Out Spoken: A Vito Russo Reader, Reel Two

By Vito Russo

Now assembled as a special two-volume edition for the very first time, A Vito Russo Reader is a companion piece to VITO, the highly-acclaimed new HBO documentary by filmmaker Jeffrey Schwarz.

Reel Two contains the segments: Politics and Power, Out Takes, I'll Take Manhattan and Postscripts (with writing by Larry Kramer, Anne Russo and Assotto Saint).

From the rough-and-tumble beginnings of the gay and lesbian movement in New York City in the late-1960s, A Vito Russo Reader travels through the excitement and discovery, turmoil and tragedy that engrossed the next two decades -- until Vito's death from AIDS in 1990.

These books, like the film, bear witness to the makings of a remarkable man.

Michelangelo Signorile: "What an amazing collection! A riveting ride through some of the most fascinating, exciting and harrowing times in gay history. Vito Russo's sharp eye, deep love of gay people, and unbridled passion for writing about gay culture light up every page... He is an icon for generations to come."

Lily Tomlin: "Vito was one of the dearest and most adorable friends I ever had. He was also a ferocious truth seeker. I am grateful to have this collection of his writings. Reading Vito's interview with me was a loving and eye-opening visit with my own consciousness - almost four decades later."

Michael Musto: "Vito Russo was an incisive film historian, a fiery activist, and a sweet gentle guy. All his textures are beautifully captured in these collected works, which reinforce his standing as a literate provocateur who helped create the modern gay movement."

• Language: English
• Publisher: White Crane Books
• Release date: Aug 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301741908

Vito Russo

Vito Russo was a movie critic and film reviewer in American gay culture in the 1970s and 80s.

Book preview

Out Spoken

A Vito Russo Reader

Reel Two

Edited by Jeffrey Schwarz

with Bo Young and Mark Thompson

Published by White Crane Books at Smashwords

Copyright © 2012 Jeffrey Schwarz and White Crane Institute

Copyright © 2012 Jeffrey Schwarz and White Crane Institute

Cover design © 2012 by White Crane Institute.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

