Elton John has remembered his friend Larry Kramer, the late gay rights and AIDS activist, screenwriter, and author, as “a warrior” for his cause and a “giant of a man.” Kramer, who penned the Tony Award-winning play The Normal Heart and earned an Oscar nomination for his screenplay to Women in Love, died Wednesday (May 27) after a battle with pneumonia.
He was 84. Kramer’s passing is “the saddest news,” writes Elton on social media. “We have lost a giant of a man who stood up for gay rights like a warrior.” Away from the stage and screen, Kramer founded the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in 1987.
His “anger,” notes John, was “needed at a time when gay men’s deaths to AIDS were being ignored by the American government, a tragedy