Normal Heart Cast For NY Marriage

Quote Of The Day - Barbra Streisand

"I’ve endured Larry Kramer’s outbursts in the past, not wishing to dignify them with a response. But at a time when we are all pulling together to achieve such giant steps toward gay equality, it is anguishing to me to have my devotion to this cause so distorted. I think my efforts for the gay community and my immersion in securing its constitutional entitlement and other equitable rights is quite evident and a matter of record. [snip]

"I think it’s unfair to blame me for the movie [The Normal Heart] not getting made. After all, Larry has had the rights for the last 15 years and he couldn’t get it made, either. Those are the facts, and none of this is news to Larry. More recently, he sent me a note before giving the project to another director, asking me again if I wanted to direct it—but only with his screenplay. As a filmmaker, I couldn’t have my hands tied like that. What if I needed to make changes? What if I needed to have something rewritten? Sadly, I turned his offer down and wished him well. It’s been very hard for me to find a piece that I feel as passionate about. I will always believe in Larry’s play and its powerful theme about everyone’s right to love." - Barbara Streisand, responding to Larry Kramer's claim that she wanted to to rewrite the movie to make the doctor character (to be played by Babs) the real star.

Full Streisand's full response on her website.

14 Tony Nominations For Book Of Mormon

The Book Of Mormon led this morning's 2011 Tony Awards nominations with 14 nods across all major categories. The musical garnered a dozen Drama Desk nominations last week. Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart won nominations for Best Revival, and for cast members Joe Montello (Best Actor), John Benjamin Hickey (Best Featured Actor), and Ellen Barkin (Best Featured Actress.) Best Play nominees: War Horse, Jerusalem, Good People, The Motherfucker With The Hat. Best Musical nominees: Sister Act, Book Of Mormon, Catch Me If You Can, The Scottsboro Boys.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play
Brian Bedford, The Importance of Being Earnest
Bobby Cannavale, The Motherfucker with the Hat
Joe Mantello, The Normal Heart
Al Pacino, The Merchant of Venice
Mark Rylance, Jerusalem

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play
Nina Arianda, Born Yesterday
Frances McDormand, Good People
Lily Rabe, The Merchant of Venice
Vanessa Redgrave, Driving Miss Daisy
Hannah Yelland, Brief Encounter

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical
Norbert Leo Butz, Catch Me If You Can
Josh Gad, The Book of Mormon
Joshua Henry, The Scottsboro Boys
Andrew Rannells, The Book of Mormon
Tony Sheldon, Priscilla Queen of the Desert

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical
Sutton Foster, Anything Goes
Beth Leavel, Baby It's You!
Patina Miller, Sister Act
Donna Murphy, The People in the Picture

HomoQuotable - Larry Kramer

"I am a gay person before I’m anything else. I’m a gay person before I’m a white person, before I’m a Jew, before I’m a writer, before I’m American, anything. That is my most identifying characteristic and I don’t find many people who would say that. The polls say the same thing: People do not identify themselves as gay. And that’s too bad. In fact, it’s tragic. It will prevent us from ever having what we deserve, I believe." - Larry Kramer, in an interview with Salon.

HomoQuotable - Larry Kramer

"Please know that AIDS is a worldwide plague. Please know that no country in the world, including this one, especially this one, has ever called it a plague, or dealt with it as a plague. Please know that there is no cure. Please know that after all this time the amount of money being spent to find a cure is still miniscule, still almost invisible, still impossible to locate in any national health budget, and still totally uncoordinated.

"Please know that here in America case numbers continue to rise in every category. In much of the rest of the world — Russia, India, Southeast Asia, Africa — the numbers of the infected and the dying are so grotesquely high they are rarely acknowledged. Please know that all efforts at prevention and educations continue their unending record of abject failure. Please know that there is no one in charge of this plague. This is a war for which there is no general and for which there has never been a general. How can you win a war with no one in charge?" - Larry Kramer, from a letter handed to patrons attending the revival of his landmark play, The Normal Heart.

Read Kramer's entire letter.

Larry Kramer: AIDS Is A Plague That Was And Is Allowed To Happen

As the world approaches the 30th anniversary of the first noted cases of AIDS, famed activist Larry Kramer publishes a typically blistering editorial for CNN International in which he shouts that AIDS is a plague that was allowed to happen. And still is. An excerpt:

Governments and bureaucrats and presidents and politicians and the people who run this world lie to people. They tell us HIV is under control. They tell us case numbers are decreasing. They tell us that all is being done that can be done. They tell us HIV is too complicated to eradicate. They tell us gay people and people of color have made more progress than ever before. These are all lies. [snip]

For some 30-plus years, I have been trying to tell the world where this plague came from and why, and I will continue to do so until I die, too. You see, I simply can't get the memories and the ghosts of just about every friend I had out of my life. And since there is no doubt in my mind that this plague of HIV/AIDS that took them from me was and continues to be allowed to happen, I am duty bound to tell this hideous history as best and as fully as I can. It's the least I can do. That is correct: This plague of HIV/AIDS was intentionally allowed to happen. It still is. Nothing has changed in the intentionality department. Hate has a way of hanging around forever and too often winning out in the end.

