THE NORMAL HEART (Ryan Murphy from Larry Kramer HBO 2014)

[Chris Knipp]

Ryan Murphy: THE NORMAL HEART (adapted by Larry Kramer from his own 1985 play for HBO, 2014)

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RUFFALO, BOMER FOR W MAGAZINE-"Ruffalo wears a 
Rag & Bone sweater. Bomer wears a Burberry Brit henley"

[Wanted to set up a separate place to talk about the HBO film and Kramer and the AIDS cricis in film and shift our discussion of this HBO film of Larry Kramer's THE NORMAL HEART.]

Start of this discussion from cinemabon May 26 on the "Musings on Cinema" thread:

cinemabon

So little chance to watch anything...

I watched "The Normal Heart" last night on HBO (Premiere). Basically a film of the autobiographical play by author Larry Kramer. The story takes place in New York between the years 1981 to 1984 when the AIDS crisis began to rear its ugly head. The film stars a strong cast - Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch, Jim Parsons, Julia Roberts and Alfred Molina. I found the performances strong and compelling. Critics - not so much. Produced by Brad Pitt, the acting is superb in my book - better than "Beyond the Candelabra" but what do I know, a nobody from nowhere. Still, if cinema means anything to us, it is the what we experience when we watch. The cry of so many anguished and forgotten victims of this terrible crime against humanity demand to be heard. This film gives them voice.

I have weekly meetings with my editor. My novel is under construction. No fluff self delivered project this time. I'm being "guided" toward a professional product. We shall see the nibblers come this fall. I think of you - especially you, Chris - often. Take care, Cinemabon.
Colige suspectos semper habitos

[Chris Knipp]

Chris Knipp

Cinemabon, long time no see. Welcome back! Good luck with your novel and your work with the editor.

I watched the Ryan Murphy HBO version of Larry Kramer's THE NORMAL HEART today.

I cried. Over the top, more emotional and gushy than the Woolf Theater revival at the Public Theater I saw in 2004. Apparently the 2011 B'way revival was good and warmer. However, Ryan Murphy's has truly dreamy dudes. Some (one IMDb comment of only 2 so far) think this version turns it into romantic schlock, but I checked out the original play text and though Kramer tweaks things all along, basically the main scenes are very close. I think he mainly just made changes to make it clearer to a mainstream audience, took out some little details about being Jewish, for instance, nothing in particular sticks out. Of the four main actors two are straight and two are gay. Mark Ruffalo and Taylor Kitsch straight, Matt Bonner and Jim Parsons are gay. Also Jonathan Groff is gay. Emily Nussbaum (whose TV column in the NYer this week is dedicated to this, and is very well informed and heartfult) doesn't like Julia Roberts and thought she was one-note; but I saw no problem with her. In the original play a lot of it is one-note. The play I saw seemed very historical and political and about organization. It was presented that way. It has a didactic, informational, Brechtian quality about it. However whatever seems warmer, more emotional, sweeter, or sexier in this HBO version, which was, note, written by Larry Kramer, is stuff that is added -- not stuff that is taken out that softens that in the HBO version. There is a lot of disco music, not in the play production I saw; of course it adds to the period feel, and takes off some of the edge. Just opening up the play for film makes it softer and warmer. This is very interesting to see. If anything, if you pay attention, and know the play, this version is richer and fuller, and given that Larry Kramer wrote this, any condemnation of it as turning events into a mere sad, sweet love story are totally wrong. The ending is in the play, word for word. If this subject interests you I highly recommend France's documentary film HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE, about ACTUP and the fight to obtain meds. It is extremely well done and informative. You can watch it on Netflix Instant. It was in the NYFF 2 years ago. GMHC Gay Men's Health Crisis is still active.

The speech about the loss of a generation of creativity in New York, a very large number of the best writers, playwrights, dancers, choreographers, actors, and artists lost, is true. Fran Lebowitz alludes to this is in the PUBLIC SPEAKING Scorsese documentary about her, pointed out how it's all different now, that things are praised that simply wouldn't be if that generation had lived, because standards for the arts would be higher. That's something to think about. It was a plague. It wiped out the best and the brightest.

I was not aware till you mentioned it that Brad Pitt was a producer. However more important to know is that Barbra Steisand owned the rights to the play and sat on them for years. There were differences between Kramer and her. According to him, she simply found gay sex distasteful, and he wanted to show it. She differs. Anyway, Ryan Murphy cared so much about this project that he put up his own money to buy the rights from Streisand to do the HBO version.

The only time I ever went to Fire Island on that ferry was with G.J., briefly a great friend, who lost his mind and committed suicide. That opening part of Fire Island isn't in the play. I lived through this period in San Francisco, and for a while I picked up the two gay newspapers every week and perused the pages of obituaries of handsome and promising young gay men who had died. It was a terrible and a terrifying time. In the studio where I worked at least seven died of AIDS eventually.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 05-26-2014 at 07:02 PM.