White Crane Institute / White Crane Books

First edition, first printing: July 2012

ISBN-13 978-1-938246-02-9

ISBN-10 1-938246-02-0

Editor: Jeffrey Schwarz

with Bo Young and Mark Thompson

Associate Editor: Delia Avila

Cover Design: Scott Grossman

Book Design and Production: Toby Johnson

Frontispiece: Howard Cruse

Section Introductions: Mark Thompson

Back Cover Photo: Lee Snyder

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012937091

~~~

Contents

Title Page

Table of Contents

Remembering Vito Russo: An Appreciation

by Arnie Kantrowitz

I. Politics and Power

Bella, Bella, Bella!

Jerry Rubin Grows Up

Lenny Bloom: The Plausible Gay

David B. Goodstein

The Scaring of America

On Gay Conferences

Park Gang: We Hate Fags!

Still Outlaws

Why I’m Not Marching

II. Out Takes

The Enemy Sleeps in the Next Bunk

They’re Writing Movies of Love But Not for Us

Failure in Film

Poor Reception for Gay Television

Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives

Cruising: The Controversy Continues

Making Love

All Male Cast: Gay Films on Videocassette

Splicing Frames from the Life of William S. Burroughs

Gay Documentaries Restore the Past, Create the Future

A State of Being

Liz: From Eddie to Avery Fisher

Doña Herlinda and Her Son

New Rock Hudson Bios Reveal Empty Illusions

Gleefully, Gruesomely, Joe Orton

Visions of Our Lives at San Francisco Gay Film Festival

From Rebel Art to Claptrap: The Year in Review

III. I’ll Take Manhattan

The Village

Camp

Fire Island

Midnight Shift

It’s the Entertainment Liberation Front

Poor Judy

Simple Genius: A Critical Appreciation of Mae West

Why Is Leather Like Ethel Merman?

Wanna Dance? Get Wrecked to the Ass!

TOSOS: The Other Side of Silence

A Problematic Sign of the Times

That Certain Summer

A Trip Back in Time

Miss M. at Philharmonic Hall

Onstage or Off: I’m Straight!

I’m Really Quite Fond of You Boys

That Twinkle in the Eye Awareness

It’s Spring! Who Do I Hate?

Tubshit: A Parade of Tight Asses

Confessions of the Last Rose of Summer

States of Desire

Michael Musto: He Covers the Glamour Front

IV. The Final Reel

Profile of an Epidemic

Michael Callen: Singing From a Purple Heart

Coming Out as a PWA to One’s Family

Why We Fight

V. Post Scripts

We Killed Vito by Larry Kramer

VIVA VITO by Anne Russo

RERUN by Assotto Saint

Acknowledgments

Remembering Vito Russo

An Appreciation by Arnie Kantrowitz

White Crane Journal — 2007

I dreamed about him again last night. It’s been more than sixteen years since he died, but still he is a part of my every day. Vito Russo was the most life-loving person I ever knew, and it’s not like him to let a little thing like death stand in his way. In this dream he had just opened a fabulous new restaurant, and people of every sort were there while he hospitably nodded and conversed — a glass in one hand, a cigarette in the other — gliding through the crowd in a black and white caftan. Vito loved to entertain as many guests as he could crowd into his small apartment. He mixed doctors and film critics, academics and street drag queens, lesbian activists and society matrons, and everyone had a good time.

Whenever I ride down Manhattan’s Ninth Avenue, as I pass Twenty-Fourth Street, I look at the building on the northwest corner and remember entering it to the smell of the superintendent’s cat box and climbing up the well-worn stairs to knock on Vito’s door. There was a sort of magic inside, but it was certainly no Disneyland; it was a working-class place, which Vito had dolled up by redecorating along with each new man in a successive line of boyfriends, but whatever changes he made—repainting, refurnishing, even tearing down walls — a picture of his beloved Judy Garland remained in every room.

His kitchen — he loved to cook — was spare, but boasted a collection of French copper pots and a few discreetly placed mousetraps. His bedroom, which had room for little beside its large platform bed, opened onto his narrow office space, where he worked on his many essays and film reviews, along with his masterpiece on gays in film, The Celluloid Closet. (His original title was Gays In/At the Movies until a calmer head prevailed.) His living room was dominated by a movie screen, permanently affixed to a wall. He owned a small collection of feature films and Judy Garland television specials transferred to film, and a reel of Bette Midler at the Continental Baths. But he borrowed and traded films and always had something new to project when company came, which was most of the time.

He employed his sparkling charisma to excite anticipation in his visitors about whatever he was going to show because he loved to watch people watching movies. His favorite film was Caged, featuring Eleanor Parker as a naïve young newcomer to a women’s prison who catches the eye of lesbian Lee Patrick and grows into a hard-bitten ex-con. He loved its opening words: Pile out, you tramps. It’s the end of the line. And he loved the comeuppance of Hope Emerson, the sadistic matron who ends up with a fork stuck in her breast. He had a predilection for films featuring noble women or African-Americans, gay themes, or camp, which I think he took quite seriously, but he was at home with all movies, doting on a message, a performance, a plot twist, or a significant moment. Those moments — sharp dialogue, covert glances, bits of action — collected since he was a boy, had laid the foundation for his encyclopedic knowledge of film.

