Larry Kramer Talks to Jane Pauley During the First Days of the AIDS Crisis in 1983: VIDEO| Gay News | Towleroad
This video [ cant figure out how to embed, so just go with the link ] - was a gem to find. That seems like a wrong term to use..... It is surprisingly hard to find photos of Larry Kramer from this time. Media then v media now.
I have known about this play, seemingly for ever - I had never seen it until the movie. As the film ended and the titles rolled the words " THE NORMAL HEART " came on the screen and for the very first time I understood the title. This was what Larry Kramer wanted, fought for , almost died for, for people to see him as " normal ".
I wish I had not been overcome by the devil pollen for the last couple of days, I should have written about Sunday night's movie when the emotion was still so raw in me, not in the cool light of intellect three days later. Five minutes into the movie , I turned to Neil and said, " this is going to kick off a whole lot of PTSD tonight" , and sure enough, that was one of the major comments - everywhere. It was such an odd / interesting week for this film to come out . The nadir of " us " in a post Stonewall wall world - so many dying - no clue as to the why. Flip that with states passing full equality so fast that I can not keep up with them.
Neil and I were in such very different places in the early '80's but both of us " missed the war ". Tucked safely in my little corner of sleepy North Georgia, I don't even remember the first time I heard about AIDS. That frat boy college closet door slammed shut ( which in my case was very funny, see : balloon valance) - it all seemed like a different planet. Even now, three lifetimes later this is difficult to right about - living a " fake life " does that. Which part was more real ? Many years later I found out that I was not all that far away and that one of those same frat boys died a horrible lonely sarcoma ridden early death from AIDS. Guess none of us were as safe as we thought at the time.
Not that there was not real blinding panic - even in someone like me , who did nothing outwardly gay. I never went to a gay bar, or a bath house sort of place - I don't think I even knew there were any in Atlanta. ( for all I knew there could have been places even in Athens.. I was clueless ) But the news at the time made me fear being what I was. Think about that - being yourself - waking up in the morning, going about your day to day existence was a death sentence. This was early AIDS, the time of the film - when for all we knew just being gay was going to kill us . Add to that I was such a late bloomer - and it is hard from 2014 to even understand my mindset, but I think we can go with not the very best time to come of age....
One thing that I was afraid of with the film, and it turns out from what people are saying online, that I was right, that the global mindset of 1982 would be forgotten or just miss understood. People and events seen though a pair of 2014 glasses , a world where even in the reddest of red states there is a whole lot of gay. The scene in the movie where the folks of the GAY MENS HEALTH CRISIS were in an uproar over where to use the word GAY and not just the letters GMHC ( which I think in the end they did go with ) . Or people in real fear of losing everything if found out to be gay - that can happen now, but 30 years ago - it was much more of a reality.
To think that this play came out in 1985, when the universe was still nothing but chaos. That Larry Kramer had the guts and ... moxie to write this AND get it on off Broadway is just amazing. You think we have some so very far, and we very much have - but it still took 30 years to get it to a screen, and even then it was an HBO one.
A great take on the making of the film from
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