[Chris Knipp]

cinemabon

On this day when so many are remembered for service to their country, it is important to note that many died who loved this country and would have proudly fought for it if given the chance. The sheer terror this virus brought to my life was one of dread and fear. Being a nurse and working in a hospital, I saw and cared for dozens of "gay cancer" victims in the early 1980's. I lived in Seattle and volunteered for the work that found few nurses who would. As one gay physician told me at the time from the very start, "They have more to fear from you than you do of them. Think of that every time you enter that room covered from head to toe." I never forgot that. In addition to Kaposi's Sarcoma (the brown spots that appeared on some men but not all), the biggest killer was pneumocystis pneumonia. More boys died of this killer than they did of skin lesions. It spread through the body so fast and knocked out their lungs. They had no defense. My cases lasted days instead of weeks or months as they did on the "cancer" ward where they treated patients with chemo. The special wing they created at Group Health had plastic taped floor to ceiling; we walked through basins of iodine; I had on every kind of covering possible. I held so many dying hands I lost count. I lost many friends, too.

Yes, the film moved me... again. Seems every so often another film about how it started and how so little was done comes along, to help us not forget. I will never forget and it took me a long time to forgive. When I think of the great artists I knew, I can hardly bear it. So on this Memorial Day, I do think of my brother - a marine who died in Vietnam. But I also think of my best friend in high school, David Glynn... I think of Jimmy Witko, also from high school... I think of Rick Sanford, Rock Hudson, and so many others I knew in LA. I stopped crying years ago. But I will never forget and will make certain my son never forgets, too. In that regard, we both agree. It's better to fight for a cause than to hide from one. Take care, Chris.

[Chris Knipp]

Chris Knipp

You are right, and I thought of that too. Indeed pneumocystis pneumonia was "the biggest killer" as you say. Kaposi's Sarcoma was an early, perhaps the key early, sign of the unusual "gay cancer" but is a bit overused in Murphy's production, doubtless because it is an easily recognized visual clue to the presence of the disease. They should have down-pedaled it a bit. A sidelight is that my dermatologist at the time, Dr. Groundwater, was mentioned in Randy Shilts' AND THE BAND PLAYED ON as one of the first doctors who noted and called attention to the sudden unusual prevalence of KS, at the time an obscure disease.

Ah cinemabon, you always have so many stories to tell. I did not know you were a nurse at this time. Though gay and even living in San Francisco I may have sidestepped the worst. No one I was very close to had it. My former Berkeley landlord M.R., a good friend, told me only later how his lover, who died of AIDS, had been rejected by Oakland hospitals, simply not allowed in. And in the Bay Area. And as you say of the cases in your care, he died very quickly, as the earliest cases did, within a month of clear infection. A doubly horrible way to die, of a terrible, unknown disease, and treated as a pariah. You were closer to AIDS in its early days than I. The difference might be that I was afraid I had it, and the AIDS test was a scary moment, and I in effect followed the advice of Dr. Brookner at which the young men surrounding Larry Kramer scoffed. I became frightened and began to avoid promiscuous sex after AIDS was identified, and stayed monogamous. Luckily, I was in love with someone, someone who did not get infected, which was even luckier, since he messed around more than I, or had done. But it hit some of the best and nicest people, didn't it? And of course still does; but for a while now the ravaging of the US white gay male communities of NYC, San Francisco, and other cities has been much reduced from what it was during the Eighties. This period covered in THE NORMAL HEART with so much passion by Larry Karmer is not just sad and angering, it's devastating and shocking and incomprehensible. On the public history of events and the struggle to get access to meds and a voice in and funding from government, again I can't recommend enough David France's HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE, which focuses on the sturggle, events in NYC related to Kramer's topic, and the founding and actions of ACT-UP.[/QUOTE]

[Chris Knipp]

Armond White's review

Wanted to cite Armond White's review (http://www.out.com/entertainment/armond-white/2014/05/24/normal-heart-historical-future-impact)in the current issue of the gay publication OUT. It's critical of Murphy (and Mark Ruffalo, who he says can't get into the character) but not one of White's slice-and-dice jobs, and informative about the context, political and cinematic. Naturally White gives the issues and the period especially in a New York context full value, while critical of Ryan Murphy's treatment. I'd say I agree with that, but I would add that this is one of those times when a more "popular" redo of a work is simply excusable on many grounds when it means reaching a much larger audience and gaining knowledge of and sympathy for a subject that's important.

