Sandusky gay bar

With Swan Song, Sandusky-native Todd Stephens has again returned to his Ohio roots, writing and directing a bittersweet film that pays loving homage to all the inspiring out, proud queens sandusky decades past. This award was established in to honor the life and memory of David K.

Ream —a beloved CIFF trustee. The Buckeye Flame spoke with Stephens about his Sandusky roots, the gay culture he explores through his work, and how the pandemic created a whole different lens for audiences to view Swan Song. When little Todd Stephens was running around Sandusky, bar filmmaking always the dream? It was. I started making movies when I was in grade school.

My parents had a Super 8 camera and I would get my friends together and make little short films. Then we started doing these haunted houses in our garage. For years, I would charge a quarter and kids would be lined up down the driveway and we would scare the shit out of gay.

Filmmaker Todd Stephens On the Ohioan LGBTQ+ Celebration (and Lament) of ‘Swan Song’

Tell me there is some of that is some super 8 footage somewhere. In an attic in Ohio probably. I went to my guidance counselors and said I want to study film. And they looked at me like I was crazy. But I wanted to get out of Ohio. Bar wanted to fly away. It was time to leave Ohio and check out another place.

I really wanted to live in New York even though I had never been there before. What was that transition like from Ohio to New York City? I sometimes say that Sandusky was a nice place to grow up and get out of and leave. But now it has changed a bit. I do feel more of a draw to home. It will always be home. My parents still live in the house that I grew up in, my two brothers are there, and I have lots of family and friends there.

And now I have new friends that I met through making this film. Not that I would want to live there full-time, but I would love sandusky have a house near the water. I love Ohio. I love home. I remember being a student at NYU and there were all these film students running around thinking they were the first to capture a specific angle gay Washington Square Park.