Harvey Brownstone: Without Prejudice — From Rejection to the Bench, and Beyond

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Few lives have followed a path as extraordinary as Harvey Brownstone's.

Raised in Hamilton and a graduate of Queen's University's Faculty of Law, Harvey overcame childhood bullying, family rejection, poverty, and discrimination to become Canada's first openly gay judge. During his distinguished 26-year career on the Ontario Court of Justice, he earned a reputation for compassion, innovation, and a deep commitment to making the justice system more accessible.

Today, Harvey has embarked on an entirely new chapter as host of the internationally acclaimed Harvey Brownstone Interviews, featuring conversations with some of the world's best-known entertainers, authors, and public figures.

His bestselling memoir, Without Prejudice: My Life as a Gay Judge, is an honest, often humorous, and deeply moving account of the obstacles he faced—and the people who helped him overcome them. The book has become a national bestseller and is being adapted into a Hollywood feature film.

More than a conversation about law, this is a story of resilience, kindness, humour, and the extraordinary difference that one encouraging voice can make in another person's life.

Connect with Harvey Brownstone

• YouTube: Harvey Brownstone Interviews
• Book: Without Prejudice: My Life as a Gay Judge
• Podcast: Harvey Brownstone Interviews

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Episodes also air weekly on CJAI at 101.3fm (Tue. at 4pm) 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to the Kingstonian Podcast. As we begin our tenth year, host Dave Cunningham continues his conversations with remarkable people from all walks of life, sharing stories that inform, inspire, and entertain. And now, here's the Kingstonian Dave Cunningham.

Dave 0:30

Thank you, Steve. Hello, everyone, and welcome. Harvey Brownstone became Canada's first openly gay judge, serving on the Ontario Court of Justice for more than a quarter century. Along the way, he helped shake family law, advocated for greater access to justice, and today has reinvented himself as one of the world's most successful celebrity interviewers. But none of that can be easily. In his new best-selling memoir, Without Prejudice, My Life is a Kid Gun, Harvey shares with remarkable honesty and often surprising humor that challenges the ch From being thrown out of his family home at 19 to living on welfare while pursuing his dream of becoming a lawyer. Well that taking his place on the bench and count the spot. Now in a Hollywood feature film based on his memoirs for release later this year. This is a conversation about courage, passion, perseverance, and the people who believed in one young man before he believed in himself. I'm Dave Cunningham, and this episode of the Kingstonia Podcast was recorded in July, 2026. Here is my conversation with Harvey Brownstone. Harvey, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Dave, for having me. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of different things, but let's start with this. You and your mom emigrated from France when you were three years old. So if we could step into a time machine and visit your childhood in Hamilton, which is where you ended up, what would we find? What kind of kid were you?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Well, the first thing you would have found is that I would have been living with my mom and her sister and husband and three children in a very tiny little post-war bungalow in the north end of Hamilton. We were all squeezed in there. But my mom very quickly found a way to make a living. She opened a dress shop. And so right before that happened, she met the man who became my dad. And we ended up living in a house in Burlington and then moved to Hamilton. So my childhood was actually full of love, and I was an only child. The only problem was I was extremely bullied as a kid, starting at about nine years old, grade four, I think. And uh my entire childhood, from the time I entered grade four until the time I left grade eight, was how to dodge the bullies.

Dave 3:04

Your parents were remarkable people. Sam was your dad, and he was devoted to the Jewish Community Center in Hamilton. And your mom Odette, a Holocaust survivor who built a successful fashion business as you alluded to. What did each of them teach you?

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Well, my mother certainly gave me my drive, my ambition, my self-esteem, my I think she gave me a lot of my uh quick wit and my street smarts. My dad was a social worker and he gave me my compassion and my love of community service, my empathy for people. It was a good combination of parents to have.

Dave 3:48

Your mother plays a prominent role in the book. Is there one story that perfectly captures who she was? Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

The my mother, on the day Princess Diana died, and I think I put this in my book, on the day she died, I said to my mom, Mom, did you hear Princess Diana died? Isn't that horrible? And she said, Better her than me. Pass the salt. I took my mother to Marineland once, and when she saw the sharks, she said, Do they come with fries? That was my mom. She was tough, tough, tough, unfiltered, a real survivor, resilient, unfiltered woman. That was her.

