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  • RIP | AIDS Activist and author Larry Kramer dies, 84

    RIP | AIDS Activist and author Larry Kramer dies, 84

    One of the AIDS’ crises most outspoken advocates, Larry Kramer has died at the age of 84, his husband has confirmed.

    Larry Kramer is also famous for writing the emotional play, turned film, The Normal Heart, which documents the lives of gay men who died during the AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s.

    When the AIDS pandemic hit, the gay community was lucky to have Larry Kramer, whose editorials and plays (particularly The Normal Heart) demanded that the government take action and that gay men take responsibility for their health.

    Larry died from pneumonia, at his home in Manhattan, New York, his David Webster said.

    Embed from Getty Images

    A fascinating author and a rabble-rouser in the best sense, Kramer continues to be a vital and often infuriating presence. Kramer co-founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), in 1981, which has become the world’s largest private organization to raise funds for and provide services to people stricken with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

    Embed from Getty Images

    However, due to his confrontational style he resigned from GMHC and helped to set up ACT UP, a more direct action alternative.

    The whole traumatic period was dramatised by Kramer in his award-winning play – The Normal Heart, which was turned into a film in 2014.

    “Missed and remembered for decades to come”

    Speaking about Kramer, LGBT+ advocate, Peter Tatchell said,

    “Larry Kramer was an inspiring playwright, author and pioneering campaigner on LGBT+ and HIV issues. He helped galvanise the formation of the AIDS activist group ACT UP, which successfully challenged US government inaction and forced pharmaceutical companies to speed their efforts to research and trial treatments. He also helped establish the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, which did so much to support people living with HIV/Aids.

    “ACT UP’s efforts helped save the lives of millions of people worldwide and Larry was part of that achievement. His often angry tirades against President Reagan, the New York Times, drug corporations and the medical establishment were searing and effective. I counted him as a friend and comrade. He will be missed and remembered for decades to come.” 

  • Unsung Gay Heroes In History

    We look back into history and highlight other unsung gay men who have made an incredible different to our lives.

    Alan Turing (1912–1954)
    Alan Turing was a British pioneering computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and mathematical biologist. During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain’s code-breaking centre. For a time he led Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis and created the Turing Machine which decrypted the “unbreakable” German Enigma code. Turing’s pivotal role in cracking intercepted coded messages enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many crucial engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic. It is said by some historians that Turing’s work at Bletchley Park shortened the war by two to four years and saved approximately fourteen million to twelve million lives. Nevertheless, Turing led a sheltered and castigated life due to his homosexuality. Whilst he was briefly engaged to fellow Bletchley Park worker Joan Clarke, it was a purely plutonic relationship and they soon divorced. Turing was prosecuted by the police in 1952 for homosexual acts, when such behaviour was still criminalised in the UK. He accepted treatment with oestrogen injections (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison and became incredibly depressed. He committed suicide in 1954. Turing’s wartime heroics were not celebrated until he received an official pardon from Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009 following an internet campaign, and then a further royal pardon from Queen Elizabeth II in 2013. From 9th March, 2015, the biopic of Alan Turing’s life and heroics, THE IMITATION GAME, will become available on Blu-ray and DVD courtesy of StudioCanal.

    Bayard Rustin (1912-1987)
    Bayard Rustin was the brain behind Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement in 1960s America. Rustin was one of the driving forces behind the Congress for Racial Equality and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Most significantly, Rustin organized the 1963 March on Washington — where King gave his legendary “I have a dream” speech. However, due to his homosexuality and his membership in the Communist Party, he has often received short shrift from historians and his integral role in the civil rights movement is often overlooked. At the time, Rustin selflessly avoided the limelight because he knew that elected officials and politicians would attempt to discredit the civil rights movement by pointing out his sexual and political leanings. Rustin was also heavily involved in the anti­–Vietnam War and gay rights movements before his death in 1987.

    Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929)
    Sergei “Serge” Diaghilev was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, but also one of the first outspoken and unapologetically gay men of the early 20th century. Sergei Diaghilev reshaped that epoch’s ideas about art and performance, and was a pioneer in adapting new musical styles to modern ballet. He created the Ballets Russes mainly as a showcase for his lover and protégé Vaslav Nijinsky, who is still considered one of the greatest dancers who ever lived. Diaghilev had exquisite tastes, bringing the work of such artists as Balanchine, Picasso, Pavlova and Cocteau onto the stage in his cutting-edge productions, which were often unabashedly erotic. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Diaghilev was condemned as an especially insidious example of bourgeois decadence and his contribution to Russian art was written out of history by the Soviets for more than sixty years.

    Larry Kramer (1935-present)
    Every movement needs a voice of anger and righteousness, and when the AIDS pandemic hit, the gay community was lucky to have Larry Kramer, whose editorials and plays (particularly The Normal Heart) demanded that the government take action and that gay men take responsibility for their health. A fascinating author and a rabble-rouser in the best sense, Kramer continues to be a vital and often infuriating presence. Kramer co-founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), which has become the world’s largest private organization to raise funds for and provide services to people stricken with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

    Harvey Milk (1930–1978)
    Harvey Milk was an American politician who became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisor.
    Milk moved from New York City to settle in San Francisco in 1972 amid a migration of gay men to the Castro District. He ran unsuccessfully for political office three times. Nevertheless, his theatrical campaigns earned him increasing popularity, and Milk won a seat as a city supervisor in 1977. Milk served almost 11 months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back. Despite his short career in politics, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and a martyr in the gay community. In 2008 a Hollywood biopic Milk, starring Sean Penn, honoured Harvey Milk’s transformation of San Fransisco into a mecca for LGBT Americans and in 2009 Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

    The Imitation Game is out on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download platforms now , courtesy of StudioCanal

  • GAY HISTORY: Unsung Gay Heroes In History

    We look back into history and highlight other unsung gay men who have made an incredible different to our lives.

    Alan Turing (1912–1954)

    Alan Turing was a British pioneering computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and mathematical biologist. During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain’s code-breaking centre. For a time he led Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis and created the Turing Machine which decrypted the “unbreakable” German Enigma code. Turing’s pivotal role in cracking intercepted coded messages enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many crucial engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic. It is said by some historians that Turing’s work at Bletchley Park shortened the war by two to four years and saved approximately fourteen million to twelve million lives. Nevertheless, Turing led a sheltered and castigated life due to his homosexuality. Whilst he was briefly engaged to fellow Bletchley Park worker Joan Clarke, it was a purely plutonic relationship and they soon divorced. Turing was prosecuted by the police in 1952 for homosexual acts, when such behaviour was still criminalised in the UK. He accepted treatment with oestrogen injections (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison and became incredibly depressed. He committed suicide in 1954. Turing’s wartime heroics were not celebrated until he received an official pardon from Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009 following an internet campaign, and then a further royal pardon from Queen Elizabeth II in 2013. From 9th March, 2015, the biopic of Alan Turing’s life and heroics, THE IMITATION GAME, will become available on Blu-ray and DVD courtesy of StudioCanal.

    Bayard Rustin (1912-1987)

    Bayard Rustin was the brain behind Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement in 1960s America. Rustin was one of the driving forces behind the Congress for Racial Equality and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Most significantly, Rustin organized the 1963 March on Washington — where King gave his legendary “I have a dream” speech. However, due to his homosexuality and his membership in the Communist Party, he has often received short shrift from historians and his integral role in the civil rights movement is often overlooked. At the time, Rustin selflessly avoided the limelight because he knew that elected officials and politicians would attempt to discredit the civil rights movement by pointing out his sexual and political leanings. Rustin was also heavily involved in the anti­–Vietnam War and gay rights movements before his death in 1987.

    Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929)

    Sergei “Serge” Diaghilev was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, but also one of the first outspoken and unapologetically gay men of the early 20th century. Sergei Diaghilev reshaped that epoch’s ideas about art and performance, and was a pioneer in adapting new musical styles to modern ballet. He created the Ballets Russes mainly as a showcase for his lover and protégé Vaslav Nijinsky, who is still considered one of the greatest dancers who ever lived. Diaghilev had exquisite tastes, bringing the work of such artists as Balanchine, Picasso, Pavlova and Cocteau onto the stage in his cutting-edge productions, which were often unabashedly erotic. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Diaghilev was condemned as an especially insidious example of bourgeois decadence and his contribution to Russian art was written out of history by the Soviets for more than sixty years.

