BEFORE: I sort of missed two holidays here, both Star Wars Day and Cinco de Mayo, I failed to program for both of them - really, what can I do for Star Wars Day? Not much usually, unless I happen to find a movie with somebody who's known for being in Star Wars - though I did watch Harrison Ford in "The Call of the Wild" back on April 18. Other than that, there's been an appalling lack of Star Wars actors around here lately, and for that I apologize. OK, so Freddie Prinze Jr. had a run in February, and Clancy Brown showed up in "Promising Young Woman", and they both did voices for "Star Wars: Rebels", but who - besides me - even knows that? Anyway, May the Fourth be With You, Happy Revenge of the Fifth, hope you had a great Cinco de Mayo. For me it's just COVID time, I'm on Day 3 of quarantine - gonna be a LONG weekend.
Mark Ruffalo carries over again from "Reservation Road".
THE PLOT: A gay activist attempts to raise HIV and AIDS awareness during the early 1980's.
AFTER: By all rights this film should have ended up in June, during Pride Month, but I needed the linking to my three Mother's Day Weekend films, so for me, it goes here. No offense, I hope. In fact I hope I give no offense throughout this whole review, it's always a bit of a tricky subject when I, a straight man, get on this topic, anything about race or sexual orientation can be a minefield if I state an opinion that's even a wee bit un-PC. But I'm going to try my best - I do support gay rights, but since I was raised (brainwashed) by Catholics this sort of thing does still put me out of my comfort zone a bit, and maybe it shouldn't. I'm trying.
What I notice here (and again I'm going to apologize in advance just in case this somehow comes out the wrong way) is the similarity between the AIDS crisis in the early 1980's and the COVID pandemic of the last 2 years. Can I get in trouble for making this comparison? They're both viruses, right? AIDS and COVID-19? There may be differences in how contagious they are, how they attack the human body, other details about incubation periods, time to spread around the globe, etc. I wonder if there are more differences than similarities. COVID just hit one million deaths in the U.S. in three years, while AIDS racked up 700,000 deaths in the U.S. since 1981. I don't mean to belittle AIDS statistics in any way, both are mega-serious diseases that took down significant numbers of people - and again, very different in the way they worked, perhaps, because an AIDS diagnosis was a terminal condition for a very long time, and I think quite possibly many more people have recovered from COVID, even though it's been responsible for more deaths overall in this country to date, and in a much shorter period of time. They're both terrible, let me stress that again.
It took a LONG time for doctors to figure out what AIDS was, it was called "gay cancer" for years when it wasn't any form of cancer at all. It's an immuno-deficiency disease, the likes of which humanity had not seen before, and because of the stigma around it, some doctors didn't want to treat it, gay men were turned away as patients, and some people with the condition tried to hide it, and all that didn't help the timeline for figuring it out and developing treatments. By contrast, scientists figured out COVID-19 in record time, and had a vaccine ready within a year - some scientist were already in the process of mapping the genome of the COVID-virus, so the background work was already being done when the pandemic hit - while we still don't have an AIDS vaccine, all these (40!) years later.
But here's what the two pandemics have in common - the science and medical stuff got bogged down in a bunch of political, moral and emotional stuff that ended up costing more lives, hundreds of thousands of them. With AIDS there were certain classes of people suddenly forced to examine how they felt about homosexuality, and perhaps up to that point they would have preferred not to think of that at all.
President Reagan didn't even SAY the name of the disease for the first few years - and when he did, he promised to increase funding for research and treatment, then proceeded to CUT the funding instead. That reminds me of Trump, who claimed that the COVID epidemic would be over in a few weeks, rather than months, proceeded to do absolutely NOTHING to help, and went to play golf instead. It's often thought that Reagan failed to act on AIDS because at the time it seemed like the virus was targeting only gay men, and the influence of the Moral Majority on his policies suggested that this wouldn't be a great loss, or affect the straight community in the long run, which was ridiculous as well as morally abhorrent. It's also thought that Trump failed to act on COVID because at the time it seemed like the virus was targeting only urban areas, which were largely Democratic and minority, and the influence of the conservative Republicans on his policies suggested that this wouldn't be a great loss, or affect the rural Republican community in the long run, which was equally ridiculous and morally abhorrent.
Then there's the issue of personal freedoms - according to this film, when the advice from medical professionals was to stop having gay sex, the gay community refused to listen, because they'd fought so hard for gay rights, and now in their minds it was going to be demonized all over again - and abstaining from sex would be like admitting defeat, akin to being shoved back into the closet, even if at the time the suggestion was being made as medical advice, based on what was known about transmission at the time. With COVID, when the advice from medical professionals was to stay home if possible and wear a mask in public whenever possible, there were certain segments of the U.S. populace who refused to listen, because their personal freedoms were being interfered with, they believed they had the rights to go shopping without a mask, and wearing a mask would be like admitting they were defenseless against the virus, even if the suggestion was being made as medical advice, based on what was known about transmission at the time.
I really, really hate to lump two groups of people together, because I'm sure on some level it's an unfair comparison, especially because I've just created an analogy comparing a traditionally repressed minority, gay men, to the spoiled conservatives who refused to wear masks during the COVID pandemic to protect others (as well as themselves, but who cares, screw those guys, I'm more concerned with the other people they could infect). But still, the analogy sort of holds, because in both cases the concerns over personal freedoms got in the way of the science, muddied the waters, and prevented the saving of lives, and in both cases, it's a damn shame. But what really grinds my gears is the fact that the same conservative a-holes who notably used phrases like "My body, my choice" when referring to wearing masks are now about to try and get rid of abortion rights in the U.S., and if they succeed, they'll go after gay marriage next, and they're too close to the issue and too rigid in their thinking to even recognize their own hypocrisy, when it's as plain as day.
Anyway, this film is about the early days of the AIDS crisis, and concerns the founding of the Gay Men's Health Crisis. The names were all changed, as it's based on a play of the same name, written by Larry Kramer, who was a gay activist and I'm guessing that the Ned Weeks character is based on Kramer himself. The play was first performed in 1985, and then in 2014 director Ryan Murphy (who is gay himself, which either is very important or doesn't matter at all, depending on your POV) turned it into an HBO movie, because he feared that people born after the 1980's would not remember the lessons learned from the AIDS crisis. And clearly that's the case, because if we had, we all might have handled the next pandemic differently, and not confused the science of viral contamination with a bunch of political and self-centered B.S., which we did. Oops.
And yes, there's a straight actor in the lead role here, instead of a gay actor. Mark Ruffalo allegedly had concerns over this at first, he thought that maybe a gay actor should have been cast - but there was plenty of representation here, a number of male actors came aboard who were gay but had been forced into straight roles for years, so this was probably liberating for them. Time and time again I've seen straight actors play gay and just bungle it horribly, usually by going too queeny and over-the-top, whereas gay actors can just be themselves - I guess this shouldn't matter in a perfect world, but we're still kind of all working this stuff out, right?
Also starring Matt Bomer (last heard in "Superman: Unbound"), Taylor Kitsch (last seen in "21 Bridges"), Jim Parsons (last seen in "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile"), Alfred Molina (last seen in "Message From the King"), Julia Roberts (last seen in "The Prom"), Joe Mantello, BD Wong (last seen in "The Space Between Us"), Jonathan Groff (last heard in "Frozen II"), Stephen Spinella (last seen in "Connie and Carla"), Finn Wittrock (last seen in "Judy"), Denis O'Hare (last seen in "The Goldfinch"), Corey Stoll (last seen in "Lucky Number Slevin"), Danielle Ferland (last seen in "Tick, Tick...BOOM!"), Frank De Julio (last seen in "Otherhood"), Adam B. Shapiro, William DeMeritt, Sean Meehan (last seen in "The Post"), John Mainieri (last seen in "Wonder Wheel"), Will Bradley, Chris Sullivan (last seen in "Live by Night"), Corey Brill, Armand Schultz (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Rebecca Watson (last seen in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"), Gregory Adair, Wenne Alton Davis, Richard Prioleau, Patrick Woodall, Brett Glazer, Catherine Chadwick, Remy Auberjonois,
RATING: 5 out of 10 lesbians working the hotline
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