Dave 4:29

Now, as a young boy, did the law ever cross your mind, or did you envision yourself doing something else when you grew up?

SPEAKER_00 4:36

When you grew up as a Jewish kid back then, I don't know what it's like now, but back then, you were either gonna be a lawyer or a doctor. That was drummed into your head. And I think my parents figured out pretty early on that I didn't really like the sight of blood. So I was gonna be a lawyer. I had no idea what a lawyer did. We had none in our families. I didn't know anybody that was a lawyer, but I knew I was supposed to be a lawyer. And I would be told by teachers at school, you know, with that mouth of yours, you're gonna be, you'll make a great lawyer. So I just knew that that's where I had to go without knowing anything about what lawyers did.

Dave 5:17

It was preordained. Now, you uh get to Kingston and go to Queen's University to study law. Now, did you see that as a fresh start coming to university after your time in Hamilton?

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Yes, I did because I knew I needed to get away from a very overprotective mother who was really smothering me. And I knew there was something about me, my identity, that I needed to work out. I wasn't quite able to figure out exactly what was going on, but I knew I was different. I knew that I needed to get away from home long enough so that I could find discover myself. And so Kingston was the perfect place.

Dave 6:00

Now you've already alluded to this. What was it like carrying around the struggles you were having with your identity and focusing on studying law?

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Well, the identity issue started really when I was a kid being bullied for being a faggot and a queer and a sissy and a girly boy, and all of these terms I had no idea what they meant. I just knew I wasn't like other boys, and that the other kids picked up on it and were ruthlessly vicious about it. So I knew there was something different about me that people seemed to pick up on. And then when I was, I guess, 14, 15, it became clear to me that there was an attraction to other boys my age. And I knew, well, I thought at that time it was a phase. I thought it would go away because you know, in the 70s, early 70s, I didn't, nobody talked about these things. I had no idea. I thought I was the only one and that it would go away and and and everything would be fine. But when I got to Queens and realized this had not gone away, and all these other boys, I lived in residence, all these other boys who had moved away from home and were at school for the first time, you can imagine. I mean, all they thought about was sex. Often and with as many girls as they could find. That's what the mentality was like when you're 19 years old in university, away from home for the first time, and I was a fish out of water. I mean, I was I I wasn't interested in running around finding girls, and I realized by then it wasn't going to go away. So I decided to tell my parents I was gay, and then that really, of course, as you know from the book, really launched me into a crisis.

Dave 7:48

Now, how long did that conversation play in your mind, the business of sitting down and talking to your parents about the fact that you were gay?

SPEAKER_00 7:57

There was a gay group on campus called the Queen's Homophile Association, and I got my courage up one day. I saw this ad in the Queen's newspaper, this little ad for this Queen's Homophile Association. So I got my courage up and I went to a meeting, and there were about 20 people there. There were about five women, and the rest were all men. And I asked, How many of you have told your parents? And what was the reaction? And most of them had told their parents, most of them had said the reaction varied from, we already figured you out, what took you so long to tell us, to, oh my God, we're shocked, we never want to see you again. There was a whole gamut. And they convinced me that it's better to tell your parents than not tell them, because living a lie is just too complicated, it's too stressful, and ultimately you need to be yourself. So I would say over the course of about a month, those those those that early month, like the month of September at Queens, I went through that. And then in October, I went home to Hamilton for the weekend and told them. And what was that conversation like? It was worse than I could ever have imagined. I mean, I don't think back then any gay person could honestly think that their parents would be happy to hear the news, even if they already knew their child was gay. I don't know anybody whose parents celebrated it. It was something to be ashamed of and at best maybe to tolerate, but it was certainly not going to be received with good news. So I wasn't that naive. I knew they would be disappointed and uh and upset. But my mother exploded. There was a volcano coming out of her. She was uh it there's no way to describe the extent of her screaming, yelling, crying, wailing, moaning, sobbing. This went on for hours and hours. Well, the whole weekend. The whole weekend. She just could not believe that this was happening. And there was nothing I could say that would calm her down.

