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(slow tempo dramatic music)
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(gentle music)
(brooding music)
- It's difficult to remember a time
when it wasn't here.
Harder still to recall when the word
finally permeated your consciousness
and became real, and frightening, and deadly.
It has infected everything,
not just the immune systems of those whose lives it takes,
but all of us it leaves behind
to try to comprehend something
that is finally incomprehensible.
We'll never know who we might have been had it not happened,
and we can't know who we'll be when it's over.
The only thing we know is who we are right now,
and if we stand up, if we find strength,
then we will bring honor to all the love
that has stolen from our lives.
Because in the end, to remember is simply not enough.
(suspenseful music)
(group vocalizing)
(dramatic music)
(gentle upbeat music)
- Growing up, LA was a spot that you wanted to come.
It was Hollywood, it was movie stars,
and this is where you come to get the life
that you were denied
in whatever small town you were in.
(group chattering)
- People come to LA
because they want to be part of the dream,
glamour, Hollywood, blondes.
And I was sitting in Patterson, New Jersey
thinking this is where I wanna be.
- [Group] Hey, hey, hey, hey!
We are proud, we are gay!
- If you're gay,
the main form of oppression is ostracism the tribe.
(group clapping)
And so we built alternative family.
We built community spaces.
Whether it's the bars and bathhouses
in the gay men's community
or the lesbian feminist bookstores,
we find each other.
That's what we do.
(car horn honks)
- West Hollywood was a part of town
that was the gay part of town.
They called it Boystown.
And the hills above Sunset were the Swish Alps.
(fast tempo upbeat music) (group chattering)
- Everybody went to West Hollywood
because they felt freer to be who they were.
(group chattering)
- We could walk down the street with another man
who was clearly our boyfriend
and see other people who looked like us.
There was a community and you felt supported
and you felt safe.
- It's wonderful to be here today
celebrating gay pride with all of you.
- LA was rip roaring.
I felt like I was part of a movement to liberate ourselves
and to not live in the fiction of the '50s.
- Me and my best friend,
we used to take the bus to Hollywood
and come across all kinds of LGBT folks
and I just never knew there were so many people like me.
It was a lot of fun.
But being in West Hollywood,
there was always the possibility of you being treated
a little different, especially if you're a person of color.
But yet it still didn't stop us from going.
- When I got to LA,
I didn't know where the LGBT community was,
and I remember I took a drive through West Hollywood
and it was nothing but white boys with no shirts on
and I immediately felt like, I'm not welcome here.
(glasses clanging) (group chattering)
And luckily a friend of mine was like,
girl, you're in the wrong part of town.
(electricity buzzing)
You need to get over to Catch One,
and literally my life turned around.
(car horn honking) (disco music)
- Jewel Thais-Williams opened the legendary black gay club,
Catch One Discotheque,
and Catch One was this black gay club
in the heart of black LA.
(group chattering)
- Catch was a community for people of color
and the kids always stayed fresh.
My customers, they would come to the Catch One
because this was a place where they could come and be
and I'm happy about that.
(group chattering) (upbeat music)
Well, it was in the early '80s
when there was first signs of it.
We had a drag show at my club
and the mistress of ceremony, April
didn't show up for her gig on the Thursday night
and it's like what?
Someone came in and said,
"Well, she had been ill all and she had gone to the hospital
and they thought that she had pneumonia."
But within a couple weeks, April was dead.
(melancholic music)
- I remember it distinctly, I read about it in Frontiers
and it was just that report
that the doctors reporting some kind of virus
going on with gay men in town.
(insects chirping)
It caught people's attention, caught mine.
- We're dealing with what medical researchers
are now calling gay related immunodeficiency diseases,
GRID, if you will.
(group chattering)
- It was still too early.
No one really knew what was going on.
When it got real was starting to have friends
who in fact were getting sick and dying.
- We still have Yahrzeit, which is a Jewish custom.
Yahrzeit candles for a lot of people
because we remember them.
- It was known as the gay cancer,
and we started seeing people on the street with KS.
- Kaposi sarcoma was a skin cancer,
purple or violet patches on the skin,
sometimes on the face, and very distressing.
And was an unknown in terms of how to treat it.
- [Reporter] Tonight, about 300 people
attended the first mass meeting
held within the gay community
to alert homosexuals about the dangers
of kaposi sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia,
two related diseases that show up
almost exclusively in gay men.
