Telling Pictures: The Celluloid Closet

History and Production

The movies are 100 years old, and gay movie characters have been with us since the very beginning -- even during the Production Code years, when "sex perversion" was explicitly forbidden. From comic sissies to lesbian vampires, from pathetic queens to sadistic predators, Hollywood has both reflected and defined how we think about homosexuality -- and what it means to be a man or woman. With clips from over 100 Hollywood movies and interviews with many of the filmmakers and actors who created them (including Tom Hanks, Shirley MacLaine, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Curtis and Gore Vidal), The Celluloid Closet is an epic story -- by turns surprising, hilarious and disturbing. The Celluloid Closet explodes sexual myths and explores how our attitudes about homosexuality and sex roles have evolved through the century.

In the mid-1980's, author and film historian Vito Russo began talking with filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman about making a film version of his landmark bookThe Celluloid Closet. At the time Russo was the national publicist for Epstein's Academy Award-winning film The Times Of Harvey Milk. The first movie treatment for "The Celluloid Closet" was written by Russo in 1986. A decade later, Rob and Jeffrey brought The Celluloid Closet to the screen.

Vito Russo

Vito conceived the idea for his book in the early 1970's while working as an archivist in the film department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He conducted archival research at the Museum, at Eastman House in Rochester, New York, at the American Film Institute, the British Film Institute, the Library of Congress, the National Archive, and the NY State Archive. First published by Harper & Row in 1981, The Celluloid Closet was the first book to chronicle the depiction of gay and lesbian characters in popular films, including the innovative use of historical reviews and censors' comments to reflect contemporary beliefs and assumptions about homosexuality. (The book was reissued in 1987 with a new chapter on films of the 1980's.)

In 1987, Jeffrey and Rob formed their company Telling Pictures. The Celluloid Closet was to be one of their first projects, but a more pressing subject presented itself and the filmmakers went on to make their Academy Award-winning feature documentary Error! Bookmark not defined.for Home Box Office. Common Threads documented the first decade of AIDS in America through the stories of six people who had been affected by the epidemic -- one of whom was Vito Russo.

In 1991, Vito Russo died of an AIDS-related illness. Soon after, London’s Channel 4 Television approached Telling Pictures with development money to help get the project off the ground.

With initial start up money, Michael Lumpkin, director of the Error! Bookmark not defined., came on board as co-producer. Lumpkin began researching hundreds of potential movies to be included in The Celluloid Closet, and determined who controlled the rights for each of them. Longtime Telling Pictures collaborator Sharon Wood was hired to write the first outline and treatment. Editor Arnold Glassman (Visions Of Light ) helped give shape to the project, using his encyclopedic knowledge of Hollywood movies to winnow from hundreds of potential movies the final 120 clips that would be used to tell the story.

The filmmakers then approached Executive Producer Howard Rosenman (Father Of The Bride, Common Threads) to help with his industry connections. Rosenman enthusiastically volunteered his services, and was eventually able to convince every major studio to cooperate with the project. (The deals were finalized by Telling Pictures' attorney John Sloss and his associate Jodi Peikoff.) Rosenman was also instrumental in convincing such busy professionals as Shirley MacLaine, Tom Hanks and Gore Vidal to discuss their work on camera in The Celluloid Closet.

Jeffrey Friedman, Lily Tomlin and Rob Epstein
Jeffrey Friedman, Lily Tomlin
and Rob Epstein

Once the cooperation of the studios was assured, the filmmakers set about raising the full budget for the movie, through grass-roots fundraising, foundation grants, and foreign television sales. Lily Tomlin, an old dear friend of Vito’s, spearheaded a direct-mail fundraising campaign for the project in his honor. Tomlin also headlined a successful benefit at San Francisco's landmark movie palace, the Castro Theatre, which also featured Robin Williams, Harvey Fierstein, Lypsinka (John Epperson) and comedian/performance artist Marga Gomez. Soon, the project received significant support from three individuals: James Hormel, Hugh Hefner and Steve Tisch (Forrest Gump). Further funding came from the Paul Robeson Fund, the California Council for the Humanities, the Chicago Resource Center, and, through the efforts of associate producers Michael Ehrenzweig and Wendy Braitman, from ZDF/Arté, the German-French cable network.

Still, by May 1994 only half the budget had been raised. Lily Tomlin called Michael Fuchs, then chairman of HBO, and Epstein, Friedman, Tomlin, and Rosenman flew to New York for a meeting with Fuchs and HBO Vice President of Documentary Programming Sheila Nevins. Within minutes of sitting down together, HBO had agreed to supply the remainder of the budget. The project was now officially a "go," and filming began one month later.

Using the book as a starting point, Rob and Jeffrey decided to focus the film on mainstream Hollywood movies. They pre-interviewed dozens of directors, writers, actors and critics before selecting those who appear on camera. The interviews, art directed by Scott Chambliss and photographed by Nancy Schreiber, were shot on sound stages in Hollywood, New York and San Francisco.

As the project gained momentum and a higher profile, a number of talented industry professionals agreed to participate. Since the film tells an epic Hollywood story, the directors wanted a classic Hollywood score to support it. Carter Burwell, who has composed the scores for Fargo and all the other Coen Brothers movies, as well Being John Malkovich and many others, composed, arranged and conducted an original orchestral score for the film. The music was recorded in April, 1995 on the Sony scoring stage -- the old MGM stage where scores for such films as Gone With The Wind were created. k. d. lang recorded an original vocal for the end credits (a reprise of the Doris Day song "Secret Love," that appears earlier in the film); Juan Gatti, title designer for most of Pedro Almodovar’s films, created the main title design and special graphics for the film; and Armistead Maupin (author of the Tales Of The City books) wrote the final narration text.

The Celluloid Closet had its world premiere at the Venice Biennale in August 1995, and its North American premiere one month later at the Toronto Film Festival. In the U.S. it was selected for screenings at both the New York and the Sundance Film Festivals. The Celluloid Closet was picked up after Toronto by Sony Classics Pictures, which gave the film a major theatrical release in hundreds of theaters across the country. It was also released theatrically in the Netherlands, France, the U.K., Japan, and -- an extreme rarity for documentaries in Italy.

The Celluloid Closet was shown on Home Box Office in the U.S. in 1996, and has had television airings around the world. It has received numerous awards, including an Emmy for Directing, a George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting, and the Columbia Du-Pont Award for excellence in journalism.

The Celluloid Closet is available on home video and laser disk (there will soon be a DVD version) by Columbia TriStar Home Video. To buy your personal copy of the home video or Vito Russo’s book from Amazon.com, click either link. The Celluloid Closet is available for school and other institutional screenings directly from Telling Pictures.