Eldergays, tell me about the film Philadelphia

Neil should have won the Oscar over Bruce. Far superior song.

What the fuck is your question??? You said you saw Philadelphia. Why the fuck should we have to tell you anything about it? YOU tell us something we don’t know.

I swear my heart can’t take this much stupidity!

R2 - I can only imagine that if I went through what so many of you did in the 80s and 90s, I would be angry as well. But, I just wanted to learn if the film's success, at the time, meant anything to those in the LGBTQ community. I was in elementary school at the time and didn't really comprehend the scale or impact of the AIDS crisis let alone whether the film was a moment for the community or if it was just seen as mainstream, straight Hollywood patting themselves on the back. Maybe a bit of both?

❤️

Is your name Pete Buttigieg OP?

I shouldn't have clicked on that. Fucking tearing up at that end with the home video.

Someone in the comments section said he home videos were actually Tom Hanks. Is that true? I didn't know.

I was in my late thirties then and had known I had HIV for almost five years. I didn't really relate to the film. It felt contrived and crafted for a mainstream audience, definitely not like something by-us-for-us. I considered 'Longtime Companion', from a few years earlier, far more authentic and far superior.

I totally agree, R7. After many years of having friends die in my arms, sometimes multiple times in a week, the film seemed designed for straight people who had never met a person with HIV or AIDS and knew nothing about it.

Hanks got Best Actor, in my opinion, because at the time Hollywood thought any straight man willing to play gay was so brave he should have been knighted, but since America doesn't have that option, the Oscar was the next best thing.

It's a somewhat tedious courtroom drama with a side of AIDS. Denzel is gorgeous and Tom plays sensitive well. Both songs are great. Death happens off camera, hours after courtroom victory. Cut to victims always supportive loving family waspy funeral. It hasn't not much to do with any gay person's reality except for Maria Callas and uniform fetishes. Longtime Companion is a much better and more honest film in every way. Earns your tears. And quite a few smiles. Try that one Opie.

About as real as a KUWTK episode.

From the film, you would have thunk 95% of men that died of AIDS had a hunky Antonio banderas-looking boyfriend near them and their loving mother especially one played by Joanne Woodward when they bought it.

Nope a lot of men were estranged from their family and usually died alone. If they didn't it would usually be lesbian volunteers that would take care of the body..

I was in my early 20s and feel similar to R7, but the movie that impacted me even more than Longtime Companion was Parting Glances. The only two things I remember about Philadelphia are that they both dressed for Halloween as officer from an Officer and a Gentleman, which seemed like a gay dig at Richard Gere and some antigay steamroom joke about gay sex and throwing yogurt on someone’s back, which I didn’t understand at the time and seemed too intimate and sexual for straight men to have made up.

Oh, and I also remember the TV movie An Early Frost to be far more superior, but then again I had a huge crush on Aidan Quinn going back to Reckless.

^^^ Ditto. Plus the bonus of the scene where the Quinn character shaves in the mirror in nothing but his white cotton boxers. Sigh.

Of course a gay publication would lead with that image as well R13. I love how blatantly the the BF is staring at his junk in this still.

Director Jonathan Demme got flack from the gay community over Silence Of The Lambs. Philadelphia was kind of seen as his attempt to make good with gay people. I was a teen when both movies came out, it seemed patronizing to me even back then before I was even out to anyone.

It’s about a guy with AIDS who wants to keep working until he’s dead. Despite being deathly ill, can hardly walk, he won’t stop working, even when his boss tells him not to. He just wants to work and work and work until he drops dead. Typical Baby Boomer bullshit about the importance of hard work.

I was an adult when this came out but didn't see it until just a few years ago. That ending scene breaks me up every time. Then this weird sense of peace comes over me for a while. I don't quite know how to explain it. For a short while I have perspective and realize that all the minute bullshit that I stress out about in daily life is so trivial so there's this wave of peace and I remember I need to enjoy and make the best of every day I have left.

Speaking of Joanne Woodward, CBS Sunday Morning noted that she will have a birthday this week. She will turn 90.

R18 Oh yes, I share my birthday with her too, as well as Liz Taylor did and Chelsea Clinton does.

Joanne Woodward is no Gena Rowlands.

R16, I knew a woman who had terminal cancer in real life and she wanted to work and work until her last minute too. Nobody could understand it. Everyone told her to quit, bosses, doctors, friends.

She didn’t, because she was worried about her insurance and didn’t want them to stop covering her due to some glitch, and because her husband completely freaked out on her and couldn’t stand being around her due to the cancer. His boss even told him to take a leave and he said no.

He refused to have sex with her pretty early on, obsessively worked overtime to get away from her and left her alone with the live in caretaker, a young relative. We found out right after she died that he already had a new gf and threw the caretaker and her family out of the house a couple of days after her death. They were family members who had moved across country to take care of her and quit their jobs. He wouldn’t even give them a chance to find other jobs, just booted them into the street. Then he immediately sold the house and moved in with his new gf a couple of hours away. I wonder what his boss thought about that, after trying so hard to make him spend the last few days of his wife’s life with her, instead of avoiding her like the plague. It was so noticeable some mutual friends of the couple pulled him aside and tried to say nicely, your wife is dying without you. He told them to fuck off.

This was the “ideal” couple for fifteen years. Happy, everything was great until he just was creeped out by the cancer and then he treated her like some space alien.

I found out later that’s not uncommon. A lot of men can’t handle illness and death and it becomes all about them and not the patient.

When you see someone who wants to work and work like that, it’s because they’re not getting support at home and want to be with their work friends, because that’s all they have. Things are bad at home. It has nothing to do with boomers or work ethic, it has to do with not wanting to die alone. At best, they’re trying to paper over how bad it is for their family’s sake. People who feel like they’ll be taken care of well by their family, quit.

