Art and Pep, is now in production. It’s both a love story and a history of activism, the filmmakers say.“What really drew me in is that the whole thing is so rooted in love,” says director-producer Mercedes Kane. “I found the story to be so powerful and inspiring.”Executive producer Kevin Hauswirth notes that as a young gay activist at the University of Illinois in the early 2000s, he would hear stories from his gay uncle and others “about what Art and his good troublemakers had been doing.”What Johnston and his comrades had been doing included founding an LGBTQ+ rights organization; getting inclusive civil rights laws passed in Chicago, Cook County, and Illinois; raising funds to fight AIDS; and much more.