The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin (2017) - full transcript

Mr. Armistead, you are...

No,
got to start over again.

That's my first name.

Okay.

Mr. Maupin, I guess you would
call yourself a gay writer.

Not really.

I'm a writer who is gay.

I'm not a gay writer.

I write about
heterosexuals as well.

My writing didn't really
flourish until I came out,

because it's very impossible
to... to keep a huge secret in



your heart and
be a good writer.

I think it's very difficult.

And my whole
success was concurrent with

my coming out sexually.

When I was a boy in
Raleigh, I was afraid of being

locked in Oakwood
Cemetery overnight.

Every Sunday after church when
our blue tailed white Pontiac

cruised through the entrance,
I fretted about the sign posted

above us,
"Gates locked at 6:00 p.m."

What if they lost
track of the time?

That enormous gate would clang
shut and we would be trapped

there all night eating
acorns for survival.

My brother, my sister,
my parents and me,

Cemetery Family Robinson.



Oakwood Cemetery was not just
the landscape of our past,

but also the very
blueprint of family.

My father would eventually lay
out the rules for his children

in a self-published
family history.

One thing is certain, the old man wrote,
wherever one of these

men met success,
there was a self-effacing

and goodly lady by his side.

Back then,
I was still too young to realize that there would

never be a lady by my side.

I felt only this shapeless longing,
an oddly grown up ennui

born of alienation and silence.

Some little boys have
this feeling very early on.

Sooner or later, though,
no matter where in the world we live,

we must join the diaspora venturing beyond our biological family

to find our logical one,
the one that actually makes sense for us.

So maybe I was beginning to
understand something on those

Sunday afternoons
in the cemetery.

Maybe I sensed that my true
genealogy lay somewhere beyond

these gates
with another family.

That would be scary, wouldn't it,
to know that my long held

dream of family,
the one laid out by my father,

came with a closing time
far more final than 6:00 p.m.

Possibly
do you mind signing this?

No. No. No.
That's is what I do.

This is for Nadine.

- And Olin.
- And Olin?

Yeah. Thank you.

I'm so happy to
hear that you're writing your memoir.

We've waited
with baited breath.

When
that shit coming out?

Seventeen.

I'm just delivering it

Typical of anything that

Armistead is involved with,
Tales of the City is a classic.

And like a classic,
you can pick it up at any time of your life

and get something different from it that's
just as powerful and just as meaningful.

And you laugh, and you cry,
and you... you feel close.

You feel intimate.

And that's something
that everyone craves.

Initially,
he was writing for a San Francisco audience,

his neighbors, his friends,

people he might meet at a party,
or on the street, or at a bar.

Just San Francisco people.

Oh, no, then when
he publishes a book.

Well, America
discovered it, and...

and then we
discovered it in Europe.

And when
Armistead arrives in London for

a book reading,
he's a Rockstar.

And the audience is very
varied in age and sexualities.

The quirkiness of his writing,
the honesty of it, is something

that just hooks people
and... but all sorts of people.

He loves the world but he
does find it hilariously funny.

Wonderful.

How are you, honey?

Hey, darling.
I'm good.

Books in the Castro, who knew?

I know. Really.

Do people read?

I guess they do.

They read you.

I'm so proud

Every morning,
a half a million people

buy the
San Francisco Chronicle.

For a lot of them, the most
important part of this paper

is the inside back page.

That's where you
read Tales of the City.

It also has made a local
celebrity out of its author,

Armistead Maupin.

Not long after I
arrived in San Francisco,

I was writing feature pieces
for a Marin County weekly

called the Pacific Sun.

And what I wanted to do
more than anything was just

whacky stories around town.

A woman friend of mine told me
that I really should go down to

the Marin Safeway and check
out the hetero cruising scene

on Wednesday nights.

So, I went down there,
and sure enough, there

were all these over-dressed
young women and men

kind of cruising
the vegetable aisle.

And I tried to find somebody to
admit that they had put on that

rhinestone studded, brushed
denim pantsuit purposefully

in order to get picked up.

And there was... nobody
would tell me that they

were there for that purpose.

So, I went home completely frustrated and thought I'm going

to have to do kind of a
fictionalized version of this.

And I invented a new girl in
town named Mary Ann Singleton.

And at the end of her search after meeting a couple of jerks,

she meets the man of
her dreams and he's there

with the man of his dreams.

And the story completely
struck a nerve, especially with

straight women in San Francisco
who are figuring out why there

were so many attractive but
unresponsive men in town.

And the editors at the Pacific Sun said why don't you do this every week?

Why don't you follow
her somewhere else?

And so I did for about five weeks,
and it was called The Serial back then.

While The Serial was appearing,
one of the people reading it was

Charles McCabe,
who was a senior columnist at The Chronicle.

And Charles was a brilliant
essayist, very misogynistic,

totally homophobic, but really
liked me, and loved the column.

And he said,
I was just vulgar enough to make it work in The Chronicle.

And so I asked him if he would
get me an interview with

the editor and publisher at the time,
and I assured him that I

could write this
thing on a daily basis.

I lied.

I basically lied.

I was panicked.

I thought how on earth
am I going to do this.

And then I got the job.

The Chronicle was thought of as sort of a

colorful paper, and was trying
to fit what we thought was a

more colorful and vibrant city,
and we had a sense that that's

sort of what most of
our readers wanted.

The day
after I got the job,

I danced down Polk Street.

I actually jumped up in the air
and clicked my heels together,

because I knew that I had
landed on something that was

going to make me famous.

I knew it then, because
I had this subject matter

that wasn't being covered.

I came out
to visit San Francisco and saw

everyone loving everyone else,
and saw so much openness, and

I just knew I had to be here.

We decided that we had to have more freedom

to be ourselves and we
came to San Francisco.

There was a huge influx of LGBT people in the City,

and they weren't
being written about.

While it was fiction,
and therefore, not norm

for daily newspaper, that it
would be one of the ways that

you could represent a lifestyle going on in the City at the time

that you couldn't if you were
going to restrict yourself to

purely, you know,
normal reporting.

The managing editor of The Chronicle was very

nervous about printing
fiction in a newspaper.

So, it had to have the fictional aspect in the title and it also

had to indicate that it
was about San Francisco.

And so they sent me five
possibilities, and among those

was Tales of the City.

And I looked at it and thought,
ooh, that's got kind of a

Dickensian ring and so I
said, that's the one I want.

Mary Ann
Singleton was 25 years old when

she saw San Francisco
for the first time.

She came to the City alone
for an eight-day vacation.

On the fifth night,
she drank three Irish coffees at the Buena Vista,

realized that her mood ring was blue,
and decided to phone her mother in Cleveland.

Mary Ann was
in many ways, my alter ego,

because I was
the new girl in town, too.

I was looking at this
strange new world in a state of

perplexity, and
wonder, and fear.

She maybe judges people a little bit too much,
the way I can do

in front of a pleasant façade,
but I'm thinking what an idiot.

Michael Toliver is a romantic,
gay man with a big slut side.

That's me.

I was having fun.

I was really having my adolescence,
and yet, in each of

our little gay boy hearts,
there was this thought that

you could also be in love.