    Larry Kramer (1935-present)

    Every movement needs a voice of anger and righteousness, and when the AIDS pandemic hit, the gay community was lucky to have Larry Kramer, whose editorials and plays (particularly The Normal Heart) demanded that the government take action and that gay men take responsibility for their health. A fascinating author and a rabble-rouser in the best sense, Kramer continues to be a vital and often infuriating presence. Kramer co-founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), which has become the world’s largest private organization to raise funds for and provide services to people stricken with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

    Harvey Milk (1930–1978)

    Harvey Milk was an American politician who became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisor.

    Milk moved from New York City to settle in San Francisco in 1972 amid a migration of gay men to the Castro District. He ran unsuccessfully for political office three times. Nevertheless, his theatrical campaigns earned him increasing popularity, and Milk won a seat as a city supervisor in 1977. Milk served almost 11 months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back. Despite his short career in politics, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and a martyr in the gay community. In 2008 a Hollywood biopic Milk, starring Sean Penn, honoured Harvey Milk’s transformation of San Fransisco into a mecca for LGBT Americans and in 2009 Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

    The Imitation Game is out on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download platforms now , courtesy of StudioCanal

  • Larry Kramer To Be Honoured By Gay Mens Health Crisis

    The writer and gay activist Larry Kramer is to be honoured by Gay Men’s Health Crisis the volunteer AIDS Organisation he helped found in 1981.

    Disagreement caused by Kramer’s confrontational style, however, led to his resignation, and he left to then help set up ACT UP as a more direct action alternative. The whole traumatic period was dramatised by Kramer in his award-winning play THE NORMAL HEART that was adapted into a movie last year.

    Mr Kramer, now in very frail health, has been named the first recipient of the LARRY KRAMER ACTIVISM AWARD which GMHC has established to recognise advocates who reflect Kramer’s ‘spirit, passion and fearlessness’. GMHC co-chair Roberta Kaplan also added that it’s also an attempt ‘to bring a sense of closure and healing’ between Kramer and the group.

    80-year-old Mr Kramer is also the subject of the first ever documentary of his life ‘LARRY KRAMER: IN LOVE AND ANGER’ that premiered at Sundance recently and will be screened on HBO in the US in June and on UK TV later this year. Here’s a clip of director Jean Carlomusto discussing the film and working with the great man.

  • FILM REVIEW | The Normal Heart

    ★★★★★ | The Normal Heart
    Larry Kramer is perpetually angry. This prominent loud-mouthed writer and gay activist has been shouting out his highly personal take on some of life’s iniquities and inequalities for the past 40 years and has made himself famously unpopular.

    It was his exasperation with the apathy of the gay community when the AIDS scare first started that made him co-found the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in his living room in 1981. And it was his unfettered bursts of outrage against an indifferent and immovable culture and a bureaucratic stonewall that got him unceremoniously forced out of the organisation just two years later.

    Retiring to Europe to lick his wounds, Kramer sat down and wrote an autobiographical piece of his whole experience of those past constantly changing years. It opened Off Broadway in 1985 when the AIDS Epidemic had really started to take a tight grip in New York (and many other major cities) and ‘The Normal Heart’ became the seminal play of the period. It would be another 6 years before Kushner’s ‘Angels of America’ would be seen.

    Now nearly some three decades later the play finally makes it to the silver screen after many false starts and broken promises, but along the way it has not lost a single iota of its potency with its powerful story that never fails to stun its audience into sheer silence.

    The movie opens on a typical care-free speedo-clad beach in Fire Island summer in the late 1970’s where sex is the first and second thing on the minds on this happy gay crowd. When one of their number suddenly collapses without warning on the sand no-one has the slightest idea that he is one of the early victims of what the New York Times will later describe as GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency) i.e. the Gay Cancer.

    As the virus spreads writer Ned Weeks played by Mark Ruffalo (Kramer’s ‘stand in’) tracks down Dr Emma Brockner (Julia Roberts) who is the first physician in NY dealing solely with the epidemic and she simply cannot cope. She is overwhelmed with the increasing number of patients, with the indifference of the medical community who in denial, refuse to help or provide funds; and the apathy of the gay community who refuse to give up their newly gained hedonistic liberty to stop having sex just because this disabled doctor says it could kill them.

