(uplifting piano music)
- So, while they're getting settled,
You saw in the end credits there, this film debuted in 2015.
We premiered it in New Orleans
on the anniversary of the fire.
We had friends, families of the victims
come in from across the country for the World Premiere.
I thought that was the only place
we should have our premiere.
And that was in the summer of 2015.
So, now that we're in 2017,
we live in a somewhat different world.
And, because on June 12, 2016,
the Pulse shooting happened.
And the death toll at Pulse surpassed that,
the death toll, of The Up Stairs Lounge.
So, it's very haunting and prophetic
those last two interviews that are in the film,
they, ever since the Pulse shooting, they give me chills
because it's the foreshadowing.
Because what Ricky Everett says,
"Look what anger and hate can do."
And we saw that again happen in Orlando,
and Reverend Perry saying, "I hope our community
never has to go through this. I hope not. I pray not."
And then, we see another community have
to go through this horror, this senseless horror
of death and tragedy.
So, it is, The Up Stairs Lounge is no longer
the largest gay mass murder in U.S. history,
and unfortunately, we have yet another one.
We must unite and make sure we do what we can
to honor the memories of those lost in both tragedies,
and continue to teach our history
and keep their memories alive moving forward.
So I'm going to open it up for some questions.
Okay. I'm gonna see, are there any opening comments up here?
- This is the first time I've seen the film.
So, obviously, it was a very emotional experience for me.
A reminder of people's faces.
People's names that I knew.
To give you a little bit of a background
of my association with the New Orleans church,
I was pastoring in Atlanta & Southeast District Coordinator
for Florida, Georgia, Tennessee,
Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.
And the church in New Orleans was kind of
at the far flung geographical location of our district,
and I had gone there about a year, a year and a half,
before the tragedy.
And they were so glad that someone was coming
to spend some time with them.
And I remember one of the memories I had was
they made, took cardboard, and they covered it
with white satin, and they made a mitre out of it.
And they crowned me Bishop of New Orleans for MCC.
And I remember that because it was just an indication
of how quickly we bonded with one another.
And then, as the film mentioned, if you remember,
I found out about the fire.
Ronnie Rosenthal, who was a member of my church in Atlanta,
MCC Atlanta, had been there to visit,
I think his name was Everett.
[Robert] Ricky Everett
- Ricky Everett.
And, he called me that night.
There was a movie that we had
at the church that Sunday night.
And Ronnie called, and that's when I called Reverend Perry,
and we got there the next day.
It seems so long ago, until tonight.
And then it seems, and seeing the movie tonight,
like it was yesterday.
And, we had so much to do
as I talked with Robert last night about it,
that I'm not sure we were even aware of what was going on.
And as terrible in retrospect as it was,
as to some of the reaction and response of officials
in the church at that time,
you know, I have to tell you, we weren't surprised.
Many of you might think how terrible that was.
But when you live in that culture, and you're used to that,
every single day, we just had to deal with it and move on.
But tonight, it really came flooding in on me
how terrible it was.
The reactions of the people.
I'm just going to need a little time to process the movie,
but it really took me back and brought up a lot of memories.
- Thank you, thank you John, for being here.
And thank you for all that you did in New Orleans
for the community.
I didn't say this last night, and you left,
and like, oh my gosh, I don't know what the community
would have done without you guys there.
And I shudder to think what kind of spiritual guidance,
if any kind of spiritual guidance they would have had,
had you guys had not been there.
So thank you so much for going there
and helping that community heal.
- Yes.
- [Audience Member #1] Can I say a comment?
- Yeah, sure.
- [Audience Member #1] Well, it gets kind of cold here,
but you know, I think that, sometimes we take it
for granted the communication with each other.
You know, the understanding, the reason.
But, sometimes we find something that will comfort us
and make us whole, to have that freedom,
that freedom to be free.
But there's an energy, a negative energy,
that don't want us to be free, no matter what
or who we are.
You know, it doesn't matter what kind of gender we have,
love unites us all, you know.
Everywhere you go, that's how it is.
And when you cross the line where it's not comfortable,
you know what I mean, it goes for my life,
you know what I mean.
You will destroy it, because you just don't want it around.
You know, and why I mentioned it,
is that sometimes we block. We do that naturally,
like when we're talking about we're humans.
We are brothers and sisters here, you know.
And love is the most powerful thing there is,
you know, for all of us,
and no matter who we are, what kind of...
You know, I go to N.A., A.A.. A lot of people go there.
What brought us together is the unity that we have
to help each other, to stay clean
so I don't overdose or whatever.