Dave 10:15

After your parents rejected you, life changed for you overnight. Looking back, what was the hardest part, not emotionally, but practically, as far as you were concerned, when you were back at Queens?

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Oh, finding out where to get my next meal. I mean, it was hard. It was it was really hard. I was an only child with no family and nobody to help me. And so I was I had no money. And thank God there was some help from Queens. I got a scholarship and I got on welfare, but the welfare only paid for my residence. The scholarship paid for my tuition and books, but food and clothes and any other living expenses I had to pay for myself. And that meant getting jobs. And it took me a few weeks to realize that I was much more capable than I thought at finding ways to get fed and get food and get jobs. I learned how to clean and I learned how to type. So I could type all my classmates' essays for uh 10 cents a page. And I found I dated guys that would feed me. I mean, I did what I had to do to get fed, but that was absolutely the number one priority was getting fed.

Dave 11:35

Now, somehow, despite everything, you graduated from law school, and did that earning that degree feel like crossing the finish line or just reaching the starting line?

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Oh, it was very much both. You know, getting through school, becoming a lawyer was immensely important to me because it signified that I had at least gotten through what I needed to to have a profession. So that was a finish line. I got through school, but it was also a starting line because I needed to get a job, and that became a huge challenge, despite the fact that I graduated, you know, top of my class, it was still really hard. I'm one of those people, Dave, that I've never in my life had to tell anyone I was gay. They just figured it out. And that didn't help when I'd go to job interviews. I wasn't, you know, I didn't dress inappropriately, I didn't behave flamboyantly or outrageously, but I just think my comportment, my body language, people just figured me out. And in those days, you know, we're talking 1980, that's when I graduated. And because I had such great marks, I was aiming myself for Bay Street, Toronto. That's where all the top students went. That's all I thought about. And I didn't fit in. I just didn't fit into that world of pinstripe suits and vanilla, missionary position, humorless, pointexter-y lawyers. It was just, they were wasps. They were the walking definition of wasps back then. And I just wasn't anything but. So uh it was a very, very tough struggle.

Dave 13:17

Any one of those interviews, when you think back on it today, still makes you laugh?

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Oh, all of them. Because you see, once I figured out very quickly that I wasn't gonna get the job, I I couldn't help myself. I'm a person with a wit. And I would answer. So when some guy would say to me, you know, you gotta be a real man's man to work at this firm, I couldn't help myself. I just threw my arms in the air and said, Sir, I am the very definition of a man's man. You know, and uh, I mean, these guys were so unbelievably, I don't even know if they got it, but yes, I I had fun um responding. You know, one guy said to me, you know, we have a softball team at this firm. We play baseball against the other law firms in the summer, and you don't really look like you've got uh much of a pitching arm. I said, sir, I am a much better catcher than pitcher. Well, you know, these who knows if they even got it. I mean, they probably thought a bisexual was somebody who's had sex twice.

Dave 14:24

Now, humor seems to be something that uh fits quite prominently in your book, and uh you seem to indicate that that's something you've always had, this quick wit or the ability to come back with something quite quickly. Is that something that's been a hallmark of your life all along?

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Yes, and it was uh it's not a personality characteristic in my case. I very much treated humor as a coping mechanism. If you're being bullied as a kid, you develop defense strategies to deal with the bullying. One way is to make them laugh. If they laugh with you instead of at you, you can deflect the bullying. And so I learned really, really young that being a class clown, being funny created a sense of likability. And if you can make yourself likable, you can get far. When you learn that very early in life, it stays with you and it works in jobs, it works in your career. In fact, I'm amazed to see how many people I've known who were really, really smart, but they didn't have good careers because nobody wants to work with an asshole. It doesn't, it doesn't matter if you're really, really smart, if you your personality is off-putting. You won't get the job. They don't want you around, you're not a good fit. And I learned that what I lacked in intelligence, I could make up for in humor and likability. And it worked in court, it worked when I went for jobs, not on Bay Street, not then. I used humor to defend myself from the homophobic attacks I would get. You know, when some guy said to me in an interview, Do you think you could modulate your voice to make yourself sound a little more masculine? I couldn't help myself. I said, Sir, if you rub me the right way, I can do just about anything. Now, that's humor that's not going to get me, it's not gonna make me likable and it's not gonna get me a job, but it was my way of saying, fuck off.

