DOASKDOTELL MOVIE REVIEW of And the Band Played On, An Early Frost, In the Gloaming, The Age of AIDS

Title: And the Band Played On

Release Date: 1993

Nationality and Language: USA, English

Running time: about 155 Minutes

MPAA Rating: not available but suggest PG-13

Distributor and Production Company: HBO films

Director; Writer: based on the book And the Band Played On, by Randy Shilts, published by St. Martin’s Press (1987)

Producer:

Cast: Matthew Moldine

Technical: TV film

Relevance to DOASKDOTELL site: AIDS, public health, discrimination

Review: "His brain was so loaded it almost exploded." I used to love that little jingle of a nursery song.

Of course. gay journalist Randy Shilts turned this phrase into something very sinister as he gives a detailed, almost week by week account of the AIDS epidemic from its imperceptible beginnings around the time of America's Bicentennial in July, 1976, during the “Tall Ships” festival which I attended then.. Perhaps his greatest concept was the "before and after," the precise moment, different for every individual person, when one realizes that the whole concept of freedom and liberation that one has almost come to take for granted, is suddenly gone.

This movie maintains that sinister mood, with its scenes of men in bunny suits probing equatorial Africa, to the scenes in hospitals, and the graveyards. Matthew Moldine comes across as a charismatic Don Francis, a voice looking for truth in a world of self-denial - both the gay community, and the politicians had their own motives for denial.

Indeed, if the gay community had not gotten a grip on itself, it might not be around as we know it today.

The movie was screened in a few theaters, and I think it would have been more effective in a theatrical release than just cable TV. Previews were shown widely in theaters.

An Early Frost (1985, NBC, dir. John Erman, wr. Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman, 100 min) was an early look of the fall of a young man, Michael Pierson (Aidan Quinn) to AIDS. A successful lawyer and part of mainstream culture, he must deal with the attitudes and misplaced sympathies of loved ones, including parents played by Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara. This was broadcast on NBC and was a landmark in its time. The film’s title is, unfortunately, a perfect metaphor.

In the Gloaming (1997, HBO, dir. Christopher Reeve) was a similar landmark cable film about a decade later. A young man Danny (Robert Sean Leonard) returns home to his mother as he dies of AIDS. This was the first film directed by Christopher Reeve after his horseback fall that left him a quadriplegic, and a leader of a major cause for victims of spinal cord injuries.

The Age of AIDS (2006, PBS/Fronline, prod. Renata Simone, dir. Greg Barker, 240 min) was first presented May 30, 31 2006. This documentary provides a complete history of the epidemic, factual and with little sensation. But by the time it was recognized around 1981, millions were already infected. Indeed, there were subtle warning signs at least as far back as 1978. Many scientists, physicians and officials (Anthony Fauci, Paul Volderbring, James Curran (whom I met in 1982), Paul Brandt, Willy Rosenblatt) are interviewed. The controversial Robert Gallo at NIH, a major retrovirus researcher, is shown. It is interesting to review all the mental paradigms of ethical thought that one could rehearse then, such as the speculations about casual contagion (now very relevant to the fears of bird flu, which is a completely different kind of virus). At one point, Ronald Reagan refused to reassure the public that HIV could not be spread by casual contact, because of a legal opinion written by now Supreme Court Justice John G. Roberts. The science of the virus itself is well presented, including its relation to a previously discovered leukemia virus HTLV-1. The way the epidemic came from simiams (probably chimpanzees, who were often hunted—there is one particularly graphic image of a chimp cadaver) in the 1930s is explained. The moral debate in Congress, driven by Jesse Helms, who wanted male homosexual sex to stop, is laid out.

The outbreak within the western world in the male gay community occurred because of historical demographics: recent liberation, multiple sexual partners within certain large urban concentrations, and, particularly, unprotected anal intercourse, a practice that is unusually efficient in transmitting certain bloodborn viruses. In Africa it would be a largely heterosexual disease because of recent urbanization, other sexually transmitted diseases facilitating vaginal transmission, and poverty. The closing of the baths is covered as Dr. Silverman from the San Francisco Health Department announces that these businesses did not facilitate gay liberation, just disease and death. A few graphic pictures of early AIDS victims, covered with Kaposi’s sarcoma blotches, are shown.

The second part of the film focuses on the development of effective drugs (the “triple cocktail” including the protease inhibitors) which so greatly prolonged the lives and improved the practical health of many victims in the U.S. (This is a far cry from a decade earlier when I, as a sometimes volunteer in Dallas, would see friends come back from hospital stays, their forearms shaved for multiple iv lines.) The gay press talks a lot about the “protease paunch”, an observation that seems exaggerated in practice.) But in the US the drugs cost about $16000 a year, sometimes covered by insurance (itself a political issue, although AIDS itself has become much more manageable in cost in employer sponsored health care than had once been expected). The triple cocktail (developed by David Ho) does not eliminate the virus completely; it keeps the virus practically undetectable, but the virus will return quickly when it is stopped. Over time, patients may develop resistance to drugs even within a cocktail, although hopefully the effectiveness of the “combination chemotherapy” is long term. Cleve Jones, one of the disease’s most famous long-term survivors (from Shilts’s book), appears a lot and helps keep the film moving. Drug companies had to be jawboned to reduce prices for third world countries. Much of the second half talks a lot about the epidemic in South Africa. Bill Clinton often appears, and there is a pass mention of his faultily executed attempt to lift the ban on open gays in the military.

China began to take on AIDS more seriously after its lessons with the SARS outbreak in 2003. The Gates Foundation was presented in conjunction with India. There was some presentation of the “moral controversy” over recommending condoms, including female condoms.

There could have been more discussion of the technical and biochemical barriers to vaccine development, which are quite complicated. I almost volunteered for an unsuccessful GP160 vaccine trial in 1989 at NIH. The lessons could be important for responding quickly to other infectious diseases, even avian influenza (bird flu). The reasons why we fear bird flu could mutate into ready contagion and HIV could not would bear a thoughtful presentation.

Website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/

Related reviews: Conduct Unbecoming (book)

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