Date: Mon, 17 Jan 1994 12:29:49 -0400 Subject: Larry Kramer's Review of Philadelphia From: anon@queernet.org (Anonymous Sender) Lying About the Gay '90s An AIDs Activist Says 'Philadelphia' Is Worse Than No Film at All. The Washington Post, January 09, 1994, FINAL Edition By: Larry Kramer, Special to The Washington Post Section: SUNDAY SHOW, p. g01 Story Type: Review; Features Line Count: 221 Word Count: 2432 Philadelphia" is a heartbreakingly mediocre movie: dishonest, and often legally, medically and politically inaccurate. It saddens me to say that I'd rather people simply not see it at all. For 12 years, millions of people-gays, people with AIDS, those with HIV infection, their families and friends-have been desperately waiting for a "major" movie to deal with this plague in a mature fashion. Other tragedies-the Holocaust, the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam-have had their films. Why not AIDS? Oh, we knew why not: because AIDS is destroying certain communities others would just as soon see die. There's no audience for this kind of subject, we've been told over and over. So for the 12 years of this plague, Hollywood has turned its back. But finally a company called TriStar, which is a division of Columbia Pictures, which is a division of Sony Entertainment, which is a division of Japan, where there are very few AIDS cases, has given us "Philadelphia," which opens in Washington on Friday. And TriStar-along with, it seems, everyone else in Hollywood-has let us all know that if "Philadelphia" isn't a success at the box office, there just might not be any other films about AIDS. In other words, like Clinton's "Don't ask, don't tell" gays-in-the-military policy, we should go to this movie but not tell anyone how awful it is. We're supposed to be grateful it's been made; we're supposed to bamboozle everyone into seeing it because it's good for them. But "Philadelphia" doesn't have anything to do with the AIDS I know, or the gay world I know. It doesn't bear any truthful resemblance to the life, world and universe I live in, and every person I know lives in-or that the film's director, Jonathan Demme, and its screenwriter, Ron Nyswaner, live in either. To believe that seeing it would make any viewer-particularly those I would like to have experienced something meaningful watching this movie-change his or her point of view is like thinking Jesse Helms or George Bush or Ronald Reagan would turn into a human being after watching an episode of "Another World." "Philadelphia" is put together like a paint-by-numbers kit. Take one noble gay white male hero (Tom Hanks). Put him together with one black shyster lawyer who hates gays (Denzel Washington). Pepper their conflict with the (most improbable) notion that the shyster is the only lawyer in the entire city of Philadelphia who will defend the white man, who's been fired from his big-deal law firm because he has AIDS. Make the head honchos in the white law firm (senior partner: Jason Robards) so monstrous and homophobic you wonder how they've stayed in business so long. Have a despicable white woman (Mary Steenburgen) and another black lawyer defend the law firm at the trial. By trial's end make certain the black shyster has experienced a change of heart so he can deliver a heart-rending sermon on discrimination to the jury and the white woman can mutter, "I hate this case." And our hero, who's just collapsed on the floor, can win $30 million on his deathbed. The very premise of the plot is unlikely. The film appears to be set in the present, but since the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, it's now so patently illegal to fire a person with AIDS that the notion of a first-class Main Line law firm's firing this guy today is cockeyed. The Act explicitly makes such a dismissal against the law. Today, it's cheaper to pay the guy his salary and tell him not to come into the office. Who was the legal adviser on this movie? There's another credibility problem: Denzel Washington never really lets us believe he's as slimy as the script is telling us he is. And for a shyster, he sure looks good, dressed as he is in Armani or Cerutti or one of those designers who end in a vowel. His character does so many flip-flops I wondered if the filmmakers shot two versions, just in case, and intercut them. In one scene he's railing against faggots and in the next he's defending them and then he's slugging a gay black athlete who tries to pick him up and then he's waffling about the case to his wife ... Very schizy. If I were a bigot, I'd walk away from this movie unchanged. The writer may have meant Jason Robards and Mary Steenburgen and Denzel Washington to be scumbags, but at least their parts are written: They have things to do and say; there is a fabric and a texture to their lives, their words, their actions and reactions. You know them and understand them. They have dialogue to speak. They're more animated than any of the gay characters: Tom Hanks and his lover (and even his mother) are in a silent film. All their dialogue put together can't add up to 10 pages. Hanks's