And I poured a lot of my grandmother into the character of Mrs.
Madrigal.

My grandmother was a suffragist who made speeches all over England.

She read my palm when
I was a little boy.

She was a
wonderful air, fairy,

almost seemingly
psychic old lady.

She was really very dear to me.

I think the
greatest influence on me.

And I told my grandmother just before she died at the age of 97,

that I had put her spirit into one of the characters
and I was so glad to be able to do that.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

Good.

You're one of us then.

Welcome to 28 Barbary Lane.

Thank you.

Yes, you should.

I was born while
my father was a skipper of a

minesweeper in
the South Pacific.

He actually found out about
my birth through semaphore.

It was something like baby boy born,
mother and son doing fine.

So, I didn't see my
father for a year and a half.

I was the great great
grandson of a Confederate

general who died at Antietam.

His name was
Lawrence O'Brien Branch.

He was a U.S. Congressman before he served in the Confederacy,

and actually made a speech on
the floor of Congress in which

he says that he will die for the right to take his property to

the new territories because they were passing laws that said

that slaves could not be brought to places like New Mexico.

And he said this was socialist Europeans imposing themselves on our...

our country and
our sense of property.

And... and he did die for it.

So, we were always told that
we were Southern aristocracy.

We lived in a suburban ranch house that looked kind of like a

Howard Johnson's, but
we were very aware that,

you know, we had good blood.

All our
Southern heritage was based

around the Civil War, the Confederacy,
going to the right church,

and making your debut,
which I was somewhat forced to do,

saying yes, ma'am, and yes, sir,
and we were very much in that Southern tradition.

We were taught to be
gentlemen and Southern belles.

My father was a lawyer and I can remember
going down to visit him downtown.

And they had colored water fountains and white water fountains.

My father had quite a difficult
time with... with civil rights

and anything that
went against what the type

of world he had lived in.

I suppose you could
say he was a white supremacist.

Everything about his
life indicated that.

I remember going to the beach one
time with our maid and her daughter.

She must have
been ten or eleven.

And I got mad at her because
she had taken my steam shovel

and I called her the N word.

And my mother grabbed me by the arm and jerked me away and said,

"You do not say that word ever.

You've hurt her feelings."

And I said, "But daddy
says it all the time."

"That doesn't matter.
He's your father."

She stood up for him, and
protected him, but privately

told her children not
to behave that way.

My mother
was a beautiful, gracious,

gentle soul and very loving.

She was the buffer I think for
us with my father, who,

on the other hand, never showed
a lot of affection to us.

I think we knew he loved us,
but I was always forever,

for years trying to get his
approval and love.

And that's sort of the way he setup his relationship with his children.

Armistead is my oldest brother.

He is five years older than me,
and then there's a middle brother,

Tony, who is
two years older than me.

I call my brother Teddy,
and I've been calling him

that since I can remember.

He is Armistead
Jones Maupin, Jr.

Our father was Big Armistead.

When he was a teenager,
my mother was always suggesting why

don't you go ask Mary Jane out for a date or someone like that.

And so I never sort of saw him
as a mover and a shaker as...

as you know
in the dating scene.

During the period where I was waiting for Tales to begin,

I actually met Rock Hudson.

He was visiting San Francisco
and invited us up to

his suite at
the Fairmont Hotel.

And he said, "I have a
little reading to do."

And he produced the bulldog
edition of The Chronicle, which

was the early edition that
appeared the night before.

So, he stood up, a little
drunkenly, and read the first

chapter of Tales of the City,
which includes a moment where

Mary Ann's mother tells her you have to leave there immediately.

I was watching
McMillan & Wife and there was

a serial killer on the loose.

Pick me up.
I'll be downstairs.

He meant it to be
charming and I was charmed.

And the next day he and his partner
invited me to dinner in San Francisco.

Do you want me to go on?

I was
just going to ask...

Oh, how sexy
are we going to get here?

- Oh, we're going there.
- All right.

The first time it was at a little French restaurant.

They got quite drunk and when
the evening was over, Tom said,

"I'm just going to
go back to the room."

And Rock and I caught a cable car up the hill heading up to the Fairmont.

And by the time we got up to the Diplomat Suite,
Rock and I were

sitting across the room from each other and he said at one point,

"Well, I should be over there or you should be over here."

Which was about as
dreamy as something could be.

Although I was completely
and utterly terrified.

And I just did not perform well at all and it was very touching,

because apparently, it
happened to him all the time.

And he sat next to me and
put his arm around me and said,

"You know I'm just
a regular guy."

And I said, "No, you're not.

And I'm Doris Day."

Don't take your
bedroom problems out on me.

I have
no bedroom problems.

There's nothing in my
bedroom that bothers me.

Oh, that's too bad.

There was a
second time and there was

once with him and his partner.

Oh, and there was a time
after a gallery opening.

I just eventually stopped trying to get together with him because

I was coming out of the
closet and he was firmly in it.

And I ended up writing about him in Further Tales of the City,

but I put blanks
where his name would be.

Good evening,
ladies and gentlemen.

We are proud to
present Armistead Maupin.

Thank you.

Drunken bears,
there's nothing like it.

I grew up in Raleigh in
the South, and had a very...

Okay, you can clap
for it if you want.

You know there are a lot...
you know, so many things to still

love about the
South except possibly the

people and the politicians.

But I grew up trying
to please my daddy.

He was all I'd ever had in
terms of a moral compass.

And so, everything he said I
thought, well, it must be true,

because he says it.

And I was actually
embracing conservatism.

By the time I was 16 years old,
I remember being interviewed by

the Raleigh paper and I said,
"We young conservatives are

going to make a
difference when we grow up."

This is Viewpoint,
the daily editorial expression

of WRAL Television
voiced by Jesse Helms.

Michigan's very liberal senior
United States Senator...

I flunked
out of law school.

So, I thumbed home to
Raleigh and told my father

I didn't want to be a lawyer.

And he said,
"We'll get you a job."

So, he talked to a friend of his,
and he said, "Well, you can

come down and work for him at the TV station,
and write news."

And so, Jesse Helms gave
me my first writing job.

He thought I was the
hope of the future.

The only fucking thing
he's ever been right about.

That man's legacy was in the hatred he spewed his entire life.

I was sent out one day by Jesse
Helms to cover a Klan rally.

And I interviewed
the Imperial Wizard.

And at the time, Dean Rusk, who
was the Secretary of State,

had a daughter who had married
an African American man.

And I asked the Imperial Wizard what he thought about it.

And he said, "Well,
what else would you expect from a man who's a practicing homosexual?"

And I went back to the station and told Jesse this scoop I had gotten,

and Jesse went white.

Whiter than he normally was and
said, "That is absolutely the

worst thing you can
say about anybody."

And I took it on.

I heard it.

I knew it was
nothing that you could be.

But Jesse was the first
person that just spelled out

what an awful thing it was.

Many homosexuals
average 16 different sex

partners every month.

The reason I
am embraced conservatism was

I was terrified of who I was.

And so you keep the
lid on, and you want the

lid on for everybody
else, and they all have to

march in that straight line.

I volunteered for Vietnam,
because I think I still had some

manhood issues going on and
I wanted to go to the war.

My mother said I had a Lawrence
of Arabia complex,

which was a lot closer
than she knew.

And I found myself
volunteering for more and more

rigorous places because I need
to write home colorful stories

to my father to show that I
was fighting for my country.

And I ended up in a little place on the
Cambodian border called Chau Doc.

I met Armistead in November of December of 1969.

I was kind of shocked in some
ways, because, while I hadn't

been trained for a lot of the
things I had to do on the boats

when I got there, especially
going out in the weeds and

laying up ambushes and all that
type of thing, Armistead came

out from Saigon, where he was
serving as a protocol officer

and he hadn't been
trained for anything that was

out where we were either.

He went out and learned what he
was going, and went up and down

the canals, and I admired
him for all that, because

it can get pretty dangerous.

You're asked to go and do it,
and you do it, and you remember it,

and you should be
proud of it at times.

Maybe you don't agree
with why you're there,

but you... you're there.

Hell no, we won't go.

Hell no, we won't go.

Hell no, we won't go.

We cannot consider
ourselves America's best men

when we are ashamed of
and hated what we were called

on to do in Southeast Asia.

I had
a friend call me.

He asked me if I would come to Washington and do press releases

for John Kerry, who at that time,
was organizing the Vietnam

Veterans Against the War.

I didn't feel the way Mr. Kerry
did, and as a result, I got

pretty angry and
wanted to do something.

So, I wrote a letter to Admiral Zumwalt and asked if the

government would help out with
a project in which Vietnamese

veterans could return to Vietnam to help the Vietnamese people.

Ten of us went back to
Vietnam on a humanitarian

project and built houses.

It looked like a bad motel,
really, when we were done.

We had no skill at all.

But at the end of it,
the White House called and said that

President Nixon wants to
see me in the Oval Office.

We showed up at the White House
and were ushered in to meet

Richard Nixon, and I
was immediately aware

of how insecure he was.

The fact
that you served there and were

willing to go back and help the
people there, of course, really

demonstrates so
clearly what it's all about.

I have never seen a figure as
spectacular as the Vietnamese.

The Vietnamese
women are actually...

They're so
sexy in their little Áo dài.

You know they fly out
when they ride their bicycles,

and it's real...

And I thought
oh, my god, the...

He picked the queer to
say this to, you know.

My father
was over the moon.

You know, I had
worked for Jesse Helms.

I had met Nixon.

Nixon had invited me back.

I was doing everything,
everything that I needed to do

to make him happy.

He was very, very proud of me.

And he hadn't...
he still didn't know the main truth about me.

The
first time I met Armistead,

we talked about the strangeness
of writing fiction that

is being read as you go along.

I was doing Sandman and you were doing in The Chronicle that sort

of Dickensian thing of
writing serial fictions.

Did things ever happen that
surprised you when you realized

how well you had set
things up without...

All the time.

...realizing
what you were doing?

All the time.

The coolest things I have ever done have just come out of the moment.

We've both been
conscious of keeping

an audience with a story.

When they hired me, they said,
"We need six weeks' worth."

So, that was 30
episodes, 30 chapters.

Pretty soon, I got confident
enough, that I just goofed off,

and I just ate up
my whole backlog.

So, I would have
to come in and think

you have to write something.

This woman was coming over to
my desk and saying, "Write."

What
was amazing about Armistead was

that he would come in in the
morning, no notebook, no notes,

no help, and he's sit down at a
desk that was bare of anything,

at an IBM Selectric typewriter,
which is unforgiving.

What impressed me is actually
how good he was at getting that

copy out in a short
time five days a week.

I kind of identified
with Mary Ann Singleton.

I'm a straight laced,
middle class, Midwestern person.

So, I was really fascinated by
this world that was opening up

to me and to all of The
Chronicle's readers too.

And I think I've
repressed a lot of what...

of the stories in there,
because you know I suppose

part of me didn't
quite approve.

I
remember that in that column,

two men woke up
in bed together.

The morphing from just being
a... a sort of interesting,

unusual, somewhat controversial
column aimed at the colorful

youth of San Francisco, it
did slowly morph into obviously

being a largely
gay themed column.

But it happened slowly and
I'm sure a lot of people were

picking up on it
way before I was.

The managing editor
of The Chronicle, who was sort

of in charge of handling
Tales, got very nervous when he

realized that Michael Toliver
was going to be a regular

character, and that
other gay characters,

and lesbians were showing up.

So, he actually created
a chart in his office.

And when characters were
introduced, he would put them

into the appropriate column.

And the theory was that it
should at no time be more than

30 % homosexual.

It annoyed me so
much, that I had a quota.

His fiction
is almost a Trojan horse.

It smuggles in all sorts of
things and all sorts of things

under the guise of
being a fantastic story

about people
you're interested in.

My intention with
Anna Madrigal from the very

beginning, was that
she be transgender.

I'd made the mistake of telling
or maybe not the mistake when I

look back on it, but
I told the editors and

they were pretty horrified.

And they said, "Well,
you cannot say anything

about that for a while."

Their fear actually served me,
because I could develop her as a

character, and make her a woman
of mystery, and have people

curious about her
at the same time that

they're learning to love her.

So, that by the time that I did
tell her story,

they would be onboard,
and that's exactly what happened.

We all
did it stealth back then.

No one was way, way out.

I was just starting
to come way, way out.

We were mostly all like
Anna Madrigal in those days.

We wanted to be respectable.

We wanted people not to know
except who wanted them to know.

I wasn't like that.

I just said, "Fuck it.

Here, this is me.

Not a man.

Not a woman."

I moved to San Francisco
in '88, started immediately

reading the books then.

I thought look at this, a
transsexual who isn't a serial

killer, isn't a rapist, isn't
some kind of terrible pervert,

is just a nice person.

And they're just weren't
that many role models.

I think there were a lot of young,
gay men and

women and trans people who...
who had nothing to hang onto,

who had no story.

And Armistead did it.

He gave them a sense of
hope, and joy, and security.

What I wanted out of
literature and what I had never

found in literature was a story that would incorporate everyone,

that would place my
life in the context

of the rest of the world.

So that gay people, and straight people,
and in between people

would fit together all on
one large canvas and function

lovingly with each other.

And I'm sure that there was a lot of

nervousness on the part of the
management as to just how far

Army was going with his stories
and of course they... they were

concerned about readership.

They didn't want anybody
cancelling their subscriptions

because of something
offensive in the paper.

"Down with the gay
life in quotes."

They still say that.

Why do you call it
gay when it's not gay?

Well, it is gay.

It's very gay in
every sense of the world.

You know when people get really
angry and start flinging Jesus

at you, that you've... you're
speaking some truth.

I loved that one.

Loved that one.

This just tells me
that they were into it.

I lured them into a world they didn't want to think about.

The idea that he was doing
this in a newspaper in

a... in what they call
a family newspaper,

that is not
just groundbreaking.

That takes chutzpa and, you know,
testicles the size of asteroids.

I first became interested in photography

when I was in my
early twenties.

I was a model in Milan
and... and London as well.

And just working with all
these amazing photographers,

sort of got me interested.

And I was always a little shy on the other side of the camera.

