Gabriel Rotello

Last updated

Douglas Gabriel Rotello (born February 9, 1963) is an American musician, writer and filmmaker. He created New York's Downtown Divas revues in the 1980s, was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of OutWeek magazine, became the first openly gay columnist at a major American newspaper, New York Newsday , and authored the book Sexual Ecology . He now makes documentaries for HBO, The History Channel and other networks.

Contents

Biography

Early life

Gabriel Rotello was born and raised in Danbury, Connecticut, and attended Knox College and Carlton College. He was in the first group of American exchange students to live and study in Kathmandu, Nepal. [1] After graduating Rotello became a New York City keyboard player, arranger and music director. In 1979 he co-founded the underground band Brenda and the Realtones, whose story was recounted in the off-Broadway show Endangered Species in 1997. [2]

In the 1980s, as music director of The Realtones he backed artists such as Ronnie Spector, Darlene Love, Solomon Burke, Rufus Thomas and many others. In the mid-1980s he produced a series of music revues at The Limelight, The Palladium and The Saint under the general name Downtown Dukes and Divas. Among his collaborators were the Uptown Horns, David Johansen, Cherry Vanilla, Johnny Thunders, the Lady Bunny, Holly Woodlawn, Joey Arias, David Peaston, Taylor Mead, Sylvain Sylvain, Jackie Curtis, Dean Johnson, Michael Musto, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato of the Fabulous Pop Tarts and many others. Rotello's life and productions during this period were frequently filmed by videographer Nelson Sullivan, and are now part of Sullivan's archive of downtown life in the 1980s. [3]

AIDS activism and OutWeek

In 1988 Rotello joined the AIDS activist group ACT UP and served on its fundraising committee. [4] In 1989 he co-founded OutWeek magazine with businessman Kendall Morrison and became its editor-in-chief. [5] The New York Times called OutWeek "the most progressive of the gay publications", [6] and Time magazine wrote that "its greatest success was in shaking up its competitors by challenging their brand of gay activism with a more militant stance." [7]

Rotello and OutWeek became controversial for the practice of outing, which originated at OutWeek, [8] and for promoting the word queer as a catch-all phrase for sexual minorities. [9] As an investigative reporter Rotello helped break numerous stories such as the Covenant House scandal and the Woody Myers affair, which The New York Times called "the most bitter dispute of the Dinkins administration". [10] Many of the young staffers Rotello hired at OutWeek went on to become well-known figures in gay and lesbian writing, publishing and other fields, including Michelangelo Signorile, Sarah Pettit, Dale Peck, Jim Provenzano, K. M. Soehnlein and James St. James.

New York Newsday

Rotello left OutWeek shortly before it folded in 1991 and was hired as a columnist by New York Newsday , becoming the first openly gay man to become a columnist at a major American newspaper. [11] For his weekly columns, which explored gay life, homophobia and the AIDS epidemic, he received the GLAAD Award as Outstanding Journalist in 1995. [12] After New York Newsday folded he became a columnist for The Advocate and wrote for the Village Voice, The New Scientist, Out, The Nation and The New York Times.

Sexual Ecology

In 1997 Rotello published Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men (Dutton). Its investigation of why HIV continues to infect large numbers of gay men, and its conclusion that partner reduction must be added to the strategy of condoms to bring new infections down, ignited a major debate and Sexual Ecology became one of the most controversial gay books of its generation. It has been called "a remarkable book ... a breath of fresh air in the growing litany about the AIDS epidemic" (The New Scientist), "the Silent Spring of the AIDS epidemic (Boston Globe) and "the most important book about gay men and AIDS since And the Band Played On (The Nation). But it was also criticized for offering "a message of empathy laced with contempt" (Out), and as "an ugly distortion of gay life" (The Village Voice).

In 1998 Rotello co-wrote My Life and the Paradise Garage with Mel Cheren, a memoir about the legendary gay disco Paradise Garage, its pioneering DJ Larry Levan and the impact of AIDS on a generation of gay men. [13]

TV and film

In 1998 Rotello moved to Los Angeles and began making documentaries exploring American life and popular culture with World of Wonder founders Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. Their first collaboration, the documentary Party Monster , centered on New York's downtown nightclub scene, a world which Rotello, Bailey and Barbato knew from their earlier days as musicians. [14] Their next feature, The Eyes of Tammy Faye , [15] is on Current TV's list of 50 Documentaries to See Before You Die .

Rotello's work with Bailey and Barbato includes a number of high-profile documentaries and documentary series including AMC's Hollywood Fashion Machine, HBO's Hidden Führer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality ; HBO's Monica in Black and White, Bravo's Reality of Reality, AMC's Movies That Shook the World , and AMC's Out of the Closet/Off The Screen: The William Haines Story, as well as reality shows such as RuPaul's Drag Race . Their 2010 HBO film The Strange History of Don't Ask Don't Tell was nominated for an Emmy Award and a GLAAD Award.

