Vito Russo Egyptian Theater, Seattle, May 21, 1982 image: Demian

The show consisted of about 35 short sequences, Hollywood-generated, as well as from rarely-seen international early cinema, that portrayed homosexuality, and gay, lesbian, or sissy behavior. Talking in between the groups of movie clips, Vito offered context with social, political, and historical information.

Most portrayals of lesbians or gay men were stereotypical. He said this was because the Hollywood films didn’t show reality, but a vision of what Hollywood thinks the mass culture desires to see.

The following are transcription excerpts from a discussion I had with Vito on the afternoon before his film presentation that evening.

Vito:
Exactly. In all the film clips that I’m using, I don’t think there is a single film by a gay person. If there is, it’s by a gay person who isn’t openly gay.

I’m really looking at Hollywood’s attitude toward this as a subject, rather than talking about “gay sensibility” in the movies, which is quite a different thing.

Demian:
How did your interest in movies begin?

Vito:
I’ve always been interested in film. I sort of lived at the movies, from when I was 10. I got a masters in cinema at NYU. I kept being interested in movies and wanting to write about movies. Now, that is what l do.

I got involved with gay liberation in the early ‘70s. That coincided with my most intense movie involvement, when I was in graduate school. That’s when I got the idea to focus on gays in the movies.

Demian:
Do you think the movies that come out of Hollywood have any effect on the culture, or do they just reflect it?

Vito:
I think they certainly have an effect on the culture. They also reflect. It’s one of those chicken-or-egg situations where it is true that Hollywood movies reinforce existing stereotypes. But it’s also true that they got those stereotypes from some place. That someplace was society.

If one looked at Hollywood films, one would think that the only thing that existed was the stereotype; which is really our problem. Hollywood magnifies everything out of proportion. Nobody goes to the movies to learn about heterosexuality. It’s the norm. We all know about it.

But as soon as you make a film that has one gay character, it’s about homosexuality, all homosexuals. It suddenly becomes the film about homosexuals.

People go to see a film like “Boys in the Band,” or “Taxi Zum Klo,” or “Making Love” and they think, “well, now I’m seeing what homosexuals are like.” That’s no more true than it is for any other film. They don’t go to “Kramer vs Kramer” or “Ordinary People” and think, “this is what heterosexuals live like.” No, they think, “this is only what these particular people live like.”

One of the functions of Hollywood is to stereotype. It puts everything on such a mass level. The lowest common denominator has to be reached by Hollywood film. So you can’t do anything too special, or you’ll lose the mass audience.

Those who go to the movies, unfortunately, are primarily straight, white teenagers, and what they want to see is “Star Wars.” Hollywood is an amusement park. Movies are a roller coaster for the mainstream audience.

I don’t rely on Hollywood to teach me about life. I think most people do. People go to the movies and they learn about their society from what they see on the screen.

When I was a kid I thought, from watching “Leave it to Beaver,” “Father Knows Best,” and “The Donna Reed Show,” that my family was somehow different because we didn’t all eat breakfast together.

Look at sitcoms. That’s not the way life is. But people buy it. They want to buy it. They want to escape from reality into an America that never really existed. That’s where all this family stuff comes from.

The New York Times printed that this “family,” that the Moral Majority is talking about, doesn’t really exist in any large numbers in this country. They are talking about the nuclear family unit where the wife stays home, takes care of the kids, and the husband goes out to work and everybody lives under the same roof.

That’s about eight or nine percent of the American population right now. Everybody else is living in different arrangements.

I don’t think the reality of the way people live in this nation is reflected on the screen.

Demian:
What kind of image has been presented about gay people through the history of mainstream film?

Vito:
First, in mainstream film, there were no such people. The American dream dictated that there were no such creatures as homosexual. For the balance of film history, we’ve been invisible.

Most often in the films of the ‘30s you’ll find gay characters as comics. Perhaps a man in a dress. They didn’t mean to represent homosexuality in the context of the film, but this was the public’s only translation for effeminacy, or for butch women.

The reality of gays on the screen, for so many years, has been one of either derision or invisibility. It’s only now that gay people are visible in society in general, that the movies are beginning to reflect this. I don’t think they’ll really reflect it in my lifetime. I don’t see them reflecting other minorities, and those minorities are socially visible. Black people are visible by virtue of their skin color, yet I don’t see black faces on the screen.

So it’s a hard battle one must either fight, or give up. Personally, I give up. I still go to Hollywood movies. I still go to everything I can. I will look elsewhere for real depth, complexity, intelligence on the screen. It’s worth doing, but it’s not going to come from Hollywood.

Demian:
Given the way the culture is right now, if a really wonderful, sensitive film on gay people, that really portrayed lesbians and gay men very accurately and fairly, was to be presented, would it be accepted?

Vito:
Not by a mass audience. It wouldn’t be a hit, if that’s what you’re asking.