It was sort of a
stretch, which is one of

the reasons I wanted to do it.

And it also interested me
because it was a way to combine

very technical stuff as
well as creative work.

Darling.

Armistead
and Chris, they're like some

kind of strange storybook
couple, in that each of them

is the other one's ideal.

It's like Armistead was being
written by a beneficent creator

with a plan, who started off
going okay, you are going to be

this repressed right-wing kid
from North Carolina but just

stick through the story, and
at the end, you will get your

happily ever after.

The way that
Chris and I met was sort of a

combination of the
old and the new.

My housekeeper had been on
this website called DaddyHunt.

It was just for
older men in general, who

were finding each other on it.

And I noticed in the personals
there this young guy who the

most beautiful blue-eyed gaze.

He was gorgeous.

My younger friends were saying,
"Oh, my God, he's really hot."

And I said, "Forget it.

He only likes them over 45."

The way he tells it,
is that he stumbled

over my profile and was sort of stopped by it and printed out my photo,

and put it on his desk,
and but never really had any

intention of
contacting me through the site.

And then one day,
I was walking through

the Castro and I saw him,
and we... our eyes... we...

we did the little cruisy thing.

You were coming this way.

Uh-huh.

And I
was going that way.

And we did the
old-fashioned stop and twirl.

And I just turned around
and went back to him and said

perfect line, just
remembered, it's so good,

"Didn't I see you
on a website?"

And I said, "Which one?"

Which thrilled me because at the time,
this was like right after

I had launched the site.

Well, it turned out
he owned the website.

And that some of the
captions appreciating

older men had been his.

When I
started DaddyHunt, a lot of it

for me was
a political statement,

because I had always been attracted to older men,
but I felt like a lot of the gay

community was very ageist.

The original tagline was
wiser, stronger, hotter.

I really wanted to emphasize
that there were qualities of

getting older that...
that should be respected.

The disparity
between the two of us that

a lot of people don't
understand is not an issue,

because we understand it.

We understand what we have.

He has made me feel
more confident in my body

than I have ever been myself.

I've started to own
this, for instance.

A lot of guys like
that, amazingly.

Pretty much since day one,
Armistead and I

acknowledged that we wanted
to have an open relationship.

I think part of it was
from past experience in other

relationships, realizing that
not only the relationships that

I had been in, but many
friends that I witness who are

supposedly monogamous, aren't.

You know, and I just felt
like it would be better to

be able to be honest about it.

You know,
I resist the term open relationship,

because it looks to me like a Facebook announcement like there's an

enormous breeze blowing
through your relationship.

As a young man,
I... it used to bother me.

I came with all the fool's,
romantic, heterosexual,

it will be one person forever.

And somewhere inside
of me, I knew that that

was a tough thing to pull off.

Some people do, and
I'm happy for them.

I don't think there is one way
to be married, whether it be

you're gay or straight.

What we both
wanted was fidelity.

The notion that this person
is with you no matter what.

And that if you love that person enough,
you can give the freedom

to let them explore a little on the side,
or sometimes with you.

That's another aspect of it.

It's very nice.

So, I think we've accomplished something
that makes me feel more loved than ever.

And I hope he feels
that way about it.

I had know that I was attracted to men ever since I was 12 years old,

but I didn't do anything
about it until I was about 25.

So, I had a long, long
period there where I...

Gestation period.

Gestation period where I had

no sex with anyone really.

I'm a... I'm what they
call a perfect Kinsey 6.

I've never had sex with a woman,
but and I waited a long time

before I had sex
with a man I was--

A few
drag queens though.

Never.
Never.

I'd like to tell you about the first time I had sex.

I hope yours was
better than mine was.

Oh, my God.

I didn't have sex with anybody
until I was about 25 years old.

And I was living in Charleston,
South Carolina, and I'm sure it

was the last time I was ever in
a dark park in all innocence.

I had gone down there to sit
on a bench, and look at the

moonlight on the water, and
enjoy the scenery, and a man

walked up to me and said,
"Have you got the time?"

And I said, "No, I don't.

I'm sorry."

And he said, "Have
you got a light?"

And I said, "No."

Finally, I said,
"Listen, I don't think

I'm what you're looking for."

I knew what he was up to.

And he apologized and
kind of scurried away.

And... and I sat there on the
bench for a while and I thought

what are you fucking up to?

You're exactly what
he's looking for.

I hurried back into
the park where this guy

was hitting on another guy.

I interrupted them
while they were...

"I'm so sorry I was
so rude back there.

Would you like to
come to my house?

It's right over there.

And like we could
have a drink."

So, I snatched this guy away from this completely dumbfounded

man and we went back to my
little carriage house, and it

took less than five minutes.

I'm pretty sure I got a dick in
my mouth, and that he did, too.

And I could just picture in that particular moment Peggy Lee in

the corner of the
room singing the song that

was so popular that summer.

What was it?

"Is that all there is?"

Thank you, very much.

It was 1969.

That was the
summer of the moonshot.

That was the
summer of Stonewall.

Sort of appropriate, really,
that I negotiated to lose my

virginity on the spot
where the first shots

of the Civil War were fired.

But the next morning
something amazing happened.

I realized I'd passed
this point of no return that

I had dreaded my whole life.

You know, so what if it wasn't
the best thing in the world?

There might be other
people who came to that park.

And maybe I could get it right.

And it wasn't so much the death
of innocence as a kind of brand

new, adolescence that made
me feel like a reborn person.

What
about life in San Francisco?

Does a straight
person need to be aware?

What's happened in
San Francisco is that the 15 %

or 10 % of the population that
is gay, is open about it.

People have learned to
accept, learned to get over the

stereotypes, learned to get over their prejudice,
and it's a

healthy atmosphere
that's taking place.

I met
Armistead in the early '70s.

He had that Southern
manner and he was so polite,

and he was just funny.

You know,
so you just felt as if he had the world in his hands.

But he had not come
out at that time.

I took him all
over San Francisco.

You know, it's been a
Wild West for so long.

And you just would walk out
the door and you'd smell people

smoking dope, and there
would be music everywhere.

You just felt great.

I mean I didn't always feel
great, because I overdid it a

little bit, more than I
should have most of the time,

but it was a wonderful time.

I saw San Francisco
on my way to and from Vietnam.

When I processed out of the Navy out on Treasure Island,
I had a

mix of feelings,
because part of me wanted to stay in the Navy.

I loved it.

I loved the uniforms, and
the camaraderie, and the men.

But I knew if I actually acted
on what I was feeling, that I

would be in big trouble.

And I remember looking over at
this white city there on the

edge of the water and wondering if I could live there.

And it wasn't until the
Associated Press offered me a

gig in San Francisco,
that I knew I

had the opportunity to do that.

So, I leapt at it.

I remember telling a guy that I
had actually picked up in the

park in Charleston that I
was moving to San Francisco,

and he said, "Oh, my God.

You'll love it there.

They've got 50 gay bars."

And I said, rather primly, I'm sure, "Oh,
I would never go into one of those."

Of course,
I was in one of those on my first night in town.

I went down to the
Rendezvous on Sutter Street.

And there were guys in there
slow dancing to Streisand.

