remember the war on AIDS?

(haha WHICH BUSH????)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLpwyq8cVdc

interview with Sarah Schulman, on ACT UP, Larry Kramer, the whitewashing of history:

Do you feel like we need a Larry Kramer now in the queer community?

Who’s we? Now we’re in the homonationalist era. Now we’re at the era of the reconciliation of the white race through gay marriage and gay family and gay rights. And gay people who have certain kinds of privileges whether they’re white or citizens or HIV negative allying themselves to the state and using the state apparatus that separates them from other people. This is where we are now. But there is no “we.” It’s not the same “we” that it was at that era or that time.

Well I would question whether it ever was, even then.

Well ACT UP was successful because it had all these different kinds of people and it allowed all different kinds of people no matter what their background to act in a way that made sense individually. It did not try to control. There was no attempt to homogenize people’s behavior and that’s why it was a successful movement.

What did you think of How to Survive a Plague? There seemed to be a certain whitewashing of history going on.

Well we call it “The Five White People Who Saved the World” — that’s our nickname for it. And those white people are very busy because apparently they’re always saving everything all the time. Everywhere you go, you see them.

Jim Hubbard, the director of United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, and David France did a public debate. It was co-sponsored by Visual Aids and you can watch it on YouTube and it’s really really fascinating. At one point they open up for questions and the first question to David is: Why do you have no women or people of color in the film? And he says, well I wanted to focus on wealthy white men because they had the time to devote to activism. Now as a person who has interviewed 168 surviving members of ACT UP New York, I can tell you that’s not historically correct. People in ACT UP gave their entire lives to ACT UP. All different kinds of people from every class and background would report in our interviews that they were at ACT UP five nights a week, that their entire life was ACT UP. And that had nothing to do with how much money you had. And the second thing he said was that these men went to good universities and so they were able to understand the science. That is absurd. The audience almost started laughing....

http://www.vulture.com/2014/06/writer-sarah-schulman-on-the-normal-heart-larry-kramer.html

remember the war on poor gay men?

So I watched The Normal Heart, adapted by Larry Kramer from his 1985 play for HBO, which though the actors are all good and/or hot and got the NYC plague vibe correct afaik -- I was in college back then but not yet having sex with men (it was not a conducive era to begin) -- it started to bother me that it was yet another tale of white, economically "comfortable" Fire Island-tripping gays, but as the drama grew more oppressive and nightmarish I accepted the theme that even these, the most entitled and urbanized of the tribe, were pariahs being tossed into Glad bags.

Both Mark Ruffalo and Julia Roberts carry off their enraged meltdown scenes well -- multiple in his case -- but then Joe Mantello, the theater director and actor who first played Louis in Angels in America, blows them away as the health professional who loses it in the GMHC office.

Also, if you weren't around and don't want to read a book, it'll help you understand what a shit Ed Koch was.

same reaction as you

nice to see Alfred Molina play two diff characters the same year too

Matt Bomer, who looks like Josh Brolin restyled as a Reagan administration lawyer, will play Monty Clift in an upcoming biopic.