I'd be remiss as a professional homo if I let the day go by without wishing Happy Birthday to one of our living gay treasures: Harvey Fierstein, who turns 53 today.

Without Harvey, we'd have never had 'Torch Song Trilogy' -- and we'd be a poorer gay culture without it. I first read the play in 1982 when I was 20 years old. I bought it at a gay bookstore in San Francisco and it instantly became one of those works that changed my life.

I was already out, but Harvey's messages of living your own life, of being OK with being different, of loving yourself enough not to need anyone's approval but giving yourself permission to want it anyway, all helped make me the gay man I grew up to be.

Harvey Fierstein gave me -- and no doubt legions of other gay people -- just a little bit more courage to be true to myself. I still have that script, it's tattered and dog-eared, full of scribbles and check marks, a memory book now of what the book meant to me then.

Harvey's life work so far has given us lots more iconic gems, too, including the book for the Broadway musical 'La Cage Aux Folles,' and of course his effervescently motherly self in 'Hairspray. (I still think *he* should have been cast in the movie, damn it.) I can't wait to see his new musical with Faith Prince, 'A Catered Affair,' which opens this fall.

Check out these two wonderful video clips after the jump. The first is an interview conducted by the sorely-missed Vito Russo backstage at 'Torch Song Trilogy' in 1983 where Harvey dishes about the play, tells us how he freaked out David Letterman, and foretells how huge 'La Cage' would become for the gay community. This is really nifty:



Harvey Fierstein 1983: Torch Song, Letterman & La Cage



(Hat tip to A Typical Joe for the YouTube upload.)


The second piece is from 'In the Life' where Harvey shows us his activist spirit.

Where Is Our Anger?



I love you, Harvey Fierstein!