I think it was "People."

It was a horrifying
sight to me.

My first good friend in
town was a red-headed woman.

And I decided I was going to
tell her that I was gay because

I wanted a new life and I
didn't see any reason to be

lying now that I was in town.

And so I went over to her
house, and I was drunk by

that time from about
three mai tais

and said,
"I have something to tell you."

And I hemmed, and hawed,
and she came over and... and... and sort

of took my hands in hers and looked up at me and said, "What?

What is it?"

And I said, "I'm homosexual."

And she looked at me for
a moment and then said...

"Oh, big fucking deal.

We... you know we love you.

Who cares?

And half of San
Francisco is gay."

Sophisticated straight people in San Francisco

were more comfortable with
my sexuality than I was.

Because I was still proudly
hanging the picture of me

shaking hands with Richard
Nixon, and I would pick up guys

down on Polk Street and bring them back to the house,
and they

would see the picture of me with Nixon,
and they would, you know

look a little bit disgusted
and horrified as if they'd just

found out they were... had
gone home with Jeffrey Dahmer.

It was... it... it... and
I... and I took that on.

I mean I think I... you know,
I think I'm still, part of me,

the... my whole life I've
been trying to please people,

and... and then I got here
and I thought nobody is happy

with my life the way it was.

Nobody is happy with it.

I was the one that changed.

I came out.

I finally became myself as a
person and my heart opened up.

The sexual aspect of it,
I can't minimize that.

There was just something amazing about,
you know, I could... I would

go to the baths, and I would
have sex, and the very process

of you know lying in someone's
arms and cuddling, it opened my

heart to such an extent,
that I started just taking the

world in in a different way.

Some of those guys that I'd
lie with were of another color,

another race.

You know, everything I'd ever
been taught, was falling away,

and I just realized what it was
to be with another human being,

what human feelings were.

And that made me examine all the little prejudices that I'd been

given when I was growing up.

It wasn't just racist stuff.

It was my family telling me
that I was better than anybody

because it was in my
bloodline, you know.

This nonsense.

And it made me into a writer.

That's what it did,
among other things.

It made me into a writer.

My grandmother and I were once,
when I was like 14 years old,

were walking to a garden party
in Raleigh, and there was a

woman ahead of us that was all
just femmed out to the nines.

Pink, and
perfumed, and powdered,

and little spike heels, and...

And my grandmother turned to
me with this sort of sly little

smile on her face and said,
"Any women who is all woman, or any

man who is all man,
is a complete monster

unfit for human company."

And that's always been my rule for writing characters,
you know.

We're all a mix
of these things.

I try to find the part of us
that isn't black, or white, or

male, or female,
or any of those things but human, the part...

the part that comes
from the heart.

And that is simply the
function of the writer.

In my novel Maybe the Moon,
it's told from the viewpoint of a

heterosexual, Jewish, dwarf
actress working in Hollywood.

Okay.

"When you're my size and not
being tormented by elevator

buttons, water fountains
and ATMs, you spend your life

accommodating the sensibilities of 'normal people'..."

"You do it if you want to
belong to the human race."

Maybe the Moon is a novel about
a friendship between a gay man

and a woman who's
a little person.

The little person Armistead was
friends with that the book is

inspired by was the
woman inside the E.T. costume.

What I remember about it was
just how much I understood and

related to the
little woman's voice.

She wasn't a victim
and I really loved that.

She was dignified, and smart,
and just had a normal life, and

there wasn't anything
mysterious, or kooky, or

fantastical, you know.

I was the only little person in
my entire family, in my entire

surrounding and I was always the black sheep in that sense, and

it was very difficult for me.

And it was very isolating.

So, I couldn't wrap my head
around how this normal size,

white, gay man, how could he
possibly walk in my shoes?

I'm like a 3'10," you
know, gimpy Mexican.

But I just can't help believing
he can relate to just being

different and not by choice.

By the end of the
book, my self-worth went

from like here to here.

It was... it... it was
life changing, really.

It was just nice.

It was the first time
in my life that I felt

someone out there understands.

In 1976 I had just
moved to San Francisco and it

seems as though Tales of the
City started the week that we

moved there, and was our guide to San Francisco,
and everything

that was going on and
what we were discovering.

If you make your
list of the major characters

beginning with Ann
Madrigal, and going down,

you will miss one of them.

And that character
is San Francisco.

We are here at
Macondray Lane, which was the

inspiration for Barbary Lane.

Actually, the steps were the...
were the inspiration to me

because when I was living in the neighborhood,
I saw them one day

and wondered what was up there.

I was just fascinated by the
idea of this little city street

and I just made
my way up the steps

into this little wonderland.

It was sort of a
combination of an English

village story
and an urban tale.

Oh, there's one over there.

I still think this is the most special place on earth,
so to be

associated with it, is
just... it's a great joy.

I started writing Tales
in 1976.

So, I had two full years
of writing five days a week,

800 words a day.

It was agonizing but
kind of exhilarating, too.

I was contacted by an editor in New York and he asked me to send

him Xeroxed copies of the
columns, because he thought

there was a novel there.

The miniseries
didn't happen until 1993.

I think
everyone quite wrongly thought

that she wasn't very smart.

And really what she
was is she was a new

person in a strange land.

And that anybody can relate to.

She arrived there
and just didn't know

what any of the rules were.

So, she was
awkward, and overwhelmed,

and excited, but not dumb.

Hello?

And that's fun to play.

Hello?

Hello.

I'm Mrs. Madrigal,
as in medieval.

The research
on Anna Madrigal was really

interesting, because I don't
know, shit all anything here.

And I...

Alan Poul was the producer,
and I called him up and I said,

"I've got to talk to a
transgendered individual."

So, he found someone and invited them to my apartment,
and I open

the door and there's this guy
6'3" - somebody who had been a

guy - 6'3",
who was now a woman.

But the initial look was much more masculine, you...
you know.

And his hands were
like basketball.

People who play basketball.

I mean, it was like... but the
voice was soft, and sweet, and

dear, and it was like, okay.

She looked at me and I
said, "Tell me, what was it

that you wanted so much?"

And what this woman said to me was,
"All my life, I yearned for

the friendship of women."

Now, I didn't know what she
was going to say, but that one

really... I mean I,
even now, it's like...

I thought...
I don't know what...

I expected something sexual.

I didn't expect
something so deeply

human, something that was

about people's
feelings, and people's....

it shows you how stupid was.

Now, I know what it is to
want the friendship of women.

And I want her to be my friend.

That's what I had learned.

And so you see the old dame

does have a past after all.

Oh, I'm
prying, aren't I?

I hope
it means we're friends.

Tales of the City broke the kiss barrier,
which is

funny, because it
was a big barrier.

I mean, you forget that man-on-man kissing,
which is now

regularly featured on
every Shondra Rhimes show,

in a much more explicit
way than it ever was with...

with Mouse and
John, was a big taboo.

Even showing two men in bed
together with the implication

that they had had sex in that
bed, was a really difficult

thing to do on television.

You cheated.

The show was
also a gigantic success.

In many PBS markets,
it was the highest rated

drama series they've ever had.

In other markets, it was second
only to Upstairs Downstairs.

