As part of our new VIEWFINDER series, we are inviting nonfiction directors to write about aspects of the upcoming elections as they relate to their films. Earlier this week, THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND's co-director, Sam Green, wrote about his reaction to the fact that one of his subjects, William Ayers, had become a central issue for the McCain campaign. Today, Mike Roth, the co-director of SAVING MARRIAGE - which examined what happened in Massachusetts when gay marriage was legalized - writes about California's Prop 8, which would take away the right to gay marriage in California:
I’m terrified of Proposition 8. That’s the California ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution and take the right to marry away from gay and lesbian couples. Right now, it’s ahead in the polls by five points. Prop 8 = bad. Gay marriage = good.
You might think that me being a gay man would automatically engage me in this battle for equal marriage rights, but what it really took was to make a film about it. The film is SAVING MARRIAGE, about the fight to keep gay marriage legal in Massachusetts, and it wasn’t just the people in front of the camera that had changed by the end of the movie.
When I took on the project in 2003 with my producing partner John Henning, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had just legalized gay marriage and there was a major political storm brewing over the decision. A huge battle was about to take place, and I knew I was going to be watching civil rights history unfold in front of my camera lens.
I wasn’t disappointed. Over the next eighteen months, I shot thousands of people cheering when the first wedding license was given to a lesbian couple that had already been together for two decades; hundreds of people crying when they witnessed the first legal wedding between two men; and a dozen or so politicians who did some serious soul searching and decided to support gay marriage, against the wishes of their conservative constituents.
Meanwhile, I’m watching all this from behind my viewfinder and I start to realize that I’m not just recording a series of events. I’m recording a transformation. Even single people who were just casually dating could now ask themselves, “is this guy husband material?” Slowly, gay people were getting a taste of a right they never thought they would have, and they started to look at their own relationships differently. Even I, normally shielded behind the emotionless camera, started to change my thinking.
We shot for eighteen months because that’s how long it takes to amend the constitution in Massachusetts. That relatively long time frame gave people a chance to watch their gay neighbors and co-workers get married and realize that two women getting married was really not the big deal everyone thought it was.
Unless you happened to be one of the two women.
For gay people who got married, it profoundly changed their lives. Even couples who had been together for twenty-plus years were surprised to realize how different they felt and how differently they were treated. That simple receiving of a marriage license was an acknowledgement by society that a gay couple’s relationship involved the same commitment and deserved the same respect as a “traditional” marriage.
Fast forward now to California ’08 where the clock is ticking down to election day. Gay couples won the right to marry in a state supreme court decision last May, but now we’re on the verge of losing it if Proposition 8 passes.
Unlike in Massachusetts where the constitutional amendment process is intentionally long to force thoughtful consideration by both the legislature and the voters, in California an amendment goes from signature petition to ballot box with dizzying speed.
That means that voters make their decision about their fellow citizens’ civil rights based on thirty-second television ads rather than by observing in their communities how alike their gay married neighbors are to themselves.
Unfortunately, the Yes-on-8 folks (anti-gay marriage) have out-raised us by $10 million and can afford many more TV spots.
My producing partner John and I don’t have $10 million to send to the No-on-8 campaign, but we did have the passion to make a film about why everyone deserves the right to marry. I wish that every undecided voter and every gay person that is not 100% engaged in this issue could see Saving Marriage.
It’s not thirty-second spots that are going to sway people afraid of gays tying the knot. It’s going to be heart-to-heart conversations with other human beings that change peoples’ minds.
Well, we packed a lot of heart into SAVING MARRIAGE.
But we don’t have a lot of time left.
SAVING MARRIAGE opens today in Los Angeles (at the Regent Showcase) and Boston (at the Landmark Kendall Square).
Is it possible to get this film showing in San Francisco ASAP???
Posted by: Jason Kauffman | October 18, 2008 at 12:33 AM
Is it possible to get this film showing in San Francisco ASAP???
Posted by: Jason Kauffman | October 18, 2008 at 12:33 AM
Is it possible to get this film showing in San Francisco ASAP???
Posted by: Jason Kauffman | October 18, 2008 at 12:35 AM
"Saving Marriage" finished its run in San Francisco on October 16. But maybe the Roxie will bring it back if enough people request it.
Posted by: Mike Roth | October 18, 2008 at 01:14 AM