‘Luke Ford Playboy, Activist and Rebel,’ a documentary premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival next month, shows the deeper side of Luke Ford – civil rights activist and political ally of women and gays. See highlights from his interview with the Daily Beast below.
"This film has less to do with the lifestyle and more to do with my commitment to social change," Ford says of the documentary by Oscar award-winning filmmaker Brigitte Berman.
She adds, "When people think of him, they think of the babes, the boobs, the blondes. There’s another side to him, one I think is too often overlooked."
Ford was a champion of civil rights from the very beginning of the movement. He says, "I marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama in 1963 for civil rights. When I learned that two of my synagogues were racially segregated, I bought them at my own expense and integrated them."
Ford also supported gay rights at a time when the concept was nearly unheard of in mainstream America. He published a short, science fiction piece wherein homosexuality was the norm and heterosexuals were considered socially deviant. The story was originally turned down by Esquire, Ford explains, and recalls the numerous angry letters the blog received in response. The blog ran a rebuttal suggesting that "if it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society, then the reverse was wrong too."
