Studio 180 Blog

Recently, the cast and crew of Studio 180’s production of The Normal Heart took time out from their rehearsals to attend a matinee screening of We Were Here, David Weissman’s powerful documentary chronicling the early days of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco.

The harrowing film speaks to the value of cinema as an avenue for research with works like The Normal Heart, tied inescapably as it is to history. As Larry Kramer states in a letter which will be shared in our house program, “Please know that everything in The Normal Heart happened.” Kramer himself bristles at the term “semi-autobiographical”, often used to describe the play, prefering to think of it as pure biography. And while a knowledge of the time and issues surrounding the play is by no means essential for a full appreciation of the show – an understanding of the world the play inhabits is sure to deepen an audience’s appreciation of The Normal Heart.

With that in mind we thought it might be fun to single out a few documentaries as well as a couple of narrative features that function as a strong primer for, and follow up to, The Normal Heart.

NED: “You don’t know what it’s been like since the sexual revolution hit this country. It’s been crazy, gay or straight.”

Through a remarkably straightforward mix of talking heads and archival footage, Gay Sex in the 70’s provides a strong sense of the world the play emerges from. The disarming candor of the men profiled offers an honest look at the explosion of sexual freedom within the gay community in New York. An explosion rudely interrupted by the onset of AIDS in the early eighties as demonstrated by this clip.

MICKEY: “Not all of us feel that way. And we don’t like to hear the word “promiscuous” used pejoratively.”

The issue of attitudes toward sex in the face of the epidemic are front and centre in Kramer’s play and also in Sex Positive, a moving look at the life and work of activist Richard Berkowitz. There are echoes of Kramer’s protagonist Ned Weeks in Berkowitz, who speaks openly about the dangers of promiscuity in the midst of the crisis and champions the merits of safe sex. For many, both in the world of the play and the world at large, sex is a political statement, an assertion of identity and liberation, and those who publicly cast aspersions upon (and drew attention to) the notion of a promiscuous lifestyle were ostracized – as seen here in the trailer for Sex Positive, which features a cameo by Larry Kramer.

NED: “It’s happened before. It’s all happened before. History is worth shit!”

History is everything in Frontline’s The Age of AIDS. Exhaustive but never exhausting this four hour documentary leaves no stone unturned – effectively documenting the rise of AIDS from epidemic to pandemic and examining the disease’s impact up to the current day.

EMMA: “A promising virus has already been discovered – in France. Why are we being told not to cooperate with the French? Why are you refusing to cooperate with the French? Just so you can steal a Nobel Prize?”

Switching to docudrama, HBO’s And the Band Played On looks at the crisis from the perspective of a few pioneers in the medical profession, striving to isolate the virus that causes AIDS. It plays a little bit like a medical version of Stuff Happens, exposing the political maneuvering that goes on behind closed doors while millions of lives hang in the balance.

NED: “We’re living through war, but where they’re living it’s peacetime, and we’re all in the same country.”

And finally, Longtime Companion moves the drama from the institutional to the personal, exploring the effects of the disease on a group of men confronted with both horrible illness and overt homophobia resulting from growing public paranoia. While the trailer below shows its age, Longtime Companion was one of the very first mainstream narrative features to put a human face on the epidemic and acknowledge gay relationships as something more than sexual.

Obviously the list could go on but these are a select few that we found particularly resonant with the play. Are there any we omitted that you would highly recommend? We’d love to hear what you think.