GABRIEL ROTELLO (nee Douglas Gabriel Rotello) is an American musician, writer and filmmaker born on this date. He created New York’s Downtown Divas revues in the 1980s, was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of OutWeek magazine, became the first openly gay columnist at a major American newspaper, New York Newsday, and authored the book Sexual Ecology. He now makes documentaries for HBO, The History Channel and other networks.

Gabriel Rotello was born and raised in Danbury, Connecticut, and attended Knox College and Carlton College. He was in the first group of American exchange students to live and study in Kathmandu, Nepal. After graduating Rotello became a New York City keyboard player, arranger and music director. In 1979 he co-founded the underground band Brenda and the Realtones, whose story was recounted in the off-Broadway show Endangered Species in 1997.

In the 1980s, as music director of The Realtones he backed artists such as Ronnie Spector, Darlene Love, Solomon Burke, Rufus Thomas and many others. In the mid-1980s he produced a series of music revues at The Limelight, The Palladium and The Saint under the general name Downtown Dukes and Divas. Among his collaborators were the Uptown Horns, David Johansen, Cherry Vanilla, Johnny Thunders, the Lady Bunny, Holly Woodlawn, Joey Arias, David Peaston, Taylor Mead, Sylvain Sylvain, Jackie Curtis, Dean Johnson, Michael Musto, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato of the Fabulous Pop Tarts and many others. Rotello’s life and productions during this period were frequently filmed by videographer Nelson Sullivan, and are now part of Sullivan’s archive of downtown life in the 1980s.

In 1988 Rotello joined the AIDS activist group ACT UP and served on its fundraising committee. In 1989 he co-founded OutWeek magazine with businessman Kendall Morrison and became its editor-in-chief. The New York Times called OutWeek “the most progressive of the gay publications”, and Time magazine wrote that “its greatest success was in shaking up its competitors by challenging their brand of gay activism with a more militant stance.”

Rotello and OutWeek became controversial for the practice of “outing,” which originated at OutWeek, and for promoting the word queer as a catch-all phrase for sexual minorities. As an investigative reporter Rotello helped break numerous stories such as the Covenant House scandal and the Woody Myers affair, which The New York Times called “the most bitter dispute of the Dinkins administration”. Many of the young staffers Rotello hired at OutWeek went on to become well-known figures in gay and lesbian writing, publishing and other fields, including Michelangelo Signorile, Sarah Pettit, Dale Peck, Jim Provenzano, K. M. Soehnlein and James St. James.

In 1998 Rotello moved to Los Angeles and began making documentaries exploring American life and popular culture with World of Wonder founders Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. Their first collaboration, the documentary Party Monster, centered on New York’s downtown nightclub scene, a world which Rotello, Bailey and Barbato knew from their earlier days as musicians. Their next feature, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, is on Current TV’s list of 50 Documentaries to See Before You Die.

Rotello currently makes science and history documentaries with Flight 33 Productions for the History Channel, Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel, including series such as The Universe, Life After People, Big History and America’s Secret Slang.