And you know, when I hold people, we're gently hugging,
I feel energy from each other, you know.
I mean, they do have [indecipherable] in the same room,
but the unity that we have together, the bond,
is beautiful, you know.
You know, I'm not, you know..
I have a girlfriend.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that we share that joy,
that bond together, you know what I mean.
Because it's beautiful.
- I'd like to think that no matter what
your background is, how you identify,
you know, whether you're male or female,
or your sexual orientation or your religious background,
that we are more alike than we are different.
And I'd like to think that this film shows that,
that we all share that same common thread.
We share love of family, of faith, of our loss,
of joy.
We are more alike that we are different,
so that is one of my hopes, to get that message across
through this film, so thank you for sharing.
Moving on to Mr. Skip over here,
as you saw, we talked about Ferris LeBlanc in the epilogue.
To give you a little bit of background,
Skip contacted me in the beginning of 2015.
We were wrapping up this film.
It was pretty much locked, and he introduced himself.
And said... well, I won't get into the story.
He introduced himself to me and
I feel like we've become close family
in the pursuit of more information about his uncle.
I just wanted to explain why there was this
epilogue at the end, because actually,
their story is going to be a film of their own,
so make sure you like 'Upstairs Inferno' on Facebook
to keep in touch with the releases happening.
[Audience laughter]
But I'm gonna let Skip talk a little bit about
how we met, how this all came about
in the beginning of January 2015.
- Well, as you saw in the epilogue,
we didn't find out about what happened to my uncle
until January 2015.
And some of the questions we've been answering
through the last couple of years
through interviews, with Robert and the film,
a lot of people ask, "Why didn't you search for him sooner?
You know, with the internet and everything else,
there is information out there".
We have a big family, 13 kids.
I've got cousins I'll never know, I'll never meet,
and somebody in the family did find out,
and they didn't share that information.
So we assumed that if anybody in the family would,
they would let us know that we could pursue
finding my uncle.
Well, we finally did an internet search on our own,
and I found out about Robert and Clayton and this book and
all these other people who had already done this research,
and they had researched the whole story of the lounge fire.
And all of a sudden, I find out my uncle was identified
and nobody claimed his body because our family never knew.
We're in California and the fire was in New Orleans.
In Northern California, if you're a LeBlanc, you're family.
You're us.
We didn't know anyone else had that name very much.
When we went to New Orleans,
we found out it was kind of like "Smith" and "Jones".
They're everywhere down there.
[laughter]
So what we realize now, is perhaps the police decided
it's a local person.
The name is local and nobody claimed him because
they were embarrassed that he was homosexual.
And that's been the concept
that's been all over the internet
and a lot of people's minds is that was the reason
we didn't claim his body.
Totally untrue.
We didn't know.
If we had known, we would have claimed him in an instant.
He was totally loved, totally a member of the family.
Every partner that he had during the earlier years
and even the later years, was accepted as a member
of our family.
It was never an issue in our family.
In an interview with my mother, who's 87,
they asked about that and she goes,
"We didn't care.
We're French!
What's it matter?"
[loud laughter]
Never was an issue.
But there's been comments made and such
that that was the reason why,
so that's part of what my journey is,
and Robert, helping, showing the film, the epilogue,
and giving interviews and things is that people know
that he was loved and that he was not abandoned.
We didn't care that he was homosexual.
He was a wonderful human being and we loved him for that.
And we didn't find help because we didn't search,
but now we know.
The journey is still ongoing.
The city...they're not real helpful.
We don't know where he's buried.
We know that area, but we don't have a spot.
We don't have a plot.
We have a number, and the cemetery refuses to cooperate,
so we're still trying to find his body.
Hopefully, we will find it and we want to get it
brought back to California,
where the family is buried.
He was a World War II vet, and we want to have him buried
in the veteran section for that.
So we're still working on that,
but finding out what happened to him for my mother,
at least at 87,
she feels now she can peacefully go to her grave,
knowing what happened.
As horrible as it was,
it does help to know what happened to him.
She knows where he was and how he died.
And he died two days after his 50th birthday.
We think he was probably at The Up Stairs Lounge
celebrating his birthday.
- Wow.
Any question pop up?
Yes.
- [Audience Member #2] So, at any point, like,
now that you and your family have found out,
are you going to have him a plaque created somewhere
near your family where everybody else is?
- What's that again?
I'm a little hard of hearing.
- Were you going to be getting him
a plaque of some sort in Northern California?
- When we get him back home, yes, we will have...
Some of the members of the family, that knew about it,
are a little upset that I'm angry with them
for not sharing this.
With a big family, there's a lot of that going on.