And in San Francisco,
we beat the networks,

which doesn't happen with PBS.

Coming off the heels of the great success of Tales of the City,

they went into
pledge drive mode.

Give us money so that we
can continue to bring you

groundbreaking,
wonderful programming like

Tales of the city.

"Something from my garden
as a welcome from us all,

Anna Madrigal."

Hi, everybody.

I'm Mary Hart.

And I'm John Tesh.

Nude scenes, sexy
romance, graphic language,

gay lovers, narcotics.

We are talking
X-rated movie, right?

No.

It's a miniseries right in Mr.
Roger's Neighborhood on PBS.

There was already
a huge amount of momentum

certainly within the Republican Party that American public funds

should not be spent on material
that is controversial, should

not be spent on material that
some people might object to,

should not be spent
on material that can't

survive in the marketplace.

The question
is whether or tax dollars,

tax payers are going to be forced to help pay for one homosexual to

have anal intercourse
with another homosexual and

to put that into a movie.

Donald Wildmon and
the American Family Association

very famously put together this little 12-minute trailer of

highlights from
Tales of the City.

There was men kissing.

They itemized how many
times somebody was naked.

There was
an underwear contest.

I remember they went and they
counted every swear word.

Beats the shit
out of Tarot cards.

I forgot one of
the most important ones, drugs.

I don't know how many times
they must have had to

watch the thing in order to
get all that information.

They delivered it
to every member of Congress.

And the idea that anybody in
the U.S. Congress or anywhere

else could watch it
with a straight face,

is kind of astonishing.

And the PBS lowered the boom.

The shit hit the fan.

It was... it was amazing.

What the hell is
going on when the taxpayers are

required to fund
such garbage as that?

This was the time
when Jesse Helms was talking

about defunding
both the NEA and PBS.

So, I was in the thick of things with... with...
with my old boss.

All the genuine
commitments that PBS had given

to producing the second series,
were immediately reversed.

We've got to understand
that all of us become

a part of what we condone.

I still am disappointed
that that happened,

because I think they
would have made them all.

I think they would have
done the whole series.

And... and they didn't.

Is everything
alright, Mrs. Madrigal?

Naïve as it may sound,
we felt we had made a

beautiful, loving show about
family and about everybody's

right to search for love.

And there was
nothing salacious in it.

So, the idea that this was
so incendiary is difficult to

grasp, because when you look
at now, you see it for...

for what...
for what it was and for what it was always intended to be,

which is a valentine.

It's a different
world we're living in now.

Oh, my God.

And on network
television, I get surprised.

I... you know, I don't want to
come off, you know... you know,

all, you know, uptight, but
the line between actor

and sex worker is a very
fuzzy one today.

It really is.

Can I tell you something?

Of course.

I think it might
be cool with me if you...

You want me to fuck you?

Yeah.

I met Armistead while we were shooting Looking.

I'd heard about the
legend of Tales of the City.

Just as like a young,
gay man wanting to... wanting to sort of

like dive in to this world
that I'd heard about before,

because I was in the closet from like 19 to 23 with a boyfriend

who was my roommate.

And in the moment
of doing it, I...

I felt... fine.

It... everything was
compartmentalized

and I had it all figured out.

I was doing a show on Broadway called Spring Awakening,
where I

was playing a straight,
romantic male lead.

And I never lied and said that I was straight,
but I always kind

of like dodged the bullet.

And it really wasn't until I
came out, that I understood how

suffocated I was when
I was in the closet.

It's like once you're out,
you're like, oh, my God,

I can't beli...

It's like taking a... like a
deep breath for the first time

and you didn't
realize that you were ho...

Well, for me, I didn't
realize that I was holding

my breath all that time.

Actor Rock Hudson is in a hospital in Paris this morning.

One report is that
he has liver cancer.

Another that he has AIDS.

But none of this
has been confirmed.

He was brought to the American Hospital's emergency room Sunday

night, complaining
he was exhausted.

This morning he met
with his secretary.

Nothing.
He looks wonderful, I must say.

Because I was no
longer in contact with Rock,

I was as confounded as anybody
else when I heard he had AIDS.

All my friends were public
about it when they got sick.

When he showed upon Doris Day's
pet show looking really bad,

there was all that speculation.

And the people around him
were still saying,

"Oh, he has anorexia, he's been
on a watermelon diet."

Just the worst kind of lying
and obfuscation that was...

it was way too late for it.

Anybody who'd
been through the whole

process of AIDS, knew it was.

Randy Shiltz, the first openly
gay reporter and The Chronicle

and a friend of
mine called up and said,

"Are you willing to
talk about Rock?"

So, I said, "Yes, of
course, he was gay.

Everybody in Hollywood knew it.

This should not be a scandal."

So, I talked about it publicly.

I was the first person
to do it.

Meaning I...
officially, I outed him.

The guy that had introduced me
to Rock called me up sobbing at

night and said, "How could you
do that to that beautiful man?"

A political columnist in the...
in the local gay paper said,

"How can you call
yourself a friend and do that?"

You were supposed to keep the
secret, and I knew that the

secret was what
was poisoning us.

Sometimes the truth just has to
be told and there are systems

that have enslaved us all.

And the biggest
one is the closet.

Armistead's come on
the side of outing many people.

People who said it's my personal life,
and I don't think it

enters into my work,
and he thinks it's important, yes, that

they need to acknowledge that.

His belief is that when you do not talk about that,
and you are

part of a community, a cultural
group that is stigmatized by

people being silent, you have a
responsibility, if you belong,

to acknowledge you belong.

Especially with somebody like
Rock Hudson whose status in

Hollywood had so much influence
on how people perceived who was

appropriate as a movie star.

So, yes, he was, in
Armistead's mind, the person

who really had to come out.

I don't agree with that.

I will do that if I find
out that someone has been

homophobic, and
acting homophobically,

and speaking and
writing homophobically,

and they're closed,
phht, I'll fucking out them.

Hell, yeah.

But for a person
just to go on... No.

No.

No, no.

Why on earth would you say
something about the person?

Armistead's response, I...
I supported

because if people are going to
be gay to their friends and to

some strangers, is it then the
responsibility of those friends

and strangers to
lie on their behalf?

I should tell you
about a moment in my life

that Armistead participated in.

It would be, I suppose,
the mid to late '80s.

I was doing a solo show in San Francisco, and...
and met up with

Armistead and his
partner at the time, Terry.

And I said, not
entirely out of the blue,

"Do you think I
should come out?"

And he and Terry looked at each
other, and smiled, and... and

nodded vigorously, and I... I
think at that point,

it was a time when very few people in public life were...
were out.

And his first reaction was,
"Well, you'll feel better about

yourself if you come out."

Which was true.

"And it will be very good
for a lot of other people who

don't feel able to come
out to... to see someone

in public life doing it."

And I think that was
the appeal to him.

And it was just a few
months later that I came out.

I don't think I would have
done with the assurance, and

confidence, and need perhaps,
even, unless I'd had that

crucial evening with Armistead
and Terry in San Francisco.

So, I think of
Ter... Terry and Armistead

as my godfathers, really.

Changed my life for the better.

I met Armistead, I think I was

probably about seven years old.