White says Kramer inspired and made possible Ducastel-Martineau's exhuberent French film about a man living with HIV, THE ADVENTURES OF FELIX, the protagonist's name apparently a tribute to the tragic Felix in THE NORMAL HEART; but Ducastel-Martineau's Felix lives. Noting Kramer's strident tone, White points to other movies about early AIDS:
Here’s a short list of movies that made the AIDS crisis an important and unignorable part of film history: Parting Glances, Longtime Companion, The Living End, It’s My Party, Philadelphia, Dying Young, Savage Nights, And the Band Played On, Angels in America, The Adventures of Felix, Son Frère, Time to Leave, The Witnesses, and the definitive AIDS-era epic Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train. He gives the late Patrice Chéreau priority.

Basically with citing THE ADVENTURES OF FELIX first, White is stating his theme: "Kramer’s warning is well heeded—and it bears repetition—but the news of gay love and its survival needs preaching, too." He also suggests, perhaps somewhat uselessly, alternative directors for the play: "Kramer’s insight deserves a more expressive approach—if not Ducastel-Martineau’s optimism perhaps a fellow New York crank like Spike Lee, a West Coast rebel like Gregg Araki, or an artist like Patrice Chereau who turned his sensitivities about AIDS into the astonishingly empathetic Son Frère. "

In his critique of Ryan Murphy, Armond White points to the limitations of his background, which we must acknowledge in talking about the HBO film.
It would take a masterful filmmaker to navigate Kramer’s polemic towards great art—which was partly Ducastel-Martineau’s alternative—but TV mogul Ryan Murphy’s sincerest directorial efforts aren’t good enough. Years spent manipulating the zeitgeist in unsubtle shows like Nip/Tuck, American Horror Story, Glee (and lousy films like Running with Scissors and Eat, Pray, Love) have given Murphy trite habits. His agenda has been to always use gay sexuality as a tease and a provocation (as in the opening’s Fire Island nudity and casual sex) without the natural acceptance that makes Ducastel-Martineau’s insouciance meaningful. We’re brought back to sex guilt briefly debated by Ned and Dr. Brookner. I didn't know or rather had forgotten that Murphy directed RUNNING WITH SCISSORS and EAT, PRAY, LOVE, indeed both glib and superficial efforts. But again, I'm glad Murphy got to do a big-audience presentation of THE NORMAL HEART, for all its failings, and in some ways I think it's an improvement on the Public Theater revival I saw, even if it somewhat submerges the exposé element. (White points out that skewering Mayor Kotch and outing him as gay was extremely bold in 1985: 30 years later and for non-New Yorkers, mentions of Koch are a lot less shocking now. By the way, this Koch is pronounced to rhyme with "crotch," not like "coke" as in the name of the brothers who have bought American politics. Mayor Koch-rhymes-with-crotch was in some other ways a good guy, though the NATION calls him "neo-liberal" -- see below.)

For more see White's full review. (http://www.out.com/entertainment/armond-white/2014/05/24/normal-heart-historical-future-impact)

[Chris Knipp]

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[From THE NATION, 2 Feb. 2013]

NYC's Eighties Mayor Ed Koch: the cost of being in the closet.

THE NATION published an article 15 months ago apropos of the former NYC mayor's recent death, Ed Koch and the Cost of the Closet (http://www.thenation.com/blog/172620/ed-koch-and-cost-closet#) by Richard Kim, who discloses that his partner is one of the producers of David France's HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE, which again must highly recommend to anyone interested in this subject: early AIDS, the struggle to get assistance and meds, and New York City. Kim points out that the secretly gay Koch, NYC mayor from 1978, when out SF city councilman Harvey Milk died, through 1989, afraid of seeming too favorable to gays, allocated $24,500, when the much smaller (but let's note: more gay) city of San Francisco provided $4 million for AIDS patient aid and research at the same time, and $10 million in 1987. And much more. Kim also cites Randy Shilts' massive book AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, a key history of this period, written from a San Francisco perspective. Shilts was a SF newspaperman, openly gay since college, who wrote freelance for both the CHRONICLE and ADVOCATE. He did not know he was HIV positive till after he finished the book. He died of AIDS at 42 in 1994, one of the many heroes of the battle. The comment Shilts makes on NYC vs. SF quoted here is: "All the ingredients for a successful battle against the epidemic existed in New York City except for one: leadership." Meaning at the city government level, meaning the mayor's office. In conclusion Kim defines very clearly what he means here by "the cost of being in the closet":


That [Mayor Koch] has blood on his hands seems likely. That he is guilty of the curious combination of paranoia, myopia, self-interest and callousness that so often attaches to closeted public officials seems undeniable. Would the fight against AIDS been helped had Ed Koch come out of the closet? Possibly. But it definitely would have been better had he just been straight.

That's pretty ironic, isn't it?