Vito Russo

Um, and, um, it wasn't the most fun time to come out in 1990.

Um, and I bought, um, Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet, which remains this titanic book.

Um, and there's a number of passages about, uh, Monty in that, and I feel like that kind of triggered my, my Monty journey.

Um, i- in particular, there's a picture of him in Red River, which I think definitely got my attention.

Working on this project, I've heard the voices of so many men who later died of AIDS-related complications.

Journalist Randy Shilts, KSAN producer Larry Lee, gay rights activist Craig Rodwell, David Lourea from the Bisexual Center, filmmaker Artie Bresson, film historian Vito Russo, Randy Alfred's friend Bobby Campbell, Randy's partner Richard, and so many others, heard chanting or clapping or singing in the background, people whose names I will never know.

It's close to midnight.

Something evil's lurking in the dark.

What do you feel like after a good conversation or at a great party when you're surrounded by people that you love? That feeling is revolutionary and it must be revolutionary because if it's not, we're moving towards nothing.

I think of a quote from Vito Russo, an AIDS activist from the 1980s and 90s, who said, and I'm paraphrasing here, so please, who said, we attend our funerals and we mourn in the mornings.

We fight like hell all afternoon and we party all night.

And each step of that is essential, right? Because it allows us to survive, right? these movements that we are fighting against, the monsters that Gramsci is warning us about, right? The fascists knocking on our doorstep.

Oh, my God.

This is 10 years ago, who had listened to our episode featuring Vito Russo, who was an important figure in the movement.

At the time I interviewed him, he was a short time away from dying of AIDS and talked a lot about legacy.

But he was he did incredible things during his lifetime.