I want to share a story about a less recognized side of Larry Kramer. In the 1960s, he worked in the story department at Columbia Pictures. In 2006, I interviewed him for my first book, Pictures at a Revolution. I went to his apartment...

...and spent a delightful couple of hours with a Larry I had not met or previously heard about: He was soft-spoken, gossipy, hilarious, knowing. He dished about Ross Hunter and Liv Ullmann and Glenda Jackson. He was, of course, fiercely smart, but also wickedly funny. >

I left realizing that that was who Larry Kramer might have been--a great old studio executive/producer/writer with a million stories--if illness and the horror of the AIDS pandemic had not called him to action. But it did, and he rose to the challenge with unimaginable courage. >

He made many people angry (often when he didn't need to). Nobody would call him easy. But he gave his life to a form of activism that galvanized a community and saved countless people--and did it while fighting for his own life. Imagine the effort, the cost, the strength. RIP.