Word Is Out **** (1977, documentary) – Classic Movie Review 13,629

The serious-minded, pioneering late-70s gay documentary film Word Is Out was highly important and influential, and is still a vital, valuable document of the time.

‘It’s really scary standing in isolation from everybody else and that’s what I’ve feared most of my life. The fact that I wasn’t part of a group.’

The serious-minded, pioneering late-70s gay documentary film Word Is Out was highly important and influential in its day. Yesterday’s news now, maybe, but still a vital, valuable document of the time and it’s important that this stuff isn’t forgotten. Peter Adair conceived and produced the film, and is one of the six directors.

The ground-breaking 1977 documentary film Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives comprises interviews with 26 gay men and women various backgrounds, ages and races who speak to the camera about their early years, trying to fit in, coming out, establishing adult identities, falling in and out of love, battling prejudice, stereotypes and discriminatory laws, and reflecting on change and hope for the future. News footage and some vocal performances provide breaks in the narratives.

It is directed by six people – Rob Epstein, Peter Adair, Nancy Adair, Andrew Brown, Lucy Massie Phenix, Veronica Selver – calling themselves Mariposa Film Group. It took five years and more than 200 interviews to make.

The film premiered in November 1977 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco and went into limited US release in 1978. It also aired on many PBS stations in 1978.

VHS was available.

It runs 124 minutes but now the 2008 restored version is 133 minutes.

For the 30th anniversary, a restored and remastered 133-minute version was produced by Outfest and the UCLA Film and Television Archive and premiered on 26 June 2008, at the Frameline Film Festival, again at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco.

It made its way to TCM and streaming on the Criterion Channel.

The restoration and DVD release were funded by philanthropist gay activist David Bohnett.

Its influence continues.

The film was selected for preservation in the US National Film Registry in 2022, by the Library of Congress as culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.

A book containing transcripts of the interviews was published in 1978, one of the first non-fiction books sympathetic to gays published in the US.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,629

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