- We published something in the CDC's Journal,
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
We were describing what we now know as AIDS,
evidence of a new acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
(brooding music) (insects chirping)
- I've gone through so many changes
since this whole thing began.
Lots of periods of depression and terror
and just really again, the sense of hopelessness.
- A long-term friend of mine, Tom McQuoid
was a business partner in the store that I had,
within a month after we opened the store,
he came down with it.
He didn't have insurance and they put him into county.
And I went to visit him,
and it was everything you can imagine.
It was a hellhole.
He was in a room with 20 other patients.
At that point nobody knew how it was transmitted
and so nurses wouldn't go near him.
He was basically ignored.
- There were all these guys that no one visited.
They were just there by themselves
and there was no one fighting, no one fighting for them.
- I'm very sad, very fearful,
and I feel very lonely, you know?
I feel like I've been dealt a bad hand here.
- Growing up in the gay community,
we had sort of learned a lesson by that point in our lives
and the lesson was that we knew
that we had to take care of each other.
We looked at this desperate situation
and felt that something needed to be done.
(gentle music)
- AIDS Project Los Angeles was the first agency
to be formed in Los Angeles County to respond to AIDS.
- We just would have these meetings in our living room
and that was how APLA all started being organized.
- [Reporter] Nancy Cole is on the board of directors
of the AIDS Project Los Angeles.
- I hate AIDS.
I hate the disease, I hate AIDS.
I hate the fact that no one has been able to really
get a grip on what this is and how to stop it.
- Nancy Cole, she was a caring, compassionate person
and she would do anything for anybody that needed help.
Nancy was very connected
in the gay community in Los Angeles.
All of her best friends were gay men.
- When we started APLA, we first raised $7,000.
That was a lot of money in 1982 for a small charity.
At the very beginning we rented a tiny little office
on Cole Avenue in Hollywood,
and we had two rooms,
most of which was taken up by the hotline.
- AIDS hotline, may I help you?
- So we recruited volunteers and we trained them
to answer phone calls from people
with all the information that we knew about HIV.
(phone ringing)
And everything we could tell them
we could fit on the front and back of a piece of paper.
So there was tremendous fear
coming from lack of information.
(brooding music)
- Hi, AIDS hotline.
This is John, can I help you?
- AIDS Hotline, Manuel speaking.
- There was so many calls and so many people.
We had our share of suicide calls.
- Do you feel you've been exposed?
- We could help them deal with their fears
and helping people deal with their emotions
on the telephone, that was a big chunk of what we did.
We had our share of family calls where one family member,
many times the father gets to find out
that not only is his son gay,
but he also has a disease that from what we can tell
is it gonna kill him.
- [Interviewer] Does your family know?
- Yeah.
- [Interviewer] What's been their response?
- Well, my mother said,
"That God was punishing me for my lifestyle."
- That era, it was the ugliest part of human beings
and how they behave.
They blamed it on the person,
that their behavior was causing this.
(brooding music)
- There was a lot of stigma because back then
there was very little education about AIDS
and so people were just so cruel.
- [Reporter] This man Ford Johnson, an architect,
died late yesterday afternoon.
He suffered from AIDS.
Johnson fell down these stairs
while ambulance drivers looked on.
- The person said outright, "I'm not touching him."
Just like that.
- We couldn't get people into the hospitals.
Hospitals wouldn't take them.
(siren wailing)
Mortuaries wouldn't take bodies.
- Too many people are dying too young.
They are dying horrible deaths,
frequently abandoned by friends and family.
The reality of having AIDS can be pretty awful.
I nearly killed myself with alcohol
because I was very closeted
and very ashamed of being gay.
(birds chirping) (keys clanging)
And I got into recovery and I became a minister,
and I was the pastor
of the Metropolitan Community Church in the Valley.
I had my first symptoms in '82
and I got sick with everything.
I had candidiasis, hepatitis,
mononucleosis, herpes, shingles.
I was horribly, horribly sick.
And they said, "That I would not live to see 1985."
I was the first member of the clergy
to be diagnosed with AIDS,
and when I became a client of AIDS Project Los Angeles,
they immediately put me in front of the cameras.
- We have an experience today
that really is touching to me.
Right here on my right,
I have a young man named Steve Pieters
and I'd like to introduce you to Steve.
- Tammy Faye Baker wanted to interview
a person with AIDS and so they called me.
