Aaron Russo

Russo was born in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up in Lawrence, New York which is on Long Island,^[1] he worked for his family's undergarment business.^[2][3] He played prep football at Lawrence High School in Cedarhurst, New York.^[4]

In April 1968, Russo opened the nightclub Kinetic Playground in Chicago originally naming it the Electric Theater. He booked numerous prominent rock groups and musicians there including the Grateful Dead, Iron Butterfly, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Vanilla Fudge, Rotary Connection, and The Who.^[2][3] In addition to owning the club, Russo managed The Manhattan Transfer and Bette Midler and several other musical acts throughout the 1970s.^[5]

Russo then moved into producing and directing films. He received six Academy Award nominations and two of the films received multiple Golden Globe Award nominations.^[6] His first producing credit was for Midler's Clams on the Half-Shell Revue. Other notable feature films he produced include The Rose (1979), starring Midler and Trading Places (1983) with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd.^[2] His final film was America: Freedom to Fascism, a political documentary critical of the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Reserve System. It warned about the coming of a New World Order.

In 1987, Aaron Russo had set up his own entertainment company, Aaron Russo Entertainment with self-financing so they would not have to disclose the participants' contributions to the production kitty. All of the ARE productions went to Orion Pictures for the U.S. and Canadian theatrical rights. He then named Irwin Russo as senior vice president of Aaron Russo Films which was based in Los Angeles. The company set up feature projects by 1988, with record division Aaron Russo Films and Aaron Russo Television being formed later.^[7]

Russo became involved in political issues in the mid-1990s when he produced and starred in the documentary entitled Mad As Hell in which he criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the federal government's war on drugs, the concept of a National Identity Card, and government regulation of alternative medicine.^[8]

In 1998, Russo highlighted his political interests, running for governor of Nevada as a Republican. Placing second in the Republican primary with 26% of the vote to Kenny Guinn, Russo later endorsed the Democratic nominee, Las Vegas mayor Jan Laverty Jones, who eventually lost to Guinn.^{[citation needed]} Russo planned to run again for Nevada governor in 2002 as either an independent or Libertarian, but was sidelined when he discovered that he had cancer. In January 2004, he declared his candidacy for the President of the United States initially as an independent, but then as a Libertarian. At the Libertarian National Convention in May 2004, Russo received 258 votes to Michael Badnarik's 256 votes and Gary Nolan's 246 votes, short of the majority required to receive the presidential nomination. Russo lost the nomination on the convention's third and final ballot to Badnarik by a vote of 423–344.

On August 24, 2007, Russo died at the age of 64 after a six-year battle with cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.^[9]

He was a producer in all films unless otherwise noted.