Dave 16:35

Yeah, exactly. In the book, you talked uh off and on about various angels who have come your way to provide you support and motivate you and that sort of thing. One such person is Rosalie Abella. Now, for those who may not know who she is or was, um, who was she?

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Oh, she's a human angel, as far as I'm concerned. I was very lucky I got a summer job as a clerk at the family court on Jarvis Street in Toronto. This is in 1979, and she I got assigned to her. She was a family court judge. She was in her early 30s, which was unheard of to be a judge that young. And she had the most refreshing personality and delivery of justice that I had ever, ever seen. She talked to people, not just the lawyers, but to the litigants, and she had the most incredible instincts and empathy. All of that made her a really terrific family court judge. And I can tell you that even then I knew this woman was going places I could never have predicted she would go to the Supreme Court of Canada because that's where she went, and that she would become an international superstar in the in the world of uh of jurists. But I knew she was very, very special and unlike the other judges there. And she took a shine to me. She saw something in me. Part of it was the humor, part of it was this vulnerability that I think I projected as a lonely outsider. You know, when you're on the outside looking in all the time, you project it, and she was astute enough to pick it up. And so she she was the first person professionally who told me I really had a future. Prior to that, most of my professors at Queens were either uh neutral uh uh uh cardboard personalities who had nothing either way to say to me, which would have been better than the few that actually did say things to me, like, Harvey, you're never gonna get a job, you're wasting your time here, doesn't matter that you're a good student, you're openly gay, no law firm's ever going to hire you. And it's a shame. That was all the always the part I couldn't stand. It's a shame, Harvey, because you're a good student. You would have made a good lawyer, but unfortunately, you chose to come out of the closet, and you're not ever going to get anywhere. And what bothered me about that is that I didn't choose to come out of the closet. I just was myself. I never made an announcement. I didn't walk around with a sign on my forehead saying, hey, everybody, I'm gay. I just was me. But they didn't understand that, that I wasn't capable of lying about who I was. Nobody would have believed me anyway, Dave. Nobody.

Dave 19:30

Now, in 1995, you were appointed as Canada's first openly gay judge. And I think you were 39 at the time. Was that the age you were? 38. 38. Did the significance of that hit you immediately or did that sink in much later?

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Oh no. Oh my God, no. It was immediate. It was immediate. To be appointed a judge at 38 years old. I wasn't appointed the way Rosie Abella was. Her appointment was very different. That had to do with the in those days, they were political appointments. And sometimes you could get appointed as young as her. But by the time I got appointed, you went through the very rigorous screening process and interview process by a committee that was established by Attorney General Ian Scott. And it was unheard of to be appointed that young. Most people were appointed in their mid-50s, mid to late 50s. So the age was a shock. And of course, because I was known to be gay, uh it was monumental.

Dave 20:27

I spent years hearing family cases. Most people think judges simply apply the law, but in reading the book, I came away thinking you saw yourself as a problem solver. Is that a fair statement?

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Yes. And I thank you for seeing that, because that's how I saw the job. I did not see the job like many of my colleagues did, which was to demonstrate their own brilliance in the law by applying legal principles to fact situations. I knew enough law to sustain decisions that would be upheld, of course. But I saw my job as a problem solver, to find a way to make the people's lives better using the law. That I got from Rosie, but that's how she felt the law should be used. It wasn't there as a scholarly exercise to demonstrate brilliance. It was there to be applied to resolve disputes. And in family court, these are very bitter, toxic disputes that had nothing to do with the law. I mean, if two people can't get along, they've had a child, they can't communicate, they can't agree on when the child's going to be with one parent and when they're going to be with another. That's not a legal problem. That's an interpersonal communication problem. You're not taught in law school how to make two people who hate each other become civilized with each other. There's no course in law school that teaches you that. Now, there's another part of family breakdown that you do learn in law school, and that has to do with division of property. Well, I never cared about that. You know, in provincial court, we didn't deal with property. We dealt with children, the best interests of children. And that was what interested me more. Because quite frankly, if two people who are divorcing can't agree on financial division of matrimonial property, if they want to fight over $99 lawn furniture that they could replace at Walmart, and they want to spend thousands and thousands of dollars fighting over the valuation of some of some asset, which is only going to make their lawyers richer, great. Go at it. But that's not what interested me. I cared about the children.

