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Theres all kinds of people in this world who are gay that are in every kind of profession that you can think of, he remembers saying to the boy. You can do anything you want to do if you put your mind to it. The encouragement worked. The teen decided to live.
Maybe the best proof of a documentarys success lies in how it changes the people who watch it. Hurley, directed by Derek Dodge and produced by Greys Anatomy alum and racing enthusiast Patrick Dempsey, has that transformative power. So does Haywoods wisdom. Granted, its easier being out in 2019 than it was in the 1970s and 1980s. Grant also that getting Hurley made even 10 years ago would have posed a greater challenge than getting it made today.
Thats certainly Haywoods thought, and hes the authority: Hes the winner of five Rolex 24 at Daytona endurance races, three 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance races, and two 12 Hours of Sebring endurance races, and he achieved these successes among many others as a gay man working within one of the most macho businesses on the planet.
Not that his sexual orientation ever held him back: I've been racing for over 40 years, says Haywood, speaking about the film as well as his career in a recent interview with Mens Health. Most people in the industry, I mean team owners and co-drivers, have known my sexuality and that's never been necessarily a problem. He cites one unnamed driver out of hundreds who refused to drive with him, but thats it. Maybe hes lucky. Anyone born during or after that time frame might be surprised to learn that the racing world accepted him at all, though perhaps acceptance comes more readily to those gifted enough to rise to the top of the field. LGBTQ acceptance today is a head and shoulders improvement over the acceptance given to LGBTQ communities decades ago, though there's still a ways to go.
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Haywood expresses some doubt that making Hurley in 2009 would have been as easy as making it in 2019 (rather 2014, when Dodge approached Dempsey to ask his assistance in getting the film into production). It was difficult for people to come out 10 years ago or 15 years ago, Haywood explains, and it's easier for them to come out now because I think America has sort of grown and has been a much more accepting a country.
The movies, in Haywoods estimation, are a powerful tool for conveying a message and for changing hearts and minds. You might not agree today about the rights of the LGBT community, says Haywood, but maybe after you see the film, you might say, Maybe I misjudged these people and what these people can do. As far as Americas come in the last decade, the country has a ways to go yet; perhaps Hurley can help Americans walk that road. True, Hurley is one movie, and its a bit much to expect one movie to remedy ingrained anti-gay prejudice in the United States. But if the movie changes one persons mind, maybe its done its job.
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If so, the good news is that, prior to being made available to stream on demand as of 03/26, the films already doing that job. There was something really wonderful that happened in a screening the other night, says Dempsey, who, like Haywood, gave his time to Mens Health to discuss Hurley, where a man came up to me and said, Look, I've always really had a hard time with homosexuality, and I really didn't want to hear about this story, but I've come out of the screening in a way where I'm have much better understanding, much more of an appreciation for who he is as a man and what he's been going through.
For Dempsey and Haywood, thats the best reason for making Hurley: Creating space for compassion, both for LGBTQ Americans and for men wrestling with mental health, which turns Hurley into a movie about suicide prevention and masculine identity writ large. Hurley contrasts Haywood with his co-driver and friend, Peter Gregg, who took his own life in 1980; Haywood believes, rightly, that one way to prevent suicide is to talk about behavioral health and mental health.
If you say to somebody, I've got a mental health problem, they immediately are turned off by that, he says. Like you're weak or there's something horribly wrong with you. But mental health has all kinds of different stages, and it's the same thing with the LGBTQ community. As Dempsey sees it, theres a lack of empathy for members of that community and for those burdened by mental health issues: Everybody has their cross to bear, or their pain, he says, and we need to be understanding of that, and tolerant.
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Its touching that each man sees the other as an ally for championing that tolerance. Their partnership on Hurley makes perfect sense given that, as Dempsey points out, theyve known each other for a long time: Ive been racing now for over 10 years, he says, and [Haywood] was always in the paddock and he was always someone who was forthcoming with advice and support for me as a driver. In that respect, Hurley feels like Dempseys attempt at giving back to Haywood for his mentorship and friendship, something Haywood himself appears to recognize. Much as he values cinema, he doubly values people like Dempsey standing up and saying, We need to have dialogue about subjects that are important to people.
The keyword there is dialogue, which Dempsey himself uses to describe his definition of success for the film. But dialogue is a tricky phrase. Whenever public figures talk about having a dialogue, the dialogue tends to stop as soon as it starts, as if simply suggesting a dialogue is the same thing as actually having a dialogue. For Dempsey, that dynamic is a sign of increased hyper-partisanship in the U.S., where politicians inhabit such extremes that they wont work together. If were so polarized, nothing will happen, Dempsey asserts, and its profoundly damaging to our society, because you have to have compassion and empathy for the person that you may not agree with.
Maybe bridging that widening social divide is Dempseys barrier, as Haywood puts it. Everybody in life has a barrier that they have to knock down, he says. I don't care what kind of business you're in and what you do, there is a barrier that stands in front of you. And if you're not willing to knock that barrier down, or at least try to knock it down, then you're at fault. For Haywood, that barrier was racing, and the pressure to perform back when he was starting out; he had to show everybody how good he was (and for that matter, how good he still is) and prove himself their equal on the track. And he did, and in so doing, he knocked down barriers not only for himself, but for others. Working with Dempsey on Hurley, he might well knock down new barriers.
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