He had a boyfriend, so he wasn’t worried about dying alone. He had plenty of money too. It’s propaganda about the importance and value of hard work. It’s such typical Baby Boomer bullshit. If this film was made with later generations, the main character would be fighting for medical leave and the chance to spend his last days at home.

It's not only a maudlin film made by straight men, the screenwriter stole the story from a gay dead man.

-- A lawsuit contending that the makers of the movie "Philadelphia" misappropriated a story about a New York lawyer, who was dismissed after his employer discovered he had AIDS, is scheduled to go to trial tomorrow in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

The family of the lawyer, Geoffrey Bowers, who died in 1987 before winning a discrimination case against his former employer, argues in its suit that Tri-Star Pictures misrepresented the origins of the film's screenplay. The family seeks unspecified damages and public acknowledgment that "Philadelphia" was based on Mr. Bowers's experience.

Widely praised by gay-rights advocates as a landmark event that changed public attitudes about AIDS, the 1993 film grossed $197 million worldwide and won two Academy Awards. Its screenwriter, Ron Nyswaner, was also nominated for his screenplay, though he did not win. Tri-Star, a unit of the Sony Corporation, had promoted the screenplay as an original story developed after two years of brainstorming between Mr. Nyswaner and the film's director, Jonathan Demme.

But the relatives of Mr. Bowers, who was 33 years old when he died, hope to persuade a jury that Tri-Star not only based the film on his case against Baker & McKenzie, the world's largest law firm, but also sought legal advice on how to avoid being sued by Mr. Bowers's estate.

Named as co-defendants in the suit are Mr. Nyswaner; a producer, Scott Rudin; Mr. Demme, and his producing partner, Edward Saxon.

For its part, the studio maintains that "Philadelphia" was derived from numerous sources, including Mr. Bowers's and other discrimination cases, as well as the personal experiences of Mr. Nyswaner, who lost a nephew to AIDS, and Mr. Demme, whose friend had died of the disease.

While it is commonplace for people to accuse studios or screenwriters of misappropriating their ideas, most lawsuits do not get far. This case is to be tried under New York state contract law and Federal trade practices law. New York, especially, takes a narrow view of what makes an idea original enough to qualify as intellectual property.

The family of Mr. Bowers points to a fact the studio does not contest: They and their lawyers were approached and interviewed by Mr. Rudin, who as a movie producer and as a gay man wanted to see someone make an important feature film about AIDS. The studio acknowledges that Mr. Rudin was paid $100,000 for the rights to the film.

The case hinges partly on the question of whether the family's contribution was unique, giving film makers details unavailable in the public record, according to Martin Garbus, a First Amendment lawyer not involved in this case. Much of the Bowers case had been made public in the discrimination case. Editors’ Picks ‘It’s Pretty Brutal’: The Sandwich Generation Pays a Price The Work Diary of a Hairdresser So Coveted, She Travels by Private Jet In 6 Minutes, You Can Be Done With Your Workout

The family maintains that 54 scenes in the movie mirror events in Geoffrey Bowers's life, and that some could have come only from information that the family disclosed to Mr. Rudin. Among them is the mother's remark, in supporting her son's fight against the law firm, that she did not raise her children to "sit in the back of the bus."

Federal District Judge Sonia Sotomayor has ordered the parties to refrain from discussing the case, but a court document showed that Mr. Bowers's heirs also seek to prove that two scenes in the film were derived from his case and never appeared in the original outline "because Nyswaner wished to propose a story that was less dependent upon the Bowers story."

The scenes were added later, the documents say, at Mr. Demme's insistence. In one, Tom Hanks, in his Academy Award-winning performance as Andrew Beckett, the lawyer who has AIDS, bares his chest in court, revealing lesions from Kaposi's sarcoma.

As this "Philadelphia" story has unfolded, two subplots have emerged. In one, Mr. Rudin, a producer of such films as "Sister Act"and "The Firm," is pitted against his co-defendants: Marc Platt of Tri-Star, a studio head who was once among his closest friends; Mr. Demme, a director known for his support of social causes; and Mr. Nyswaner, who, like Mr. Rudin, is a prominent gay figure in the industry.

In the other subplot, gay rights leaders have either ignored the lawsuit, or have expressed skepticism about the family's accusations.

An outspoken critic of the family has been a prominent gay lawyer, Tom Stoddard, who served as a consultant on the movie. He said, "As a person with H.I.V., I'm infuriated that they should try to punish movie makers who tried to make the world easier for people like their son."

The Bowers family said in court papers that Mr. Rudin approached them a year after the death of Geoffrey Bowers, solicited their cooperation, met with them or their lawyers several times and promised that they would be compensated "according to industry standards." It was Mr. Rudin who recruited Mr. Nyswaner to the project.

Mr. Nyswaner later took the idea to Mr. Demme, who won the backing of Mr. Platt, then an executive at Orion Pictures. Mr. Platt moved to Tri-Star, where he is now president, taking the project with him.

The studio, in its court filings, does not dispute this account.

The defense contends that Mr. Rudin abandoned the project without sharing with Mr. Nyswaner any details he had learned from the Bowers family, and that some scenes resemble events in Mr. Bowers's life not part of the public record only through coincidence.

The family contends that after Mr. Rudin bowed out of the picture and they learned about the movie, he told them that he had assumed they would be compensated and encouraged them to sue.

The suit was filed in February 1994, two months after the New York State Division of Human Rights awarded the Bowers estate $500,000 in the discrimination case.

[quote]Neil should have won the Oscar over Bruce. Far superior song.

Neil should not have cracked unwise about not wanting AIDSy faggots touching his groceries during checkout.

[quote]“You go to a supermarket and you see a faggot behind the fuckin’ cash register, you don’t want him to handle your potatoes.” – Neil Young in Melody Maker, September 1985

There was no such thing as "the LGBTQ community" those days, R3 / OP.

The movie sucked, btw. Watch Longtime Companion for a more realistic view.

Seriously, R27, you think there was no LGBTQ community in the 1990s? You really are clueless, but most people as ignorant as you try at least to appear to have basic knowledge.

Seriously, r28, you called us "the LGBTQ community" in 1993?

FFS r22, r23, r24, just link the damn article. We’ll read it if we want to.

[quote] I didn't see it until I rented the DVD from the independent video store I worked at as a teenager.

Oh, dear!

[quote]When I was in college,

Your English professor is hanging his head in shame.

Yes, R29. The arrangement of letters wasn't necessarily settled, but all those letters were used at the time. You don't remember Queer Nation and ACT UP?

R29 is one of the transphobes trying to rewrite history. Ignore.

Rent it OP. It’s a fucking movie

An interesting aside about the film: Tom Hanks was not Jonathan Demme's first choice for Andrew. The role was written with Daniel Day-Lewis in mind, and Demme was determined to get him for the part. DDL was not interested, though he spoke graciously of Demme when asked. He never gave a straightforward answer as to why he wasn't interested at the time, but years later he spoke rather elliptically when asked about why he turned it down. From what I could gather, he felt that the script was too sanitized for mainstream audiences. Having played Johnny in My Beautiful Laundrette, with its unself-conscious sex/kissing scenes and treatment of gay sexuality, he felt Philadelphia's tip-toeing around gay physicality and the Andrew/Miguel relationship would be a regression for him. I can see his point...though I suppose there's some irony in him losing the Best Actor Oscar that year to Hanks.

That was very interesting indeed, r35.

Thanks for that.

Wow, R33. You really are clueless. You absolutely can disagree with me about the arrangement of the LGBTQ letters, and when it became the standard label, but your psychic powers need work.

I'm a generic gay white man who lived in NY in the 80s and 90s and had countless friends die in my arms. Gay men of all colors, drag queens, a black lesbian, an elderly straight white post-op trans woman, straight male recovering drug users, as well as straight people with cancer who had no particular connection with the HIV-affected community.

I worked at Beth Israel Medical Center and later at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and St. Claire's AIDS clinic, volunteered at GMHC, marched with Queer Nation and ACT UP, helped throw the cremated remains of a man who died of HIV onto the grounds of the White House when Ronald Reagan was president, was in and out of Bailey House and the Center on West 13th Street constantly, and coincidentally, I lived a few blocks from Geoffrey Bowers. He lived on East 10th or 11th Street, I believe, and I was on East 3rd.

So fuck you for calling me a transphobe. Just fuck you.

Since no one will probably say it here, r37, I will.

Thank you. Your compassion and what you went through is heartwarming, if sad.

A few thoughts.

I thought Denzel was much better than Tom. However Tom got the Oscar and famously "outed" his school teacher during his speech. Kevin Kline benefited when the film inspired by the incident, In and Out, became an enjoyable hit.

At the time, more than a few people felt that the aids issue was handled better in an episode of the Golden Girls. Seriously.

Neil Young's song was superior to Springsteen's Oscar winner.

Andrew Sullivan was THE gay journalist at the time. I always loved his comment that certain scenes were so cliched, you could "hear every gay man's eyes rolling".

An Early Frost and (especially) Longtime Companion, were far superior films.

Oops, sorry, R33. You weren't talking about me but to me. Never mind. (Laughing.)

Oops, sorry, R33. You weren't talking about me but to me. Never mind. (Laughing.)

Never watched the whole thing. Looked maudlin.

I’m a big fan of Longtime Companion.

Mary Steenburgen plays a good cunty lawyer.

I was twelve when it came out. Saw it later when I was grown. I stop and watch it whenever it's on TV. It's very nostalgic to me. The Neil Young song is definitely better. That ending gets me everytime. I LOVE "Longtime Companion" though.

Didn't we have a Philadephia thread like two weeks ago? Many people shared their feelings about the movie there. The movie was definitely made mostly for the straight audiences and I was totally fine with that. Films like Philadelphia made people see gay men as real human beings and showed the destruction the AIDS epidemic caused, and that's its greatest value. However I was totally in tears in the end when the home movie started showing.

I actually personally enjoyed Philadelphia more than Longtime Companion but that's partly because I've never been close to anyone with AIDS. As a movie I find Philadelphia better but Longtime Companion is obviously a real gay drama.

Willie Young's Philadelphia song is beautiful and was perfect for the ending. I've always loved Springsteen's Streets of Philadephia as well. It's more radio friendly than Young's song and I understand why it won the Oscar. BTW, Young's 1985 anti-gay talk was absolutely terrible but since he made a song for Philadelphia I assume he realized what an ass he'd been. At least I hope so.

It’s sad that the only time I ever encountered real solidarity and community was when our friends and lovers were dying horrifically.

Now the majority are back to shitting on each other.

That’s always the way, r46. We pull together in times of tragedy and separate soon thereafter.

See also: 9/11/01.

I think Hanks won the Oscar partly from this scene:

How did the lawsuit by the family of Geoffrey Bowers against the filmmakers turn out?

Way back for r30–we appreciate people posting articles rather than linking to articles.

I hate this movie and I can’t believe Tom Hanks won the Oscar for it. By contrast, I saw [italic]Forrest Gump[/italic] six times.

It seemed dated by the time it came out. In retrospect, it’s shocking that it was really the first major film to address it. It was a sterile view of gay life and death created to garner sympathy. However, it did help.

Clinton’s election was more important. He included gays in his election night speech - which I thought was the biggest symbol of the end of the nightmare of anti-gay politics that started with Reagan in 1980. 1992-95 felt like there was a light at the end of the tunnel for gay acceptance - if not AIDS. Philadelphia brought gay rights and AIDS rights to middle America.

It had a big impact on me because I’m from (suburban) Philadelphia and the family was very similar to mine. It’s the future that I assumed I would have. Dead by 35. Imagine spending your 20s assuming you would die by 35? It really did put everything in a different light. You better live your life now because you don’t have a lot of it. Now in my 50s, I feel like I’ve been given more life, time and gay rights than I could have ever imagined in the early 90s.

[quote] At the time, more than a few people felt that the aids issue was handled better in an episode of the Golden Girls. Seriously.

They were right then and they are right now. This movie is a homophobic piece of shit and any gay man who isn’t at least is offended by it as I am is a goddamn Uncle Tom. And as for the relationship between Tom Hanks and Antonio Banderas, I saw more sexual chemistry between Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari on [italic]Bosom Buddies[/italic]!

For all the sexist homophobic protests over [italic]Silence of the Lambs[/italic], that, too, was a much better movie that deserved its Oscars and will be remembered as a classic.

R50, it’s right there in black and white in the posting guidelines:

[quote]Please [bold]DO NOT[/bold]

[quote]re-post entire or large excerpts of articles from other sites. Just provide a link and maybe a few selected quotes.

Simply posting a link leads to several inept queens who don't know how to click on links complaining about links not being quoted, then being cunts either way, as above.

The Silence of the Lambs is an all-time favourite for me! That’s why I was so disappointed when I saw the promotion for Philadelphia. The people here who wrote it was a film for straights probably nailed it (I haven’t watched the whole thing). I did watch a scene with Jason Robards and between the acting and Demme’s trademark visual style, I thought it was campy (in a bad way) overcooked.

I do love the song by The Boss, oddly. I stop what I’m doing whenever I hear it and think of all those men I volunteered for back during my hospice days. I was still quite young when the cocktails really began to take off, but the impact of the devastation had registered in me.

I’m ashamed to say I still haven’t seen And the Band Played On (or Parting Secrets). But as I referenced earlier, if any of the young gaylings here haven’t seen Longtime Companion, they should check it out. At least for how hot and gay Dermot Mulroney is in the film. I also haven’t watched since it came out, but I also recall Tidy Endings (?) with Stockard Channing (put our by HBO).

I laughed, I cried, it was better than cats!

His apartment is up the street from me

Whose?

[quote] it was better than cats!

That is not setting the bar exceptionally high. I don’t even think that’s setting it high enough for any human being to fit under it, except maybe Kate Moss.

The Gay Community took the win even though the movie was from straights for straights. Back then being appropriated was better than being flat-out ignored. It's one of the biggest milestones of gay representation in mainstream media.

Where was the apartment? For some reason I thought it was Northern Liberties - but that would have been way too dangerous then - even for an “edgy” gay couple. Just living in the city then was considered edgy - it hadn’t begun its comeback yet.

R60 fails to get/appreciate a vintage TV commercial reference/joke, but has to explain it away like a dullard.

[italic]Sleepless in Seattle[/italic] actually had a gay person in it, even if it was Rosie O’Donnell.

For the gay and gay-friendly audience, it was pandering and patronizing. But it wasn't meant for those of us who loved our gays. It was definitely made for a straight audience, and it wisely presumed a large chunk of that audience would be homophobic or at the very least quite ignorant about both what being gay meant and what having AIDS meant. In 1993, Ryan White's grave was still being repeatedly desecrated. That same year a HI Supreme Court case paved the way for same sex marriage and the religious right went into a frenzy that resulted in DOMA. It was a very ugly time. The film was designed to be a warm hand off in getting more straight people to see gays as something more than deviant caricatures and reminding them that AIDS patients are still human beings. The whole movie is deliberately and firmly rooted in very conservative principles: family, hard work, patriotism, fairness, merit. The protagonist is a very privileged white man who is charming, graceful, and well spoken. The soundtrack prominently featured very straight rugged white men who were blue collar heroes. In a way it's a real indictment of straight people, that they need this extremely carefully constructed version of a gay man's experience as an AIDS patient to accept him as a protagonist.

[quote] The protagonist is a very privileged white man who is charming, graceful, and well spoken.

And yet they still depicted him as just another slutty whore. That scene in the porno theater was Razzie-worthy scriptwriting.

The exteriors were of a converted industrial building at 10th and Fitzwater in Bella Vista, R62.

[quote] In 1993, Ryan White's grave was still being repeatedly desecrated.

Are you serious?! What did that poor little kid do to anyone? What a fucking twisted bunch of assholes.

R66, no, they depict a one time "youthful indiscretion." What they depict in present time for the film is a devoted monogamous man who also loves and is loved by his immediate family. Again, very deliberate.

[quote] Are you serious?! What did that poor little kid do to anyone?

Other than do nothing to stop them from casting Judith Light as his mother in the TV movie about him? Everywhere there is an existential threat to gay people, her and/or one of her costars from that lousy sitcom she was on is sure to be around.

The porn shop sex was the most edgy part of the movie. I give them credit for that at least. Showed the reality of gay life and disease transmission.

It was a crossover fim---they always seem like crap 20 years later--heck, they can uncomfortable in their earnestness when they're released---you have the likeable guy cast as leading man (and Tom Hanks had no illusions of the situation). You have a non-homophobic family that seems to be from Mars. You have every court room drama cliche you've ever seen. I liked Springsteen's song, though. It needed to be made so that AIDS could stop being the province of low budget uneven indie films like Parting Glances.

I'd rather watch that, R72.

I got into a huge argument with a friend over this movie. He told me the girl who played Chandra created Grey's Anatomy. I told him no that was Shonda Rhimes but Chandra is on the show. We're still on very unstable terms.

I am betting the very intelligent and progressive director Jonathan Demme knew very well that he was aiming for a wide audience. That isn't necessarily a fault. Why do people insist on acting like people had the exact same POV about race, sexuality, etc., 30 years ago?

Say what you will, I think it’s one of Cukor’s best and it lifted our Miss Hepburn out being box office poison and won that darling Mr. Stewart his Oscar!

r15, We shoulda known back then to drop the fkin T.

R68, 4 times in the year following his death alone. The "problem" with Ryan and his family is he refused to pander to an "innocent" victim narrative. He would not condemn gays and he wouldn't suggest that somehow they deserved the disease and he didn't. Here's an article about his mom, who was vocally supportive and grateful to the gay community for embracing Ryan and helping them get him treatment:

'There are a lot of hurt feelings, still. The people that live there feel they did what was right at the time. But when that TV movie about Ryan was made, those people did not want to see theirselves. My best friends turned on me. And all I could keep thinking was `I got to make sure he lives the longest he can.`

'I thought, `Ten years down the road these people are gonna be sorry, but I won`t be.` I prayed, `Lord, don`t let me say anything I would be sorry for later.` They were trying to get me to be negative, trying to discredit me when I didn`t do it myself.' The hurt rings in her voice. 'They tried to make him a ward of the court. They said I was an unfit mother to allow him to go to school and kill the other kids.'

White-Ginder is a Methodist. 'I think Christianity is having a really hard part in AIDS,' she says. 'We`re all caught up in homosexuality and whether it`s right or wrong. But of all the people I know of who are such good Christians and have AIDS, the ones who are gay believe in their religion even more. I almost see more spirituality, reaching out and helping more. There is no one doing more for this disease than the gay community.

'If Ryan had been gay, would I have left him on the street?' she asks with disgust. 'We have no control over sexuality.'

Even though Vice President Dan Quayle recently termed homosexuality 'a wrong choice?'

'Who is he to say that?' she says angrily. 'Let God be the judge. Everyone knows what the Bible says and don`t. But what about when you need Christianity and it`s not there? I`ve seen some criminals treated better than the gay community is.'

As for the National Commission on AIDS, she says: 'I don`t want to criticize the people on it, but I think it`s just there for the president to say, `See, I`m doing something.` And even if I think the committee itself is listening, is the president?' She shrugs.

She is equally ambivalent about Kimberly Bergalis, who contracted AIDS from her dentist and, before her death in 1991 at the age of 23, testified before Congress that she 'hadn`t done anything wrong.'

'You never want to condemn another person with AIDS,' White-Ginder says. 'People forget the family suffers as much as the patient. So I say this softly. There was so much bitterness about her being an innocent victim. But Ryan always said, `I`m just like everyone else with AIDS, no matter how I got it.`

'And he would never have lived as long as he did without the gay community. The people we knew in New York made sure we knew about the latest treatments way before we would have known in Indiana. I hear mothers today say they`re not gonna work with no gay community on anything. Well, if it comes to your son`s life, you better start changing your heart and your attitude around.'

She does not raise her voice. The stillness remains about her, the inevitable simplicity that tragedy brings with its absence of choices.

Since Ryan was buried in April 1990, his grave in the Cicero Cemetery has been vandalized four times. The grave marker, at more than 6 feet tall, is the highest stone there and bears tributes from Jackson and Elton John. ('Ryan always wanted to be tall, but AIDS stunted his growth,' White-Ginder says.

'He was never more than 5 feet.')

No matter how well-made, how realistic to life, how well-cast, how well-acted, there will Never be a gay-themed film that will be approved by the queens of DL. It's as simple as that. OP, you will never find realism here so don't ask any more questions. Not because they aren't good questions but you are asking an audience of idiots.

I was like 12 when it came out and my mom and sister and went to see it in theater and mostly I remember being disappointed, as a very closeted gayling from rural Colorado with basically no prior exposure to anything remotely gay, that the gays were all mediocre looking old (to me) guys.

R80, I was 19 when Philly came out. Denzel was pretty hot. Hanks was at his tail-end of hotness (some of the weight loss after A League of Their Own helped). And many people lusted after Antonio. Even though the all seemed “old” to me. That’s my hot take.

R78. Thank you for sharing. Ryan’s mother was amazing and it’s worth repeating. I feel like Ryan was a modern day version of a prophet tbh. I know that sounds extreme, but it’s how I feel. We were roughly the same age and he influenced me for sure. Had it happened to me, I probably would have reacted more like Bergalis unfortunately. At least back then. Her bitterness is seared into my memory. I don’t blame her to some degree. I think at least in the media narrative at the time, getting HIV from a tainted blood transfusion verses from a “promiscuous and careless dentist” is a slightly bigger pill to swallow. But still ... the differences between her reaction and that of White/White’s Mom are quite distinct and telling. You could see all of life’s experiences she felt entitled to and robbed of written all over her face). I think I saw them all on Phil Donahue (wow, that show was seriously revolutionary and impactful, if not imperfect at times).

R79, once again, stop being a shit stirrer.

Numerous posters mention how much they love the superb LONGTIME COMPANION.

People keep repeating the film was made by straight people but in reality it was written by an openly gay man Ron Nyswaner. He also wrote the Lee Pace / Troy Garity trans film Soldier's Girl and appeared as himself in The Celluloid Closet.

From Wikipedia: "In 2004, he published Blue Days, Black Nights: A Memoir, which chronicles his relationship with alcohol, drugs, and hustlers."

I have a feeling he might have even been a Datalounger at some point.

[quote]No matter how well-made, how realistic to life, how well-cast, how well-acted, there will Never be a gay-themed film that will be approved by the queens of DL.

Many of the criticisms being mentioned here on this thread were also aimed at the film at the time of its release, and by much bigger names than the queens of DL. It has always been critiqued as watered-down and aimed primarily at straights. Those aren't views exclusive to DL or even gays.

Thank you for that, r78.

I am not ordinarily a violent man, but I believe if I ever saw someone desecrating a gravesite of a child, I could easily become very violent very quickly. Like, kill them type violent.

[QUOTE] Many of the criticisms being mentioned here on this thread were also aimed at the film at the time of its release, and by much bigger names than the queens of DL. It has always been critiqued as watered-down and aimed primarily at straights. Those aren't views exclusive to DL or even gays.

Didn't Larry Kramer write a scathing editorial condemning it?

I did not want to watch anything with homophobe Denzel. I eventually rented the tape one night when there was absolutely, positively nothing else to watch. It sucked.

A lot of people here liked Brokeback Mountain, R79. Your post is a laughable screed that bears no resemblance to reality.

It was really the first mainstream AIDS film. It was extremely important in gay rights. It talked directly about homophobia and discrimination.

I thought it was OK, but the biggest takeaway was what one of my straight co-workers said at the time.

She said the family films really got to her because she had never thought of gay people as having families before.

THIS was really important. She didn't look at gays (including me) as being a part of a family and like everyone else prior to the film.

If that was the main thing it contributed, then that's a lot. It's not perfect - but Hollywood films are always dissected for not being everything to everybody in less than 2 hours.

Before Night Falls is 100x better than the smarm that is Philadelphia.

I am SURE Larry Kramer complained about it. Never misses an opportunity to complain. Yet, we don’t complain about his tedious, poorly written diatribe that was to be his opus.

I am SURE Larry Kramer complained about it. Never misses an opportunity to complain. Yet, we don’t complain about his tedious, poorly written diatribe that was to be his opus.

I am SURE Larry Kramer complained about it. Never misses an opportunity to complain. Yet, we don’t complain about his tedious, poorly written diatribe that was to be his opus.

Yeah, we heard ya.

I found Before Night Falls void of any sexual appeal. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention when I watched it. But I came out of it questioning if Bardem’s character was even gay.

The movie was both lame and powerful at the same time. Not a fan, but it did take on a very real and very heartbreaking subject. The screenplay was poor - but the performances were good all things considered.

I didn’t like Before Night Falls. Artsy to the point of abstraction. Longtime Companion got it right.

I think it is really important to write down what happened and what we remember. I think the whole situation of the disease is unprecedented in many ways. I am nearing 60. I have a few gay friends my age and older. It is like this unspoken and unsaid thing in our lives. Such a contrast to when we were much younger and loved to tell each other and listen to our stories of discovering being gay.

We don't talk about those years. The curtain coming down on those gorgeous. life and music filled years. The years of our first true possibilities. Then the betrayals of the plague years. The inability. The fears . The not knowing what to say, or do, or think, or act or not. Now, it is as if it never happened. I want the amnesia.

Something surroundIng the coliseum at the height of its theatrics. They would have full scale naval battles take place in a flooded stage, I would love to see that.

Getting back to your demand, OP. It was difficult. I think the first time a film actually dealt with the truth about HIV/AIDS and finally put it in a human perspective. Kudos to all involved in the film. It is a difficult film if you'd been there. When it came out I don't think any of us involved really could deal with it. I think it was an very important film, it showed the rest of the country the human and emotional toll of all this. Eventually, most of Americans would come to learn of people nearby.

This is obviously a beloved film. I was mid-20s when it came out and didn’t see it then because I thought it would be too much of a noble, inspirational Oscar-bait tearjerker with the two leads being lauded as oh so brave for playing gay (and double bravery points for Hanks for playing gay with AIDS) for my tastes. I’ve still never seen it.

It's not a very emotional experience R101. Of course everyone is different. You should see it, just to see it. You won't likely cry. I was only 10 years old when it came out, completely unaware. I have reason to fear those films now. I finally watched it with my mother. It's quite sterile and unaffecting. Not a terrible movie, but nobody really feels anything much for longer than a glance. It's not noble. It's a courtroom drama with a side of AIDS. The lawyers are shot like demons and Hanks' fragile look is a bit of a pull on the heart. The Springsteen song is great. That incessant beat with the tender vocal. Don't know why people here think Neil Young's song is better. Generational I guess. except i'm the one who is 37. Ha.

The ending is very emotional when we're shown the home video of Tom Hanks as a kid in his wake. If I remember correctly Neil Young's song is playing making the maximum emotional impact. I can see how some people might be unmoved by that scene but I assume they didn't really appreciate the film at all before that either.

There's a lot of hate towards the film which I find partly undeserved. Some people want it to be more like a documentary of the gay community at the time, or show more openly affection between men, or whatever. Those were different times and that movie is most certainly a child of its time.

R101, with all due respect, I don't think it is a beloved film. I think it was the first film that really dealt with the pain of it all, pain that most of us don't want to deal with , memorialize or immortalize. I think if someone lived through this period this film is a painful reminder of those days. There were no heroes, there was no redemptive message, there were just many young people dying sudden and horrific deaths,

I take back the comment that there were no heroes. There were.

R104

Longtime Companion is a more realistic film, but it's not actually very good.

The ending of LONGTIME COMPANION is a little shaky to me but the rest is killer. LOVE that movie. Liking the Neil Young song better is generational? I'm 38. It's better. Melancholy, beautiful melody paired with the video of him as boy. Beautiful. All performances in PHILADELPHIA are top notch. You don't get acting like that anymore. Make that movie today and see.

I think part of the distaste for the film was also because it was released in Dec 1993 - years and years and years after people had been dying.

Why did it take so long to get a mainstream film? It is truly incredible that tens of thousands of Amercians were dying each year and there was a general apathy from the government and from most Americans.

It was a film about straights really - not gays. There was very little shown about gay relationships and how AIDS affected them and the community. So little. I think this is why gays didn't love the film.

It's a good film and it holds up over time. It tells the story of prejudice among those in particular who should know better. For many or even most who died during this period pre HAART, it was much more difficult: family rejection, poverty and a grinding death, never mind losing a job which was pretty universal. Those days were absolutely surreal if you lived through them. .

R109 - yeah, I think that's part of the rub about the movie. Wealthy white lawyer who loses his job but doesn't appear to suffer from it financially.

There's only so much you can cover in 2 hours. But there should be another film that covered these issues better.

And let's not forget, there were many partners of those who died who were kicked out of their apartments, condos, or houses by the landlords or by the dead partner's family. They were entitled to nothing in the eyes of the law.

I also remember a side business in the early 90's where companies would buy out your life insurance at a reduced rate so you could have some money to pay bills before you died. Then they collected your life insurance money when you passed.

Denzel Washington did more actual acting.

GenZers, and millennials as well, please tell me about how you're a bunch of obnoxious, entitled, ASSHOLES.

[italic]Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere[/italic] and [italic]LA Law[/italic] all did AIDS storylines that were better than this movie.

THE HOGAN FAMILY did an AIDS episode too. With the friend Burt.

Mr. Belvedere did one too.

Among sitcoms, only [italic]The Hogan Family[/italic] had the nerve to give it to a semi-regular character instead of a one-shot. But it wasn't Burt, it was Rich. Not like they had trouble killing off major characters before.

“Melrose Place is a really good show!”

All joking aside it did a good job capturing that anxiety of being tested.

R106 Realistic? Did you forget the whole wish fulfillment dream sequence at the end?

It’s pretty realistic to imagine hopeful, yet impossible alternate universes where HIV/AIDS hasn’t happened.

But, yes, it’s hokey (but sweet). However, the film earned that ending.

It (the ending of Longtime Companion) was never presented as their reality. They knew it was a fantasy. We knew it was a fantasy. My personal "Post Mortem Bar" includes each of the men I saw the movie with.

A friend of mine worked on the post-production. He said the straightness of the film developed in the editing room. There was a lot more Gay stuff shot including a terrific scene of Hanks and Banderas in bed together. He said it made him understand that a "screenplay" is also (re)written by the editor.

Yes, Hanks has spoken of the scenes of physical intimacy between him and Antonio that were removed from the film. Edited is a nice way to say censored.

I imagine the studio had a say. They saw it as an awards-run moneymaker and they would make sure anything they thought threatened the bottom line would get the cut, I imagine. I don’t think Demme could have done anything he wanted despite his recent success. I’m guessing he didn’t have final cut privilege. You’d think he didn’t considering what he had gotten away with in the past, especially with his commercial grand slam Lambs.

It'd be great of some of the edited footage still existed and they released an Anniversary edition on Blu-ray.

I can't understand how The Piano won Best Screenplay.

The Piano was a huge Arthouse hit which got nominated for a slew of Oscars. Its success was undeniable. It was something different, evocative, moving, etc. The story is quite original and creative and it offered cinema a very unique heroine. On top of it all, the film was created by a woman, so it had narrative on top of everything else.

The competition included ... Sleepless in Seattle, Dave, In the Line of Fire, and Philadelphia ... all films which still stand inferior to The Piano 27 years later.

It’s pretty easy to see why it won.

R11 I continue to be haunted and weirded out by that yogurt joke. Is it that a woman can't make a gay guy cum, so he throws yogurt....on her back?

...the fuck?

If he's gay and can't get hard, that's one thing. But if he can't get hard, she'd see it and he's nowhere near needing to fake cumming.

And why on her back? Most women would want eye contact with their man...

And where the hell is he stashing yogurt....by the bed? So it can rot?

None of it made sense. Even a gay guy can get hard and cum with a woman jacking him off or fucking him. The dick just works that way. Contact, stimulation, orgasm. Even straight dudes know that.

Women fake orgasms, not men.

And the tone of the scene was so evil, with that nasty old man holding court in the steam room. I think it's the scene I most remember from the movie. Really got under my skin.

Anyway if I'm missing the joke, please explain it to me.

The yogurt joke sounds like something a mean-spirited 1980s eldergay DLer who got married/divorced to a woman before coming out would make tbh.

It also sounds like a guy who can get excited/ hard for anyone, but it’s only a guy who can make him orgasm. A guy who sees sex as only a physical act, not an emotional one.

Just my impression.

The yogurt joke is...

A JOKE. It doesn't need to make perfect literal sense.

The yogurt joke is because gay men are known for getting fucked in the back especially back then. Bent over. So the bottom knows the top would have cum by the hot yogurt (fake cum) on his back therefore making the bottom cum then because that's "what they want" and turns them on. Straight men aren't thinking about different sex positions for men fucking men.

The sources of information were so limited then compared to now that unless you lived this, you'd never know what it was like. 1993..a few TV stations, a few print newspapers, video taps gotten from the rental store, and then the movies.

To have a version of the AIDS story told on the big screen was a big deal. I hope it opened the eyes and hearts of others. I really have a hard time watching these movies or anything about those years.

It's not a terrible movie but it is certainly not a memorable one.

Tom Hanks did a very good job, though he was playing a martyr, but he only won the Oscar because he was "being brave enough to play a gay man." TBH he deserved it more for playing Fred Rogers.

But honestly the Early Frost TV movie is much better re: early days of HIV/AIDS.

Yeah, Hanks' best acting has been as Fred Rogers and the final ten minutes of Captain Phillips (possibly the best acting of 2013).

My eyes were already open before this dumb, condescending movie came out, R131. I learned what AIDS was before I even knew what homosexuality is. This movie changed nothing.

Its strength was its weakness. It was a big Hollywood, all star cast, big budget movie. Melodramatic, manipulative. About AIDS and with that juggernaut of heart-on-the-sleeve emotion, made for middle American audiences. Mom and Pop out to the movies on a Friday night, who would never in a gazillion years see Longtime Companion.

I thought Hanks did a good job.... the histrionic grief and mortality dance of the opera sequences should now have worked. He made them work... saw the film again a couple years ago and those scenes seemed intense, moving to me.

Neil was better than Bruce. But both were good songs.

The only reason that song won is because [italic]The Lion King[/italic] didn't come out until the summer of 1994. All the Disney animated features immediately before it that won the Best Song Oscar were released late in the year.

I was born in 1983 and I can't deal with the fags here who don't *get* the yogurt joke. It's not that vile or hard to understand. Gay men ass fuck, the way to ape one is to spray yogurt on her back. It's not even a good read from the old man, but completely understandable. Does nobody on DL have sex, now or then or ever? Now we breed and don't waste the cum, but even my grandmother could understand that tasteless "joke." Datalounge always surprises me. So many here live on porn and fantasies. Real men cum when we fuck. Our cum shoots. Back in 1892 when Philadelphia was filmed, they blew their cum outside the hole. Now boys filled with dish detergent *cream* all over from a good fuck. Gush, Gush. What's more shocking is that some posters had to go into some philosophical or political space to understand a crude comment in a bad movie. Asking what the underlying message was. Weird. My boyfriend is howling. Helps me with my understanding of this joint though. Thanks to 60 year old virgins, like Cinesnatch et al. That dude is kind of creepy all on his own.

That scene of him voguing to Maria Callas would be improved if they replaced it with this song:

The deleted scene of Hanks and Banderas in bed is on youTube.

Amazing film for its time.

[quote]To have a version of the AIDS story told on the big screen was a big deal.

But they were not the right choices to tell that story.

They were for the time the film was made.

No, they were not. Tom Hanks was miscast here and I usually like him.

The point of the movie was to appeal to an audience that needed to be enlightened but normally wouldn't go to a gay-themed movie, especially one about AIDS. Casting Tom Hanks in the lead made it "safe" for them to go.

Personally, I thought he was just fine but not necessarily Oscar-worthy. I thought Denzel gave a more interesting performance.

Who would you have cast at that time?

[quote] When I was in college, the mainstream success of Brokeback Mountain felt like a 'moment.'

Yeah, like everyone in school noticing your spontaneous boner and pointing and laughing at you.

This thread motivated me to finally watch the film. Sometimes heavy-handed and manipulative, the story itself is painted in broad strokes. It was obviously conceived to win Oscars. But it was also designed to educate a mainstream, mostly straight audience. Denzel Washingon's Joe Miller is given the extremely ambitious arc of an African-American homophobe who develops empathy towards gays in just over two hours. The transition is transparent and unbelievable, but he acts as the audience surrogate and his character development provides the framework to witness a dying man fighting for justice. In late 1993, America (sadly) needed to see THIS particular story (about a gay man with AIDS fighting for justice against social and economically-ingrained homophobia) told in THIS particular way (to reach a wide audience).

An imperfect film, I cringe at certain parts. When a young attractive young med student hits on Miller, I winced at how clumsy and awkward it played out. Yet, it was also important. We saw a man who was professional, confident, and good-looking hit on another man in a very casual, comfortable way, and they were both black (a community that has struggled with homophobia to larger degrees). The judgment was solely on the Miller character, who couldn't handle the sexual attention. That scene has aged mostly well. Not so well was the kitchen scene between Miller and his wife. We learn just how nasty Miller's homophobia is. Lisa, on the other hand--being the straight woman--is naturally more at ease with gays. We see again how Joe is the one who needs to sort through his own issues. However, the way the scene is written, Joe goes too far with his disdain. And even though we know Lisa's stance, her reaction to her husband's tirade is too soft. Even if she was in the middle of dinner and didn't want to fight this particular battle, the extreme nature of Joe's hate really called for her to elevate her level of advocacy.

I would have liked to have seen more intimate moments between Hanks and Banderas. The film treats their relationship as a given. Of course, this was done in a cautionary manner to ensure large box-office receipts.

The acting is solid. Hanks' Andrea Chénier scene was quite beautiful and more understated than I remembered from clips. Oddly, in that scene, with a glow emphasising his face, Washington looks like he wants to mount Hanks. Overall, Washington helps Hanks carry the film. I've never been a huge fan. One performance bleeds into the next. But, I shouldn't underplay how dependable he is as a leading man. And, here, he has a very difficult character to make likeable. Woodward is lovely, especially in the final scene. Robards as the main villain isn't as one-dimensional as I recall from clips. Steenburgen offers stealth femininity in the courtroom scenes. Banderas looks so youthful and his delivery is nicely subtle as the dedicated partner.

Part of what I didn't expect were some strategic light touches. During the courtroom scenes, there were these moments where Demme catches the look of some of the jurors perfectly capturing the judgment that gay men face in real life. The film shows rather than tells how in the quest for justice, the marginalised must face the extra scrutiny and shaming of their life choices just to be treated equally.

I also didn't expect corporate success to be framed in such a dark shade. Andy Beckett comes from privilege. His hard work mixed with advantages have taken him to the upper echelons of a big corporation. At the beginning, we see him and Miller arguing before a judge. Beckett represents "the haves" and Miller "the have-nots". The former is untouchable, yet, when illness exposes him as a minority class in both sexuality and health, he's kicked out of the club. The film presents the big corporation as cold, calculating, and inhumane, despite society still seeing it as aspirational, which was still new for mainstream films.

Both main songs are just gorgeous. I prefer Springsteen's main track, but I love Neil Young's as well.

[quote]Who would you have cast at that time?

Rick Schroder and Mackenzie Astin

I was appalled at Hanks for pulling his wife into just about every press junket and interview when he was promoting the film back then. He seemed mortified that people would think he was gay by association. His constant references to his wife were nauseating. Between that and the cloying treacle of Forrest Gump, I've had a hard time watching him in anything else. Fortunately most of what he's done has been middling meh mainstream not worth seeing anyway.

That's unfortunate about him "de-gaying" himself for the press tour, R148. :( But, I imagine that could have been from studio pressure. I'm not sure Hanks would have really cared. He has struck me as someone who has always been quite secure in his sexuality (based on interviews I've read).

Alos, his final scene in Captain Phillips (2013) is the best acting of his career. And I loved him in Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood (2019). While both films are mainstream, I wouldn't call his work in them middling whatsoever. He has really grown as an actor.

[italic]Forrest Gump[/italic] was easier to swallow. At least the str8 girl was the one who died of AIDS for a change.