Rotello currently makes science and history documentaries with Flight 33 Productions for the History Channel, Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel, including series such as The Universe , Life After People , Big History and America's Secret Slang.

Related Research Articles

Outing is the act of disclosing an LGBT person's sexual orientation or gender identity without that person's consent. It is often done for political reasons, either to instrumentalize homophobia in order to discredit political opponents or to combat homophobia and heterosexism by revealing that a prominent or respected individual is homosexual. Historical examples of outing include the Krupp affair, Eulenburg affair, and Röhm scandal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michelangelo Signorile</span> American journalist, author, and talk radio host

Michelangelo Signorile is an American journalist, author and talk radio host. His radio program is aired each weekday across the United States and Canada on Sirius XM Radio and globally online. Signorile was editor-at-large for HuffPost from 2011 until 2019. Signorile is a political liberal, and covers a wide variety of political and cultural issues.

A circuit party is a large dance event. It extends through the night and into the following day, almost always with a number of affiliated events in the days leading up to and following the main event. Proto-circuit parties in the late 1970s, the precursors of what later became circuit parties, were called disco parties. They lasted only one evening and were held in various large venues in metropolitan areas with large gay populations.

<i>The Advocate</i> (magazine) Bi-monthly American magazine covering LGBT-interest topics

The Advocate is an American LGBT magazine, printed bi-monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a website. Both magazine and website have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender (LGBT) people. The magazine, established in 1967, is the oldest and largest LGBT publication in the United States and the only surviving one of its kind that was founded before the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan, an uprising that was a major milestone in the LGBT rights movement. On June 9, 2022, Pride Media was acquired by Equal Entertainment LLC.

15th Annual GLAAD Media Awards (2004) were presented at three separate ceremonies: March 27 in Los Angeles; April 12 in New York City and June 5 in San Francisco. The awards were presented to honor "fair, accurate and inclusive" representations of gay individuals in the media.

The 14th Annual GLAAD Media Awards (2003) were presented at three separate ceremonies: April 7 in New York ; April 26 in Los Angeles; and May 31 in San Francisco. The awards were presented to honor "fair, accurate and inclusive" representations of gay individuals in the media.

The 16th Annual GLAAD Media Awards (2005) were presented at three separate ceremonies: March 28 in New York; April 30 in Los Angeles; and June 11 in San Francisco. The awards were presented to honor "fair, accurate and inclusive" representations of gay individuals in the media.

<i>Hidden Führer: Debating the Enigma of Hitlers Sexuality</i> 2004 American TV series or program

Hidden Führer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality is a documentary film based on the research of German Professor Lothar Machtan for his 2001 book The Hidden Hitler that claimed Adolf Hitler was a homosexual. Aired by HBO's CINEMAX Reel Life, the 90 minute documentary was directed by Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato and Gabriel Rotello and was produced by Gabriel Rotello.

<i>OutWeek</i> American LGBT magazine

OutWeek was a gay and lesbian weekly news magazine published in New York City from 1989 to 1991. During its two-year existence, OutWeek was widely considered the leading voice of AIDS activism and the initiator of a cool new sensibility in lesbian and gay journalism.

<i>Sexual Ecology</i> 1997 book by Gabriel Rotello

Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men is a 1997 book by gay activist Gabriel Rotello, who discusses why HIV has continued to infect large numbers of gay men despite the widespread use of condoms and why a number of experts believe that new HIV infections will disproportionately affect gay men in the future. Rotello examines the origins and timeline of the AIDS epidemic, drawing on epidemiology, sociology, gay history, and ecology. His conclusion is that gay men need to reduce their number of partners and increase condom use to bring the infection rate down. Rotello's central argument derives from the epidemiological concept that sexually-transmitted epidemics are the result of three factors, sometimes called the Triad of Risk: the "infectivity" of a sexually transmitted disease (STD), or how easily it spreads; the "prevalence" of that STD in a particular group, and 3. the ‘contact rate,’ or the average number of sexual partners that people have within a particular group.

<i>Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt</i> 1989 film by Jeffrey Friedman, Rob Epstein

Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt is a 1989 American documentary film that tells the story of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, with a musical score written and performed by Bobby McFerrin, the film focuses on several people who are represented by panels in the Quilt, combining personal reminiscences with archive footage of the subjects, along with footage of various politicians, health professionals and other people with AIDS. Each section of the film is punctuated with statistics detailing the number of Americans diagnosed with and dead from AIDS through the early years of the epidemic. The film ends with the first display of the complete Quilt at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., during the 1987 Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.

World of Wonder Productions is an American production company founded in 1991 by filmmakers Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey. Based in Los Angeles, California, the company specializes in documentary television and film productions with a key focus on LGBTQ topics. Together, Barbato and Bailey have produced programming through World of Wonder for HBO, Bravo, HGTV, Showtime, BBC, Netflix, MTV and VH1, with credits including the Million Dollar Listing docuseries, RuPaul's Drag Race, and the documentary films The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2000) and Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (2016).