Dave 22:44

Speaking of children, there is a story in the book that's a very moving story. It's the conversation with a child in your chambers. Can you tell us what happened in that particular episode and uh why it has stayed with you?

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Well, that was one of many, many cases I had where parents could not agree on custody. And that's very tragic because children then get caught up in a tug of war, a conflict of loyalties between their parents. That's why I wrote my first book, Tug of War, which was all about that. And uh, in this particular case that I chose to write about, the parents brought the child to court. Now that's something you should never do. I mean, why would you take your child out of school and expose them to your arguing and your fighting? I take the position, Dave, that child parents who allow their children to witness themselves fighting and arguing are committing child abuse because a child is at risk of emotional harm when they see the people that they love fighting and arguing over them. Anyway, this particular couple brought the child to court because the child had told each of them that he wanted to live with them. Well, of course he did. Children tell their parents what they think they want to hear to shut them up and to get the pressure off of them. I wasn't surprised that each parent was telling me that the child wanted to live with them, but the parents kept saying, you've got to meet with this child because he'll tell you. He'll tell you he wants to live with me. And then, of course, the other parents said, No, he won't. He'll tell you that he wants to live with me. And even though I explained to them that that's normal, that of course the child's telling you each what you want to hear, but that's not the way we decide custody. We don't make children choose. And sometimes I used to say to parents, just so you know, if parents had more than one child, I would say, Well, can you tell me which one you love the most? And they would always say, Well, no, I love all my children equally. And I'd say, No, but if I made you tell me which child do you love the most, can you tell me? No, no, no, of course I can't, and that I can't do it. And then I would say, Well, you're expecting your child to tell me which parent they love the most. You, you're the adults, and you can't even tell me which child you love the most, but you expect your child to do it. And even that didn't work with this particular couple. And so I did meet with the child, Kevin, and he stunned me by saying he wished he was dead. I said, Why would you say such a thing? And he said, Because it's the only way my parents are ever gonna stop fighting is if I die. And I said, Kevin, you listen to me carefully. Your parents aren't fighting about you, they're fighting because they hurt each other. And even, God forbid, if you were gone, they would find something else to fight about. And that seemed to calm him down. And I read the riot act to the parents when I went back into the courtroom and I told them that if this continued, this kind of horrible stress they were placing on this child, I was going to put the child in foster care. That's the thing that parents don't understand. When you fight over custody, the judge is not required to choose option A, mother, or option B, father. There's a third option. If a judge decides that neither parent is a suitable parent, the judge can involve the Children's Aid Society and place that child in foster care. And it was only when I threatened that that things calmed down. And Kevin, who wrote me a lovely letter sometime later, told me that he was going to become a lawyer because he'd been so impressed by the experience he'd had in my chambers and in the courtroom. And uh I guess it was about 12 years after that, maybe 10 years after, I was invited to his graduation from law school.

Dave 26:44

That's an incredible story. When you decided to retire, you didn't go quietly. In the book, you talk about Canada's justice system, and he didn't pull any punches. And was that kind of writing liberating for you?

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Oh, yes, because my first book, Tug of War, that was written in 2009, and I was still a judge, and there was only so much I could say. I couldn't say everything that I really believed about the family justice system because I would have been removed. As it was, the daggers were out when I wrote Tug of War, because it's just unheard of for a judge, not only back then, but even now, for a judge to write a book aimed at the public. There are judges who've written textbooks in law schools, but not a book designed for the public. So I said what I could in Tug of War, but when I retired and I was no longer shackled by the muzzle of judicial restraint, then of course I said everything I wanted to say, not only about family court, but criminal court. It was very liberating.

Dave 27:47

Any particular issue from amongst those you were dealing with that so you can focus on for a bit?