I will have a ceremony, hopefully,
and the whole family can come and we'll have a place
for him there.
And I've told the family that,
so we want to honor him as a human being
that was loved by his family.
Not somebody who was abandoned and
stuck in a hole in the ground.
One of the things that the city told us
when I first contacted them was that,
"Oh, those four guys,
they were just put in one big ol' grave
and they weren't even in coffins.
They just dumped 'em in the ground."
And that's the city's official comment to me.
Knowing that was wrong, I told them that,
but they didn't like to hear that.
You saw on the film, there was four grave sites,
there was four actual places for them to be.
So, it wasn't what they said.
It's been a real difficult journey, but I'm really proud
to be able to do this and try and find him.
That's the most important thing.
- [Lori, Skip's wife] In New Orleans,
in the Potter's Field where he is,
where we believe that he is, there is no marking,
whatsoever, that there are human remains there at all.
It looks like a cow pasture.
You saw the lock up. You saw the lock up.
So they did...
- ...the mayor's office get involved
even allows us to go into that.
- So they did mow the field
and we were allowed to go in,
and one of the things that we wanted to do
was to have them put a plaque even
on that cyclone fence, to just say that this is a cemetery
and there are people here,
and they will have nothing to do with any of that.
We wanted to have a plaque even put in
somewhere in that field and nope, nothing doing.
They don't want any attention drawn
to that situation at all.
Very frustrating, very frustrating.
- [Robert] But it's still a journey.
- It is a journey.
- It's still a journey.
- I think you had a question, someone on the front row.
- [Audience Member #4] My question was answered.
- Oh, okay.
Other questions we had.
It's okay, we won't bite.
(audience laughs)
Anything else you guys?
- [Audience Member #5] How was it received
when it was viewed in New Orleans
on the anniversary a few years ago?
- The question is about how was it received
at the premiere in New Orleans.
I can tell you: I've never been so nervous.
I mean, the film is done.
There's nothing I can do at that point.
I can't re-edit it, I can't do anything.
You know, the film is done,
it's ready to be put on the screen.
Can't really worry about the projection.
I was very nervous about how it was going to be perceived
because we had a sold out theater full of
the people that you saw in the film,
family members of the victims, witnesses...
This is their story.
I just had the privilege of telling it.
And I'm just scared on how they would
perceive the way that I told the story.
Those little ideas of self doubt
and did I present it in a way that they will appreciate?
And I'm glad to say that it got a standing ovation.
There were a lot of tears.
We handed out tissues at the door, just in case.
We had a second sold out screening after that
and then they invited the film back
last year for the anniversary of the fire,
and then they named me Grand Marshal
of the Gay Pride Parade.
So I was very, very honored for that and again,
it was my privilege to tell the story.
They trusted me with their memories,
and I don't take that lightly.
I'm really thankful they trusted me.
- [Audience Member #6] What is the building now
that the fire happened?
What became of the building itself?
- The question is what's the building now?
Well, the ground level is still the Jimani Lounge.
That's the name of the bar it was back in 1973.
Still in the same family,
passed down to the next generation.
And the floor that housed the Up Stairs Lounge
is now the storage room and office for the Jimani Lounge.
Jimmy Massacci, who runs the Jimani Lounge,
is a strong advocate of preservation
of the Up Stairs Lounge story.
He was 12 years old, 13 years old, at the time of the fire,
and he remembers being down there, seeing the flames.
And there's a plaque on the ground outside
the former entrance of the Up Stairs Lounge
as you saw in the film, but the stairway leading
up into the second floor, he has intentionally kept
some of the charred wood, some of the soot on the walls,
he's kept it that way.
Some of the soot around the window -
He kept it that was as just in remembrance and honor
of the fire.
Yes.
- [Audience Member #7] In order to, in looking at some
of the footage that you have in there,
you definitely have to go through police records
and stuff like that.
How cooperative was the city with you
in accessing those records?
Or was it like, "We don't want to talk about
this black spot on our history."
- I'll tell you what.
Research is what took up most of this time,
because for me as a story teller,
I want to start from scratch.
I don't want to depend upon anybody else's
telling of the story, because ultimately,
I'm responsible for what's in the film
and I didn't want to perpetuate any mistruths
that there had been.
I started from scratch, reading through the police reports
and reading through witness statements.
And all of that's public information.
So I was able to read some of that.
The problem that I did encounter
was that there were police recordings
and other evidence that got destroyed
in Hurricane Katrina.
So much of what once existed was now gone
and that's heartbreaking, because the...