lover can't speak more than three words; Joanne Woodward as Mommy could be playing a mute. The Hanks character, Andrew Beckett, is an utter cipher. I couldn't tell you anything about him-his opinions, his beliefs, his likes and dislikes, his feelings. I couldn't even tell you he's gay. I did not for one second believe he was gay. Tom Hanks does not act in this movie. His makeup does all his acting. From first scene to last, I haven't seen so many changes rung on various shades of Max Factor since James Cagney in "Man of a Thousand Faces." The notion that Hanks's performance here makes him a serious contender for an Oscar is just part of Hollywood's self-congratulatory hypocrisy, like wearing red ribbons. Hanks wears a wedding ring, and in fact he might as well be married to a woman for all you see of his lover, their life together as a couple, their interactions, their affection. Some actor I didn't recognize from scene to scene but who had dark hair and spoke with a Hispanic accent hovers around Tom now and then, and Tom winks at him now and then in the courtroom, but for all the script tells you, either they could be trying to pick each other up or the guy is a volunteer from some Philadelphia AIDS organization who helps Tom get around. No, I take that back. The dark-haired guy couldn't work for an AIDS organization. He doesn't know anything about AIDS. He talks about a colonoscopy as if it were brain surgery. Who was the medical adviser on this movie? No one else does any acting either. They grimace. They look sad. They look embarrassed. They look the other way. And almost every grimace, smile and grunt is underlined with throbs and crescendos. You don't have to supply any feelings. The music does it for you. I haven't heard a musical score like this since Bette Davis went blind in "Dark Victory." Two "big" scenes are meant to convey that we're in the company of "different" people. The first shows Tom listening to Maria Callas sing an obscure aria about the French Revolution from "Andrea Chenier" that even I never heard of. Of all the music I'd believe Tom's character might listen to, Maria's aria about the French Revolution is not one of them. The Pet Shop Boys, maybe. To see this character, who's been totally undeveloped by the screenwriter, and who has as much personality as a piece of wood, suddenly-in front of Denzel-put Maria on and, in swooping close-ups a` la Fellini, swirl and swoon around a dim room (his apartment? loft? studio? house?; as I say, it's dim) like some loony, his eyes rolling in ecstasy-this is not acting, it's embarrassing. Even I'd be afraid of someone who-out of the blue-behaved like this. The other scene is a gay party-which I guess is obligatory in a movie about gay people-at which Quentin Crisp can be briefly glimpsed. What Quentin Crisp, perhaps one of the most outrageous homosexuals in the world, is doing at this party and with these people is a question I'll bet even he can't answer. There are the requisite guys in drag (that wonderful makeup person again) and a brief shot of one of our greatest AIDS activist heroes, Michael Callen (who died the day I saw this movie) performing, for some reason, "Mr. Sandman" (they must have known that long boring trial scene lay just ahead). Tom and his ... boyfriend? buddy? alter ego? doppelganger? warden? (oh. I remember: Tom refers to him somewhere as "my companion") are dressed like naval officers and Tom dances with "my companion" as if it were his mother. (Tom leads. Tell that to your gay Hispanic friends.) Which brings me to his mother. And his family. His siblings. And their mates. And their children. And their cousins and their aunts. No family like this exists in the entire world. Every single one of them is supportive, loving, proud of Tom, just thrilled he's gay, accepting of "my companion," rooting for Tom every second at the trial, attending Tom constantly in the hospital (which one did the art director have in mind that fits 30 family members in semiprivate?), and not one of them has a spot or wrinkle or blemish on either face or body or clothes. This family is clean. (This movie is clean. Even the table in the jury room looks like a Pledge commercial.) The movie's one most awful line and moment comes after Tom tells these assembled relations, all gathered 'round a hearth in a house out of Colonial Home, that he's going to sue his firm, and has warned them awful things might come out about his private life (he went once, horror To make a movie in which two "lovers" never kiss, or touch each other, or show any affection, or even talk to each other, is a lie. And Middle America knows it. of horrors, to the baths and a gay porn movie theater), and surprise, surprise, they are all with him one hundred percent. "Gosh, I love you guys," Tom gushes. As Dorothy Parker once wrote, "Constant Reader thwowed up." Who's going to see a movie like this? Why would anyone want to? Why don't the nervous Nellies who made this movie understand that it's lies and distortions like these that make the "Middle America" they pander to, and are so terrified of offending, stay