Not long after he arrived in New York and secured a job as a waiter at the Omnibus restaurant in Greenwich Village, the gay liberation movement exploded in the wake of the Stonewall riots. Just before the end of 1969, a small group of twelve activists split off from the Marxist-oriented Gay Liberation Front to form the more reform-minded, militant, but non-violent Gay Activists Alliance, and soon I was swept up in the movement. A few weeks later, a new friend told me, There’s a guy you absolutely have to meet, and we went to the Omnibus for dinner. Vito joined the new group immediately, and in short order, he and I and the organization’s president, Jim Owles, were friends for life.

The gay Zeitgeist of the early 1970s was focused on visibility. It created a binary division of straight and gay for political purposes. Of course, some of us knew from our own experience that sexuality is malleable, but we had chosen the model of a pluralistic political minority, containing middle-t4elclass white boys, black drag queens, Asians and Latins from Manhattan and the outer boroughs, macho leathermen and lesbians bent on self-determination. We were seeking equal rights as a voting bloc, and in the name of identity politics, as it came to be known, everyone was either gay or straight and either in or out of the closet. Bisexuals (though many were among us) were considered semi-closeted gays, and sleeping with the opposite sex was looked on as a form of treason. When academics began to question the validity of that worldview and spin post-modern theories about the meaning of desire and what that meaning means, Vito had little patience for such ivory tower pursuits.

Vito’s roots as a gay activist informed his criticism of film. For him the questions were about fairness and accuracy, more political than aesthetic issues. Here is an excerpt from a speech he gave at Yale University in 1987:

"I am no longer interested in whether there is a gay sensibility but rather in exploring what that sensibility is and how we perceive it. I have had the electrifying experience at the movies of being moved by the filmmaker…If one asks a lesbian or a gay man who was twenty years old in the 1930’s what they saw when they saw Queen Christina or Gilda or The Maltese Falcon, they will say they saw ‘something gay’ but thought no one else saw it…With the visibility of gay people in a textual, open sense, we gain something and we lose something. We lose that sense of belonging to a secret world to which no one else has access. What we gain in the specificity of the new cinema — especially independent cinema — is the reality that fourteen year old gay kids in Tulsa will be able to go to movies and not have the idea that they’re the only ones in the world who are gay."

Vito began to compile a list of films that concerned lesbian and gay people. He began to lecture on the subject at gay organizations until he decided that his work needed to become a book. There were already a couple of books on the subject, Parker Tyler’s Screening the Sexes, for one, but Vito had a much larger project in mind. He would catalogue the entire history of gay images in, or suggested in films, both American and foreign, and trace their evolution. We spent the summer of 1975 on Fire Island in a house we named The Way We Are. Every morning I would sit down at my portable typewriter and get to work on my autobiography, Under the Rainbow, and he would sit, staring at his typewriter for a couple of hours, then give up and go out to play.

By the end of summer it was clear that he had a mountain of research to do, so that fall, he began to haunt libraries and museums, watching reel after reel of film for nearly three years, until he was satisfied. Then he was able to write, but it took over two more years, and lots of my encouragement. We loved to fantasize that we would wind up like Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins, who play two novelists left alone together on New Year’s Eve, toasting with champagne glasses at the end of Old Acquaintance, but we always argued about which of us was Bette.

The Celluloid Closet finally came out in 1981, followed by a second edition in 1987. The book was greeted with applause and admiration, and Vito became famous. Eventually he spoke at nearly two hundred universities, colleges and museums, and even on gay cruises. To accompany his talks, he showed film clips, which he had gathered with or without permission from the studios, but the more famous he got, the more careful he had to be. It was hard to keep in touch with him as he traveled across America to Europe, Australia, and South America, staying for days in some places and months in others.

Life was not much fun in the 1980s. The shadow of AIDS hovered over all of us, and Vito, who had more friends than anyone I ever met, was forced to enter death after death in his journals. Finally, in 1985, he himself was diagnosed with Kaposi’s sarcoma. We were miserable, but we were also concerned about the ugly images of gay people with AIDS in the tabloid press. Even The New York Times ran an evocation of Auschwitz by William Buckley, calling for those with AIDS to be tattooed. Later that year, Vito and Jim Owles and I joined five others to form GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Again we took to the streets, beginning with a demonstration against the gay-baiting New York Post at which we piled rags on their doorstep to tell them what we thought their newspaper was. Vito was fighting the same battle he had fought over film. As activists, we did our work for free. When ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) was formed, he became one of its most vocal members, sitting in on strategy sessions, going to demonstrations and conferences, and making fiery speeches.

