I just watched the shortish (~1 hour) documentary
Small Town Gay Bar, via Netflix streaming, which takes a look at a few proprietors and their clientele of gay bars in northern MS. It's been in the queue forever. It sure is easy to forget - living in the city - how oppressive life and culture is in those parts.
The common thread through all the stories was the need to have somewhere they could be themselves and feel a sense of kinship and community. A very familiar theme to most of us, I think.
A few of them came and went at the whim of local politicians and law enforcement, and at least one came back again. It's pretty scary how arbitrary the harassment seemed to be. And I guess like most things, there's a life cycle, and places became rougher and scarier and maybe they needed to close and be re-invented.
This is the first time I've listened to Fred Phelps for any amount of time. I guess the waste of celluloid was necessary to properly frame the extreme element of local attitudes. Interestingly he talks about going to seminary with Billy Graham (at Bob Jones U) and how he had written to Graham to tell him he was going to picket Graham's funeral. I swear. And I wonder if he did, but I don't care enough to look it up. He's such a caricature of a human being, and I mean that purely in the one-dimensional sense.
I like that Kevin Smith of
Chasing Amy, among other things, produced/invested - I've always liked his work. Here's an interview about how Kevin got involved with his friend Malcolm Ingram - who conceived and directed.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7bqJIHrQ28[/youtube]
I gave it five stars.