The Celluloid Closet

“Portrayals of homosexuality were frowned upon until the 1960’s, yet gays were everywhere in the movies ... The Celluloid Closet is inspired by a 1981 book by Vito Russo, who wrote as a gay man who found he had a to look in the shadows and subtexts of movies to find homosexual characters who were surely there. His book is a compendium of visible and concealed gays in the movies, and now this documentary, which shows the scenes he could only describe, makes it clear Hollywood wanted it both ways: it benefited from the richness that gays added to films, but didn’t want to acknowledge their sexuality. The movie narrated by Lily Tomlin, contains interviews with a lot of witnesses from the days when gays were in the Hollywood Closet..” ROGERE BERTS, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES