"The Normal Heart"

[Okliehomo]

I watched it when it first aired and then twice since. Was very moved by it. Thought Mark Ruffalo really nailed Kramer's mannerisms in a very powerful performance. Matt Bomer was exceptional as well. His acting and his ass. His ass in a faded pair of button up 501s (my favorite) was something to see and even better when he bared it in the bedroom scene. I really bought their love story. Jonathan Groff looked amazing for the 5 minutes he was in it and I had no idea that Taylor Kitsch was so beautiful. Hated his character, but he was very believable as the blonde beauty of the group. I had seen him in "Savages" but I much preferred Aaron Taylor Johnson, though both were memorably naked in the first 10 minutes. Like the first 5 minutes of "Rush" with Chris Hemsworth walking bare assed out of the shower and flopping face down on the bed (my other favorite).

 

But I digress...

 

Very insightful and touching, infuriating and heartbreaking. I identified a lot when the closetedness of the times. Afraid that the mailman would see the word Gay on the return address. Seems silly now, but at the time, well. It was a different world especially here in Oklahoma.

 

AIDS has been with us so long (the guest at the party that everybody hates and that won't leave ), it's hard to remember a time before it, when you didn't need a condom, when it wasn't known that it was sexually transmitted, when we thought maybe it was from too much poppers.

 

Okie

[cany10011]

I really enjoyed the brief depiction of bliss and freedom found on Fire Island in the early 1980s. It really captured in my mind the denial and ignorance leading up to the AIDS crisis. I think the acting was extremely well done... i actually almost cried in the hospital scene. Quite moving.

 

 

 

I watched it when it first aired and then twice since. Was very moved by it. Thought Mark Ruffalo really nailed Kramer's mannerisms in a very powerful performance. Matt Bomer was exceptional as well. His acting and his ass. His ass in a faded pair of button up 501s (my favorite) was something to see and even better when he bared it in the bedroom scene. I really bought their love story. Jonathan Groff looked amazing for the 5 minutes he was in it and I had no idea that Taylor Kitsch was so beautiful. Hated his character, but he was very believable as the blonde beauty of the group. I had seen him in "Savages" but I much preferred Aaron Taylor Johnson, though both were memorably naked in the first 10 minutes. Like the first 5 minutes of "Rush" with Chris Hemsworth walking bare assed out of the shower and flopping face down on the bed (my other favorite).

 

But I digress...

 

Very insightful and touching, infuriating and heartbreaking. I identified a lot when the closetedness of the times. Afraid that the mailman would see the word Gay on the return address. Seems silly now, but at the time, well. It was a different world especially here in Oklahoma.

 

AIDS has been with us so long (the guest at the party that everybody hates and that won't leave ), it's hard to remember a time before it, when you didn't need a condom, when it wasn't known that it was sexually transmitted, when we thought maybe it was from too much poppers.

 

Okie

[adriano46]

I saw it when it first played on TV - was deeply moved and saddened too -- like cany10011, it reminded me of a carefree, blissful and sadly now looking back careless period in NYC and Fire Island (and who of this age group could forget too the "baths") where no one wanted to really face what was causing AIDS. I found both Mark Ruffalo and Matt Bomer especially riveting. BTW -- I was as turned on by Mark Ruffalo's ass as much as by Matt Bomer's.... go figure.

[jimboivyo]

Normal Heart should be required viewing for young gay men today

 

perhaps if they saw what bare backing can transmit and the effects of HIV, they might think twice before doing silly things. no matter what anyone says or what drug companies push, AIDS is not yet a manageable disease. it still kills.

 

back in the early 80s, I had enough friends die to know that I didn't want to be another statistic. it was truly horrific

[rollingrock]

I was a wreck for days after. The scene where no one will take the body of the boy who's just died and his mother has to put him in a garbage bag left me shaken. I'm 44 so & moved to NY at 20 in 1990 so I arrived in NY in the later days of a very dark time. I remember everyone just a few years older than me looking like they'd been through a war, and they had. I'm glad those days are being illuminated again by films like The Normal Heart, How to Survive a Plague & United in Anger. It's important that the younger generation knows what really happened.

[maninsoma]

I, too, was very moved by The Normal Heart -- both very sad and very turned on by Matt Bomer earlier in the film. He looked so good in that bedroom scene.

[rocky]

It's weird but after I saw this I quickly emailed two escort friends of mine, not for any reason of concern, but these are two I am close to and just this hit me so hard since I was at that age but not out (Im' 60 now). Seeing again what happened and how angry it made me was good I saw the show and I hope many of us see the show. I didn't really have a male sex experience until I was older and after the 80's AID's scare; but it was still around. I was frightened in many ways. This was a very good movie I hope many of our "family" will see regardless of how dumb some things may be.

[Okliehomo]

Just happened to catch the end of it again last night. Still killed me.

 

How all his "friends" turned on him and ousted him because he was the only one brave/ballsy enough to stand up and vent his outrage had to feel like such a huge betrayal. When his lover is dying and they are having a mock wedding and his lover says, "I should be wearing white" and Ned says back, "Oh, honey, you are" because he is in a hospital gown. Then his lover tells him, as he is dying, "Find another way to fight." And we know that he did. Wish the movie told more about his involvement with Act Up and how it really did take his kind of in your face civil disobedience to get their attention.

 

But in truth, hindsight is 20 /20. I remember being embarrassed listening to Larry Kramer (and I hated "Faggot" ) accuse the government and thinking, surely they want to help us. When I read the play, I remember thinking that can't be true, about a virus that decimated the immune system being developed in a lab by our government and tested on gay men. Called operation Firm Hand?

 

Do you all think that is true?

 

Remember watching "Designing Women". Yep, it was the 80s.... I was partnered and happy as clam with a house and pups. The very picture of domesticity. The show did an episode about AIDs discrimination. This young gay guy moves back to Atlanta to live with his parents because he is sick and dying of AIDs. One of their snooty clients is outraged about it and she says something like, "Well, one thing about AIDs..... at least, it's killing all the right people..." That really hit home with me. Wow, they do hate us.

 

First time I ever heard of Act Up, they showed a clip on tv, them blocking a bridge or a municipal building, and all these gay men were locked arm in arm, facing down the police with their shields and billy clubs and the guys were chanting, "Your gloves don't match your shoes...... you'll see it on the news..." Brave as crap and yet with that clever as Hell gay edge.

 

And of course, Aiden Quinn in "An Early Frost'... and "Longtime Companion"... the latter of which despite the subject matter has some of my absolute favorite lines. "oh, honey.... it needs a hat." And the long forgotten, "As Is" with sexy nerd, Robert Carradine.

 

Remember this one? "What's the hardest thing about telling your parents you have AIDs?"...... "Convincing them your Haitian."

 

What another world (Somerset? Bay City?) that was.

 

Okie

[+ FreshFluff]

I'd like to hear the Gay Men's Health Crisis founding story from a perspective other than Larry Kramer's. It just seems like the other members are depicted as partying airheads or ineffectual cowards. I think it was pretty brave of a Popham, a Citibank exec, to become president of an organization with gay in the name in 1992 let alone 1982.

 

Thay said, I'd really like to see the Normal Heart.

[tyro]

The Normal Heart arrived at my house earlier this week and I watched it tonight.

It's been awhile since a work of art made me cry like that.

Love you guys.

T

[TruHart1]

The Normal Heart arrived at my house earlier this week and I watched it tonight.

It's been awhile since a work of art made me cry like that.

Love you guys.

T

 

Well, you and I are in agreement about the emotions engendered by this film, beautiful T!

 

TruHart1

[+ Charlie]

I'd like to hear the Gay Men's Health Crisis founding story from a perspective other than Larry Kramer's. It just seems like the other members are depicted as partying airheads or ineffectual cowards. I think it was pretty brave of a Popham, a Citibank exec, to become president of an organization with gay in the name in 1992 let alone 1982.

 

Thay said, I'd really like to see the Normal Heart.

The other founders of GMHC, or anyone else's perspective on the period, always do get lost in Larry Kramer's presentations. Of course, the survivors always get to write history, and Kramer is a powerful writer. Like Okliehomo, I hated Kramer's "Faggots" for its self-righteousness, no matter how prescient it seemed after the emergence of AIDS. Nevertheless, I was running an AIDS phone hotline when I went to see the original stage version of "The Normal Heart," and I had to admit that he nailed the contemporary situation perfectly. I haven't seen the current version, and I wonder how it may have been revised (longtime survivors get to re-write their original histories, too), and I wonder how I would react to it now.

[+ FreshFluff]

The other founders of GMHC, or anyone else's perspective on the period, always do get lost in Larry Kramer's presentations. Of course, the survivors always get to write history, and Kramer is a powerful writer. Like Okliehomo, I hated Kramer's "Faggots" for its self-righteousness, no matter how prescient it seemed after the emergence of AIDS. Nevertheless, I was running an AIDS phone hotline when I went to see the original stage version of "The Normal Heart," and I had to admit that he nailed the contemporary situation perfectly. I haven't seen the current version, and I wonder how it may have been revised (longtime survivors get to re-write their original histories, too), and I wonder how I would react to it now.

 

I agree on both counts, and I read the same thing about how well TNR represented the situation the contemporary situation.

 

Two of the other GMHC founders, Lawrence Mass and Edmund White, are still living according to Wiki. Both appear to have published memoirs of some kind, and apparently Mass and Kramer in particular feuded for a long time. Maybe, as you imply, Larry is just a better writer.

 

Have you seen the HBO version of the Normal Heart? It's available on Amazon.

[+ purplekow]

I was a medical student at St Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village in 1978 and 1979 and saw many patients, mostly young gay men, come into the hospital with immunosuppression conditions, Pneumocystis pneumonia, Kaposi's sarcoma, unusual intestinal parasites and enlarged lymph nodes of all types. The patients came to the ER or the clinic worrying whether that had "it". There wasn't a name or a label that really fit but everyone knew about "it" and everyone was afraid that they may get "it". Some labels were placed on it, kind of like Chinese fashion purse forgeries, but they never seemed quite right. At the time, "Gay Bowel Syndrome" was catch all for the diarrheal illness these patients faced. But clearly it was much more than that. I watched these patients waste away and die, helpless to do more than try antibiotics, supportive palliative care and and an open ear.

I left NYC in 1979 and returned in 1982 to Westchester. By that time we had a name, AIDS and soon an organism HIV. People everywhere were still afraid and many felt that it was "killing the right people". At the hospital where I worked as the director of the medical clinics, I tried to start a HIV clinic and the nurses and other staff told administration that they would not work in the clinic. The Chief of Medicine refused to allow the clinic to be established.

Two other doctors and I set up a clinic out of my small office and used an nearby empty hospital roomin the old part of the hospital as an exam room. Twice a week young beautiful men would come in ravaged with they symptoms of HIV and for two years we bore witness to the suffering and death. Then, in 1984 the son one of the respected physicians in the community developed HIV related to his treatment for hemophilia. The doctor's second son soon developed it as well. An 80 something year old woman was admitted with severe pneumonia and died of HIV likely related to a transfusion for an ulcer years before screening was possible and a 2 year old daughter of a drug addict also succumbed. That is when the hospital administration agreed to open an HIV clinic. Once it was no longer "killing the right people", action was taken.

I try not to think too much about that time. It is too sad and too maddening. Advances have been made but prevention is still the best hope.

[+ Charlie]

I also lived in NYC in those years, and remember all the friends and acquaintances who kept getting odd infections, but at the beginning we assumed it was just a normal price of being sexually active; after all, I hardly knew anyone who hadn't had some kind of STD--crabs, clap, herpes, etc.--in the 1960s and early 70s. Then one of my old acquaintances, a doctor who was part of the A-list Fire Island Pines crowd, began to get more and more of them. No one he consulted seemed to know what to do, and he ended up self-medicating for a year before he died of an undiagnosable infection in 1980. After my best friend's new boyfriend died of something similar in 1982, we hardly seemed to talk about anything else at any social get-together. By the time AIDS had a name, I knew at least a dozen people who were dead or seriously ill.

[tyro]

Crying again.

T

PS It's a good crying. I was very young when you guys were seeing this disease first-hand for the first time. I had no clue that people could be that cruel to people who were sick. I guess I do know now.

