Saw The Normal Heart on HBO last night. A heartbreaking film. Not easy to watch, nor should it be. The acting was flawless. My sometimes not so favorite Julia Roberts was exceptional in her role as a doctor, as were Mark Ruffalo, Jim Parsons and all the others. Strangely, it might have been more powerful if it were a bit shorter and somewhat less strident. For me the quiet moments were the most powerful and moving. The writing - so necessary at that time - was a club to beat down the indifference of the world to this plague - particularly that of the government. I can recall my wife and I visiting San Francisco in the early eighties and looking in horror at the sick, emaciated men in the streets, some of them dying and homeless. And when I wrote my first draft of An Early Frost doing research at St. Vincents hospital and being horrified by what I saw there, and how little was known of a cure, or even an effective treatment. At first when I was asked to write about AIDS as a TV drama I resisted. I did not want to do another disease of the week - popular at that time. But I soon came to understand how necessary this one was. And I had plenty of trouble with the network every time I tried to toughen the material. Our network TV film was very mild compared to Larry Kramers then play, but it helped to introduce the large TV watching public of the time to the subject - and encourage compassion for the stricken but it did not have the power of Larry Kramers work - for all of Kramers tendency to replace drama with polemic his passion comes through at all times. Watch this HBO film. It is an important document of that time and that place - perhaps the most important that we have now - and should be seen particularly by the young both gay and straight. How fortunate that there is cable that allows for a more truthful, hard hitting treatment of this subject. Congratulations to all who made this film.
Posted on: Tue, 27 May 2014 10:29:46 +0000
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