How Academy Award Winning Short ‘Trevor’ Turned the Tide of Gay Suicide
Share
The story behind the Peggy Rajski’s Academy Award-winning debut film Trevor that became the foundation of The Trevor Project is fascinating.
View this post on Instagram
The Queer Review posted on Instagram:
Ahead an airing of Trevor on @hbo in 1998, Rajski searched for an organization that young at risk viewers who identified with the central character’s experience could turn to for help. Discovering that there was no such resource led Rajski & the film’s writer @celestelecesne to found a nationwide 24-hour crisis line for LGBTQ youth, the Trevor Lifeline, which continues its invaluable work to this day as @trevorproject.
The Trevor Project Logo
The landmark Pioneers of Queer Cinema retrospective, presented by @uclaftvarchive @indiecollect & @outfest, continues in Los Angeles on Monday, March 7th at 7:30pm with a free screening of @trevorproject co-founder @peggyrajski’s darkly comic @theacademy-winning short film Trevor.
There is one filmmaker who does not identify as queer represented in the Pioneers of Queer Cinema series, included due to the incredible impact their film (and personal activism and community alliance) has made on the entire LGBTQ+ community. Peggy Rajski’s Academy Award-winning debut film Trevor is a heartfelt and straightforward dark comedy that perfectly walks a fine line between darkness and a charming story of self-realization and advocacy.
Rajski (b. 1953) and co-producer Randy Stone conceived of the short film after seeing writer and performer James Lecesne portray the Diana Ross-loving character Trevor in his one-man show Word of Mouth. The short’s eponymous protagonist is a young theater and dance-loving teenage boy who comes to the realization (much to the chagrin of everyone around him) that he is gay. The resulting constant rejection and bullying leaves him with no alternative but to seriously consider taking his life.
When Rajski and the short’s other filmmakers went to look for a LGBTQ+ youth crisis organization they could place as a referral in the film’s closing credits, they were alarmed to see that no such nationwide hotline existed. Before the HBO debut of the film in 1998, The Trevor Project was created to rectify this egregious void as the country’s first and only 24/7 crisis intervention and suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ+ youth. As discrimination, harassment and hate crimes rise due to the current political climate, the essential Trevor Project and other activist groups such as Dan Savage’s It Gets Better and the Human Rights Campaign serve a vital mission to give LGBTQ+ youth hope and show them a path forward. Peggy Rajski is currently the Dean of Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film and Television and also continues to serve on The Trevor Project’s Board of the Directors.
—Todd Wiener