Demian:
I’m not as interested in box office success, as I’d like to have a good film get a large audience. Something that would aid in educating people about what is really going on.

Vito:
The largest mass audience that such a film has ever had is the one that “Making Love” got. “Making Love” has made more money, and reached more people, than any other commercial film dealing with this subject, except for “La Cage aux Folles,” which tells you something right there. Those people out there really want to see a comedy about two fairies who are harmless, and don’t threaten the heterosexual status quo.

The documentary “Word is Out” was shown on television, and probably reached a lot of people. Yet, it still hasn’t reached the kind of people that a sitcom will reach. I see independent and foreign films saying the things that you’re talking about, being interesting and educational. Very few people see those, like “Pixote,” from Brazil.

Television has done better than movies. Take for example “The Naked Civil Servant,” the story of Quentin Crisp. The story of Mary Jo Rischer in Texas, who is fighting a custody battle, was called “A Question of Love.” It was extraordinary, just beautiful, and so well-done. This was on NBC and repeated three times. “The Leonard Motlovich Story” was made by NBC.

Television has consistently done more creative stuff with gays because television can get away with it. If a sitcom has a gay character on one week, next week it’s a new show. All the money doesn’t ride on it, so they don’t lose their shirts if people hate it. Two billion dollars could be running on a movie, and they can’t fool around.

Now they’re going to do “The Harvey Milk Story” as a movie. I think that’s a good example of what you're talking about. That could be a film which breaks through, and hits millions and millions of people as a mainstream film, because it’s about the assassination of not only a gay supervisor in San Francisco, but the assassination of the mayor, by a man who is a policeman. He’ll be out of jail by next January in time to play himself in the picture.

As someone pointed out recently, Sara Jane Moore got a life sentence for firing a bullet that missed President Gerald Ford. Milk and Moscone’s killer got seven years for killing two people. So it’s an extraordinary tale to be told, and it could be a great movie.

Demian:
Any film that highlights a social issue, or people, very often winds up exploiting those people; often because the subject matter is seen so rarely. What happens if they make Harvey’s life more entertaining than it actually was?

Vito:
Almost unavoidable.

Demian:
What bothers me is using this story to set us up for another extremely depressing ending, which will make us feel powerless, and make it more scary for people to come out.

Vito:
A tragic ending all depends on the film maker, and how that film maker chooses to do it. It can be inspiring to gay people, or it can be a warning against coming out. I don’t think it’s good enough reason to not make the stuff. Any visibility can only help people to see us as people.

I think you’re right. It’s very hard for any film maker, whether they’re independent, or Hollywood, not to exploit a subject. For instance, I saw an extraordinary film by gay film maker Artie Bresson, who made “Gay U.S.A.,” “Passing Strangers,” and a lot of gay male pornography.

Nothing he ever did prepared me for this feature called “Abused.” It’s a black-and white, 95-minute feature, and well made. It vacillated between exploiting this 14-year-old kid, and telling his story.

It’s about an NYU film maker who is making a film about abused children, and he comes across this 14-year-old who is beaten regularly by his parents. The kid is gay, they’re both gay. It’s a very courageous film, because the 14-year-old kid does fall in love and seduces the guy who is 35 or 40. They have a wonderful love affair.

It’s clear that the kid is better off with this guy than he is with his parents, who are beating the hell out of him and are going to kill him, eventually, if he stays in that home.

Demian:
Because Hollywood films are so often full of misinformation, do you think that they are worth watching?

Vito:
I think they are, because they offer images that we have never seen before on the screen. For instance, I didn’t like “Personal Best” very much because I thought it was a very straight-male, voyeuristic view of lesbianism, especially lesbian sexuality. But as a gay person, it was wonderful to look up on the screen and see 20-foot-high, two incredibly funny, handsome, playful, women running on the beach together, being in love. Just to see that image disconnected from the context of the film is a wonderful thing. I hated the way they were used in the film, considering lesbianism to be adolescent. It was so exploitative.

Demian:
In the end, isn’t it possible that it could do more damage?

Vito:
I don’t think so. The worst it could do is to perpetuate this idea that lesbianism is defined in male terms. I don’t expect men who make movies to know anything about lesbianism. They never have.

There has never been a movie in which two women end up together in the end. I don’t think it’s damaging in that it’s going to make people believe that lesbianism is adolescent, because there are too many visible lesbians these days.

Ultimately, it’s not a movie about lesbianism. It’s a movie about athletics and women in sports. The message it brings about lesbianism is retrogressive. It does not help, but I don’t think it hurts.

Demian:
Have you written the great gay, American film script yet?

Vito:
No, and probably won’t. More than anything in the world, the movie I would like to make would be Arthur Clark’s “Childhoods End.” I’m interested in science fiction. Any movie I made would probably have a gay character in it, but it wouldn’t be about homosexuality.

That’s what I want to see. No more movies about homosexuality. I want to see movies in which gay people appear quite incidentally and naturally.

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