away in droves? Who wants to be lied to? A 6-year-old-after going to the malls, watching a million television movies and episodes that handle this subject matter better, and living intimately with all those series on the Fox network-knows gay people don't live and look and act like this. And that they are much, much more interesting. I'm tired of hearing the old chestnut that the reason Hollywood doesn't finance movies about gays and AIDS is that they won't make money. ("Philadelphia" will not make money.) I scream back: If you make a good and honest movie, people will come to it, and there's never been a good and honest movie financed by a major studio with gay or lesbian leading characters, in which we're dealt with dramatically just as heterosexuals are-i.e., openly and without condescension. To make a movie in which two "lovers" never kiss, or touch each other, or show any affection, or even talk to each other, is a lie. And Middle America knows it. Middle America knows it's being lied to and cheated, if for no other reason than if there's all this AIDS around, the fellows must have done something. I fervently believe that the first decent movie in which a male star like Tom Hanks makes love, in a bed, naked, with another male star, like Tom Cruise-who is in the same bed, and in the same shot, and also naked, and they kiss, and they embrace, and they talk to each other in an adult fashion, and they are photographed doing the same things that straight lovers are photographed doing in countless movies, TV shows and commercials-will make a fortune. Which brings me to this movie's biggest lie. There is not one HIV-positive person in the entire world who does not believe that he or she is the victim of-if not outright intentional genocide (which is what I believe)-then at least government inaction and oversight of huge proportions. Not one. There is not one of us who is not forced to face the fact every second of every day that Ronald Reagan and George Bush and now Bill Clinton have done I waited 12 years for this? This movie does not deserve, on any grounds, to be supported; it deserves to lose its shirt. little of consequence to save our lives. It is criminal that there is not one reference in this entire movie to this reality. And what makes it even more criminal is that it's undoubtedly intentional. What unreal world do the manufacturers of this movie live in? How can it be possible that a gay screenwriter wrote this cornucopia of lies? Can any gay writer be as much of an Uncle Tom as Nyswaner herein reveals himself to be? I waited 12 years for this? This movie does not deserve, on any grounds, to be supported; it deserves to lose its shirt. I don't want Middle America to see it. Anyone who wants to see what AIDS is really like, and what gay life is really like, and how audiences are reacting to it, should see the seven hours of theater known as "Angels in America," which is on Broadway, is selling out every performance, and doesn't give a damn what Middle America thinks, which is why at each of the three performances I've attended I was surrounded by people-straight people!-from Middle America. As I write these thoughts I realize just how angry this film has made me. To watch Demme and Nyswaner on a recent "Nightline" trying to maintain that, well, gee, this isn't really a movie about AIDS (and yeah, we wanted to make a movie Middle America would see) is enough to make anyone lose faith in the artist as the teller of truth. Why did they make it, then? I bring up the painful reminder that Demme also directed "The Silence of the Lambs," which many gays consider one of the most virulently and insidiously homophobic films ever made. Would that he'd worried about us as much then as he now worries about Middle America. Is "Philadelphia" some sort of attempt to offer an apology? After these two films, I wish he'd just go away and leave us alone. He's about as good for our cause as Ronald Reagan, George Bush and now, Bill Clinton. In the end, though, my main rage isn't against Demme and Nyswaner. They're only small potatoes who've missed a boat that could have carried some valuable cargo. My unabated and unabating fury rages against the third silent, useless president in a row who refuses to take a leadership position in ending this plague. Thus allowing everyone else's complicities in a monstrous coverup that not only allows one crappy major-studio AIDS movie to be made in 12 years by a bunch of lunkheads for whom it's more important, as TriStar puts it, to "play in the malls" than to tell the truth-but by the same token allows an entire world to look the other way. Larry Kramer, a former Columbia Pictures film executive, has written "Reports From the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS Activist" (St. Martin's Press) and two plays about AIDS, "The Normal Heart" and "The Destiny of Me," both of which have been acquired by Barbra Streisand and Columbia Pictures. He is the co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis and founder of ACT UP. He grew up in Washington, where he attended Woodrow Wilson High School.