/

an C^ljronidr THE VOICE OF THE WEST

Randy M. Shilts Notional Correspondent

Septeiober 30, 1991

FROM; RE: . Revised Draft (8/22/91)

On the whole, I'm very pleased with the revisions in the new draft. I think the screenplay flows much better in this version and offers far more context concerning the gay community. I love the Butcher's Bill blackboard. You might want to insert it more regularly, though. I'm particularly like the ending. I don't have any problem with the fact it's basically fictionalized. It really works and helps sum up what the whole movie has been about.

By the way, has anybody asked Susan Sarandon about playing Mary Guignan? She's extremely committed to AIDS causes. I met her when I was on Good Morning America once and she said she loved the book. Also: Willem Defoe did the audio version of the book for Simon & Schuster. He'd be a good Don Francis and, from what I've heard, he's interested in the project. As I'm sure you already know, Tom Hulce, who was nominated for an Oscar for "Araadeus," is eager to play Bill Kraus.

Back to the script: Though I think there are some problems that need to be ironed out with the chronologies, I don't have any sweeping critique to offer this version of the screenplay, like I did with the last.

The only thing I found that conceptually doesn't work for me is that whole subplot with Elio and Elizabeth Sanchez. It felt very tacked on and says absolutely nothing about what this movie is about — that is the failure of institutions to respond to AIDS. I think there might be an attraction to do affirmative action with this script and make it about evervone who gets AIDS. I can understand that, but I think we've got so many people walking on and off the stage that to add people gratuitously might only confuse the viewer.

There are a few things I'll raise below that are important. Most of the points I bring up below are minor, some even trivial.

~~ P* 1- I like the idea of having a Prologue. There's certainly wisdom in telling people what you're going to tell them. I felt ambivalent about using Ryan White, however, since that's already lapsing into the distant memory. There is one line that

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ABSOLUTELY must go if you decide to keep the prologue...that's the line about White being "innocent of everything." There is probably no more offensive concept in the discussion of AIDS than that of the "innocent" victim. Separating "innocent" victims from others denotes there are people who we should feel sorry for, as opposed to those we don't need to, and, in a backhanded way, seems to separate those who don't deserve AIDS from those who do. Innocent victim implies there's guilty victims; gay men are not "guilty" of anything, except being in the wrong place at the wrong time. TAKE IT OUT.

— p. 5: I believe the Thelma Houston song is "Don't Leave Me This Way." I love the scene, by the way.

— p. 14: Wrong date. You've got "November 1981" on the script. That's probably a typo and you mean "November 1980," but that's not right either. Gottlieb saw his first patients in November 1980, but he didn't write up that article until, say, March 1980. That's the accurate date there.

— p. 15: Wrong date. Make this scene "May 1981," not June.

— p. 16: It wasn't Jim Curran who ordered the article buried. He's not that important to make these kinds of decisions, especially way back then. It was much higher mucky-mucks. This can be easily fixed. He should say, "They'll probably bury this some place on Page Two." It takes the onus off him (which is accurate) but still makes the same point.

— p. 22: MAJOR FACTUAL ERROR. Scientists absolutely knew why gay men got hepatitis B. It wasn't just "a few speculations," like you have Don say. Don should say, "Anal intercourse. This is a blood-born virus, which means men can spread it in their semen. Get a fissure in the rectum and, bang, you got that semen right in the blood." Jim can respond by saying, "There's nothing new about men having anal intercourse. What's new. Did you notice any changes lately that might be relevant?" and continue with the page as it's written.

This is important to get it right — because this also is how AIDS gets spread. It sets us up for AIDS transmission. The critics are going to love it if you talk about anal intercourse frankly. "Anal intercourse" were the two words the media was so skittish about using early on, so now anybody who utters those words gets extra points for candor. (Let's not be squeamish.)

— p. 27: We've missed the chance at some badly-needed humor here when Mary buys all those poppers. You should have two guys behind the counter who might comment on her plans for a party or something. At least they could give each other a knowing look. 3

— p. 29: There were no bathhouses in the Castro District. They were in the warehouse district of .

— p. 30: Let's not call it an "oral-anal lobby," since oral-anal contact is really another issue altogether. Let's call it the "anal intercourse lobby."

— p. 35: Jim should say back to Don's comments about "loony- toons" that, "Reagan promised to cut waste in government and we're first on the block."

— p. 40: I love that parade.

— p. 50: I like the Christopher Columbus-Coney Island line, but do you know that he actually said it? It didn't come from my book. At the end of the Gallo scene, put in the Butcher's Bill blackboard.

— p. 50: This is a fictionalization that doesn't work, though it can be fixed. I don't think it works merging Bill's birthday with Conant talking about AIDS and arguing with Pat Norman. First of all. Bill hated and loathed Pat Norman (even before AIDS), so she wouldn't be at a birthday party and it just doesn't work to see Conant turn a birthday party into a lecture on AIDS. Instead, it should be at some political meeting, in some small conference room. Kico can still come in at the end and have that talk with Bill.

