My hometown of Seattle marked its modern debut in 1962, when the World’s Fair gave it the iconic Space Needle. It was also a city of corruption and secrets, when cops took bribes to tolerate vice, and people then called “queer” feared for their lives.

Update: My screenplay, “The Red Feather,” was named a quarter-finalist in this year’s Big Break screenplay competition.

My hometown of Seattle marked its modern debut in 1962, when a World’s Fair gave it the iconic Space Needle. It was also a city of corruption and secrets, when cops took bribes to tolerate vice, and people then called “queer” feared for their lives. My screenplay, The Red Feather, captures a moment when today’s progress was barely a dream.

I researched this script more than usual. Two books became core sources. The first is Vice Patrol: Cops, Courts, and the Struggle over Urban Gay Life before Stonewall, by Harvard professor Anna Lvovsky, who recounts the legal suppression of homosexuality in the United States from the second half of the nineteenth century through the 1970s. Police departments across the country, including Seattle, enforced state laws that forbade bars and taverns from serving alcohol to “deviants,” which led to raids on establishments that catered to gays, lesbians, and other marginalized groups.

Modern queer story origins

Police also enforced anti-sodomy laws with sting operations designed to nick men seeking casual or anonymous sexual encounters in public places, including bathrooms. Though the Stonewall Riot in New York is recounted in the media regularly, most of the history of legal suppression is forgotten, despite its drama, tragedy and hypocrisy. It’s rarely told on film, apart from a few documentaries.

The second book is On the Take: From Petty Crooks to Presidents, by the late William J. Chambliss, a professor of sociology at the University of Delaware. The book tells the story of a half-remembered period in Seattle history of deep corruption in the city’s police department, when dozens of officers took payoffs to protect illegal businesses, especially in the city’s Pioneer Square district. The book gets into fascinating, cinematic details reminiscent of classic crime movies, such as Chinatown and L.A. Confidential. The payoff system, which went all the way to the police chief, broke up in the early 1970s, when the local media took off their blinders and voters installed a reformist county prosecutor.

Synopsis: ‘The Red Feather’

I combined these two threads – the oppression of gays and police payoffs – into a single story that examines how these activities affect a street cop and his family. Here’s the logline: In 1962, a homicide detective re-assigned to a vice unit targeting gay men finds rampant corruption and unearths a conspiracy to hide his brother’s murder.

Here’s the first part of the synopsis.

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Randall “Randy” Spring, an off-duty homicide detective, and his wife Judy, visit the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. Randy refuses an offer of free tickets, saying he doesn’t like such perks. While they enjoy a show, Tom Pepper, a costumer, is attacked and killed backstage by an unknown assailant. Noticing the commotion, Randy goes to the crime scene. He finds a red feather, a popular decoration in a man’s hat. He is assigned the case.

A year later, he’s made little progress. He’s contacted by Chris Stanley, an ambitious young deputy prosecutor. After Randy meets Chris in his mememto-filled office, Chris takes Randy to a local bar, where Randy witnesses a payoff to a policeman by the bar owner. Chris asks Randy, disgusted by the bribe, to join his investigation of police corruption. Uncertain, Randy accepts Chris’ invitation to a house party celebrating the birthday of Chris’s wife, Sandra. Randy meets Jack Sharp, the detective in charge of the city’s vice unit. The guests include Randy’s brother George and his fiance, Melanie. Returning home, Randy and Judy hear George and Mel having sex in the spare bedroom.

Having decided to join Chris’s anti-corruption probe, Randy joins a raid on a cabaret frequented by homosexuals. A female impersonator entertains the crowd when the police arrive and destroy the bar for failing to pay protection money. Meanwhile, Chris is warned off his investigation by the county prosecutor and a local hood. Later, Judy, Sandra, Mel, and Dorothy Sharp, Jack’s wife, visit a high-end department store to look at wedding dresses for Mel. Sandra gets upset, and confesses that she and her husband Chris have stopped having sex. He might be having an affair, but a divorce is unthinkable.

Randy visits several downtown bars and amusement parlors collecting cash payoffs. Jack Sharp assigns him to a new project, a sting against illegal solicitation and lewd conduct in a local park. During the sting, George is arrested. Randy is shocked; he has no idea his brother is gay. Randy confronts George in jail, but he asks Chris to go easy on him. Chris obliges, and the charges are dropped. Despite this, George’s name is published in the newspaper. He loses his job and his fiance, who feels betrayed. Randy urges George to lay low, but after George vanishes, Randy learns that he’s been killed.

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