- I know you must feel lonely sometimes.
Have you found this to be true,
that people wanna stay away
and they're afraid to be anywhere in in the same room
or breathe the same air you breathe?
- Yes, Tammy, that happens.
When I was so very sick,
nobody wanted to come to my house and maybe touch something
or breathe something that was going to contaminate them
or get them sick with AIDS.
Dentists were terrified of doing work on people with AIDS
and so it became very important
to have this dental clinic that APLA started.
- [Dentist] How are you doing today, Maury?
My private dentist would no longer treat me
and then I called APLA.
As soon as I went through the door,
it was very warm, and accepting, and very comfortable.
You could feel it, the spirit and the comfort
in the clinic just opening up the door.
(group cheering)
And I think we have to be very thankful
to the Project for getting it going
and continuing it so that people can be taken care of.
- For a lot of people with AIDS,
it was a bankrupting kind of illness.
And so APLA started the Necessities of Life Program.
People with AIDS could come and get bags full of groceries.
- APLA keeps food on the table
and it's dignified food on the table.
The people who provided that food for you
did it out of love because of what you are,
not because you're another burden on the system.
There's a lot of fear about AIDS
and there's no fear in this place.
- We created the buddy system at APLA.
People volunteered to adopt a person with AIDS
and be their buddy and they would spend time with them.
- How you doing? - Hey, how are you?
- Nice to see you. - Yeah.
- They would have lunch with them,
they would take him on errands.
They would arrange to get 'em to the doctor.
- [Comedian] Lesbian.
(group laughing)
- Ours has been a building of trust in the foundation
of a very strong friendship.
I can't change Billy's medical situation.
There is nothing I can do to make that different,
but I can be there when he needs a shoulder to cry on
or just somebody to listen to him ramble on
if that's what he needs to do.
- She's well beyond a buddy.
I mean our relationship has gone much farther than that.
- The Florence Nightingale in us came out
and I knew that they needed someone to say, I love you
and would hold them and touch them.
And we would come and see about our friends
and hang out with them knowing that they were really sick.
- In the early days, you could help take care of people,
you could visit them, you could be their friend,
but you couldn't save them.
You just couldn't.
(brooding music)
- At APLA every Thursday afternoon at four o'clock
we had a memorial service
for everybody who had died that week.
We had grieving counseling for staff because it was so hard,
(group vocalizing)
but that's knowing that about a third of the staff
died the first year I was there.
And, um, shit.
- All right, let me begin with the latest figures
from Los Angeles County.
Today they show 56 new cases of AIDS
diagnosed here locally last month.
That brings a national total now to about 10,000.
(fast tempo brooding music)
- And while a lot of theories were put out there
as to the cause of AIDS from the earliest days though
we suspected that this was a virus.
The fact that it was occurring among gay men, hemophiliacs,
blood transfusion recipients, and intravenous drug users
looked like bloodborne and sexually transmitted infection.
- [Reporter] First and foremost, we understand
that the basic cause of this deadly syndrome
is a virus now labeled HIV or human immunodeficiency virus.
- Currently, the riskiest practice is to use a needle
which has been previously used by somebody who is infected.
The next highest risk is associated
with specific sexual activities.
Anal intercourse is the highest risk activity
for transmission of the virus.
(glasses clanging) (group chattering)
- I went to one meeting and I said,
if you could stop gay men from having anal intercourse,
we could overcome this and I was booed off the stage.
(water splashing) (brooding music)
Being gay is being sexual, that's where your mind goes.
Even my mind goes, but we'll leave that out.
To tell them they couldn't do it anymore,
that wasn't as easy as it sounds.
That took time and a lot of effort.
- Our end objective is to make every person
in LA County have it second nature in their mind
that when they're having sex
they have to think of having safe sex.
- We put out pamphlet after pamphlet after pamphlet
about how it was transmitted and what you needed to avoid.
- I don't think there had ever been a campaign
to change people's behavior regarding health
like we did with HIV and AIDS.
(gentle upbeat music)
And I have to say our staff at APLA
did an incredible job with Mother Cares.
- Well now Mother wants you
to be extra careful when you play with your friends
'cause some of them are getting very sick.
- Zelda Rubinstein from the "Poltergeist",
she played Mother,
and its purpose was to educate people at risk.
It was deliberately done to show gay men
that they need to have safe sex
and this is how you can do it.
- [Group] Rubbers!
- In LA we early had clinics within the bathhouses.
We didn't want people in the alleys, in the streets
and we wanted places where we could educate them.
(water splashing)
- One day I saw ads for gay health clubs
and I called them up
and I asked if people were friendly. (laughs)
And the queen on the other end of the phone said,
"Well sweetheart, that totally depends on you."
A few weeks later I went.
(group chattering)
And I went to sit in the lounge
where they were like showing pornography
and down the stairs came this guy and he sat down beside me.
He asked me to go up to his room,
and I said, "Why do people keep asking me that?"
And he just laughed and he said,
"Because that's where people go to have sex."
And so we had sex in the bathhouse that night.
It was my first sexual encounter
and about three months later we moved in together.
We fell in love and it was everything.
(group vocalizing) (brooding music)
My process of kind of understanding HIV personally
actually took a long time
because I, like most other people,
believed the mischaracterization of the epidemic
in the beginning that it was a white gay disease.
But I was in a relationship with a white man,
so it was something that was on my mind.
- [Reporter] The disease that was first perceived
by the black community everywhere
as a white gay problem is now threatening
the lives of black men, women and children in LA.
- In the black community, you can talk to people
and they can tell you someone
who's 20-years-old or 30-years-old who died of pneumonia,
who had a cancer, who had meningitis,
but it is not clicking that this could possibly be AIDS.
- It was all over the news,
but it was about white folks and white men in particular,
but actually more black people got it per capita.
Black men mostly,
but there were some women that that got it too.
- [Reporter] This Los Angeles woman has AIDS.
She says when she found out that her husband
was an IV drug user, she left them, but it was too late.
- In many, many ways for black and brown people
the way we responded to it is to ignore it, dismiss it,
push it to the side and pretend it doesn't exist.
(group vocalizing)
We had someone we knew that used to be around an awful lot
and they stopped coming around.
And then a couple years later,
I remember he died and it was like, that was it.
We're not gonna acknowledge him or even say he was here,
okay, you just don't talk about it.
(melancholic music)
- With regard to the federal response, it's so important
who is in charge at the time of a crisis.
That was Ronald Reagan.
He had just become president in January of 1981
and the HIV epidemic came to attention in June of 1981,
but it didn't catch the attention of the president
or high ranking people in HHS
and people who knew what the potential was.
- [Reporter] White House officials confirmed
that the president has never talked
with his surgeon general about AIDS
or read the report Dr. Koop sent him last October.
- I don't know what Reagan was hearing.
He had been an actor in Hollywood
and so he certainly knew gay people from the business.
So what was going on in this White House?
(dramatic music)
There was the sway of these conservative Christians
who said, "Leave it alone."
"These are not legitimate people."
"This is their own fault."
"Let them deal with it."
- If the American people knew the filthy and bloody
sexual events that transpired between homosexuals,
they would be a national revulsion
unparalleled in this country.
- It was discrimination that killed a lot of us
because we weren't given credibility
that we are important enough
to do the research and the treatment.
- [Reporter] At the AIDS Project,
a support group for AIDS patients in Los Angeles,
there is growing concern about the AIDS epidemic.
- Well, the mission of APLA was to try
to get more research done
and to figure out how to provide aid and support
to people who were infected and dying,
but all of it was volunteer, all of it was donation.
We got at that point virtually no help from the government
and so what we tried to do was to force the government
to pay for research.
When that didn't work,
we organized fundraisers and paid for the research ourself.
- The reason why we're here tonight
is because we're here to try to conquer
this horrible thing called AIDS.
(group cheering)
- We put on benefits for service organizations like APLA.
- I'm standing in for the Roxy Theater
where a special 10 o'clock performance
of a play called "Women Behind Bars" is about to go on.
And the thing that really makes it important
is that the first theatrical performance
is really given as a benefit for AIDS.
And I would like to talk for a minute with Max Drew,
who is the man that organized this whole thing.
Max, Max, why did you put on this particular benefit?
- "Women Behind Bars" seemed appropriate
for the fun of the event.
We were also trying to stimulate interest
in the film community for participation.
(camera snaps) (gentle upbeat music)
- The reason I became a celebrity spokesperson at all
was because I was Nellie Oleson
on "Little House on the Prairie".
Coming right up!
I was really awful and I enjoyed it enormously.
- Nellie, I have to talk to you.