<i>Outrage</i> (2009 film) 2009 American film

Outrage is a 2009 American documentary film written and directed by Kirby Dick. The film presents a narrative discussing the hypocrisy of people purported in the documentary to be closeted gay or bisexual politicians who promote anti-gay legislation. It premiered at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival before being released theatrically on May 8, 2009. It was nominated for a 2010 Emmy Award, and won Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival's jury award for best documentary. The documentary's prime subject was Michael Rogers, founder of BlogActive.com.

Lawrence D. Mass is an American physician and writer. A co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis, he wrote the first press reports in the United States on an illness later became known as AIDS. He is the author of numerous publications on HIV, hepatitis C, STDs, gay health, psychiatry and sex research, and on music, opera, and culture. He is also the author/editor of four books/collections. In 2009 he was in the first group of physicians to be designated as diplomates of the American Board of Addiction Medicine. Since 1979, he has lived and worked as a physician in New York City, where he resided with his life partner, writer and activist Arnie Kantrowitz. Having written for the New York Native since the 1970s, he currently writes a column for The Huffington Post. An archival collection of his papers are at the New York Public Library.

K.M. (Karl) Soehnlein is the American author of the novels The World of Normal Boys (2000), a 1970s coming-of-age story that won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men’s Fiction; You Can Say You Knew Me When (2005), set in San Francisco during the Beat era of 1960 and the dot-com boom of 2000; and Robin and Ruby (2010), which follows the brother and sister characters of The World of Normal Boys into the mid-1980s.

Sex Panic!, sometimes rendered SexPanic! or Sex Panic, was a sexual activism group founded in New York City in 1997. The group characterized itself as a "pro-queer, pro-feminist, anti-racist direct action group" campaigning for sexual freedom in the age of AIDS. It was founded to oppose both mainstream political measures to control sex, and elements within the gay community who advocated same-sex marriage and the restriction of public sexual culture as solutions to the HIV crisis. The group has been depicted as a faction in a gay "culture war" of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">21st GLAAD Media Awards</span> 2010 annual presentation of the media awards

The 21st GLAAD Media Awards was the 2010 annual presentation of the media awards presented by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. The awards seek to honor films, television shows, musicians and works of journalism that fairly and accurately represent the LGBT community and issues relevant to the community. The 21st annual award ceremony included 116 nominees in 24 English-language categories, and 36 Spanish-language nominees in eight categories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David France (writer)</span> American journalist and filmmaker (born 1959)

David France is an American investigative reporter, non-fiction author, and filmmaker. He is a former Newsweek senior editor, and has published in New York magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and others. France, who is gay, is best known for his investigative journalism on LGBTQ topics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1st GLAAD Media Awards</span> Award ceremony

The 1st GLAAD Media Awards ceremony, presented by GLAAD and hosted by Phil Donahue, honor "fair, accurate and inclusive" representations of LGBT individuals in the media during the 1989 season, took place on April 29, 1990 at the Time & Life Building, New York City. Tickets to attend the ceremony cost $125.

<i>Queer Wars</i> 2005 book by Paul A. Robinson

Queer Wars: The New Gay Right and Its Critics is a 2005 book about gay conservatism by the historian Paul A. Robinson. It received both supportive and critical commentary.

References

  1. ↑ "Rotello Amazon bio". Amazon.
  2. ↑ Haden-Guest, Anthony (February 17, 2015). Hayden Guest; The Last Party. ISBN   9781497695559.
  3. ↑ "Nelson Sullivan NYU archive".
  4. ↑ Signorile, Michelangelo (2003). Signorile, M.; Queer in America. ISBN   9780299193744.
  5. ↑ "Signorile, M; How Queers Started a Revolution". HuffPost . June 30, 2014.
  6. ↑ Carmody, Deirdre (June 28, 1991). "The Media Business; Outweek, Gay and Lesbian Magazine, Ceases Publication". The New York Times .
  7. ↑ "Publications: Open Closets, Closed Doors". Time . July 8, 1991.
  8. ↑ "Rotello; The Ethics of Outing". Archived from the original on March 17, 2010.
  9. ↑ Curzan, Anne (May 8, 2014). Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History. ISBN   9781107020757.
  10. ↑ "Landmark OutWeek Archives Now Online". Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved March 5, 2015.
  11. ↑ "Rotello Newsday archive".
  12. ↑ "GLAAD Awards 1995". IMDb .
  13. ↑ Cheren, Mel; Rotello, Gabriel; Earle, Brent Nicholson (2000). Amazon; My Life and the Paradise Garage. ISBN   0967899400.
  14. ↑ "Amazon; Party Monster". Amazon.
  15. ↑ "Rotello, The Lies About Tammy Faye". HuffPost . July 24, 2007.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.