“There’s this misperception about gay men that they are soft, weak, feminine – and some may be, and that’s fine – but there’s a huge range, just like any group.”īut not only do these guys love to play ball, they’re good at it. There’s this misperception that we have – that I had – when straight people think of gay men… there is an immediate feminizing of them and that feminizing is a very dangerous quality,” Greenleaf says. “There was a moment of shock because it wasn’t something I had awareness about. He said yes because they were good, and he wanted to play football with these guys. He didn’t know they were a gay team until they asked him to quarterback for them.
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Greenleaf, who is straight, stumbled upon a Warriors practice in the park one day and wanted to play with them. “I don’t even remember our championship run because I was so invested in winning and proving to myself that I was somehow different because I was ‘a good gay athlete.'”ĭavis met Greenleaf, who directed and produced the film, playing together on the NYC team. “When I joined in 2005 or 2006, I still had yet to wrestle with or interrogate what it meant to be a gay man who… loved sports,” he says. He led the Warrior to three straight Gay Bowl championships after joining the league, but it’s mostly a blur for him. I mean, I was a former NFL player and I knew it was a gay league, but that was all ego and me not really having enough experience to realize that gay men, women, trans folks can play sports and actually be really good at it.” But Davis says that when he got to the practice, “I walked out onto the field and saw all these gay men playing football and I fell in love with them immediately.” For him, the league gave him a safe haven to “interrogate my own ideas of femininity and masculinity and internalized homophobia,” but that didn’t happen for Davis right away. “He told me to come to a practice and, for lack of a better word, ‘try out’ for the team,” says Davis. He says the football league was the first group of gay men he met, thanks to a relationship he had built with Zeigler after sending him an email. The Private Lives of Liza Minnelli (The Rainbow Ends Here)ĭavis moved to New York City after his NFL career ended following a knee injury, with the goal of being able to come out and live openly as a gay man. It’s a rivalry story that’s made for the movies, so i’’s fitting that it has become one. team is led by Cyd Zeigler, founder of both the NGFFL and the website Outsports, as well as a former member of the Warriors. The New York team is captained by former NFL player Wade Davis, Jr., the most high profile player the league has. The film spends most of its time focused on two teams, arguably the best teams in the NGFFL: the New York Warriors and the L.A. Seth Greenleaf’s film adds nuance and depth to the idea of what it looks like to be a gay man, and an athlete. It’s a film that shatters stereotypes about both athletes and gay men, and gives the world an image of gay men that has never really been showcased before.
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It’s a film that seeks to tell a story about athletes – these particular athletes – and the personal sacrifices they’ve made to be able to play the sport they love.
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A new documentary, F(l)ag Football, takes viewers inside the world of the National Gay Flag Football League as 26 teams from around the country fight for the title of Gay Bowl Champions.