Vito Russo, John Wojtowicz, two documentaries

I watched two documentaries, one about Vito Russo, the gay activist who wrote The Celluloid Closet about gay characters in mainstream Hollywood movies from the silent era to the 1970's.

The other was about John Wojtowicz, that horrible little man who Al Pacino portrayed in Dog Day Afternoon.

It turned out that the two were connected and they used the same video clip in both documentaries.

There was no real, serious drive for same-sex marriage in the '70's. Activists considered it out of reach and not all wanted it. But the guy in charge of the New York City Marriage Bureau started mouthing off. There was a church that was marrying gay couples, and he said it was illegal and suggested they may raid the place.

In response, there was a protest against the Marriage Bureau. The protest included an anouncement that Russo would marry his boyfriend and that Wojtowicz would marry his transexual boyfriend who went by the name Elizabeth Eden.

I don't know where Wojtowicz's money came from. He bought a thousand dollar wedding gown for Eden. Eden only needed a couple thousand dollars for the sex change. The cost of the wedding gown, the guns and maybe the used getaway car would have covered most or all of it. Wojtowicz bragged that he got a couple hundred thousand in the robbery, so that was overkill.

Wojtowicz accomplice in the robbery, Sal Naturale, had just turned 18. He was adamant about not going to prison because he had been in jail before and had been raped. He wanted money so he could get his little sister out of foster care. He was a teenager and 27-year-old Wojtowicz got him killed.

The gay rights movement immediately distanced itself from Wojtowicz, of course. It was a non-violent movement and the last thing they wanted was to be associated with him.

I saw Russo at the university here speaking about gays in cinema and showing film clips. I knew most of it already having read his book. But I don't remember if he mentioned Dog Day Afternoon.

The Wojtowicz documentary, The Dog, and the Vito Russo documentary Vito are available on Fandor.