— p. 54: Willy should say the "first six cases in France," so it doesn't confused people with the ones the CDC wrote up.

— p. 56: ACCURACY ALERT. At this point in the epidemic, I don't think anyone realized that there were heterosexual cases in Africa. That awareness didn't come until 1984 or so. Guignan should say, "Have you seen the Haitian cases? It's pandemic among them already and completely heterosexual." Use the Haitians here. It raises the same point about semen depositors.

I also don't think that Mary ever proposed getting people to jack off...or that anyone stopped her from doing that. You could fix it by just taking out the last two speeches of Jim's on p. 56 ...and Mary's line in between them... and pick it up with Harold's observation at the top of p. 57.

— p. 59: This scene with the mother could be made stronger, since its hard to figure out in its current form. Bill wasn't getting disability insurance, he was getting Social Security. So Kraus should say, "I finally got him that Social Security allowance for being sick.." Woman should laugh sadly back, "Great. The bureaucracy finally kicked him to give him benefits he deserved two years 4 ago. Great. He'd be glad to hear it, except he died last week." Then she can slam the door shut.

— p. 60: Supervisor Tennison. I don't believe any member of the board of supervisors in the last 15 years would ever have said anything about feeding soup "to a handful of faggots who fucked themselves to death." I'm not up in arms over this and can see the scene's dramatic purpose, but you should know.

— p. 63: There is an absolutely weird line we have Bill Kraus saying that should go...or at least be rewritten. It's the comment to Dennis, "When I look back on how I spent the seventies, I don't care if I never have sex any more."

I like the speech that leads up to it (pp. 62-3), but believe me. Bill Kraus never so much as even had a thought about never having sex any more. And besides, is this the message we're giving out? Nobody should have sex any more? It's just weird. I don't understand why it's there.

I think the speech leading up to that is trying to get at how the free sex gradually shifted from being liberated to being dehumanized. And Bill regrets that. If that's the point we're trying to make...which is a good point...then that's what we should say, not that Bill never wanted to have sex again.

To fix it, after Dennis asks, "What're you saying?" Bill should say, "It just all got out of hand. For me...for everybody. Of course, nobody knew it was going to end like this."

Then the scene can continue to play out .... Dennis can ask, "Are you guilty?" And Bill can give his answer. I think that provides a much more clear message.

— p. 65: I don't understand Blaine's lines here. He's saying "fuck it, fuck everybody," but then he's helping Bill Darrow out. Let's let Blaine be a nice guy in this, especially since we've just seen Greg who's being an asshole.

— p. 68: Date this April, 1982.

— p. 74: This meeting happened a year later in 1983, not in 1982, which is the year we're in in the script at this point.

— p. 80: The problem with aspirin was absolutely not an army of Little Old Lady lobbyists. The corporations have their own well- -paid lobbyists. They don't need LOL's. Let's be accurate here.

Don should say, "They'll unleash an army of corporate lobbyists who will accuse us of trying to undermine free enterprise and demand that the government get off the backs of 5 businessmen. And they don't give a damn how many babies die, as long as their stock goes up."

— p. 80: It's not UC Medical Center - Parnassus Hills, OA. Mount Parnassus is simply a hill in San Francisco. Let's call this, "University of California Medical Center/ San Francisco."

— p. 82: The correct date here in JUNE, 1982.

— p. 87: Be wary of any words you put in Max Essex's mouth concerning Bob Gallo. Essex is very, very tight with Gallo; his laboratory is funded with money from the National Cancer Institute. I don't know where the "Nobel Prize in your pocket" line came from, but you better have it very well backed up before you put it on the air.

— p. 91: Amman should be talking about AIDS, not GRID.

— p. 93-94: AIDS was actually named in August 1982, not at this meeting in January 1983. If you want to have this scene (arghhh), then you should put it back with the discovery of the first hemophiliac cases. I frankly think it's a completely unnecessary exchange. I don't care when they named AIDS and I don't think anyone else does either.

— p. 94: Bove's first speech. He needs to say nothing about transfusion AIDS exists in peer-reviewed literature. By then, there were plenty of articles about AIDS in general in peer- reviewed med journals.

— p. 95: Butcher's Bill. There weren't 1,145 infected...there were 1,145 CASES. By then, there were probably hundreds of thousands infected. There's a difference.

— p. 95: I like the idea of using a parade motif, even though I'm not sure what this parade is going to look like. But if it's a gay parade, please do NOT put it into the movie right at the funeral of a dead baby.

— p. 102: ACCURACY ALERT. You've got Conant's statistics wrong here. It wasn't one in 100 men in the Bay Area (which includes San Jose, Oakland, Santa Rosa and all kinds of places), it was one in every 100 men in the Castro. Also the arithmetic about the odds of getting AIDS is wrong, but that's a mistake that was in the book, so it's my fault.

