Reopening the closet.

"He wanted it to be the That's Entertainment! of gay movies," says filmmaker Jeffrey Schwarz of author-activist Vito Russo and the documentary based on his groundbreaking 1981 book, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. But the film, completed by Russo's friends and collaborators Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman after his death in 1990, was a different kind of movie.

"The movie that was made is essentially a Gay Film 101 and mainly focuses on Hollywood," explains Schwarz. "But Vito's book went much deeper, talked about silent film, talked about European film, talked about the underground a little bit. It was very political. You don't get the entire scope of Vito's vision from the movie."

The special-edition DVD release of The Celluloid Closet (Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment) gives viewers a chance to learn the history of the project from Russo himself. Though the film clips and celebrity interviews compiled in the 1995 documentary are fascinating and informative, they don't fully capture the enthusiasm for the subject matter Russo conveyed in his book and his lectures. The inclusion on this new disc of rare video of Russo discussing how he began cataloging gay film images and an alternate audio track pulled from a presentation Russo gave at the Roxy Theater in San Francisco are two remarkable amendments to the original production.

"I pitched [the idea of a special-edition DVD] based on my knowledge that this material existed," says Schwarz, who worked as an apprentice editor on The Celluloid Closet and whose company, Automat Pictures, produced the supplemental material for this release and the recent DVD release of the lesbian classic Desert Hearts. "Sony [Columbia TriStar's parent] realized the value of this title and that the additional material would help sell discs. In my mind, being a huge fan of Vito Russo, I saw an opportunity to make his voice present on the DVD in a way that wasn't possible with the movie."

In addition to the Russo material, the DVD includes nearly an hour of interviews and sound bites not seen in the original release of the film. Directors Gus Van Sant (discussing My Own Private Idaho) and Gregg Araki, author-filmmaker Rita Mae Brown, actress Mariel Hemingway (who shares Persona/ Best reminiscences), and others whose contributions were originally left on the cutting room floor can finally be heard discussing a wide range of topics, such as gay imagery in Hitchcock movies and the history of drag in film.

The DVD also has an alternate audio track of running commentary by The Celluloid Closet producer-directors Epstein and Friedman, narrator Lily Tomlin, and others. Each shares personal experiences in making the documentary, including the struggle to get funding and the interviews with the featured celebrities, and each has an anecdote or two to share about Russo as the man responsible for it all.

As Schwarz points out, neither the book nor the movie is about Vito Russo, but, he adds, "you can't separate Vito from The Celluloid Closet." Indeed, Russo's voice is a necessary part of the thoughtful, sometimes painful history he so lovingly documented, and the additional material on this DVD release makes it a must-have for film scholars and gay movie fans alike.

Tate is a former assistant editor of Buzz magazine and RadioSpy.com.