheduled to travel across the U.S. in early 1976, asking the question “Who are we?” with gay and lesbian citizens. According to the Advocate, the filmmakers were especially interested in subjects from “small-town America,” who knew “what it was like to be gay before 1960.” At that time, 150 interviews had already been videotaped in San Francisco.
A summer 1977 Adair Films press release in AMPAS library production files, promoting an “investors screening” at the Vanguard Theater in Hollywood, CA, stated that the final film was composed of “portraits of twenty-two lesbians and gay men, edited from forty hours of color footage shot across the country during the past eighteen months.” According to the press release, the $200,000 budget consisted of $92,000 from investors and an additional $50,000 from the sale of television rights to WNET, a public television station based in the New York City area, but $50,000 was still required to release the documentary. As part of the distribution plan, PBS was scheduled to air the picture nationally during the winter of 1977-1978 for four broadcasts. Additionally a book based on the “200 video research interviews and the 22 film interviews, was in the editing stage at that time, and Adair Films planned to market the documentary to various groups such as high schools, colleges, gay, lesbian, feminist, and professional organizations.
Following its 26 Mar 1978 opening in New York City,Word Is Out screened at FILMEX in Los Angeles, CA, on 19 Apr 1978 and opened in the city the next day, according to a 19 Apr 1978 LAT review. After the screening, the Parents and Friends of Gays (PFG) presented the Oscar Wilde Award to the film’s production company, the Mariposa Film Group, as stated in a 19 Apr 1978 LAT news item.
A 29 Aug 2006 HR brief announced that the LGBT Film Preservation Partnership, founded by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Outfest Legacy Project, selected Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives as one of the first two films to be restored.
End credits include the following written statement: “Thanks to: John Adair; Margo Adair; Linda Artel; Mitchel Block; Blair Boyd; Earl Carter; Cine Manifest; The City; David Clayton; Gloria and Iggy Copleman; Joan Dunlop; Jon Epstein; Judy Epstein; Susan Fanshel; Jill Godmilow; Orlando Hernandez; Dale Hess; Victoria Hochberg; Bill Johnson; Marty Kashuba; Leonard Mayhew; Gwyn Metz; Jim Meyer; Joyce Millington; Rosa Montoya; Moon Books; Pacific Film Archive; Roger Phenix; Leonard Post; Vito Russo; José Sarria; Irene Selver; Irmi Selver; Richard Sheffield; Rick Stokes; Peter Tenney; Triangle Area Lesbian Feminists; Kevin Vericker; Women’s Fund-Joint Foundation Support; John Wright,” and also: “And Thanks to: the 140 people we pre-interviewed on videotape whose lives and stories helped shape the making of this film; the Bay Area lesbian and gay-male communities without whose moral and critical support this project would not have been possible; and our special gratitude to the 28 people who trusted us to freeze a moment of their lives for this movie. We are interested in your reactions to the film. Response and general inquiry may be sent to: Word Is Out; P.O. Box 77043; San Francisco, 94107.”
Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives
Homosexual men and women discuss the experience of growing up gay before the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s. Those who came of age in the 1940s and 1950s felt the need to conform and hide their sexuality. Harry Hay knew he was gay at an early age, but he learned how to mimic heterosexual male behavior so no one else would know. Sally Gearhart immersed herself in “girly” activities, like sororities and beauty pageants, to hide her true self. Lesbians Pam Jackson and Rusty Millington got married to men as teenagers and had children before leaving their husbands and falling in love with each other. Other people sought out situations where they felt accepted, including Pat Bond, who joined the Army, where she knew she would find other lesbians. Roger Harkenrider gravitated towards acting because he could play any role he wanted. Many homosexuals are frustrated because they do not have gay role models. Sally Gearhart and Cynthia Gair feel society indoctrinates people into being either masculine or feminine. African-American Michael Mintz identified as male, even though he acknowledges his homosexuality. He loathes the idea of being “girly,” so he took up athletics to prove he was a “man.” Tede Mathews initially dressed as a woman because he identified more with feminine traits, but eventually found a way to blend the two. Even though Pat Bond preferred being feminine, she felt pressured to dress and behave “butch” in order to identify as lesbian amongst her peers. Nathaniel Dorsky and Dennis Chiu assumed that being a “man” meant one had to be cold, unemotional and stoic. Poet ...
Homosexual men and women discuss the experience of growing up gay before the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s. Those who came of age in the 1940s and 1950s felt the need to conform and hide their sexuality. Harry Hay knew he was gay at an early age, but he learned how to mimic heterosexual male behavior so no one else would know. Sally Gearhart immersed herself in “girly” activities, like sororities and beauty pageants, to hide her true self. Lesbians Pam Jackson and Rusty Millington got married to men as teenagers and had children before leaving their husbands and falling in love with each other. Other people sought out situations where they felt accepted, including Pat Bond, who joined the Army, where she knew she would find other lesbians. Roger Harkenrider gravitated towards acting because he could play any role he wanted. Many homosexuals are frustrated because they do not have gay role models. Sally Gearhart and Cynthia Gair feel society indoctrinates people into being either masculine or feminine. African-American Michael Mintz identified as male, even though he acknowledges his homosexuality. He loathes the idea of being “girly,” so he took up athletics to prove he was a “man.” Tede Mathews initially dressed as a woman because he identified more with feminine traits, but eventually found a way to blend the two. Even though Pat Bond preferred being feminine, she felt pressured to dress and behave “butch” in order to identify as lesbian amongst her peers. Nathaniel Dorsky and Dennis Chiu assumed that being a “man” meant one had to be cold, unemotional and stoic. Poet Elsa Gidlow expressed her concern of being stereotyped, insisting that although she is gay, her sexuality does not represent her as a person. Several subjects experienced persecution and abuse. Rick Stokes had a decade long homosexual relationship as a teenager, but he married a woman in his twenties. The stress of living a lie caused his nervous breakdown and an extended stay in a mental institution. There, psychiatrists subjected him to electroshock therapy in an attempt to “cure” his homosexuality. A lesbian named Whitey recalls innocently asking her mother what a lesbian was and her mother responded by sending her to a psychiatrist, who put her on a special diet to “cure” her. Whitey later ran away to New York City to find other homosexuals, but her father tracked her down and had her committed to a mental institution for thirty days. Pam Jackson lost her children in a custody battle when her husband learned she moved in with her lesbian lover and her children. When the military decided to expel homosexuals from service, Pat Bond and others endured months of investigations and trials. Once exposed as a lesbian, the Army gave her a dishonorable discharge from the Army. George Mendenhall and Pat Bond talked of constant police harassment for attending gay bars. For some, the frustration of having no legal recourse to protect their human rights caused them to become politically active. Many gravitated toward support groups and feminist organizations while others planned to fight for young gays currently growing up in the U.S.
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