Vito had grown friendly with celebrities Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, both of whom were able to help him. In his AIDS work, he also got to know Elizabeth Taylor, but he had become a celebrity in his own right. His friend Alan Sawyer recalls telling someone that he had just been with Vito and Ms. Taylor. The excited reply was, You know Vito Russo? His family appreciated his importance to the gay community when he was asked to emcee the New York Gay Men’s Chorus in its tribute to music from films on the stage of Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. It was a triumphant moment, one of many. He was given award after award, a whole box full, but by this time he was being plagued with bouts of pneumocystis pneumonia and a host of other AIDS-related infections

Despite his flagging strength, he was able to teach two courses at the University of California at Santa Cruz: one in the history of gay liberation, and one on gays in film. He received dozens of bouquets from his students at the end of the semester. Back in New York, he grew weaker still, but he was able to stand on a balcony overlooking his last Gay Pride march while thousands of people chanted his name and yelled, We love you! at him. For his last public appearance, he insisted on checking out from the hospital to deliver a talk at the gay and lesbian film festival. He got a standing ovation.

Now he is gone, but his work remains alive. A few years after his death, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman — winners of an Academy Award for Common Threads, a film on the AIDS quilt, which featured Vito — made a film version of The Celluloid Closet. It premiered at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, where Annie Russo proudly stood to acknowledge the applause for her son’s achievements.

What Vito wanted was a cinema in which gay and lesbian people could appear without their sexuality being the subject. Vito taught gays to look into the mirror of film, to see their distorted on-screen history, and to demand more true-to-life portrayals.

Vito Russo’s perceptions were born of his experience and the time in which he lived. New times will generate new theories, built on the work that went before. Once the political effort to make ourselves acceptably visible becomes taken for granted, gay men and lesbians may no longer look at movies through the same lens. The issues and understandings of the future are something for the next generation to decide. I only hope another Vito Russo comes along to inspire them.

Politics and Power

Vito was never just a movie-struck kid, another anonymous face in a darkened room. He was vibrant and alive, on the streets, seemingly every day and in every way. There were few places – mental, physical, social – he did not go. His journalistic interests were as wide-opened as his inquiring mind.

This next section reflects those ambitions well. He was a committed journalist, all right, but a political activist of the first rank as well. These pieces reflect the diversity of his approach to the political life — people always first, and then the consequences, helpful and dire, they might leave behind them.

We start with a series of interviews: the always colorful and forward-thinking doyenne of New York politics, Bella Abzug. Then a remarkably personal conversation with former Yippie Jerry Rubin. Lengthy profiles on post-Stonewall Manhattan politico Lenny Bloom and publisher David B. Goodstein typifies the new breed of savvy gay movers-and shakers that were emerging in cities across America by the mid-1970s.

Vito takes a more personal turn in his writing when he confronts the powers elite in fiery attacks on The National Endowment for the Arts, the editors of the Village Voice, and CBS News. If we cannot find truthful representations of our gay and lesbian lives in places like these, he suggests, why not take matters into our own hands? And thus he traverses the nation visiting the growing league of solely gay-created community conferences.

He then takes us on the scene of a brutal hate crime in the Bronx, and continues with a searing personal history of his own. With irony and some dread, he notes that along with heightened gay visibility and cultural assimilation at decades end comes increased anti-gay violence nationwide.

But I’ll take my chances, he declares. If they are going to get me, it’ll be because I’m exactly what they think I am. ...I remember The Stonewall. They’re around every corner. But finally, as to be expected of Vito, he has the last word about it all.

Bella, Bella, Bella!

The Advocate —April 23, 1975

It was spring of 1970 when I got my first good look at Bella Abzug in a crowded, smoky hall on Ninth Avenue in New York City. The occasion was her first appearance at the then-flourishing Gay Activists Alliance weekly meeting. It was five years ago. It might as well be a million.

It was a time when people believed that the Village Voice was the liberal bastion of the East Coast; when the phrase power to the people didn’t sound like part of the nostalgia craze; when the gay liberation movement in New York City was alive and kicking and all you had to do was look crooked at a gay man or woman and there we were by the hundreds, lining the sidewalks and shouting. They were exciting days filled with mischief and hard work, victory and defeat and hope…hope that we could carve a new world for ourselves.