Conant should be saying, "One out of every 100 men in this city's gay neighborhoods already has AIDS. That means if you don't have it yet, all you need is 10 sexual contacts in a year to have a one in ten chance of going to bed with somebody who does have it. " 6

— p. 106: Dan Rather quote. He should say since AIDS first appeared in 1981. (If we're using a film clip here, we can go with it as is, since it reflects the inaccuracy of the newscast. AIDS was identified in 1981, though by the time Rather said this, some doctors realized they had seen cases as early as 1979. Later, they realized they'd seen them earlier than that.)

— p. 106: Is this an actual Falwell film clip? If not, we should tailor the quote more, since Falwell was far less apt to be criticizing Reagan in this era than was criticizing gays.

— p. 107-8: This scene is fictionalized but I don't think anyone will have a problem with it. I certainly don't. It communicates very valuable information.

— p. 117: Who is Elio Sanchez? What is he doing in this screenplay? Let's bid him a fond farewell.

— p. 121: ACCURACY ALERT. Do you know as a fact that Bob Gallo dictated a memo here? I never heard of it. In fact, he did stop cooperating with the CDC at this point, but we shouldn't have him putting it in writing unless we know for sure he did. (I'd be surprised if he were foolish enough to actually write it down.)

— p. 128: All this talk about the leukemia virus is not from And The Band Played On, but from John Crewdson of the Chicago Tribune. To be honest, Crewdson is the journalistic equivalent of Bob Gallo, a very nasty and vindictive individual. I'm sure he'll have lots to say if we openly crib from him. For all we know, he may be trying to sell his own movie rights to his work.

Besides, I don't think such detailed information is necessary here. I don't think the average viewer is going to understand it anyway.

— p. 131: ACCURACY ALERT: Some major chronology problems here. The French never talked about filing a lawsuit against Gallo until after he got the patent in April 1984. They were not threatening a lawsuit. Don will know this chronology better than I.

I'm pretty sure that for all the specious claims Gallo did make, he never made any about the French stealing the virus from him. These could be very easily fixed with some minor word changes.

— p. 140: I didn't know this about Gallo manufacturing his blood test. Again, I want to warn you about basing material in this movie from Crewdson's work in the Chicago Tribune. The part about him not only stealing the virus but stealing the photograph of the virus is from my book, however, and valuable to include. 7

Again, I love that ending.

Let me know if I can be of any further assistance. I appreciate your efforts to include me in this creative process. Please let me know once we have a new director. June 14, 1987

TO: MICHAEL DENNENY FROM: RANDY SHILIS RE: POSSIBLE BATHHOUSE CUTS

Rather than cut on the neat proofread manuscript, I thouc^ht I'd list possible cuts in Manuscript about bathhouses, as we discussed. Here are some suggestions:

— p. 1059; cut from 3rd sentence 1st graph — "Earlier, Conant ... — to end o-f page. Also cut. -first sentence (just. Tour words) from top of page 1060.

— p. 1067; Cut from 2nd graph — "On April 3, Jim Curran ... — to end of section on page 1068. Resume with CDC section.

— p. 1073: Cut from 2nd graph — "Hearing that he was going... -

~ to end of section on piage 1074. Resume with "On the morning...'

— p. 1074: Cut. last piaragraph — "The regulations would be ... -

-- to second graph on p. 1075. Resume w/ "Silverman's move..."

— p. 1075: Cut fourth sentence in second graph. "She had only recently..." It's a gratuitously ant i ~Si 1 verman sentence.

— p. 1088: Cut from second sentence in third graph — "The discov£jry removed all ... — to the second graph on p. 1091. Resume w/ "The gay press, s'till angry ..."

— p. 1091: Cut from fourth graph — "1 want you to know ... — to 2nd graph on p. 1092 — "The prevention program wa not the only..." Keep that, sentence and cut the rest of the page, and all of page 1093 until the last graph. Fiesumie w/ "A stall enveloped..."

— p. 1095: Cut 2nd and 3rd graphs — starting w/"ln New York City, the ... — and resume with second graph of p. 1096; "In Los

Angeles, public h€?alth ..

— p. 1174: Are those top) three graphs too preachy? (1 don't think so, but what, do you think?)

— p. 1189 S< 1190 and tofj of 1191 could all be cut. Ety now we've well established the problems w/NYC. This gets redundant.

— p. 1201: Perhapis cut 2nd grapjh. — pi. 1232! Cut from 2nd graph --- "Within daxys of Ryan's death...

— to end of section on p. 1233.

— p. 1237 - 1239 ... The section on Jim Foster. Does it add anything in your opinion?

I think most of these are very good cuts, exceapjt. where otherwise noted. If I alre^ady have this section of the MS by the time you get this, we can talk these over on the phone.