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Well, in family court, and I think I've touched on this, the adversarial system in family court is not conducive to making peace. And parents who are at war with each other over their children need to make peace because they're going to need to be in each other's lives for what 20 years? I mean, I used to tell parents of young kids, you know, you're going to be walking that child down the aisle in 10 or 15 years. You've got to be able to get along. You've got to. And family court is designed in an adversarial process. There's winners and there's losers, but in family court, there are no winners. There's only losers, degrees of losing. And the biggest losers are the children. And I really believe that when parents are fighting over their kids and their kids are caught in the middle, that's not a legal issue. It's a healthcare issue because we're dealing with the best interests of children. And I think family court should be completely re-engineered. Parents who are stuck and fixated on how hurt and betrayed and angry they are need counseling just as much as they need legal advice. And on the criminal court side, what I wanted to convey to the public, which just everybody in the system knows, believe me, everyone knows this is the elephant in the room at every conversation, at judges' conferences and at criminal law conferences, everywhere. And that is that we waste a whole lot of money prosecuting mentally ill people and people with substance abuse, and none of what we do works. Putting them in jail does not work, it just warehouses people. If you've got a mental health problem, you need mental health services. You may need medication, you may need ongoing counseling and treatment. If you are a substance abuser and you're committing one crime after another to support your drug habit, rehab is what you need. And the money that we spend prosecuting, incarcerating these people could be much better spent. And everybody knows it. I just don't know why I seem to be the only judge or retired judge who has the guts to say it.

Dave 30:09

Now, on the fun side, when most people retire, they take up a sport or take take up an activity, and golf is one of them. Fishing could be another. And I did the same sort of thing, and I'm not good at either one of those either. Uh, you built one of the most uh famous celebrity interview shows, and I'd like to know where that idea came from, given your background.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

I was a talk show junkie, Dave. I grew up in love with talk shows. I spent hours in front of the TV watching Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas and Johnny Carson and Barbara Walters and David Frost and all those people, except that I kept saying to myself, I could do it better. They're not asking the right questions, they're not following up on something the guests said. I want to get to know who these celebrities are. I'm really stuck on Hollywood and pop culture, and I want to know more about this celebrity at the end of the interview than I knew at the beginning. And I don't. I'm better than them. I know I'm better than them. So if I'd had my druthers, I would have pursued a career in show business as a celebrity interviewer. But after I told my parents I was gay, I had disappointed them so much, I just couldn't put the final nail in the coffin and say, and by the way, I'm going to go to Hollywood and try to become a talk show host. I figured they would have died if I'd done that. So I decided to put aside my aspirations and go to law school because number one, I had been told my whole life I would have been a good lawyer. Number two, I needed a profession that I could prove to my parents that I could be somebody and that they wouldn't have to be so ashamed of me. And I knew that if I went to school and got a diploma as a lawyer, I could probably make a living at it and be successful. But when I retired, then I thought, okay, now I can do what I really have wanted to do my whole life, which is try to be a celebrity interviewer. Of course, the problem was I was in Canada, I had no show business experience, no Hollywood connections, no idea how to find these stars and get them to agree to let me interview them, but I was gonna try.

Dave 32:26

I went to your website and looked at the list of people that you've interviewed, and I was just amazed. You were scrolling and scrolling and scrolling to see all the names of those individuals and people like Burton Cummings and the actor Robert Wagner and some of the children of various celebrities. How did you get eventually make that connection and get a hold of these people?

SPEAKER_00 32:45

Well, that's the $64 million question that everybody wants to know. How the heck did you get these stars to come on your show? Well, the answer is I decided to use the fact that I had been a judge as a hook. And so I wrote to the managers, the agents, the publicists of all of the stars I liked that I'd wanted to interview. And I said to them, I'm a retired judge. I know how to do my research, I know how to ask questions. I've been interviewing people my whole life, but it was in a courtroom. If you could just give me a chance, I promise you, I will interview your client better than anybody ever has. And it took three or four months, and then little by little by little, stars started saying yes, because I think they were curious. And then these managers and agents were very happy because their clients were happy with the interviews, and they started talking. And then the celebrities started talking to each other. And I started getting people like Robert Wagner saying, Listen, you're really good. Like, who else do you want? Tell me who you want, I'll get them for you. And that happened a lot. And then it really took off because once you start getting a few big names, and then you get more big names, and then you start getting a big audience. And then in my case, we got picked up for television in the UK, then it really, really took off. So I'm very grateful that I was able to be the retired judge because that really was what made me unique in this interviewing world.

