Saturday, April 07, 2012
GAY CANCER
Today's Favorite Gay Film # 13 was
in which we follow a group of gay men and Mary Louise Parker for the ten years after the first appearance of HIV, a small news item inside the NYTimes about a gay cancer.
People get sick and die (in those days it was a death sentence) and some people simply disappear. Others steer the ship with great spiritual power.
I came out (again) in 1973 and until 1981 had no clue about the future.
I remember reading the item in the NYT and wondering what it meant for me.
I lost a lot of friends. I worried a lot about the men I had been with who became positive.
The world changed.
Over the years I have seen the disease modify and become treatable. But with substantial risk because of the sometime lethal side effects.
This film puts faces into the headlines and medical stuff.
These are people like the ones I know and knew who lived with the disease for awhile or even up to this day.
The power of the film is that it does not show homosexuals or homosexual, then gradually gay, life. It is in the close up depiction of the realities of the disease and the loved ones who were affected. Most of the cast, one way or another.
I saw it when it came out and I am glad that I was able to see it again. A 5 out of Netflix5.