- And then they decided to marry her off.
I was so happy when Steve Tracy showed up
'cause he was cute as a bug, and he little freckles,
and the curly hair,
and was like the nicest person in the world.
We stayed friends after the show
and people thought that he and I were dating,
but I found out he was gay early on.
And then in the '80s he got sick,
and he called and told me that in fact I have AIDS.
So suddenly my phone rang.
They were asking me medical questions
and epidemiology questions.
If they're asking an actress questions
about this very serious disease,
something is wrong with this picture.
(phone ringing)
And so at AIDS Project Los Angeles,
I signed up for the Speaker's Bureau,
so I went everywhere and talked about people with AIDS,
and I was able to provide services.
Welcome to AIDS Vision.
I'm Allison Arngrim, your volunteer host.
- We got celebrity support where we could,
but there was so much stigma.
Stigma around HIV, but the other risk was many celebrities
in Hollywood at the time were not out.
And the common understanding for a gay celebrity
was if you come out and support an HIV cause
everyone's going to assume that you're gay
and that will hurt your career.
- Well look me over.
(group laughing)
- My father managed Liberace,
which meant I went to Liberace shows as a child.
My parents really did say,
"No one knows that Liberace is gay."
And I said, "I'm eight, I know he's gay."
- I want you to beat my friend over there.
That's Scott Thorson.
(group clapping)
- Everything was so hush hush,
everything was so closeted,
(group chattering)
and you just didn't advertise it.
In the late '70s, early '80s,
that started to change culturally,
but definitely not in the entertainment business.
It was very much a tightly held secret.
(gentle music)
Well, I was really young
in the beginning of the AIDS epidemic,
but I knew very early on that something bad was happening.
The relationship between her and the gay community
was always very strong.
- [Joan] You know how I know who's gay and who's not gay?
Can we talk here?
(group laughing) (group clapping)
- And so she did a big AIDS fundraiser in LA.
- [Announcer] Ms. Joan Rivers.
- I remember it being very crowded.
I remember it being very outrageous.
It was very successful.
It raised money and it opened doors.
I have to think that it gave people some shelter
to be able then to speak out.
- Hi, my name is Sammy Davis Jr.
I know you've heard about AIDS,
that's acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
- Each city had to use the resources of that city.
New York had the Gay Men's Health Crisis,
which was a very important, very active organization.
San Francisco obviously had a very vibrant gay community.
In Los Angeles we've got star power.
- Do you feel that you or anyone you know personally
are at risk of getting AIDS?
- In the early days, we had a bad brand.
People didn't wanna associate with it.
They want to say, oh, those gay boys
are getting what they deserve for their behavior, right?
And so that was one of our goals was to change the brand
and we knew that getting Hollywood involved
in getting that legitimacy was gonna be key.
- Peter Scott was our board chair
and he came up with the idea of having a benefit dinner,
something called Commitment to Life.
And remember this is an '85
when nobody was supporting much of anything.
We put together some ideas,
who makes the most sense
for something called Commitment to Life.
And there were three draws at that time,
the Pope, Queen Elizabeth, and Elizabeth Taylor.
And we said, "Well, we can't get the first two,
but we could probably get the third."
- Elizabeth Taylor was the biggest movie star in the world.
(upbeat music)
She was the last great movie star of the Golden Age.
Her escapades were notorious.
She was what every girl in America wanted to be
and many of the boys.
- Where passion rules, how weak does reason prove?
- She was working in a creative business,
so she had gay people around her her whole life.
- Thank you, my friends.
- In the '80s, Elizabeth was making some TV movies
and kind of living her life.
AIDS was in the news.
She'd go to a cocktail party
and people were like whispering,
oh, there's this awful thing.
And Elizabeth was getting more
and more angry and frustrated,
like why is nothing happening?
- I was made so aware of the silence,
this huge loud silence regarding AIDS,
how no one wanted to talk about it.
No one wanted to become involved.
And it's so angered me that I finally thought to myself,
bitch, do something yourself.
(upbeat music)
- [Tim] And Elizabeth was well aware
of the fame that she had
and she realized she was in a unique position
to be able to put her face to AIDS.
- I became involved when I was asked
to be general chairman of the first dinner
given in America to raise funds for AIDS.
(birds chirping) (cameras snapping)
- We had a fundraising event,
the presale party for Commitment to Life in West Hollywood
and she went.
