Bridegroom Documentary Review

Full disclosure right up front – I am a firm believer in gay rights. Always have been, always will be. I don’t shop at stores or eat at restaurants that are opponents to gay rights. Homosexuals are as equal as everyone else to me, and I will do all I can to make that position protected by the law.

So, when the documentary BRIDEGROOM directed by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason was given to me to review, I wasn’t sure I was the target audience. I knew it was a film about a gay couple and the effects of anti-gay marriage laws, so in my initial assessment I figured it would just be preaching to the choir. It didn’t need to change my mind on the subject. I was already with them. Better someone else see it, someone who wasn’t so friendly to gay rights. But I was urged to see it anyway, told it was “about more than just that.” And boy were they right.

If you take a long view of BRIDEGROOM, yes, it is ultimately about how destructive anti-gay marriage laws are, not just to the couples, but to their families and friends. But, when you get closer to the documentary you realize that what it’s really about is love. In the greatest sense it’s about the love of Shane Bitney Crone and Thomas Bridegroom, two young men from middle America who – through the caring actions of their mutual friends – brought them together in Los Angeles, California. What started as a tentative friendship quickly became a committed loving relationship that was as fierce as it was tragically brief. But BRIDEGROOM is also about the love they shared with their friends, and the love of their family, though that was often the hardest to get and deal with.

BRIDEGROOM sprang from a short film Shane created after his love Thomas died from an accidental fall from an apartment roof. For a year Shane documented his grief and thoughts, exposing every aspect of his love, telling his camera about the troubles Thomas’s family caused over his burial, and when he was done he uploaded the video to YouTube and titled it “It Could Happen To You.” 3+ million hits and fifty-thousand emails later, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason asked to broaden the canvas of Shane’s story, which ultimately became BRIDEGROOM.

Did BRIDEGROOM change me? Yes. I’m even more convinced that the intolerance of homosexuals in our society needs to end. It’s a cancer that eats away at everything we should hold dear. Who cares why one person loves another? What right do we have to say whose relationship is right and another is wrong? For over six years Shane and Thomas loved each other, created nothing but joy in themselves and those around them. Having that love end because of a bad step in a dark evening is tragic enough. It’s made even worse, though, when the memory of that love is tarnished by the personal beliefs of others. I urge you to see BRIDEGROOM and then share it. This love story needs to continue.

If $10 is the full price of admission, Bridegroom is worth $8.50

 

Justin Macumber
The Hollywood Outsider
www.TheHollywoodOutsider.com