Please read Kramer's full piece, especially his "ten realities about AIDS." And read the comments, where AIDS denialists and anti-gay Christians are rushing to attack.

HomoQuotable - Larry Kramer

"Barbra Streisand is a hypocrite. If she had made my play about AIDS, The Normal Heart, in 1986, when she first acquired the rights, only to sit on them for a full ten years without filming it, she could have done something for gay rights when we were really in the sewer of death. But no, she chose to go off and make such vitally important and classic movies as Nuts and The Mirror Has Two Faces. Barbra Streisand cares about gay rights as much as i care about spending a zillion dollars decorating a colony of houses in Malibu. As the mother of a son who is not only gay but HIV positive, she should be ashamed of herself.

"Fortunately and at last, an exciting movie version is now being prepared by openly gay director-producer Ryan Murphy to star Mark Ruffalo. i hope it will prove that the best thing that happened for The Normal Heart is that Barbra Streisand didn't make it. I think it is important for all her many gay fans around the world, which certainly had once included me, to know the above." - Larry Kramer, responding to Barbra Streisand's statement of support for the overturn of Prop 8.

Broadway Friday

- Mark Ruffalo will star in a movie version of Larry Kramer's AIDS drama, The Normal Heart. Other casting and production details have not been announced but reportedly Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy is involved.

- Elf: The Musical (SRSLY) opens at Broadway's Hirschfeld Theater on November 2nd. Tony nominee Casey Nicholaw will direct and choreograph.

- Standing room, rush, and lottery discount tickets for this weekend's Broadway shows are available here.

- Molly, you in danger, girl. A musical version of Ghost starring Laura Michelle Kelly is slated to open on London's West End in 2011.

- Drag queen alert! Liza Minnelli has launched her own line of clothing and jewelery on the Home Shopping Network. The line includes "sequined separates and signature flowy pants." Werq!

- Last month's Broadway Bares XX raised over $1M for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. The previous record was 2008's $874K. So far the show has raised over $7.5M to battle HIV.

- James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave have been cast to star in a Broadway version of Driving Miss Daisy, set to begin previews on October 2nd. The Pulitzer-winning play debuted Off Broadway in 1987 starring Morgan Freeman and Dana Ivey.

VIDEO: The orchestra voices from Promises, Promises sing their plea for NBA free agent LeBron James to sign with the New York Knicks. Who doesn't like street meat?

Turmoil At GMHC Over Headquarters

NYC-based Gay Men's Health Crisis is under fire over the search for a new home to replace their longtime headquarters on West 24th Street, which they must vacate by the end of this year after losing their lease. According to cofounder Larry Kramer, the new building being considered is unacceptable.

Somehow a building was eventually located that GMHC's leadership felt they could afford. It is in the Associated Press building on 33^rd Street and Tenth Avenue. For people with AIDS it will be an awful and unsatisfactory home. It is an indication of the board's desperation that it has been willing to accept terms and restrictions that are out of another era. Here are only some of them: No kitchen or cooking facilities will be allowed. GMHC is famous for its daily hot meals, which, for many clients, is the only food they get. I repeat: for many of their clients this is the only food that they get. Clients will be forced to enter through a special entrance and use a special elevator,lest the regular tenants see them. Staff will be allowed to use the regular entrance and elevator. This represents an institutionalized apartheid that past leaders of GMHC would have denounced and refused to countenance.

No medical facilities or activities will be allowed. This could literally be a real killer. Most clients come to GMHC for regular testing, counseling, clinical trials, to see their doctors, and to receive related services, all under one roof. The medical and testing facilities are located on the ground floor of their current West 24^th building. These services, which provide grant funding for GMHC, are financed by generous contributions by the David Geffen Foundation and the Michael Palm Foundation, and are administered by New York Hospital/Weill Medical Center. Without these facilities located in the same place as their daily hot meals, (which they will now also not begetting) what reason would clients have to come to GMHC at all? Indeed, the new building is located in such an inconvenient neighborhood that it will be arduous for many clients to come there. It is a fifteen minute walk to many subway stations, a ten minute walk to others. There is a 34^th Street cross-town bus to take them the very long blocks to these subways, but I keep having images of sick people standing in the snow and rain on a freezing winter day waiting for that cross-town bus.

Read Kramer's lengthy diatribe for more of story.

HomoQuotable - Larry Kramer

"People think I’m the one who demanded that gay men stop fucking altogether, but you have to realize that in 1981 or 82, one had to be something of an alarmist. People would say you’re going to scare us to death and I’d say that’s what I want. Somewhere in your unconscious brain the specter of AIDS lurks, no matter how stoned you are and even with a condom. When ACT UP was in its ending years, I remember one of its most important members, Jim Eigo, saying to me that we haven’t finished our work until we bring sex back again." - Larry Kramer, in a fascinating South Florida Gay News interview with our own Father Tony. Kramer tells Father Tony that he is astonished to find himself horny again at the age of 75.

Read the complete article.