Bella was part of the dream. She fed it. It was the first time a politician had come to a gay meeting. Politicians had double-talked us for years and here was this woman coming to us! She entered the room, her face framed by a large purple hat, and shook hands and laughed her way down the aisle to the platform. She spoke of the dream inside us and told us that is wasn’t a dream. She promised to help us make it a reality.

She did help us. She was at the forefront in the struggle for gay rights as she was among the first against the war in Vietnam and for impeachment. She took unpopular stands with a fervor unmatched in our dull and predictable political time.

Five years later, many things have changed, but not Bella. She is still battling and still believes, despite Nixon and Watergate, despite Gerald Ford and the FBI, that there is hope for our nation and its people.

Still first on controversial issues, still wearing her distinctive broad-brimmed hats and still mixing humor with devastating political commentary, she is one of a kind—-a fighter and a champion. It is 1975 and Bella Abzug has introduced, for the second time, a gay rights bill in Congress.

Bella spends only one day a week in New York and her press secretary, Harold Holtzer, immediately agrees to an interview for The Advocate, mentioning that he’d seen pieces on Bella in it before.

When I arrive, she sits behind her desk in her office, a coat over her brown and white print dress, the inevitable hat a wide-brimmed beige. She spots the camera around Eric Jacob’s neck and smiles as she takes off her coat.

Well, Bella, since this is for The Advocate, suppose we begin by discussing the gay rights bill in Congress. What do you think its chances are and how long before something substantial happens?

Well, the important thing is that I had introduced it earlier and I had just two or three co-sponsors at the most. This time I’ve got twenty-three and I expect to have more. There seems to be, therefore, a greater willingness to deal with the subject. They’ve been unwilling to deal with this for quite a while. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to press for some kind of hearings within this session of Congress. I’ve talked to a couple of my co-sponsors and we’re planning to prepare a letter now to urge the chairman of the committee to hold hearings, which I think must be the next step. I think there are chances for that.

Realistically, what are the chances this time around? Do you think it will go well?

No, I think that this is the kind of legislation that takes a considerable amount of education, a considerable amount of dialogue, of discussion among legislators, people in the public arena, gay people and people who are their supporters. I have previously had the occasion to introduce legislation which was considered rather…well, you know — not within the realm of majority support. I have found that it’s an educational process. The introduction of the bill, a statement as to why this legislation is necessary, highlighting the problem, beginning to create a focus on it in legislative terms is one of the ways we can develop public opinion. It’s not the only way, but it’s one of the ways.

A lot of gay people are disappointed that the only supporters at present are from New York and California.

And Philadelphia.

Yes, well, the coast cities. I wonder if you have any indication of what the best area would be for gay people to concentrate their efforts?

Well, I think the issue, frankly, is one of having to come to grips with the reality that many members of Congress are just thus far not willing to face it. I don’t have to tell you and I’ve told any number of people that in their vicinity there are gay communities and it seems to me that they should look into that.

Would it help for gay people in various areas of the country to contact their representatives at this point to make them aware that they do indeed have gay constituents?

Absolutely! The most important thing. To have mail and even to arrange to talk to them if possible and make them aware of what the problems are. A dialogue. An education. A letter. [Her voice rises and her manner is urgent now, as she speaks about the lack of understanding.] So that it becomes something which is not, you know, remote. Which is what I think most members of congress feel it is — remote. It has nothing to do with them. They have nothing to do with this issue. That is the way they feel about it.

I wonder if I can ask you what your reaction was when your former campaign manager, Doug Ireland, came out as a gay person while he was working for you?

[She is a little surprised at the question and smiles.] Well, I never, ah…generally speaking I think that we all know that there are many more people coming out and taking their position, making it clear. So to me — it’s not an unusual event, is what I’m saying. It’s an event which is going on now as part of history; this is a person wanting to say something about himself which increases his identity.

Things are changing quite a bit, but do you think they have changed enough to enable a member of Congress, for instance, to come out publicly?

That’s very interesting, you know. I never thought about it in terms of the House, per se, but after all, we know that Elaine Nobel got elected in Massachusetts after making her positions clear.

Yes, but she was elected on an openly gay platform.

You mean, someone elected already. I feel that there would be a lot of dependence on the way that individual had functioned in office. In other words, if a person generally had a lot of respect by the public for his or her performance, activity, ability and so on, I think it would go a long way towards enabling that person to stand up. I don’t say that there wouldn’t be problems. It would create problems and some people might be hesitant. It would take an enormous amount of education. [She has been thinking about this fact as she speaks as she breaks into a little smile.] It would be a very fascinating and interesting occasion.

