Awards

• Commended for Lambda Literary Awards (Gay Memoir/Biography) 2012

Overview

Celluloid Activist is the biography of gay-rights giant Vito Russo, the man who wrote The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, commonly regarded as the foundational text of gay and lesbian film studies and one of the first to be widely read. But Russo was much more than a pioneering journalist and author. A founding member of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and cofounder of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), Russo lived at the center of the most important gay cultural turning points in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. His life as a cultural Zelig intersects a crucial period of social change, and in some ways his story becomes the story of a developing gay revolution in America. A frequent participant at “zaps” and an organizer of Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) cabarets and dances—which gave the New York gay and lesbian community its first social alternative to Mafia-owned bars—Russo made his most enduring contribution to the GAA with his marshaling of “Movie Nights,” the forerunners to his worldwide Celluloid Closet lecture tours that gave gay audiences their first community forum for the dissection of gay imagery in mainstream film. Biographer Michael Schiavi unravels Vito Russo’s fascinating life story, from his childhood in East Harlem to his own heartbreaking experiences with HIV/AIDS. Drawing on archival materials, unpublished letters and journals, and more than two hundred interviews, including conversations with a range of Russo’s friends and family from brother Charlie Russo to comedian Lily Tomlin to pioneering activist and playwright Larry Kramer, Celluloid Activist provides an unprecedented portrait of a man who defined gay-rights and AIDS activism.

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9780299282301

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Reviews

<p> My dear friend, Vito Russo, was a darling and a daring man; more important, he was a giant in the fields of gay and AIDS activism. In Celluloid Activist , Michael Schiavi recounts Vito's full life, starting with a New York childhood that Martin Scorsese might have written, through Vito's penning of the indispensable Celluloid Closet , the first major study of gays and lesbians in film, and finally through Vito's tireless work as an AIDS activist. All this, plus a look at Vito up a tree (literally) at the Stonewall Riots! Celluloid Activist is a long-overdue examination of a man who helped put gay rights on the map. In the words of Edith Ann, one of Vito's other good buddies, 'And that's the truth-h-h-h!' --Lily Tomlin

<p> My dear friend, Vito Russo, was a darling and a daring man; more importantly, he was a giant in the fields of gay and AIDS activism. In Celluloid Activist , Michael Schiavi recounts Vito's full life, starting with a New York childhood that Martin Scorsese might have written, through Vito's penning of the indispensable Celluloid Closet , the first major study of gays and lesbians in film, and finally through Vito's tireless work as an AIDS activist. All this, plus a look at Vito up a tree (literally) at the Stonewall Riots! Celluloid Activist is a long-overdue examination of a man who helped put gay rights on the map. In the words of Edith Ann, one of Vito's other good buddies, 'And that's the truth-h-h-h!' --Lily Tomlin

Schiavi is thorough and compelling both in bringing this complex character to life and in delineating the people and events that shaped him. Highly Recommended. CHOICE

<p> A dynamic, emotional, and fascinating look at the life of the spellbinding gay activist Vito Russo. --Craig Zadan, producer of Chicago and Hairspray

Author Information

Michael Schiavi is associate professor of English and coordinator of English as a second language at New York Institute of Technology's Manhattan campus. His articles have appeared in Cinema Journal, Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, and College Literature.

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