Robert L. Camina | Upstairs Inferno / 2015

leaving by the front door

by Douglas Messerli

 

Robert L. Camina (screenwriter and director) Upstairs Inferno / 2015

 

Robert L. Camina’s 2015 documentary personalizes the terrible events that happened in New Orleans on June 24, 1973, by not only providing the history of the terrible fire at the UpStairs Lounge gay bar at the edge of the New Orleans French Quarter, but by interviewing many of the still living survivors.

      The bar, established and run by Phil Esteve, which he opened on Halloween 1970. Having been in both a seminary and the Navy, neither of which worked out for him. He and friends fixed it the second floor up with a front bar, and an open room, and behind it a larger “meeting room,” in which for a while Phil celebrated gay performances and readings but which was eventually used, with his joyful permission, on Sundays for one of the national centers of the Metropolitan Community Church, a protestant pro-LGBT religious denomination founded in Huntington Park, California by Troy Perry, who appears as a central figure in the film.

      Having difficulty finding space in the New Orleans, the local Revered Bill Larson were delighted that Esteve granted them space, although they soon found a larger place a worship nearby. Yet Larson and several other regulars continued to visit and meet at the UpStairs Longue, often before and after services and on special occasions also met in the back room where they had begun their New Orleans chapter.

      On January 27, 1973, in fact, several of their members, including Larson, as well as bar regulars had filled the bar to celebrate a regular “beer bust” drink special than ran from 5:00-7:00 pm. About 110 patrons were visiting the bar when a terrible fire broke up, trapping many within since there were bars on the windows to protect people from falling out, and most of the patrons did not know of the existence of a special back door from the large back room of the space.

      As Christopher Rice, who narrates this film and has written extensively about the event, and others such as Luther Boggs later reported the immediate events, summarized on Wikepedia,

 

“At 7:56PM, a buzzer from downstairs sounded, and bartender Buddy Rasmussen, an Air Force veteran, asked Luther Boggs to answer the door, anticipating a taxi cab driver. Boggs opened the door to find the front staircase engulfed in flames, along with the smell of lighter fluid. Rasmussen immediately led some 20 patrons out of the back exit to the roof, where the group could access a neighboring building's roof and climb down to the ground floor. Others saw the floor to ceiling windows as the most promising means of escape despite the fact that there were safety bars on the windows with a 14-inch gap between them to prevent dancers from breaking through the glass. Several people managed to squeeze through, some still burning when they reached the ground below. Luther Boggs was one who came through the window in flames after pushing his female friend through the gap. The flames on Boggs were extinguished by the owner of a neighboring bar, but he died on the 10th of July (16 days later), from 3rd degree burns to 50% of his body.”

     Some of the men who had escaped found their partners missing and rushed back into the building to find them, only to be consumed in the flames.

    In all, 32 people were killed in the fire, until the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, in which 49 people were shot and murdered, the UpStairs Lounge arson attack was deadliest event in gay club history in the US.

    Although Camina’s documentary shows detailed images of the fire and recounts the events from both men and women who experienced the terrible fire itself, the most fascinating and sad aspects of this moving film begin after the fire when concerned figures such as Troy Perry, and others attempted to find a church that would be willing to host a memorial for the victims. Perry’s early presumption was that the arson attack was perhaps related to two other arson attacks on MCC churches at the headquarters in Los Angeles, which resulted in the collapse of the building with no injuries and the complete destruction of their Nashville, Tennessee church in Nashville, Tennessee. Homophobia was clearly behind these events, and it was presumed that the arson fire at the UpStairs Lounge was related.

      The major Catholic Bishop and most other church leaders not only refused their sanctuaries and would not even speak out about the events. Even worse was the media, some of whose members described it as the “fruitfry.” The police department head stated, so the newspaper reported, that this was a bar “frequented by thieves, burglars, and queers.”

       As one survivor speaks, the reaction to the murders spoke to the homophobia not just of the city but of the society in general. Survivors had to return to work the next day and often pretend they hadn’t even heard about it, playing the game of closeted queers of the period: “While instead there was a lump in your throat that could choke you. But that was just part of the play-acting we all learned to do.”

       Both the Mayor, Moon Landrieu and the state Governor Edwards, one commentator suggests thought it was too political risky or simply unnecessary to acknowledge the deaths of gay men. Previously there had been a serious fire in New Orleans that killed 6 people, when the Mayor, Governor Edwards and Archbishop Hannon had made many public statements to the press. Later, a fire at the Howard Johnson’s hotel which killed 10 people, and again all made statements to the press, days of mourning were declared. But none of these men chose to say anything about the

deaths of 32 individuals who died in UpStairs Lounge fire.

       Heroes included, other than Perry himself, Reverend Paul Breton from the MCC church who visited three of the dying patients regularly in the hospital. When he sets up a fund to help the victims, people rose to the occasion; and what he didn’t realize, he explains, is that the process would teach them how to deal later raising support for AIDS.

       When no church seemed available for Revered Perry’s memorial service, Reverend Bill Richardson of St. George’s Episcopal Church offered his space, but was reprimanded by his Bishop, he even offering to resign if his church could not be open to such an act of kindness.

       Perry even considered holding the memorial service on the street outside the burned-out bar.

But finally, Rev. Edward Kennedy of the Methodist Church opened the doors to his church for a filled memorial service. Local businesses even agreed to put up notices for the service.

      As the service came to an end, Kennedy passed a note to Perry telling him that a camera crew and gathered across the street from the church, and offered the congregation of gay people and affected families the possibility of exiting through a side door. Perry explained what the situation was, apologizing for his inability to control what happened outside the building, but offering them the alternative route. A woman in balcony began to scream, “No way. We came in the front door and we’re going to leave through the front door.” Perry claims nobody left by the side door, perhaps one of the first times gay men and women and those who supported their loved ones stood up for themselves and fully faced the camera with pride and a feeling of self-worth.

      Eventually, a suspect was found, Roger Dale Nunez, who had been ejected from the bar earlier in the evening after arguing with several other customers. He had warned to bartender that he would regret it. Nunez who police later found to be suffering from psychiatric problems. He later told a friend that he had squirted the bottom steps with a lighter fluid he had purchase at a local Walgreens before tossing a match. Evidently, the plastic grass covered carpet which the owner had laid down to make the steps attractive immediately caught fire and itself rose up to block any possible exit through the front steps down to the street. Nunez committed suicide in November 1974.

      LGBTQ individuals are perhaps exhausted by watching films documenting their torment and death over the decades, but I would still argue that this film is necessary if we are to know our own pasts and prognosticate about our possible futures.

 

Los Angeles, February 19, 2024

Reprinted from My Queen Cinema blog (February 2024).