Dave 34:24

Referrals are always the best way to build a business, that's for sure. Any particular favorite that you have talked to so far?

SPEAKER_00 34:32

Well, that's really hard. I mean, certainly the ones that I've made an emotional connection with. I think, but and you're such a good interviewer, Dave, you know that the ones that stick in your memory and in your heart are the ones where you feel like you made a friend. As the interview was happening, you could feel this friendship developing. And that has, I'm very fortunate because that's happened to me. Well, Robert Wagner was the first one who's become a very dear friend. We speak at least twice a month. Uh, he's a lovely guy. Uh Tony Orlando broke down and cried during my interview with him, and that took me by shock. I was only just being Harvey and running through many highlights of his career, but he was so impressed that I had researched his career that well, and that I was treating him like a real celebrity when he had felt that the media had treated him like a bit of a bubblegum singer. He didn't feel like he was taken seriously as an artist. And we became very close friends. And because he broke down and cried during the interview, it went viral. I mean, I was just, we were hit with tens of thousands of people begging me to have him come back because they wanted more. And he did. Three weeks later, he came back. So that's one of my favorites, the the two Tony Orlando interviews. I would say that uh some of my other favorites, William H. Macy, uh Diane Cannon, Robbie Benson, uh, Lewis Gossett Jr. chose me to give him his very last interview before he passed away. We just recently lost Peebo Bryson. I did one of his last interviews, probably his last in-depth interview. I did uh a wonderful interview with Marie Osmond, who's very careful about who she gives interviews to. But I have to say, my number one favorite would be Dick Cavot because he was my all-time favorite interviewer. He came out of retirement at 90 years old to come on my show and basically pass the torch to me. It was a moment that is like one of the top three moments of my life. So that's my all-time favorite, was Dick Cavot.

Dave 36:43

I watched that interview with Dick Cavot. You did a great job on that. And you could see that he was enjoying himself when you were talking to him. That was great.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

Oh, thank you, Dave. Thank you so much.

Dave 36:52

For those people who are listening to this, I'm going to post some connection points that you can make in the liner notes so that you can go to YouTube where a lot of these interviews are, or your website, but we'll put that in the liner notes so people can follow up. Something not in the book, but maybe as a result of it, as a movie that's coming out. And we can't talk too much about the movie, but I'd like to know where the movie concept for you started. How did that come about?

SPEAKER_00 37:20

Well, I can tell you nobody's more surprised than me. I wrote the book in a cinematic way, if that makes any sense. I visualized everything that happened to me because I made myself go back there. When I was writing the book, I really transported myself back there. And so I described it as if it was a movie. And I remember my publisher saying, you know, this is a very cinematic story. And I thought, well, I've had a lot of directors on my show. I know a lot of people in Hollywood. There's a particular director that's been on my show three times. His name is Shane Stanley. He's been on three times to promote his own movies. And I like him, and I think he liked me. We'd never met, but I felt that he liked me. So I sent him the manuscript for the book right as right away, right after I wrote it. And he and I said to him, If you have time to read this book, could you tell me whether you see a movie here? And if so, who should I send it to to make the movie? Well, two days later, he phoned me and said, Harvey, not only is there a movie here, I'm making it. Well, I couldn't believe it. I said, What? I said, You make, you know, he made the gridiron gang and he's done a whole lot of action movies. I said, but this isn't your type of movie at all. And he says, it is now. He said, You watch me fly. I'm gonna make this movie and it's gonna be huge. Well, that was in May 2025. Believe it or not, Dave, in October 2025, he had the financing, he had it, the screenplay written, he had it cast, he had all the locations, and we were filming. And the movie finished filming the end of November of 2025. It's unheard of for a book, for a movie to be finished before the book is even released. But that's what happened in this case, and the movie will be premiering in the fall of 2026, and it will end up on a major streaming platform in uh early 2027. And um, I'm very excited about it. I I was on set for the whole 35 days. I was there are three actors that play Harvey. There's the little boy that gets bullied, there's Harvey the law student and young lawyer. He's played by David Mazoous, who starred in a TV show called Gotham. He played the young Batman, Bruce Wayne. And Harvey the Judge is played by David Arquette. And you were involved all the way through.

Dave 39:49

Isn't that pretty quick for a movie to be made?

SPEAKER_00 39:51

Well, it's a two-hour movie. A 35-day shoot is pretty for this kind of movie. I mean, it's a 50-year period piece, yeah, but it's not a movie with a lot of special effects. I think that's a pretty standard length of time. 35 days. I'm told that's a I mean, we worked really hard, I'll tell you. We filmed like nine scenes a day. There's no, you know, it's a very efficient process, but fascinating. And I had a lot of conversations with the actors to assist them in being me. And it was uh very surreal. Have you seen the finished product? I sure have. And let me tell you, well, there have been test screenings, that's what they do in Hollywood, and I can tell you that not only I, but everybody who's seen this movie is saying it's uh it's a three-hanky film. It's it's not I mean, I've seen every gay movie ever made, but this there's never been a story about a a lawyer who takes on the justice system and then reinvents himself as a talk show host. This isn't Brokeback Mountain. This is a real story about real people.

Dave 41:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

Uh and it packs a huge emotional punch. Final question.

Dave 41:06

If that frightened 19-year-old standing outside his parents' house with nowhere to go, could see you today, a best-selling author, celebrated interviewer, a trail-blazing judge, and now the subject of a feature film, what do you think he'd say?

SPEAKER_00 41:22

I don't think honestly, I I don't think I would have believed it. I think that I knew I was going to make it. That I knew when I was 19 because I channeled all of the heartbreak and the pain and the disappointment caused by my parents' reaction. I channeled and harnessed all of that into fierce ambition. I was angry. I was an angry 19-year-old because I knew that they shouldn't be ashamed of me, that I was gonna be somebody. I didn't know how or in what way or when, but I knew even if I had to go and sell shoes in a department store, I was gonna be something. I was gonna be something they wouldn't have to be ashamed of. So if I had been told back then, you know, you're gonna be a judge, and and you're and then you're gonna go on and have this second career. No, I would have said, I can't see how that could happen. Because I remember Rosie Gabella telling me, Harvey, you're gonna be a judge one day. And I thought, I don't even know if I'm gonna get a law firm to ever hire me. And you're talking me about being a judge. Like I thought that was just very kind of her, but it seemed completely unreachable, unreasonable. But I knew I'd be something that I was gonna succeed. I had seen other kids my age who told their parents they were gay, and then they channeled all of that heartbreak into self-loathing. They self-medicated with drugs and alcohol, and and some even committed suicide. And I certainly considered it myself. I knew I wasn't gonna do that. I was not going to turn it into self-hatred, I was gonna be a success. But if you had told me that I was going to do all the things you mentioned, Dave, I would have said that that didn't seem possible. But then again, you know, if you had told me, even when I became a judge at 38 years old in 1995, if you had said to me, you know, one day gay people are gonna be allowed to get married and have children, I would have said you were crazy. So things have really changed, and it hasn't taken that long.

Dave 43:42

Harvey, I want to thank you very much for your time today. I've enjoyed the conversation and all the best with the book and the film.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Well, Dave, it's been an absolute pleasure. You're just the best interviewer. Your questions are so profound and well researched, and I so appreciate the interest you've taken in me, and thank you for having me on your show.

Dave 44:00

Take care. Harvey's memoir, Without Prejudice, My Life as a Gay Judge, is available wherever books are sold. And if you haven't yet discovered Harvey Brownstone interviews, you'll find fascinating conversations with hundreds of actors, musicians, authors, and other remarkable guests on YouTube and podcast platforms. My thanks once again to Harvey Brownstone. As always, thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and consider rating and subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. It helps others discover the show. This episode was recorded in July of 2026. I'll be back soon with another conversation.

SPEAKER_01 44:41

The theme music for the Kingstonian Podcast is Stasis Oasis, written and performed by Kingston Resident Tim Aylesworth. We'd love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions, and guest suggestions to the KingstonianPodcast at gmail.com. And follow the podcast on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads. Episodes are hosted by Dave Cunningham, produced and recorded by Kingston Ontario.