And I can't... I can't
remember if we had met or not.

I just remember seeing him.

He had done a signing at my family's bookstore,
which was on

Polk and California, which
was called Paperback Traffic.

The bookstore also was very gay,
and so it was the perfect place

for a signing of
Tales of the City.

Just a very, very big deal that he was there,
because Tales of the City

really is all
about that neighborhood.

It was a pretty exciting
time just in San Francisco,

because this was before AIDS.

If this thing that gay men are getting in the States,

it's a severe
immune deficiency.

When I think about
AIDS, it's really like the...

my whole world disappeared.

My family lost their business.

They... they couldn't... they
couldn't keep it open, because

there was no customers,
because everybody died.

The... all the employees,
you know, a lot of them are gone,

and it's really... it's hard to
separate what happened in...

in my life from what
happened in the books.

I had had so many valiant friends who had died of AIDS,

people who were openly
gay, who were talking about

their illness in the face of the most extraordinary... mistreatment.

And their parents were
throwing them out, you know.

They were dying and their
parents were rejecting them.

John Fielding was the first
character in fiction anywhere

who had died of AIDS.

It was the only way I could
cope with it to... to take my

own... the pain I was feeling
about the death of my friends

and make other people feel it.

Uh-oh.

You have a hicky.

Where?

Right here on your neck.

There was a huge
outcry, and a lot of gay people

wrote me and said, "How dare
you spoil our light morning

entertainment with
your political agenda?"

They didn't get it.

It would be impossible to write
about San Francisco

in that period
and not bring it up.

It would be kind of insulting in a way to all of the people who

were living with it
and living through it.

And so,
why not tell that deep and heartbreaking story of AIDS?

I had a two-week
period where I was certain that

I had AIDS,
because it took two weeks for the test to come back.

And I remember going to
my doctor and wanting some

assurance that I didn't, and he
started trembling and said,

"I don't even know
whether I have it."

None of us did.

We all lived with the
assumption that we had it

and that we were going to die.

And that's one of the reasons why I ended Tales of the City in 1989,

because I had established
Michael Toliver

as a gay character who is HIV positive and I didn't want to continue

the tradition of killing
off the gay man at the end.

I don't
know how much time I have left,

whether it's two years,
or five, or fifty,

Everyone I
have loved since the epidemic

started has been HIV positive.

I knew Chris was
positive when I met him.

And both my partner at the time, Terry,
and my best friend Steve

were diagnosed at
roughly the same time.

Steve and I tried to have a
little romance, but we weren't

made for each other in
that way, but we were so made

for each other as friends.

He taught me everything I knew
at the time about Bette Davis,

Busby Berkeley, and
Bette Midler, the holy B's.

And he was 15 years younger than I was,
and didn't even remember

these people,
but he was one of those gay men who knew our lore.

And I just adored him.

What made
you realize that you were gay?

A big man.

Will you shut up?

I have to
keep him under control.

Steve loved those old
Busby Berkeley songs.

So, I was always
playing "Let's Face the Music

and Dance", you know.

"There may be trouble ahead."

I'll cry if I
repeat the rest of it.

"But... but while there's music
and moonlight, and love, and

romance, let's face
the music and dance."

And there were a lot of
gay men who were doing...

doing that at the time.

♪ There may be trouble ahead ♪

♪ But while there's moonlight And music and love And romance ♪

♪ Let's face the music
And dance ♪

Steve was a
wonderfully open person who

made no secret of having AIDS,
because he felt that it would

make life easier for people
who came after him.

A day doesn't go by in
which I don't feel the

impact of AIDS in some way.

I've lived with a man that I've
loved for the past ten years,

and we've known
from the very beginning

that he was HIV positive.

Maybe part of me thought that I
would be the one that would be

sticking it out with
Terry till the end.

They called it a
cocktail divorce.

It's what happens when the
HIV medications come along and

someone who's thought he's going to die,
no longer thinks he's

going to die and the first thing he wants to do is breakup.

So, when the cocktail came
along, and he had that choice,

I didn't see that coming.

It was a hard time.

It was a very, very
hard time for me.

Probably one of the
hardest of my life.

But you have to get through...
you know everybody who

has ever been through a
breakup, knows that is.

Finding your way
back to yourself again.

Olympia and Laura were terrific
during that period in my life,

because I was very fragile.

I think I must have been crying a fair amount on the phone with them.

My first marriage had just ended and Armistead

flew to Hartford and then
in a great sort of Southern

tradition, we were
just with each other.

And... and it strengthens
your spine when you're feeling

confused, and heartbroken, and
in grief, that

life is changing in a way that
you didn't expect.

And we sort of
clung to each other

during that period of time.

And... and... and then, after...
I think it was... I think it was

after that, Armistead invited me to...
to be with him during the

San Francisco Gay Pride Parade.

And he was one of the
grand marshals, and so I was...

I got to be his
lady in waiting.

And I found the original Mary Ann Singleton dress,
the striped one,

and I wore that,
and we were in the back of the car sitting,

and we were
both brokenhearted.

I was brokenhearted.

Armistead was brokenhearted.

We were really
vulnerable, you know, sad,

mopey people at the time.

And I remember there
were people screaming

our names in adoration.

Armistead!

Laura!

Mary Ann!

And Armistead started
to laugh, and he laughed,

and laughed, and laughed.

And the journalist from The Chronicle took a picture at that

exact moment,
and that's the photo that they ran the next day,

was that moment of... of us
both just in disbelief that we

were so brokenhearted and yet,
at the same time, being so feted

in a community of people
who were so loving,

who had so much love
to give to us.

You can tell by the applause,
we're here with

the grand marshal, Armistead
Maupin, and one of the stars

from Tales of the City,
of course, Laura Linney.

How... how's the
parade going for you?

Oh, it's just heaven.

This is the best seat in town.

You get to see everything.

A lot of fun
and feeling a lot of love.

Absolutely.

It's the best feeling
in the world, really.

My father had left out big
chunks of the family history.

His father killed himself,
I think with a shotgun,

in his home while
his family was there.

It was never talked about.

I wrote a novel about it,
finally, in 2000.

And I guess the knowledge of
that at 15 on my part, made me

start looking at my father in a different way,
and realized that

maybe so much of this anger,
so much of his political posturing,

and I figured that it may have
come from that moment where he

had to suddenly be
the man of the family.

And he was pissed off.

I would... I would
have been pissed off.

And I always
worried that my... my father

would do the same himself.

I lived in terror
of that, actually.

And I suppose I let him
get away with a lot of stuff,

and maybe my mother did, too.

She knew that about him, too.

In some ways he was
just a big baby crying.

I was up in New York and we were shooting the Night Listener, and

there's a character in
there that is sort of him.

I'd be
careful if I was you.

Why?

Well, folks
could talk, that's all.

About what?

Use your damn head.

Just because you're shut down,
doesn't mean we all have to be.

What kind
of new age crap is that?

And my sister
called and said, appar...

"You should get home.

He's not doing well."

Chris, my husband,
tells me that my response to that initially

was, um... fuck him,
I can't take it.

I remember
saying to Armistead that you

know it's... that he
would regret it if we

didn't at least make the trip.

