“Bohemian Rhapsody” recalls my own 1985 experience in Dallas with “We Are the World”
In early 1985, while living in Dallas, I learned about an American Airlines flight attendant, Rodney Ayres, who had made a miraculous recovery from Kaposi’s Sarcoma, apparently able to work during recovery. I got to know him, and for a while in early 1986, he was able to pose as Superman again. I remember a dinner one time (he said he had diabetes as a result of the treatments) with another person with AIDS whom I had befriended as a volunteer at the Oak Lawn Counseling Center, he ordered a cheese omelet and we talked about the Supreme Court, Judge Bork, and Justice Scalia. We were fending off the Moral Majority and the “Dallas Doctors Against AIDS” who had almost pushed through very draconian anti-gay legislation in 1983 (before HIV was identified) that would have pretty much closed down the gay community as we knew it. It would be only ten years before it would become credible to debate lifting the ban on gays in the military.
But Rodney would relapse, suddenly, in April 1986, with a return of KS and with pneumocystis pneumonia. He would pass away in March 1987, whereas my other friend from that night would benefit for a long time from AZT. In October 1989, I would find his quilt in Washington DC on the Mall. He could have been a boyfriend. Perhaps I wouldn’t be here today. Or perhaps I have some kind of unusual genetic resistance, because I certainly could have been exposed anytime until 1983, after which I “stopped”.
Rodney was a great supporter of Live Aid, and I remember standing next to him on Turtle Creek Drive in Dallas the morning of Saturday, July 13, 1985, as the concerts were broadcast from London (Wembley) and Philadelphia. The song I remember is “We Are the World.”
But there was also the similar “We Are the Champions.”
And, of course, “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
The film, directed by Bryan Singer and Dexter Fletcher, starts out as a biography of Freddie Mercury (Farrokh Bulsara, played by Rami Malek, in 1970, as he joins and helps build the band Queen, in Britain. They begin to tour the American Midwest, and in 1975 release an album, “A Night at the Opera”, based in part on Bizet’s “Carmen”. The home life with girlfriend Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton) is graced by two inquisitive cats, who seem to grasp that there is more to Freddie than meets Mary’s eye. Animals know things before we do. In time Freddie comes out as bisexual and primarily gay.
The film spends some time on the introduction of the slow-movement song “Bohemian Rhapsody” but gathering momentum toward the concert that will aid starving children in Ethiopia.
Freddie fires a road manager inside the car for a homophobic comment, and then breaks up angrily with a boyfriend, saying he doesn’t want to see him again. Someone once told me that in NYC after losing a chess game to me, but called a week later and apologized, but he had gotten a letter from still another person saying just that. Freddie is soon becoming ill, with symptoms of pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. But he holds together well enough to do the concert, with his other engaging friends.
He would live until 1991 (died at 45).
The film would win the Golden Globe 2019 for best dramatic picture, but it could have been considered a musical.
As for the fundraiser, I personally don’t run fundraisers in my own name (as on Facebook). Given something specific enough to me, however, that could change.
Name: “Bohemian Rhapsody”
Director, writer: Bryan Singer
Released: 2018/11
Format: 2.39:1, Imax
When and how viewed: Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse (VA), 2019/1/14, large audience
Length: 135
Rating: PG-13
Companies: 20th Century Fox
Link: official
Stars: ****_
(Posted: Monday, January 14, 2019 at 11:30 PM EST)
Author billsmePosted on January 15, 2019Catego