Kickstarter

The Other Side:
A Queer History's Last Call

Filmmaker Jane Cantillon is finishing her film, The Other Side: A Queer History's Last Call, about the last gay piano bar in the filmmaker’s neighborhood of Silver Lake in Los Angeles.  In the meantime, the bar closed it's doors forever on June 24th 2012.  A venerable gay watering hole since the 1960s, The Other Side was previously known as Patinos, The Toy Tiger, Daddy’s and Houston’s.  Adding to her already critically acclaimed festival cut, the filmmaker has recorded the final chapter of its long history, and renamed it to reflect the end of an era.

In the film, The Other Side, Cantillon interweaves personal interviews and archival footage, including various performances at the piano bar. The film captures candid stories, humorous and frightful, from bar patrons who share their tales about what it was like to be gay in the ’40s to the ’70s.  They recount their personal experiences of raids and entrapment at the bar by the LAPD.  Lives were ruined for simply going out to a bar and meeting up with friends.  These much-overlooked history lessons on L.A. nightlife and gay culture must not disappear after the very last-call at The Other Side.

A new producer is on board funding current production, but at least an additional $10,000 is needed to complete the film and preserve this important history.  In order to use the featured performances at the piano bar, music licensing is required.  Adding new stock footage, doing a final edit, and sadly, adding the last scenes of the closing of L.A.’s last gay piano bar, create additional costs.

After losing so many loved ones to AIDS in the 80s and 90s, the filmmaker feels these men who survived the epidemic have much to teach us about growing old; they are lovable and clever, and oddly enough, keep bitterness to a minimum.  

Please help Jane Cantillon and her production crew preserve the stories, the great performances, and celebrate these memorable survivors.   Some of the  gentlemen in the film have already passed away.  We must share their stories, and the end of the gay piano bar tradition, before both are forgotten.

Watch the original trailer below, and thanks again! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwCelncmvqk