Actor Mark Lamos remembers 1989 film 'Longtime Companion:'

Cliched soaper

I loved it at the time.

It's godawful!

Wonderful film.

It was an amazing film when I saw it in 1990. I saw it several times in 1990. It made me cry and being able to cry about all the AIDS fear in the world at that point was refreshing and rejuvenating.

It's was great for its time. But the cute slut at the beginning would have deserved a more dramatic dying scene. He just disappeared.

End of Act One - The Inheritance.

[quote]cute slut at the beginning would have deserved a more dramatic dying scene. He just disappeared.

Aparently he was initially a significant character in the film, but his story arc got cut out in the editing room. Not sure precisely why but I think it was for pacing, to keep the overall narrative moving.

This was mentioned during a Q&A following a 20th anniversary screening at Outfest.

What cute slut?

[quote]What cute slut?

He was a waiter in some of the early scenes. After he got off work, film included a shot of him going off to cruise in the park.

A decent film but I think most criticisms of it single Lamos out as the weakest link....oopsie

Despite any shortcomings and melodrama, it was really stunning at the time to finally see "our" story being told on-screen in a legit movie - to see the loss and pain we had been through recognized in the main stream.

Hey, it helped me win a Tony! Thank you Longtime Companion!

Great movie!

WHET Campbell Scott? IIRC, I last saw him in a Julia Roberts hapless heroine film.

I get Penelope Ann Miller and Mary Louise Parker mixed up. They’re both drably boring.

The Inheritance shamelessly ripped off the much better Longtime Companion.

R8, R9, I was thinking of the character John, the first to die.

Well, I just had to cry all over again. I still miss you, Dick. As deep as the sea, as wide as the earth, as far from me as the stars above.

This isn’t just a film, it’s an artefact. It’s like revisiting a time… I lose it a lot when I watch this film and it’s okay.

I remember the first time I saw this, at the Music Box Theatre on Southport in Chicago, when it was still one big house, and when I came out of the cinema, my ex-boyfriend was in the lobby waiting to go in. I knew he had lost his best friend to AIDS when he was like just 26, the loss had really stunted him, he didn’t know how to grieve him and he felt so guity…I phoned him and left a msg on his answering machine and we talked later because I knew it wouid be hard for him. We’re still friends to this day and I think of his friend often, and others like him, and how young they were, how short their lives were.

When I watch this film, and I do on occasion, I mourn and honour the dead. And I’m glad it exists, I’m glad it was made.

I liked it back then.

However watching it again and the other AIDS movies has brought up so much anger and I guess repressed fear that I had buried(in my 50s now) that I am overwhelmed by emotion that I'm on the verge of either tears or fury.

The song Back to Life by Karen Wheeler and Soul II Soul was playing when a beautiful guy called Don and his partner took me to all the Village bars one evening after I had moved to the city in 1991. What I remember about Don was his athleticism and incredible legs-he liked to wear running shorts- and his Wasp handsomeness, a wonderful smile and gentleness. 18months later I attended his 37th birthday where in the end stages of AIDS his skin was brown and almost translucent and I thought it might tear it looked so fragile. He was dead 2 weeks later. Apologies for the digression, but talking with other guys I find I'm not alone in how memories of those days seem to awaken something not so pleasant.

That time wrought havoc on so many folk.

I can't help but think that I'm lucky in a way that I grew up in the sticks, b/c if I'd been in NY or LA or SF I'd be dead.

R21 Me too.

R1, were you around during the 1980s/1990s?

Got to meet Bruce Davison CHILLER. While people were lining up to have their "X-Men" stuff signed my friend had the "Longtime Companion" DVD signed and we talked about him being nominated for the Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor.

I prefer another similar one that DLers recommended with Steve Buschemi. Can’t remember the name but loved it.

Michael Schoeffling played one of the homosexuals.

That scene, R24... "Time to go"... I couldn't watch it when I saw this in the theater. I had just lost a good friend and coworker. It was very traumatic. And that scene was so close to what I actually experienced, it hurt SO BAD, I literally sobbed in the theater, hands over my eyes, trying to be quiet, not really succeeding.

That scene is a masterpiece of reality. It hurt. But it was cathartic to know others experienced that same moment, so much so, it was written into a film, and those who hadn't experienced it first hand could at least see and maybe begin to understand.

And of course that final scene. Where everyone who died came back and then disappeared, showing the scale of the devastating loss in a way words could never describe.

It really captured the time. The fear. The sadness. The anger.

R25, that was Parting Glances

Oh man, Mark Lamos... i haven't thought of him in years. I am again reminded that I am officially an "eldergay". i remember Lamos when he was the Artistic Director at Hartford Stage. I think it was (gulp!) the early 1990s that I saw his production of The Importance of Being Earnest... he directed and portrayed Jack Worthy. I remember that evening as nothing but pure delight.

R29 below is a 2023 update / profile on Mark Lamos.... age 77, still in Connecticut, recently retired from Westport Playhouse

AIDS RIBBON RED LIPSTICK. Such disrespect and historical ignorance.

This film captures the intense grief of the time, it is difficult to watch.

I didn't realize that scene where characters are using affirmations about loving themselves is a reference to Louise Hay, I had not heard of her teachings until very recently.

Were there no people of color in the gay community of Fire Island?

I saw the film 5 years after I left NYC in my mid-20s, and was living in north Florida. Devastating. It was the most real film about gay people and their lives that I had ever viewed. It mirrored my own experiences and the people I had already lost by then. I almost couldn't walk out of the theater. I had to take time to collect myself. In those days I bore a passing resemblance to Dylan Mulroney, and one of my friends said, "wow, you look just like that character "John". Considering that John was the first character in the film to die, I didn't take it as a compliment. Instead, I was worried that I would endure the same fate - in fact, most of us in the audience were living in constant fear during that decade, even though many in the audience viewed it as a NYC film about NYC gays and couldn't quite relate the experiences being depicted to their own lives. Within 4 or 5 years, many of them were also dealing with illness and death, or knew others who were.

I have not tried to watch it since then. I'm not sure I want to relive the feelings of terror and helplessness and despair I felt the first time I watched it. It wasn't death in the abstract that was frightening - that comes for us all, eventually. It was the fact that droves of people were dying in their 20s and most of the world didn't give a damn.

Thanks R30 - Lamos is 77. Seems like a good time to retire and enjoy, leave the headaches of the arts in this tumultuous "woke" time to youngsters.

The 'Fuzzy' character was so sweet. The actor was on All My Children and Tour of Duty. Did he ever come out? Steve Caffrey?

I was in Sacramento when the movie came out. A lot of people were dying there. I was a home health aide and worked for an agency that would send me out to At-Home AIDS care. It was a very heartbreaking time. I was in my early 20s at the time.

[quote]It wasn't death in the abstract that was frightening - that comes for us all, eventually. It was the fact that droves of people were dying in their 20s and most of the world didn't give a damn.

Just needed to repeat that.

It's also heartbreaking that so many of the 20-30 something gays today have all but forgotten.

Well, they weren’t even there, R38. They don’t understand the Vietnam war either.

R39, the point is, they're not being taught their own history, and seem to have no interest in learning it, which leads them to not understand anything, and to be really dismissive and selfish and self-centered, and it's honestly tragic.

[quote]r31 AIDS RIBBON RED LIPSTICK. Such disrespect and historical ignorance.

The proceeds from MAC’s shade Viva Glam has funded and raised awareness for HIV/AIDS programs since 1994.

(I think Lisa Eldridge’s reds are better, though.)(Granted, they are more expensive.)

[Quote] It was the most real film about gay people and their lives that I had ever viewed. It mirrored my own experiences and the people I had already lost by then.

R34 you mean white gay men of a certain age and financially well off

R42 Jog on.

Both COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS disproportionately impacted minority communities.

I remember the scene of the friends all gathered to watch the first gay kiss on TV. Then they cut to a shot of a TV in a shop window also showing the kiss and people in the street being shocked.

I love Fuzzy doing Dreamgirls.

It needs a hat.

The twist death, when it is Bruce Davidson being buried.

Wearing the Sisters wedding dress.

Patrick Cassidy.

Mark Lamos wiki

[quote]Patrick Cassidy

the truly hot Cassidy

This film has been discussed before on the datalounge- probably MANY times since 1995.

I liked the movie- by far the most moving scene was with Bruce Davidson telling Mark Lamos to just - Let go.

Some of the production values were weak- I'm a queen I can't help but nit pick.

The scene in 1982 when Bruce Davidson and Campbell Scott pull up to a hospital in a Checker Taxi - it's 1982 New York plates are still yellow with blue lettering but the taxi has 1989 plates with the Statue Of Liberty in the center- that BUGS 🐞 me.

The made this move on a 1.5 million budget, hon. R49. Just let go.

it was made to make gay men palatable to the general audience which never saw the film anyway

[Quote] the point is, they're not being taught their own history,

They can always watch An Early Frost, Angels in America, Dallas Buyers Club, The Normal Heart, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, Parting Glances, And the Band Played On . . .

They could. But they're not.

I think Joe Pesci is an excellent actor, but Bruce Davison should have had the Oscar for the death scene alone

Another elder Hartford Stage fan who saw many of Mark Lamos' productions there (as a director) including a musical version of Martin Guerre (not the the London production) in the early 1990s that starred the gorgeous Patrick Cassidy and the much-maligned Malcolm Gets as the 2 husbands/Martins of Broadway star Judy Kuhn. A beautiful production. The theatre did amazing work back then, often Broadway quality.

[quote][R8], [R9], I was thinking of the character John, the first to die.

That was Dermot Mulroney.

He's probably best known as Julia Robert's love interest in MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING.

[quote] In those days I bore a passing resemblance to Dylan Mulroney, and one of my friends said, "wow, you look just like that character "John".

As R56 said, Dermot Mulroney.

But R34 is one of many of us who confuses Dermot Mulroney and Dylan McDermott......

[quote]Julia Robert's love interest

Oh, dear.

r46 r49 DAVISON, not Davidson

Dermot Mulroney also gets remembered for playing 'Gavin Mitchell' on FRIENDS.

[quote]I think Joe Pesci is an excellent actor, but Bruce Davison should have had the Oscar for the death scene alone

If it's any consolation, Davison won Golden Globe and NYFCC.

The only major precursory award that Pesci won was LAFCC.

There was no SAG Award until 1995, and BAFTA (which neither was nominated for) did not become an Oscar precursor until 2001, so I guess Davison had the edge?

*LAFCA

A year after the film released I was invited to a CT Thanksgiving. Mark was one of the six people there and it was delightful. I did have an initial gasp when we were introduced as I immediately recognized him and almost cried in a weird flashback to that death scene. His partner was very nice as well but I don’t remember what he looked like. I have a picture somewhere.

Is this the movie where the man go up inside the man?

[quote] I was invited to a CT Thanksgiving

Cognitive Therapy?

Completely Thankful?

R65. Connecticut, where he lives. I took a train there from NYC.

Wasn't Dermot Mulroney married to Catherine Keener? WEHT her? She used to be ubiquitous. For that matter, WEHT Dermot?