NEW YORK — He refuses to go quietly into that good night. Larry Kramer continues to rage.
The playwright and activist turns 80 on Monday and neither recent illness nor the glow of a new marriage has softened the urgency of his demands.
“There’s so many things I still want to do and there are so many fights still to win. I try to concentrate on that,” he said recently in his Manhattan apartment. “The fight’s never over.”
Kramer, who wrote “The Normal Heart” and founded the advocacy group ACT UP, is angry that AIDS infection rates aren’t falling and there’s still no cure, even as diseases like Ebola grab headlines.
“No one is talking about AIDS. It’s been 35 years, this plague, and we still don’t have as much to fight it as we should have,” he says. “Right now AIDS is worse than ever before.”
His fiery temper, which roused thousands to protests in the early years of the epidemic, is part of a new HBO documentary that offers an intimate look at the crusader.
“Larry Kramer in Love & Anger” shows Kramer from his troubled relationship with his father to his suicide attempt at Yale, from his divisive 1978 novel “Faggots” to his role in both the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP.
“The one nice thing that I seem to have acquired, accidentally, is this reputation of everyone afraid of my voice,” he says with a smile. “So I get heard, whether it changes anything or not.”
Director Jean Carlomusto has known Kramer since 1986 and wasn’t afraid to show his irascible side. She admits there have been times when she’s wanted to scream at Kramer, but she also credits him with teaching her how to fight back.