    Brockner recognizes a passionate true spirit in Weeks and eggs him to start trying to both persuade the gay community to change their practices and also organize an official support system.

    Even with the figures of gay men getting sick and dying escalating at an unprecedented pace Weeks is frustrated at the very little headway the newly formed GMHC is making. Finding himself as the unofficial spokesman, mainly due to the fact that he is not only the most articulate of the bunch, but his anger at a system that refuses to pitch in and help makes him a compelling anti-Establishment figure that the media are happy to cover.

    It may help them sell newspapers but it doesn’t achieve any of Week’s more lofty ambitions, and in fact only serves as the reason for the Board of GMHC to fight him tooth and nail and try and control his activities. Even with a Mayor, a President and a whole medical community that refuses to do anything to help stop all these men dying, the GMHC still wants to take a very cautious and overly polite approach so as not to upset either anyone in power or a gay community that do not want to curb their lifestyles.

    Whilst all this is going down 30-something-year-old Weeks finds love for the first time in his life in the shape of a younger New York Times Reporter Felix Turner (Matt Bomer). This unlikely seeming couple turn out to be a perfect match and their very passionate relationship is the one happy part of Week’s life even though it is sadly doomed when Turner falls ill and his young life is unseemly ended way before its prime like so many others of his generation.

    The movie ends soon after that (although the story in real life didn’t with Kramer going on to co-found ACT UP the AIDS activist organisation that unapologetically demanded help and support to help fight the plague and whose many successes included the releasing of much needed drugs and funds).

    Kramer’s anger may also have been one of the reasons that it took so long to get this on to our screens, but it was worth every minute of the wait. In Ryan Murphy, the openly gay creator of ‘Glee’ and ‘American Horror Story’, he found a filmmaker who not only put his own money where his mouth was by buying the Rights himself, but he proved to be a collaborator who created a masterpiece movie true to his vision.

    Murphy deserves credit for many things, not least the fact that he took the almost unheard of decision of casting many openly gay actors to play gay men. With not one mis-step in his selection which included the actor & director Joe Mantello as Mickey Marcus (fresh from his Tony nominated turn playing Ned Weeks in the recent Broadway revival); Jim Parsons repeating his role in the same production as Tommy Boatwright; Jonathan Groff, Taylor Kitsch, Alfred Molina, Frank De Julio, and the ultra handsome Matt Bomer as Tyler who quietly shed 40 lbs to play his dying character without any of the inflated brouhaha of a certain Oscar Winner who had trouble mentioning the word AIDS in public!

    Mark Ruffalo gets nominated as an honorary gay for his convincing portrayal of Ned Weeks who was equally passionate berating politicians as he was making love to his boyfriend. And last, but not least, Julia Roberts very competently played the part that Barbra Streisand had lusted after years, the physician who was sadly dabbed as Dr Death.

    With Murphy refusing to shy away from any of Kramer’s rhetoric or the scary visuals of the violent and cruel deaths these young men suffered, this is the story of how it really happened, warts and all. There are no flowery allegories or sightings of Angels as in the Kushner play but just sheer unadulterated screaming and angry rants at a world that we thought may actually kill us all

    If you were around at any of these times from the early 1980’s on, then this powerful heart-wrenching piece will make a lot of unpleasant memories flood back. It is shockingly disturbing and serves to remind one that the nightmares that we lived through were not imagined in the slightest and were very real indeed.

    If it hadn’t been for Larry Kramer’s loud mouth, it would been a whole lot worse. If on the other hand you are approaching this drama having been born after these events then I can only assume that this near apocalyptical scenario may even appear like an historical event that is nothing to do with you. Trust me it does. AIDS may longer be considered a gay plague, but as the closing credits of this movie remind us all too clearly, even now 6000 people are diagnosed with HIV every single day to increase the present world total of 35 million infected. It still affects as us.

    P.S. The last word goes to Murphy when he simply summed it up after this movie was Premiered in NY. with ‘You were right Larry’. I never thought otherwise.

    The Normal Heart airs on 1st June on Sky Atlantic

     

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