MN AIDS Project brought this film to the Riverview just as it has been nominated for an Academy Award. I wanted to see it but was prepared to be disappointed. Skepticism about anything the Academy and the mainstream media lauds has been the name of the game since "Philadelphia" and "And The Band Plays On," and long before. Vito Russo's "The Celluloid Closet" is a go to history... speaking of those who are sorely missed.
But it was moving. I felt like I was watching one of those "This Is Your Life" shows. Those photos and obits I keep in a box, with clippings, shirts, buttons, and posters from Act Up! SF and elsewhere, they were evoked by the footage and photos, all those faces I remember from demos and meetings. So many guys who liked like my friend Colin, who flew to get arrested at the Bush I White House just before he died. Just before the cocktail, sickened by AZT. Like so many in the film.
A guy leaving was angry because it was static, talking heads and nothing new. I get where he was coming from, but too many people on theater gasped in surprise at basic facts: the sight of The Names Project quilt on the mall in 1987, when we marched on Washington for the second gay time, the calls for quarantine, KS and PCP (not the drug). They missed it, one way or another, and it's a good time for a reminder, ballot hate initiatives and all. One small reminder is timely as heck: We beat Larouche's amendments. It can be done.
And people's memory of the Reagan years, seriously. Said to be from a transcript of a 1982 press briefing Q&A session between Reagan administration spokesman Larry Speakes and journalist Lester Kinsolving. It's the first known time that AIDS was brought up at the White House.
Lester Kinsolving: Larry, does the president have any reaction to the announcement —the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases?
SPEAKES: What's AIDS?
LK: Over a third of them have died. It's known as "gay plague." (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it's a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the president is aware of it?
SPEAKES: I don't have it. Do you? (Laughter.)
LK No, I don't ...
SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.)
LK: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?
The answer, as the briefing spiraled into hysterics, was yes... Fearless leader Reagan didn't publicly refer to AIDS until 1987.
That was the 80s in a nutshell for me. Too late, too little, deadly legacy continues to play out. So many so-called leaders were not there. Or were actively opposing efforts to deal with the pandemic. We can't explicitly say that on TV, tho, but the doco lets ACT UP! posters speak eloquently, briefly.
My only quibbles were the lack of dots connected more clearly between street activism and movement on treatment and funding fronts at key moments. It was mentioned by the one female, a nurse, who was involved in those battles, but not very clear what happened beyond doctors doing studies. Also, the role of ACT UP! as a place for PWAs to express outrage and push was told in a sentence by her and some photos which I know were of the PWA caucus (purple shirts) only because I was there. Those weren't just randomly angry young gay guys. They were dying for lack of treatments. And facing official ignorance, neglect, denials, and criminal incompetence, at best.
The official history that gets remembered is that Hollywood stepped in, government acted, and doctors and scientists saved the gays. It makes my blood boil, and only reading Sara Schulman and David Feinberg and Greg Bordowitz's 1990s film has truly captured that disconnect for me. But those are quibbles. Mostly...
Source of the quotes
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