You know, what could it hurt to
just go and you know see him

while he was on his deathbed.

And so, we went down
and daddy fell in love with

Chris, this man 30 years my
junior, and Chris drove us

around town, and to any locales
that my father wanted to go to.

His house on Hillsboro
Street, the one where my

grandfather killed himself.

And we went out to
the cemetery, which

had been an old family ritual.

For me,
it was significant, because my

father is very conservative,
and I knew that it was a big stretch

for him to be accepting
me and us as a couple.

And I remember before we left, when...
as we were saying goodbye,

you know, his dad said to me,
you know,

"You take care of that boy."

And now, that's
a 90-year-old man telling a

30-year-old man to take
care of a 60-year-old man.

He mellowed towards
the end, and he did

tell me he was proud of me.

He just wasn't proud of
the part that I thought

of as central to my life.

Many homosexuals
have become active in the

defense of what
they call gay rights.

Nowhere is that defense
under greater attack

than in Miami, Florida.

Anita
Bryant was once known

as an orange juice saleswoman.

Not anymore.

She has been selling her
Save Our Children group.

And I know
that there is hope for the

homosexuals, that if they're
willing to turn from sin,

the same as any individual,
that... that they can be

ex-homosexuals the same as there can be an ex-murderer,
or an

ex-thief, or an ex-anybody.

During the time that Anita Bryant was doing

her anti-gay campaign in
Florida, and Teddy took her on,

Newsweek decided they were going to do an article about him, and

it was going to... gay
author, Armistead Maupin.

And he didn't want his
father to find out that way.

So, that's when he
wrote the letter.

My own coming
out letter to my parents,

I published in The Chronicle
as the letter of one of the

characters in my serial.

And so, that my... my literary
life and my personal life

were running concurrently.

Okay. Okay.

This is the letter,
The Letter to Mama

that Michael writes.

He says, "Dear Mama..."

"I have friends who think I'm
foolish to write this letter.

I hope they're wrong.

I hope their doubts are based on parents who loved and trusted

them less than mine do.

I hope, especially,
that you'll see this as an act of love on my part,

a sign of my continuing need
to share my life with you."

"I wouldn't
have written I guess if

you hadn't told me
about your involvement in the

Save Our Children campaign.

That, more than anything, made
it clear that my responsibility

was to tell you the truth.

That your own
child is homosexual."

"No, mama, I wasn't recruited.

No seasoned homosexual
ever served as my mentor,

but you know what?

I wish someone had.

I wish someone older than me,
and wiser than the people in

Orlando had taken me aside and
said, 'It's all right, kid,

you can grow up to be a doctor,
or a teacher just like everyone else.

You're not crazy,
or sick, or evil.

You can succeed and be happy
and find peace with friends,

all kinds of friends,
who don't give a damn who you go to bed with.

Most of all, though,
you can love and be loved

without hating
yourself for it.'"

"I know this may
be hard for you to believe,

but San Francisco is full of men and women,
both straight and gay,

who don't consider
sexuality in measuring the

worth of another human being.

These aren't
radicals or weirdos, mama.

They are shop clerks, and
bankers, and little old ladies,

and people who nod
and smile at you when you

meet them on the bus."

"And their
message is so simple.

Yes, you are a person.

Yes, I like you.

Yes, it's all right for
you to like me, too."

"All I know is this,
if you and papa are responsible

for the way I am, then I
thank you with all my heart.

For it's the light and
the joy of my life."

♪There's not much else
I can say ♪

♪ Except that I'm the same
Micheal you've always known ♪

♪ You just know me better now ♪

"Please don't feel you have

to answer this right away.

It's enough for me to know that
I no longer have to lie to the

people who taught me
to value the truth."

"Mary Ann sends her love.

Everything is fine
at 28 Barbary Lane.

Your loving son, Michael."

I wanted a
response from my own parents,

which I didn't get.

My mother was dying
of cancer at the time.

It was how I came out to them.

They were subscribing to The Chronicle and I knew when they

got to that, they
would know it was me.

It was just too
close for comfort.

But my father wrote me a very terse little letter on his legal pad

that said, "Any extra
stress on your mother is only

going to make her die faster."

Not nice.

I, a few years back,
coined a phrase.

I refer to the
logical family as opposed

to your biological family.

It's clearer and clearer as I get older,
that sometimes people

who... that you share
blood with are not coming

along with you on the ride.

And it's time to stop punishing
yourself about that and just

realize where the real love,
and support, and unconditional love

is coming from in your life.

In this new crazy culture that we live in that has

gotten so far away from our old
school tribal village culture,

we move into the world feeling
alienated, and isolated, and

fucked up, and... and with
a sense of not belonging.

You grow up somewhere.

It doesn't fit.

It doesn't make sense.

You don't feel real.

You don't feel accepted.

And then you get to part
two of your life where you

find that place
that you belong.

When Armistead described logical family to me,
and I said,

"Oh, you mean that thing that we've all been doing all our lives?"

And he went, "Yeah."

So many of us
feel alienated from the people

who brought us into the world.

It can make you feel really isolated, desperate,
unmoored in

ways that you just
don't... sometimes you just

don't know are happening.

So, the idea of logical family,
I think really gives people an

option to say I choose you.

I call it extended family

and that's what we do.

My role in most of the extended
family is auntie or granny.

More and more these
days, people are aware that

that's what they need to get
through life, people who,

of like mind, who
love and support you.

I would say that
Armistead has told stories that

make you want to
tell your story.

He made characters who were like people you know,
and you wanted

to tell them in turn what
you hadn't been able to say,

or what your back story was.

Tell me again
about those Gatsby eyes.

He allowed people to be truthful,
and to know why it was

important to be
truthful beyond themselves.

My career has
had a very slow unfolding,

and the story I've told has
kept ongoing for 40 years,

and people are finding it.

A writer's life has ups and
downs, and there's not a whole

lot of money flow
going on right now.

It was a real lesson for me to
move into our current

ground level flat in a
Victorian house in the Castro.

I don't mind being back in a
sort of Mary Ann Singleton

situation where I can
hear the people going up

the steps to the flat above.

Have a good weekend?

I've had a hard time distinguishing between yearning

for my own youth and yearning
for the old San Francisco.

This is still the most beautiful place in the world to me,

and where I want to be.

It still has an
enchanted feel to it.

Times change.

Herb Caen,
who was the great columnist when I was a young man

here, was always grumping about
how things were so much better

back in the '30s and '40s.

Well, you were young
then, Herb, and you know, and I

was young in the '70s and '80s.

And they were
lovely, but here we are, and

I'm fucking lucky to be alive.

That's what I
keep coming back to.

I'm so lucky to be alive.

I don't have friends who could
be here with me,

and have the luxury of griping
about the Google bus.

They are long gone.

And so, I try to
live my life for them.

It was so
cool to see Donna there.

Let
me show you this window.

- Have you seen this?
- Oh, no.

It's great.

Now,
that's just so great.

Stay visible.

Should we...

Go get a Dapper Dog?

Dapper Dog.

- A little sustenance...
- Yeah.

- ...after your show.
- Yeah.

- That was great.
- Oh, thanks, baby.