The collective is responsible for some of the most powerful protest art in modern history, including the now-iconic "Silence = Death" tagline that appeared on posters and shirts around New York City. With a mixture of interviews, archival footage and historical records, It Was Vulgar & It Was Beautiful weaves together an unsparing account of the tireless efforts of activists during the height of the AIDS crisis, with a focus on the Gran Fury art collective, an offshoot of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP.įaced with willful government inaction and wide public disinformation, the group approached their activism as an advertising project - looking for material that would catch the public's eye and draw their attention to the pandemic ravaging the country.Īnd to their credit, they succeeded.
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It Was Vulgar & It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic by Jack Lowery The result is a poignant reflection on a decades-long career as a playwright and actor that will make you laugh and cry in turn.Īnd if Fierstein had just written I Was Better Last Night, it would have been enough, but we're happy to say he narrates the audiobook, too. He's blunt about his struggle with addiction, the feeling of abandonment he felt through the AIDS crisis, and the fear that characterized how many people in the entertainment business treated him even as he won award after award for his work - much of which focused on the lives of gay men. But the memoir goes well beyond the (often well-deserved) cattiness that punctuates Fierstein's writing. I Was Better Last Night offers stories on everything from Harvey Fierstein's high school's smoking terrace to his early days as a supporting actor in Andy Warhol's Pork and all the backstage gossip of La Cage Aux Folles.