But I don’t know…I think that if there were a person who had a good track record, there would be a shot…a good shot a being returned. Then maybe I’m being more than…well, you know, we’ve never dealt with an situation where there’s been a disclosure subsequent to the member of Congress being elected. I think the greater factor would be the lack of preparedness for acceptance. They’re not prepared. Take the average community across the country. What’s the preparation that’s taken place for a thing like this? Not a lot, right? So this is the problem. It would take an enormous effort, I think, to describe it. But if you had a good track record on people’s issues in general, I think there would be a shot. But it would be different.

There was a controversy in Denver earlier this year over Country Clerk Clela Rorex’s decision to marry gay couples. Also, she was being accused of promoting lesbianism by anti-women people because she is involved with NOW. What is your reaction to these is issues?

Yes, I read about this. It’s not uncommon in terms of the women’s movement. Anti-women groups and groups against freedom of all minorities have attempted to suggest that any women who are interested in independence or liberation are lesbian. People in public office have told me that they have heard people say this about women who run for office. It is regarded as a method by opposition to taint, because they believe that this is unpopular, to be gay, and not acceptable. It’s a scare tactic, that’s all. And it’s not a new one. As far as gay marriages go, I find her interpretation of the law very interesting. I think it varies from state to state but it’s a very important question. I’m a realist. We know that there are gay marriages. I believe that our lives, our laws, our practices and our culture should reflect our reality. Now, since we know that there are gay unions which take place, people must deal with the fact that this is a way in which two people are working together in a partnership and if they choose to live together and have the benefit of marital vows, then society has to face it and resolve it. Because our laws were built around concepts which didn’t take these developments into consideration, we have to change them.

Do you get verbal abuse from your colleagues about your support of unpopular issues?

Well, in the beginning there was a little skepticism. There were many issues like this one which I supported to which they reacted pretty verbally. When I talked about impeachment as early as I did they used to say SHHHH…Don’t talk about it! When I kept bringing up the Vietnam War in the Democratic Caucus month after month they used to say I would wear out my welcome. On this subject, the gay bill, I’d say there are a few people who are taking a lot of interest and others, well they’re just not taking it seriously yet, I’m sorry to say. It’s still, among some members of Congress, an issue of some embarrassment, hesitation, self-consciousness. It confuses them. What I have always tried to do when the subject comes up is make clear to them that it’s an issue they should really take very seriously because there are so many gay people and I know they want to make sure that all the constituents receive equal treatment even though they may not be aware of all the problems involved. That’s why I believe that if there’s more dialogue, you can deepen the understanding. It’ll take a while though…

Do you see changes for women and gay people in film and other media?

The only thing I can say about the gay image is that we know that a lot more has been portrayed; it wasn’t so long ago that it wasn’t done at all. I’m not too sure how well it’s been done. I would say not too well from what I’ve seen. I did see one play that was sensitive to the subject recently, though.

Was that Find Your Way Home on Broadway?

Yeah, that’s what I think it was. That was great but outside of it, I can’t really focus on a movie that was done well.

Do you think women’s roles have changed?

Not enough. I feel that the image of women in theatre, film and television is still way behind what our reality is. It’s almost unbelievable that women are still portrayed as victims in television commercials. They have nervous breakdowns about the shine on their floor or the taste of their coffee and are total objects. Every commercial is directed towards a woman’s face, her body, her home, her child — nothing else. The same goes for the view of women in society. It is totally distorted. Even if they portray a working woman, she’s not like any working woman I ever met. She’s always blonde and gorgeous and I feel that this is a big, big, serious problem that we have. The media as a whole is in no way reflecting the changes which are taking place. Not that we’ve won our revolution but there are steps which have been made in economic, social and political arenas. They are nowhere to be found. It’s really quite amazing.

There’s always that discussion about gay actors who feel that they can’t come out because they have too much to lose.

Well, it’s a problem but it’s the same on all levels of society, no matter what the role is. Obviously, if society is not prepared to accept gay people then it’s a question of education and what you risk by using yourself as an example in order to educate by coming out. I think the more it’s done,