I also lived in NYC in those years, and remember all the friends and acquaintances who kept getting odd infections, but at the beginning we assumed it was just a normal price of being sexually active; after all, I hardly knew anyone who hadn't had some kind of STD--crabs, clap, herpes, etc.--in the 1960s and early 70s. Then one of my old acquaintances, a doctor who was part of the A-list Fire Island Pines crowd, began to get more and more of them. No one he consulted seemed to know what to do, and he ended up self-medicating for a year before he died of an undiagnosable infection in 1980. After my best friend's new boyfriend died of something similar in 1982, we hardly seemed to talk about anything else at any social get-together. By the time AIDS had a name, I knew at least a dozen people who were dead or seriously ill.

[Frankly Rich]

The early 80's were such a horrifying time. Our lives were just turned completely around, if they didn't end. Now it seems as if we are discussing history, which I guess it is, except that it still seems so real. San Francisco in the 80's was a miserable place to be, but I'd rather have been there than not.

 

Only problem is that for young guys who didn't experience this, it is history, and convincing them of how painful life can quickly get seems an uphill battle. "Oh, we'll just take Truvada."

[Diverdan]

IT WAS A TERRIBLE TIME for so many reasons.... and unfortunately much of the hate is still out there, just disguised in other ways. I lost many friends to AIDS, and some of them were married with children and their wives and parents supposedly had no clue they were bisexual. I finally had to stop going to some of those funerals, I just ran out of stamina and the ability to offer any words of comfort to the families, especially those with young children, or parents who had no clue that their sons were gay. I thought the HBO version of the Normal Heart was excellent, and although it is told from one person's point of view, it is pretty accurate of what was going on in those days. Tyro, I too still cry when I think about some of the dear friends that I lost and feel so fortunate that I was always so careful. Thanks for updating this post.

[uwsman2]

I lived through that time on the front lines. I arrived in NYC in 1977 and once I discovered the bathhouses I managed to do all kinds of stuff that I would never do today. Somehow I escaped - when the test became available in the mid-1980s, I resisted for a few years, then submitted to testing as a volunteer in a large-scale study, and was relieved to test negative. But I'm still living with it - all the friends I lost and funerals I attended, and my husband has been living with HIV for over 20 years. Thankfully, he got on the right meds at the right time and is surviving in reasonable health. But the meds just about killed his sex drive, which is one of the reasons I occasionally indulge with an escort. But I get tested faithfully every year as part of my physical, and am still negative, knock wood.

 

As to TNH, I attended the original production at the Public Theater with Brad Davis, and the Broadway revival a few years ago, and I just received the DVD of the new HBO movie... But I'm not ready to watch yet. The original show gave me quite a jolt, but I found the Broadway revival not as affecting - perhaps because the depictions of some of the characters struck me as a bit cartoonish and overdone. I've known Larry Mass for many years, and I would trust his version of events more than the overly-dramatized version peddled by Larry Kramer. (I am an admirer of Larry K. and we always got along from mutual respect, but he can be over the top when he wants to make a point. The funny thing is that he is really a very gentle soul....)

[+ quoththeraven]

I lived through the period depicted in The Normal Heart, so although the AIDS crisis didn't affect me directly, there was nothing in the HBO presentation that surprised me much. I got all my outrage at the hatred, bigotry, and indifference aimed at gay men as a result of the existence of AIDS out at the time, though I'm left to ponder how much further the fight for LBGTQ might have progressed by now had HIV/AIDS not made itself manifest at that exact time.

 

As for the movie itself, I found Larry Kramer as written by Larry Kramer to be self-righteous and obnoxious. (I was glad to read that Mark Rufalo's portrayal was an accurate depiction of Kramer; before I knew that, I thought the awkwardness of his portrayal was due to discomfort with the part or bad acting.) Yes, Kramer was right about a lot of things, but all he did was hector people. That is not an effective way to make friends and influence people. Of all those involved with GMHC, the one I had the most respect for here was the one played by Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory. And the person with the most right to hector people was the doctor played by Julia Roberts, who I normally am not that thrilled with but who I thought was very effective in her role.

 

So while the facts may have been cherry-picked and slanted, the movie as a whole is not a Larry Kramer puff piece.

 

When it comes to gay-themed plays, the one I liked the best -- in fact, the most moving play I've ever seen, and my favorite live theater experience -- is Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy, which says a lot about discrimination, prejudice, and lack of acceptance, but isn't specifically about AIDS/HIV.