Photo by Chris Meyer IU Auditorium employee Eugene Hopkins (far right) takes tickets as the public lines up in the lobby for the premiere of Kinsey. Actress Laura Linney (left) and Bill Condon, director of Kinsey Producer Gail Mutrux (left) and Laura Linney discuss the movie Kinsey during a press conference Nov. 13. Alfred Kinsey's granddaughter, Wendy Kinsey Corning (far right), speaks with Laura Linney during the reception preceding the Bloomington premiere. Linney plays Clara Kinsey in the movie. “Have the issues of censorship and academic freedom, ignorance and fear gone away? Hardly.” —Ken Gros Louis,

The November screening was the Midwestern premiere of Kinsey, the Fox Searchlight film about the life and work of the controversial IU sex researcher, Alfred Kinsey.

More than 1,200 ticket holders packed the auditorium lobby for the Kinsey Institute fundraiser. The diverse crowd represented a wide cross-section of the IU and Bloomington communities, as faculty, staff, students, members of the Kinsey family, local business owners, couples out on the town and my son’s second-grade teacher mingled and enjoyed the refreshments provided by local eateries.

Before the house lights dimmed and opening credits rolled, Nancy Lethem, development director for the Kinsey Institute, welcomed the audience and thanked those who made the event possible, singling out actress Laura Linney, who plays Clara Kinsey in the film.

“Laura …made a Herculean effort to be here to celebrate with us tonight. She has left a relentless production and promotion schedule to fly here from Vancouver today. She will be back on the set in Vancouver tomorrow morning,” said Lethem.

Linney, who had spoken to reporters at a press conference at the Indiana Memorial Union before the screening, told the audience that her co-star, Liam Neeson, who portrays Alfred Kinsey in the film, deeply regretted not being able to attend the Bloomington premiere. “At this moment, he is stepping in front of the audience on Saturday Night Live,” Linney informed the audience.

In his eloquent opening remarks, IUB Chancellor Ken Gros Louis quoted from John Milton’s Areopagitica, a 1644 tract against censorship: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

Gros Louis recalled IU President Herman B Wells’ and the IU Board of Trustees’ defense of Kinsey’s right to do his research in the face of threats by Indiana’s governor and legislature to cut funding to the university. “Have the issues of censorship and academic freedom, ignorance and fear gone away? Hardly,” said Gros Louis, citing the outcry a decade ago against the Bloomington campus opening its Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Student Support Services Office.

Following the screening, Trevor Brown, dean of the IU School of Journalism in Bloomington, moderated a question-and-answer period with the film’s writer-director Bill Condon and Julia Heiman, director of the Kinsey Institute. Condon said that budget, casting constraints and a tight schedule necessitated the shooting of the film at New York schools rather than at IU—Fordham University for the exterior scenes and Columbia University and Bronx Community College for the lecture halls. When Brown asked him what it was like to be in Bloomington, where it all began, Condon replied: “Very strange. I found Indiana in New Jersey and Kinsey in Liam Neeson. It feels like an alternate universe to be in the real place. It’s kind of scary.”

The film received a “two thumbs up” response with Bloomington viewers, just as it has with critics. John Bodnar, chair of the IUB Department of History, said, “Kinsey really did create the public furor noted in the film, although as a historian, I have to point out that in the late ’40s and ’50s, there were many other events and issues that were pushing for a rapid change in our traditional outlooks. The film does a good job of showing how Kinsey helped to make society more tolerant of gays and lesbians but does not really explore his full impact on the heterosexual majority.”

Photographer Tyagan Miller, the Riley Lecturer at the IU School of Journalism, praised the film’s aesthetic sensibilities with a caveat: “The cinematography was beautiful. Backyard and forest paradises, hardwood and slate lecture halls, the leather and oak color palette, the haircut and bow tie—how can you find fault with the creators’ vision for the look of the film and skill in realizing it? But a Hollywood film has a way of usurping our imagination. Going forward, it will be hard to envision Kinsey without seeing Neeson.”

Wendy Kinsey Corning, a granddaughter of the Kinseys, and her mother, the Kinsey’s daughter Anne, also attended the screening. Although Corning felt somewhat uncomfortable with the film’s depiction of some of the private aspects of her grandparents’ marriage, her overall impression was favorable. “It’s necessary to look at it from different perspectives. As a film, it is beautifully made, amazingly well acted and directed. But as a story of my family, there are certainly some parts of it that I think should remain private,” she said. “The thing that was of greatest importance to my grandfather was his research. It was the driving force in his life. I was pleased to see that aspect of him treated so thoroughly in the film.”

Based on the biography, Kinsey: Sex and the Measure of All Things, by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, which was recently issued in paperback by the IU Press, Kinsey opened in theaters in New York City and Los Angeles the day before the Bloomington event and more broadly nationwide on Nov. 19.

Related stories:

Julia Heiman sets agenda for future Kinsey Institute research

What the press is saying about ‘Kinsey’

Kinsey documentary set to air on PBS in February

Kinsey Institute timeline

Facts about the film 'Kinsey'

About the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction