Celluloid Heroes Never Die :: Vito Russo Doc Premieres on HBO

The catalogue of Buffalo Bill’s various effemera includes:
"His miniature poodle named Precious, his chiffon scarves, his made-up
face, his nipple ring, and his murdered boyfriend." Art history
professor Douglas Crimp then sums the tranny psycho killer of Jonathan
Demme’s 1991 Oscar-winning film thusly: "Maybe these features don’t have
to add up to a homophobic stereotype with the complex alignments of
sexuality and pathology represented in ’The Silence of the Lambs,’ but
they most certainly do within the history of their deployment by
Hollywood, the history Vito Russo wrote."

The half-dozen high
school students’ at Gramercy Park’s School of the Future eyes have
glazed over and they are staring at me blankly. I look back down at my
notes. There’s no more spit left in my mouth. Bryan Currie, who manages
Live Out Loud’s youth programming, has asked me to prepare 20 minutes on
a queer activist for the fourth chapter in Live Out Loud’s after-school
programming entitled "Our Story Is Your Story: Exploring LGBTQ
History." He’s nodding vigorously just beyond our circle of chairs,
either ignoring or oblivious to the fact that I’m bombing in front of
the School of the Future’s gay/straight alliance.

"Most of these
kids were born in the mid-90s," echoes in my head from a preparatory
phone call Bryan and I had a few days before the speaking engagement.
The troika of films I want to talk to them about today--’Silence of the
Lambs’, ’Philadelphia’ and ’Cruising’--are like activist Vito Russo’s
greatest hits, all films he had a major beef with and organized protests
against, but they were all released well before these kids were even
born.

Common ground

Panicked,
I decide to back out of my material and course correct slightly. By a
show of hands, none of these kids has even heard of, much less seen, any
of the films I’d planned to address. Finally, mercifully, a sharp kid
with a magenta streak in his hair gives me the patented, Hannibal
Lecter, "pfff-pfff-pfff." We have at last found the common ground
between a group of high school students born in 1996 and a gay activist
and author who died in 1990.

Finding common ground was something
that Vito Russo was particularly adept at, as detailed in Jeffrey
Schwarz new documentary called "Vito: The Life of Gay Activist Vito Russo" which premieres on HBO on Monday night after a successful run on the
film festival gauntlet. Witness Russo corralling his pal Bette Midler to
Washington Square to reunite the crowd after a 1973 gay pride rally
turned contentious in the many, excellent archival assets this film
employs. Bette sings "Friends," natch.

Spirit still there

The
first thing Schwarz does last fall after his film spools for press at
the 29th annual New York Film Festival is thank the lady who signs his
checks. "I want to thank HBO documentary films and Sheila Nevins in
particular," Schwarz says, "they have history with Vito. They were the
network that produced ’Common Threads’ which won the Oscar in 1991 and
featured Vito. They were also the network behind ’The Celluloid Closet,’
which was a documentary made out of Vito’s work." All of the events
Schwarz mentions happened after Russo passed.

"The first phone
call I made was to Rob Epstein," Schwarz continues of the genesis of
’Vito,’ "he made ’Common Threads’ with Jeff Friedman and also ’The
Celluloid Closet,’ we were very close friends. I had worked on ’The
Celluloid Closet,’ it was my first job in the movie industry as an
intern. When Sheila Nevins green-lit it, they hired me as an apprentice,
so I had a really good relationship with Rob and that’s when I got to
know Vito. He’d just passed away, but his spirit was still there. I had
access to all Vito’s research materials so I was able to listen to audio
tapes of all these interviews he did for the book, extended interviews,
so I learned about his activism."

"The motivation," Schwarz
continues, "besides wanting to tell Vito’s story, was to tell a larger
tale about the LGBT civil rights movement from the dark days of
pre-Stonewall era through gay liberation and the gay community’s
emergence from invisibility to visibility and all the history of the
AIDS crisis and ACT-UP. It was a way in. Every single step of the way,
Vito was there. Our editor tried to find the balance between Vito’s
personal history and this very vast, epic tale. Our first cut was about
three hours."

"We could make one hundred documentaries about Vito
and the gay civil rights movement," editor Philip Harrison adds, "there
were so many stories that we couldn’t tell, but hopefully they’ll be
available on the DVD. It was a matter of combing through the material
and stay ground emotionally through the stories that were being told."

Not about outing

Unfortunately,
one of the stories the film does tell is not actually factual. It
asserts that Lily Tomlin, a friend of Vito’s who narrated and also
executive produced ’The Celluloid Closet’ after his death, came out of
the closet in the 1970s. Of all of the astute talking heads the film
corrals, including Tomlin herself, the filmmaker chooses activist and
former sex-worker Richard Berkowitz to corroborate the claim. His
credentials appear to be nothing more than hard-core Lily fanboy. But to
what end: putting the film in line with that other HBO documentary
whose cred hinges on Tomlin’s stated sexual preference?

Almost
twenty years ago, when Rob Epstein and Jeff Friedman took the same stage
to talk about their posthumous film adaptation of Russo’s ’The
Celluloid Closet,’ they were asked the same question point-blank. "The
film is not about outing," was Epstein’s response, "but about the
evolution of gay stereotypes in Hollywood movies. We just found
Armistead Maupin’s telling of the story irresistible. Harvey Fierstein
presents himself as gay. People here are either gay, or not; they simply
have an insider’s--or incisive--knowledge about the productions they’re
talking about."

Out in the ’70s?

A
few months later, I run into Maupin at the 24th annual Lambda Literary
Awards where Olympia Dukakis is bestowing one of Lambda’s Pioneer awards
upon him. The publicist for the event squirrels us into the gift bag
room for a quick chat. Maupin, like Tomlin, is also credited with
narration on the film, but admits his role was to actually write her
lines.

"I know he and Lily were very close," Maupin says of
Tomlin and Russo, "but I couldn’t comment on their relationship. I
didn’t know Lily at all except for the few times that I dealt with her
when we were doing the dialogue. We lived in different cities for the
most part."

"No, she wasn’t," is how Maupin answers the direct
question of whether or not Tomlin was out in the 70s. "I got into a fair
amount of trouble in the 90s when I said that I wish she were more open
when she made the film, but that’s long gone and she’s, you know, out
now. I know that Vito wanted her to be more open. I can tell you that.
He was asked that question often in public appearances in San Francisco
and I think it troubled him a little bit that she wasn’t more open, but
she certainly went to bat for the film and I know she did that out of
love for Vito."

The right thing to do

"I
think she gave him a great deal of support," Maupin replies when asked
if Tomlin could be classified as Russo’s benefactress, "I didn’t know
their relationship, but from everything I gathered from him and
elsewhere, they were good friends and he really valued their friendship.
Like a lot of us who are openly gay, we have a point when we have to
confront our friends who aren’t and say, ’I think this would be the
right thing to do.’ Ian McKellan came to me in ’88 and asked me if I
thought he should be out of the closet and I said, ’You know the answer
to that question already.’ And he proceeded to come out shortly
thereafter.

"We all need that support from someone," Maupin
continues, "and I’d like to think that when Lily finally made that full
step, and I don’t know that she said it so many words, but it’s always
been about her and Jane and she’s always been celebrated by the
community because privately everyone knew that she was gay. I knew a lot
of folks who approached her all wide-eyed about appearing on their gay
and lesbian calendar and it was politely declined."

The institutionalized closet

When
asked what Russo would be on about if he were standing in the gift bag
room with us, Maupin replies, "I think he’d still be grumpy about the
way the closet is completely institutionalized. There’s a lot of folks
in the closet who go to the GLAAD Awards. They think that’s going to
keep the heat off them. And much of the money-making side of Hollywood
is still telling young actors to keep quiet about it. Money will always
drive the industry and money will always say you can’t be gay."

"My
only response to that," Maupin continues, "is you cannot be in the
closet and continue to be happy. There are a lot of blazing examples of
that right now. John Travolta must look at people like Neil Patrick
Harris and think I could have had that life. I could have been singing
and dancing and being celebrated for who I am and not be victimized by
the gossip press and the last guy that gave me a massage."

"I say
that out complete sympathy for people who find themselves in that
situation," Maupin asserts, "I’m not questioning the reality of anyone’s
love. It’s perfectly possible to marry someone you love a great deal
and do it because you want to have children and love that person, but if
you are being secretive about the gay life, it’s not going to remain
hidden in this world, it can’t be any more."

