Stephen Winter

IN 2015, I was en route to the world premiere of my original JASON AND SHIRLEY feature and received the phone call letting me know my film would be shadow-banned by representatives of the cinematic Old Guard. They publicly stated my film was slander and trash and should be roundly rejected by the indie film industry. Ouch!

Sure, I expected a strong reaction. I had (Like Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, Issac Julien, among others) gone boldly into a key but under-explored piece of queer art history to make some art history of my own. But JASON AND SHIRLEY is about race and class, gender and sexuality, so it was “dangerous.” And nostalgia is a helluva drug. Take ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. It’s set in a today that is entirely incorporated by yesterday. This nostalgia lends a warmth to the fascism of Dr. Frankenfurter. Spend enough time in that kind of lotus-land and it’s easy to forget who you are, what you were doing: what’s actually important to you. The forces that canceled my film erroneously took it for a docudrama living in the past. What I actually did was use and transform historical events in an explicitly fictionalized way that lives and speaks to the present.

But what was in the works worked out. Richard Brody gave the film a rave in the New Yorker, opening night was fabulous, and we received rapturous applause at every screening of the (sold out) two-week theatrical run at MoMA. After that, the word was mud. We were Frankenfurtered! Zapped with the Medusa Transducer! Turned into a brick. No safe harbor for JASON AND SHIRLEY would be endured.

That’s where things stood until COVID when folks got sick of banging pots at 7pm and I got a second chance. My 1996 feature CHOCOLATE BABIES was canonized as a lost gem, restored by UCLA/OutFest, then picked up by the Criterion Channel. They wanted to pair it with a second feature and everyone was out of fucks so I sent them JASON AND SHIRLEY (2015).

This attention prompted me and my collaborators to think about those handful of little tweaks we wanted to make before we got buried, but when we opened the dailies we found dozens more moments that would sharpen the film and help us respond to this nascent reich circa 2025 that’s threatening to consume the world.

My film’s nostalgia is not the comfy kind that runs on and is a response to the rising beast of fascism. That nostalgia simplifies the world to make us forget the experiences we’ve endured. JASON AND SHIRLEY REVISITED (2025) exposes that nostalgia for what it is, a myth that robs us of the tools to do the work that needs to be done today. We also got to design new title cards and complete the overture! Today’s technology allows better control for us to beautify our color scheme and frame rate effects from the original S-VHS tapes.

So, we have revisited and recreated a work that is true if not factual, and not only Truth about the work represented but the fabric of our reality itself, such as it is.

I hope the film makes you laugh and makes your soul dance, but I guess that depends on if you can hear the beat.

Stephen F. Winter
Noted Faggot
October 29, 2025
Brooklyn