New doc explores New Orleans' drag past

Filmmaker Tim Wolff, 47, found himself, like many of his neighbors in New Orleans, dazed, confused and homeless after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city. An Indiana native, Wolff migrated to New Orleans in 1994 after graduating with a filmmaking degree from Cal Arts in Los Angeles and living for a spell in Massachusetts.

In those pre-Katrina days, Wolff found plenty of lucrative work as a carpenter. His relaxed and bohemian lifestyle led him to believe that he had plenty of time to make the films he had always dreamed he'd make - eventually.

"That all changed after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans," Wolff said. "My home was ruined, my car had been towed away, and all I had left for belongings could fit into two orange crates. I was in shock. I was incapable, really, of creating a new life for myself."

His boyfriend convinced Wolff to pull himself together. While living in temporary housing, Wolff wrote a treatment for a film that had been in gestation for fifteen years, a story about the lives of pioneering gay men in New Orleans who, in the early 1960s - seven years before the Stonewall riots in New York - defied laws against same-sex cross-dressing and dancing by creating a "drag ball" during Mardi Gras.

A story about pioneering gays

The result became "The Sons of Tennessee Williams," Wolff's documentary about the evolution of drag and politics in the gay Mardi Gras "krewe" scene. ("Krewes" are organizations that throw a ball during carnival season.) The film opens in New York on October 7 and in Los Angeles on October 14.

After writing his treatment Wolff sent it and an application to the John Burton Harter charitable trust in New Orleans. Harter, a gay artist and photographer who had been murdered in New Orleans, left an endowment to promote the work of emerging artists. Wolff was awarded a $30,000 grant from the Harter trust and set forth to begin working on the film.

"But a lot had changed in filmmaking since I was at Cal Arts," Wolff said. "For one thing, the digital cameras had revolutionized how films are made, and film editing is an entirely new skill, too, thanks to new computer software. I had to immerse myself into learning how to make films all over again."

Drag legal one day a year

In November 2008 he began interviewing many of the men, most of them elderly, who discussed their early lives living as closeted gays in New Orleans, so as to avoid getting bashed, beaten by police, or imprisoned. The New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper published a daily column during the 1950s-1960s about men who had been arrested the night before in downtown bars and bistros for "crimes against nature," as homosexuality was then publicly referred to. "It was must reading for anyone living in New Orleans," recounts a man in the film.

Wolff insisted that the film be seen in context to the history of gay rights in America.

"I was fortunate to discover a scholar at Tulane who was writing a book on gay life in New Orleans in the 20th century," Wolff said. "And he let me have free access to his research. That was an invaluable gift; it saved me several years of research, and allowed me to incorporate historical facts into the fabric of the film itself."

With the men as the storytellers of the film, Wolff weaves the history the unique tradition of Mardi Gras into the film. We are shown archival photographs of families who annually dressed their children in costumes for carnival. And we are taken into the French Quarter which had a tradition of gay cross-dressing dating from the turn of the last century.

"The law, at the time, stated that you could only dress in drag one day a year," says Mike Moreau, one of the men interviewed in the film. "That day was Mardi Gras. And you had to be out of drag by the end of the night. You had to have at least one item of men's clothing with you. Don't ask me why, but that was the law."

But gays were closeted for another reason: self-preservation. Gays were frequently bashed by marauding gangs of thugs. In one incident in 1958, a young gay man, Fernardo Rios, was brutally beaten and murdered by a gang of three Tulane University students, who, we learn in the film, were later exonerated for their crime in a highly publicized court trial.

It was in this atmosphere of persecution and murder that a group of men formed a krewe, an organization that sponsors a ball during carnival season. By working within the Mardi Gras tradition, they seized upon an opportunity to broadcast - and celebrate - their gay identities.

"The film shows how successful they became, that by 1969, how even the mayor of New Orleans wanted to purchase a ticket to their ball," Wolff said. "They were pioneers, forcing a change in discriminating laws against gays and promoting a more wide-spread acceptance of gay life."

"The Sons of Tennessee Williams," so titled as a twist on other groups like the Daughters of the American Revolution, pays homage to the late playwright, a longtime resident of New Orleans, who served as a role model for the gay men depicted in the film.

"The Sons of Tennessee Williams" opens on October 7, 2011 in New York and October 14, 2011 in Los Angeles. For more on the film visit the film's website