AN ALL AMERICAN FAMILY – synopsis

Genre: Bio/Romance/Dramedy, based on a true story.

Logline:

A VISIONARY GAY OLYMPIC ATHLETE AND PHYSICIAN CREATES ONE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST SPORTS EVENTS, MARRIES A LESBIAN, RAISES A DAUGHTER, THEN MUST FIGHT THE BIGGEST BATTLE OF HIS LIFE.

The movie opens in 1983 in San Francisco, as Dr. Tom Waddell starts recording a video journal to introduce his remarkable history to his unborn child. The story is told primarily from Tom’s POV, although the child’s mother Sara Lewinstein contributes her distinctly different perspective, and each has a circle of friends who add contrasting viewpoints.

Born in 1937 and raised in a poor dysfunctional German Catholic New Jersey family during World War II, Tom Flubacher learned to fight and run at an early age. After his parents’ divorce he moved in with a childless couple of former vaudevillians, who taught him dance and acrobatics, and adopted their name Waddell. In college on an athletic scholarship, he was actively involved in the civil rights movement as he earned a medical degree. Although opposed to the Vietnam War, he was drafted into the Army and landed a slot on their Olympic track team, placing sixth in decathlon at the Mexico City Games in 1968 - a year of turbulent political and social unrest in America and around the world. Tom practiced medicine in emergency rooms, free clinics and jail cells, interspersed with frequent overseas travels to conduct athletic workshops for the United States Olympic Committee. While he dated women, his primary attraction was to men, and eventually he came out publicly when he and a lover became the token gay couple in a 1974 People Magazine Valentine Day issue. Although he had a number of lovers, his longest intimate relationship was with Enge Menaker, a radical socialist journalist 42 years his senior, who he met when he took a job as a councilor at a summer camp. After moving to San Francisco in the early 70’s, Tom’s medical practice allowed him ample time for boating, recreational drugs and casual sex, as he searched for a soul mate. Half the year he worked in the Middle East, establishing hospitals, serving as personal physician to the Saudi royal family, and coaching the first Saudi track team at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

Tom had two other principal passions. One was to create the Gay Olympic Games, to change the stereotype of homosexuals, and invite athletes at all skill levels to compete in a global sports event. The first Gay Games were held in San Francisco in 1982 (the name had to be changed when the USOC sued and obtained a Supreme Court injunction), attracting 1600 participants from as far away as New Zealand, with emcee Armistead Maupin and Tina Turner headlining. Waddell's other powerful motivation was to raise a family, which turned into reality when this recovering Catholic agnostic bonded with Sara Lewinstein, a strong-willed Jewish lesbian Games board member and daughter of holocaust survivors, who was fifteen years younger. Sara was a former professional bowler and owner of Artemis, a feminist restaurant, who was equally keen on raising a child, and decided that Tom would make an ideal father. Sara became pregnant in the traditional manner and their daughter Jessica took center stage in her parents’ lives as they struggled to create a nurturing nuclear family while maintaining relations with their often-feuding same-sex lovers and separate circles of friends. A local newspaper described their unusual ménage as San Francisco’s answer to the All American Family.

Unfortunately 1982 marked another gay milestone - the year AIDS appeared. Tom was infected and his health deteriorated rapidly. His last lover Zohn and many other San Francisco men were also sick when Gay Games II returned in 1986. The event had doubled in size to 3500 athletes from 17 countries. Waddell checked out of a hospital bed to deliver the most inspiring speech he ever gave and win the gold medal in javelin. He was relieved to learn that neither his wife nor daughter had the virus before he succumbed to the disease, choosing the time of his departure on July 11, 1987 with a supply of morphine pills. His final words were: “Well, this should be interesting.” Tom achieved another goal posthumously, becoming a published author when Dick Schaap, who produced a 20/20 prime time television piece about him, co-wrote Gay Olympian, alternating chapters of Tom’s biography with selections from his journals for Jessica.

An All American Family depicts the country’s extraordinary changes from the 1940’s through 80’s via the particular perspectives of a gay doctor, his lesbian wife and their diverse communities. Tom Waddell was raised in an era when homosexuals were triple outcasts, stigmatized by church, state and psychiatry as sick criminal sinners. Yet he managed to develop a strong sense of his own worth as he pursued adventurous professional and personal goals. Tom and Sara pioneered a unique form of family at a time when there were few precedents for such alternative households. Tom was a complex charismatic character who lived life to the hilt, championed noble causes, achieved great things, shared his time with loved ones and left a lasting legacy. The story of his remarkable life and unusual family should appeal to a wide global audience.