Like, Michael Scarborough, the only person to hear
Rodger Nunez allegedly say,
"I'm going to burn this bar out",
his interview was on tape.
And so it would have been...
I really wanted to have that for the film,
but the police department did respond to me.
The fire department - they were very cooperative.
That's where I found that swatch of wallpaper.
So, for the most part, everything was pretty cooperative
but it was a treasure hunt.
'Cause sometimes I didn't know what I didn't know.
I knew there were certain visuals I wanted to include
in the film, but didn't know if they existed,
and if they did exist, where do I find them?
So a lot of times, it was going to the library
and searching through photographs
that hadn't been cataloged.
Interesting story:
I was just looking for photographs
of the police department from that time period
just to put on the screen, and I was at the library
looking through their files.
Old police pictures.
I'm going picture after picture,
and all of a sudden, I come across this photograph
of a staircase, charred,
with a can of Ronsonol Lighter Fluid at the base.
I'm sitting in this library and I'm like
looking down at the picture, looking up,
looking down, looking around to see if
anyone else sees me.
I'm like, oh my...
I just couldn't believe what I had just found.
And I flipped it over and it was dated June 24, 1973,
but it had been categorized as a Black Panther attack.
'Cause it was rumored at one point that it was related
to the Black Panthers.
So this photograph had been misfiled and lost
for decades.
So I was like, I've got to get this picture.
So I got the library to license it to me.
But it was a treasure hunt,
so the research process was the most tedious part.
I knew that I wanted this film to be a comprehensive film,
a comprehensive telling of the story,
because we had such great interviews.
I wanted to to compliment those.
It's a long winded answer, but they weren't too...
They were pretty cooperative.
Yes.
- [Audience Member #8] I'm just curious to see
how you came about this inferno.
How were you introduced to it, and how did you
get intrigued and compelled to do the story telling of it?
- Question is how did I get involved with Upstairs Inferno?
It all goes back to my documentary,
'Raid of the Rainbow Lounge' - postcards are in the back,
and I do have them for sale, I do have Square with me.
(audience laughs)
But 'Raid of the Rainbow Lounge' was a documentary
about a controversial gay bar raid
that happened on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall
in Fort Worth, Texas.
Multiple people were arrested, some were seriously injured.
And I'm from Dallas, and I had friends who were at
the bar in Fort Worth, which is about 45 minutes away.
We didn't know what was happening, but I felt like I needed
to get my camera and start filming this
because I thought it'd make a great short film.
Well, the story became very sordid,
and the film, becoming a full length film,
as we watched the investigation progress
and we see the police department evolve
as there were some very sordid allegations
from the police department.
They were claiming that they were there for a bar check
and once they were there for a bar check,
patrons were grabbing their groins,
and it just got really ridiculous.
And so we, it became salacious, and there was a lot
of activism, so we used, I told them the film...
The power of activism.
The power of building coalitions
with your law enforcement and city officials.
Because ultimately, Fort Worth became a leader
in LGBT equality.
Even being one of the first cities in Texas
to include transgender protection
in their anti-discrimination ordinance.
So we used the film to help educate and enlighten people
across the country, communities across the country,
Mexico, and Canada.
And in a respectful way.
And one of the producers of 'Upstairs Inferno'
had seen the film and seen how we had told the story
from history, in a respectful, constructive way,
and that we're using it to educate people.
And he told me the story of the Up Stairs Lounge fire.
"Have you ever heard of this?"
And I hadn't, and I was shocked,
because of, it was the largest
gay mass murder in U.S. history,
and I thought to myself,
"why isn't this part of our common LGBT history narrative"?
And it needed to be.
So, I decided that I was gonna take this on.
And that was the genesis: you know, 2012, 2013,
and started doing my research and started getting
in touch with people.
Yes.
- [Audience Member #9] Have you shared the film
with the LGBT museum in Fort Lauderdale
and then there's one in San Francisco as well.
Have you been in touch with them to share that,
to get some more exposure?
- San Francisco...we screened in San Francisco at the
Frameline Film Festival, which is the oldest
LGBT film festival in the country,
on the eve of the fire in 2016, which happened to be
11 days after Pulse.
(audience gasps)
Frameline is huge for a filmmaker,
and here, I'm just like,
I don't know what to do.
I mean, we as a community, as a country,
we're reeling from this tragedy,
and I didn't know how people were going
to accept this film, because it was
so hauntingly similar.
But thankfully, a lot of people did come,
and the LGBT History Museum, they came,
they did an introduction and were part of the Q and A,
so we worked with them.
They actually provided some of the footage,
some of the black and white footage
of MCC you saw in the film.
