Studio: Oscilloscope Pictures Release Date: 06/08/2010It begins with a woman sitting on a bed with her dog, saying nothing, barely moving, and ends with a raucous gay pride parade. In between: candid opinions, hesitations, tears, songs, chainsaws, a lot of cigarettes, and a meal or two. And we learn that Barbie and Ken wear the same size.
Funny, articulate, and occasionally troubling, the testimonies offered by the 26 subjects of Word Is Out entertain, inform, and inspire for the duration of its 130 minutes. Made in 1977 by the Mariposa Film Group, the documentary–a montage of interviews in which the crew often foregrounds its own participation (by responding verbally, retaining mistakes, and shooting into mirrors, for example)–divides into three parts. The first focuses on the closet, and various attempts to pry open the door; the second on coming-out experiences–initial physical contact and emotional involvement; and the third on present and future concerns, including the consequences of visibility, which, as several of these people make clear, could be more dire then than now. Likewise, the film is definitely a period piece, wide lapels, frizzy perms, handlebar mustaches, overstuffed furniture, towering table lamps, pot plants, and all. But it also remains an important artifact of its time, in terms of these individuals, such as Radical Faerie Harry Hay and his partner, Bob, as well as the history of gay liberation. From the comical (one woman’s psychiatrist attempts to treat her lesbianism with a diet of green salads) to the painful (one man’s parents consider castrating him, while more than one interviewee had to witness or undergo shock treatment in mental institutions), and ethnically varied, Word Is Out offers telling tales of the city, town, and country: an act of remembrance on par with Coming Out Under Fire and The Celluloid Closet. –Robert Burns Neveldine
Rating: 
(out of 12 reviews)
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June 16, 2010
#1
Review by
Rating:
This is probably the best GLBT documentary ever made. It is poignant, funny, and provocative. While somewhat dated since so much has changed in the past 20+ years, the stories hold up and still speak to the human condition in a touching way. Also, it’s probably just as necessary to give people a historical context of how far the community has come, not only since the film was made, but throughout the lives of the participants, including The Pioneer Harry Hay, who just died recently.Anyone who has ever felt like an outsider or knows any GLBT people should appreciate this film. And any member of the GLBT community should consider this mandatory viewing as an obligation to their own history, and those who came before.
June 16, 2010
#2
Review by The Doughball
Rating:
This documentary is a great one. It carries the same feel as Epstein’s other documentaries, COMMON THREADS: STORIES FROM THE QUILT, THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK, and THE CELLULOID CLOSET to name a few.
The film is comprised of many gay, lesbian, and transgendered people basically talking about all aspects of their life. Epstein and his codirectors did a good job presenting a variety of lifestyles: Black, white, mothers and fathers, the very young to the quite old. This truly encompasses much of the GLBT experience, in an entirely unbiased way, with people simply speaking for themselves.
I recommend this to all people, but especially to gays and lesbians.
June 16, 2010
#3
Review by Robert in NY
Rating:
I first saw this documentary in the late `70s, when it was shown on the local PBS station in San Francisco where I then lived. (I recall some PBS stations refused to broadcast it at the time).
I had just purchased one of the first vcr’s, and I taped it. That tape has lasted me all these years, but its physical quality (color, sound etc) obviously has deteriorated. And so I’ve often wondered when if ever it would be available on dvd. Well, some thirty years later, its finally “coming out”.
Simply put, it must be considered one of the great works in gay history (and herstory), and is required viewing for anyone interested in understanding the on-going struggle for basic human rights and personal dignity. Documentaries (even awful ones) provide a fascinating glimpse at finite periods in time. Fortunately, this is a great one. It’s beautifully edited and presented, with interviews of gays and lesbians, ranging in age from 20-ish to 70-ish. I believe one of them is Harry Hay, who was a founder of The Mattachine Society in about 1950. (He is currently the subject of a wonderful Off-Broadway play “The Temperamentals”). Other names will be familiar as well (the participant’s are identified by name only in the final credits, at least on the vhs tape version).
This film was made just ten years after Stonewall, and the participants are all admirable for their courage in stepping before the camera at a time when it was not only unfashionable, but possibly dangerous, to reveal personal details of a “life style” still illegal in most jurisdictions. To a person they are incredibly articulate. The film does not tell a chronological story, and has no point of view per se. Unlike other fine narrated documentaries, like “Before Stonewall” and “The Celluloid Closet”, this one paints a vivid picture of a seminal point in time simply through the disparate stories of people living it: post-Stonewall, pre-Harvey Milk murder, and of course just three or four years before AIDS would be identified (though many were of course already infected).
I write this review before the actual release date of the dvd, so I do not know how it may have been re-edited or (hopefully) expanded.
I want to emphasize that while some of the stories are terribly sad (a woman who was subjected to electro-shock treatments for example), there is more than a little humor throughout and so no one should presume viewing the film will be a downer. In fact, I was exhilarated by it in the `70s, and I still am.
June 16, 2010
#4
Review by R. Geatz
Rating:
I first saw this film upon its release in the late 1970s. I journeyed from my Appalachian small town to the big city of Washington DC just to see it. This film certainly changed my life… and may have saved it. It gave me the courage to come out and confidence, knowing that I was not alone. Seeing it more than 30 years later fills me with nostalgia and reminds me what a good film it is, regardless of my orientation. You get to know a diverse and interesting group of gay people–all shapes and sizes, genders and ethnicities. The seventies styles will induce smiles among those old enough to remember them, and there’s a sense of joy in recognizing how far we’ve come in the past three decades. There are lots of laughs, too…. especially funny is Pat Bond’s stories of passing as straight in the military pre-DADT. But there are moments of tremendous sadness and disgust as some of the people recount the misery they endured… often at the hands of their own families.
The extras provide added dimension–with follow-up interviews with some of the subjects a quarter-century later. It’s heartwarming to see these survivors–wrinkled, gray and happy. Those missing remind us of how many men from that generation have been lost to AIDS. It’s a DVD that I expect to watch again and again over the years.
June 16, 2010
#5
Review by Mal Schoen
Rating:
It was a long time coming. I first saw this film when it debuted in the 70s, then again on scratchy VHS in the eighties, and now finally on pristine digital DVD in the 21st century. While there’s no denying the datedness of the hairstyles, fashions, and omnipresent cigarettes, there’s also something very current in its diversity: female and male, old and young, black, white, and brown.
The film has been lovingly restored, with a wonderful where-they-are-now section in the bonus features. For those who survived that tumultuous time, it was nice to see that they had aged along with me, these old familiar faces that look almost like old friends now. If you look beyond superficial fashion, of course, a movie like this can never be dated because it’s about people talking about their lives.