The morality of outing

"There
was a case in the New York press just recently," Maupin adds, "in which
it was ruled that it is no longer slanderous to call someone gay. I’ve
been waiting for that case for thirty years. Many years ago I wrote a
piece of the L.A. Times and I said something to the effect that gay
people can just as easily resemble Richard Chamberlain as they could
resemble Richard Simmons and the L.A. Times said I couldn’t run it
because it was slanderous to Richard Chamberlain. My response to that
was I did not call anyone gay as an accusation. It’s a matter of fact or
belief, but as long as it continues to be legally an accusation, we
will continue to be second class citizens."

It’s a legal issue
Russo confronts directly in the introduction to his book "The Celluloid
Closet," writing that movie-goers ought to "be aware of the sexuality of
gay actors just as it is aware of the heterosexuality of the majority. I
do not believe that such a discussion is nobody’s business, nor do I
believe that it is one of a sexual and therefore private nature.
Discussing such things in a book without the knowledge or consent of the
people in question is, alas, immoral and libelous. It is immoral
because unless people by their own choice come out of the closet, the
announcement is valueless; it is libelous because such information has
been known to destroy people’s lives. Some of us will change that in
time."

"The fact of our lives has to be just as ordinary as
anyone else’s," Maupin sums, "we’re not there yet, but we will be
eventually. And Vito fought for that on the ground level and in the
streets. He was up on a platform shaking his fist. His greatest gift
will always be an intellectual one because he changed the way people
think. Vito changed so much about the way everyone looks at the cliches
that we were saddled with. He educated the film world from the ground
up. Once you realize that, like a lot of minorities, we were always
depicted as either clowns or killers, that changed things right there."

PC-images required?

Back
at the School of the Future, the students of the GSA have perked up.
We’re discussing Russo’s critique of the gay killer and how that trope
was turned on its head by what film critic B. Ruby Rich dubbed "new
queer cinema" in 1992, two years after Russo’s death. It’s hard to tell
if the students are impressed by the subversion or just excited that
guns have been introduced into our discussion. Either way, they are
alert and happy to be discussing the gun-toting, HIV-positive Thelma and
Louise at the center of Greg Araki’s "The Living End" and Tom Kalin’s
film "Swoon" which is based on the notorious queer killers Leopold and
Loeb who murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in a case that coined the
term "thrill kill."

"One of the questions last night," Tom Kalin
says over breakfast at the Provincetown International Film Festival last
month, "is was is it responsible in this day and age of trying to get
trying to get equality of marriage and all the rest to have a
representation of a couple who were also murders, a negative
representation that can cause damage?"

It’s a question he got
used to answering when "Swoon" debuted, but one that surprised him after
the 20th anniversary screening in Provincetown. "We should have the
right as queer filmmakers to make a film noir if we want to that shows
dark obsession between these characters that leads to murder and know
that that’s not going to topple homosexuality or say something us that
can be withstood," Kalin asserts.

A little Vito story

"Vito
is thanked in the credits of my movie," is his response to how Russo
would have felt about new queer cinema re-appropriating the gay killer,
"he embraced me through my entire career in the most unbelievably
generous way. I was making this AIDS video, the first piece of work I’m
known for, called ’They Are Lost to Vision Altogether.’ And Vito was the
source of a lot of footage. Without blinking, he gave the three-quarter
original sources masters and said, ’Do what you want.’ And later, in
showing that piece, I noticed in a clip of a Bette Davis movie, and
there was Vito in the darkness whispering dialogue line by line. So we
were in contact. He did not see a completed version of ’Swoon,’ but he
knew what I was up to and understood it, I think. I stand on his
shoulders."

I’ll tell a little Vito story," Kalin continues, "in
Homewood, Illinois, where I grew up I went to the public library to
check books out every week because I was a book worm. When I was ten or
eleven, I got up the nerve to look in the old wooden card catalog and
typed out I found the header ’Homosexual.’ And the only card in that
section was one that said, ’Russo, Vito.’ And there was a book, but it
was kept behind the desk because it was a homosexual book. I did not
have the nerve or the ability at age eleven to get it. I told that story
to Vito when I met him and his response was, ’That’s nice, dear.’"