Yes.
- [Audience Member #10] The business owner
who was introduced saying that they really didn't care
that it happened -
Was that the sort of mentality that a lot of people had
at that time?
In the community itself, and the gay community.
- Would you like to answer that?
- [John] Yes.
It was.
Again, the movie portrayed the group of us that came in
as carpet baggers.
We were there for our own purposes.
And I think that was somewhat of a cover for them,
that they weren't more involved in trying to do something.
I told Robert last night, one memory I had was,
when we were there, we would go to the bars at night.
And we would talk with people.
And we would see them in clusters that were crying
or holding one another, and we would go talk with them.
And we also wanted to let them know that life
goes on and you can't just stop.
And we went into one bar one night,
and we noticed at the far end of the bar
there were two fire doors with panic bars.
And the panic bars had heavy chain around it
with a padlock.
I said to Robert last night in our time of sharing,
I have never seen, if any of you know Reverend Troy Perry,
I have never seen him
so ballistic in my life.
And let me tell you, when what you are saying
can stop the disco music and stop the dancing
and stop the drinking, you're doing something.
Finally the manager, the owner came out,
and Reverend Perry said to him, "We're not leaving
til you remove that chain."
Those weren't his exact words.
(audience laughs)
And Troy is a very intelligent person,
and knowing some of the response we had gotten
from the other owners, he said,
"While we are here, we'll be back to check
that door's not chained again."
And he said, "We have friends in New Orleans,
you don't know who they are.
They'll be here every month,
and they'll report back to me."
And he said, "You don't want me
to fly back from L.A. sometime."
And Troy did know people.
And there were people that would check that would call him.
But there was not only an antagonism towards
the group that was working there,
but also total disregard
after this horrendous event.
A chained fire door as if lessons weren't being learned
by people in our own community.
- Yeah, I think we probably have time
for one more question.
- [Audience Member #11] For the Reverend:
I am familiar with that Paul from church,
and I was surprised and felt...they had a symposium
last night about the history of the LBGT movement,
and our obstacles that we are overcoming,
and the church was brought up,
along with the fact... that I am curious as to how
it became an issue with the fire
at multiple churches during that period of
Metropolitan churches.
- I'm not quite sure I understand the question.
- [Audience Member #11] Metropolitan churches that
were being burned in the period that were mentioned.
- Yes.
- [Audience Member #11] Which you mentioned.
No, that was in the film.
- Right, right.
- [Audience Member #11] I'm getting my symposium and
the issue confused here, but it's all one.
I just wasn't aware of that.
Did that happen more after that?
As a social acceptance, by a pattern, cut that down?
- But again, yes, it did happen,
not only the burning, but other situations.
I pastored our congregation in Houston for awhile,
and the pastor before me, Reverend Jeri Ann Harvey,
they had been...I'm not sure exactly what time of the day
it happened or anything...
Anyway, the Ku Klux Klan came and burned a cross
on the doorstep of the MCC in Houston.
And again, that happened more than the press
ever reported it.
So it was not only the community that didn't learn about it,
it was society in general, who didn't learn about it.
It was just dismissed as another incidence
in the life of another MCC.
But there was a lot more that went on
than the people realized
when it was occurring.
- And just to tag onto your question.
We did mention in the film the fire at the mother church.
The Nashville fire, then the Up Stairs Lounge,
which had an MCC connection.
But a month after the fire in New Orleans,
the MCC church in San Francisco was torched.
So four fires in one year, 1973.
They weren't related, as far as like
a single person being responsible for them,
but going to what John was saying,
there was this mentality.
Over the years, I've gotten close to Reverend Perry
and many of the other MCC clergy,
and I've heard stories that would make your skin crawl
of what they've had to endure.
The MCC church is a leader in our LGBT equality movement.
Thank you.
- I think I speak for everyone here too,
in thanking Robert - Yes
for the time and the effort and the love
that he has put into this film
and it shows, Robert. It shows.
(crowd claps)
- I'd like to thank you all
for taking time out of your week
to honor the victims and their families
and the story of the Up Stairs Lounge fire.
Please, tell your friends.
Because we're living in a really uncertain political time
right now, and
(audience mumbles)
we just need to educate and enlighten.
If we aren't visible, we become invisible, so please
keep this story visible and share the story online:
'Upstairs Inferno: The Documentary'.
'Upstairs Inferno' on Twitter.
And just, even if not to promote the film,
just to raise awareness of this incident,
because we cannot ever let our community
or anyone else forget about this incident again.
So thank you again for coming.
- [Audience] Thank you.
(audience claps)
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