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“Bridegroom” is a film that must be made and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason is determined to make it
Filmmaker Shane Bitney Crone lost the love of his life in 2011.
He and Tom Bridegroom had been together for six years when Tom died after falling off of a roof while taking photos of their best friend.
Crane’s grief over losing his partner was compounded by the heartless actions of Bridegroom’s homophobic family who threatened him with violence if he tried to attend the funeral and made no mention of him in the funeral program.
Crane responded by making the heart-wrenching video It Could Happen to You (see below) which has had 2.7 million views since it was posted on YouTube in April.
Among those who watched the video was Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, the creator of the classic sitcom Designing Women, who had met Crane and Bridegroom at a gay wedding in Palm Springs.
She now wants to make a documentary about the couple, titled Bridegroom, and has started a Kickstarter Campaign to raise the $300,000 budget.
The film will focus on how people without the legal protections of marriage can find themselves completely shut out and ostracized. Marriage is still not legal in California where the couple lived.
‘Like so many others who saw this video, I was deeply touched – and angered,’ Bloodworth-Thomason writes on the page. ‘I called Shane told him I wanted to make a documentary that would tell his and Tom’s love story from beginning to end. I have now seen all of Shane and Tom’s videos and home movies. Like a lot of young people, they routinely documented their lives—but this recorded history is so prolific, it almost seems as though they had a premonition or unconscious fear of not getting to live out something important.’
‘They are, in fact, the sort of young people who hold within themselves the promise of America,’ she added. ‘And that is why I want to bring to life, on film, this real life Romeo and Romeo—so that all who condemn them, might come face to face with exactly what it is they are opposing.’
As of Sunday (1 July) evening PST, $127,000 has been raised. The funds will be matched by Kickstarter only if $300,000 is raised by 7 p.m. EDT on July 19.
Comments
(All comments are reviewed before being published, and I review submissions several times per day.)
2201 East says:
Put it in your will if you have to, but make sure you make it very clear how you want your loved one involved in the proceedings if you should die before him/her. This is no matter how accepting the family may seem of you. This may seem like overkill, but I learned the hard way what can happen if the “so called” accepting family becomes anything but . Suggestion-put it in your will that if certain things don’t happen with your partner then your family receives the grand sum of one dollar. This act can really change how the proceedings can happen after you die. Most people don’t want to think of their own death but think of what can happen to the one you leave behind.
sean r. lake says:
I am so sorry for your loss. Love is universal and that is it. I am glad that you are speaking out for not only the loss of your love but the loss of still being a part of what should be, his life. It is as shame that there are still people out there that consider OUR love a sin, or a sickness to be cured. We are still in a society where people who consider themselves supporters still may say in a knee jerk reaction to one of their own kids being gay “well I sure hope not.” as if it was an illness.
Until someone being gay is as normal coffee beans being ground, and just as accepted in our society, your situation will not be the last. I have forwarded this article as well as your video in support of normalizing our love.
For Love is Love and only Love.