- It's a desperate situation
and it needs everybody's help now.
- [Bill] It was her very first AIDS event.
- To put a dinner together, it took seven months work.
Our industry seemed reluctant
to have anything to do with it.
It was a taboo subject.
And I won't tell you the names of some of the people
that refused to have their names identified
because it would blow your mind. (chuckles)
I became so incensed and personally frustrated
at the rejection I was receiving
by just trying to get people's attention.
- And that was what it was like until Rock Hudson got sick.
- [Reporter] Actor Rock Hudson has AIDS,
acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
- Rock Hudson was completely in the closet,
but Elizabeth knew Rock was gay.
They were friends.
- [Narrator] Liz and Rock, today's two most exciting stars
in the only picture big enough
to bring them together "Giant."
- In January of 1985,
she received the Cecil B. DeMille Award.
- Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Elizabeth Taylor.
(group clapping)
(triumphant music)
- [Tim] She was with Rock and he didn't look very well.
She asked him about it, but he said it was cancer.
- Mr. Hudson is being evaluated and treated
for complications of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
- Elizabeth found out that Rock had AIDS
at the same time as everybody else.
She got in touch with Michael Gottlieb
and he took her to go see Rock
and so she had a chance to say goodbye.
(gentle music)
- What we all have to do is go out tonight, tomorrow,
grab our neighbors, our friends, our acquaintances,
grab them by the throats if necessary,
make them understand, break the barrier.
- Rock Hudson put a face to the disease for the world
and that was invaluable in helping us move along
the idea that everybody needs to be concerned about this.
(group cheering) (group clapping)
When we were putting together
the first Commitment to Life dinner after Rock Hudson,
the demand for tickets to that event was crazy.
- Tonight in Los Angeles,
some of the biggest names in show business
will host a widely publicized benefit for AIDS.
- [Announcer] Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Elizabeth Taylor.
(group cheering)
- The emotions were so raw
because everybody was personally affected by it.
- All we can do at this point
is help our friends who have AIDS,
(group cheering) (group clapping)
and the only way we can do that
is by doing what you are doing by giving,
giving of support, money, and love.
(group cheering) (group clapping)
- That evening was amazing
because it was all of these big famous people
coming together to say, we see you.
That hadn't happened.
That was the first time that happened.
- As a person with AIDS, I wanna remind you,
I am still alive.
(group cheering) (group clapping)
I had been so scared of dying alone
and that was totally irrelevant
because I was surrounded by love.
I am very hopeful that the turnout
of stars and celebrities
will really help people across the country realize
that there is nothing to fear
from being in the same room with a person with AIDS,
from embracing a person with AIDS,
from being present to a person with AIDS.
(group cheering) (upbeat music)
- When we first put this on,
we were targeting maybe $400,000.
It is not someone else's problem,
it is all of our problem.
Wound up raising $1.3 million.
- [Interviewer] If you have one message
to get across to people about why they should really care.
- Well, it's human beings' lives
and if you care about anything,
if you care about yourself,
you have to care what happens to others.
- [Announcer] The following program is a special
from Channel Five's Eyewitness News.
It contains detailed information
about a sexually transmitted disease.
- [Reporter] This is it, the test everyone's talking about.
The AIDS antibody test.
- They developed this HIV test
and for a lot of us, myself included,
we were adamant that people shouldn't take the test
because there were no treatments.
Getting tested without treatment exacerbated stigma,
but also exacerbated hopelessness.
(group chattering)
So we felt that a better prevention strategy
was to assume that you had it
and we behaved accordingly as a way
of trying to protect each other.
I decided that I should take the test
because Chris was already experiencing severe symptoms.
And so I went to get tested.
Two weeks later, I went to get my results
and it turns out that I was HIV positive
and everything started to spin.
And I began to cry
and I was completely overwhelmed
by the notion that I was going to die.
The doctor said to me,
"You probably have six months to live and you should go home
and get your affairs in order."
And I remember thinking, I'm 20 something,
I don't have any affairs to get in order.
- [Reporter] 37-year-old Chris Brownlie
and 31-year-old Phill Wilson
have been a couple for eight years.
Although Phill has AIDS related complex,
he is still healthier than Chris
who was diagnosed as having AIDS last February.
- We really went into political mode
and then the Larouche campaign happened.
- This is a disease which is perfectly capable
of eliminating the human race.
- Lyndon Larouche was a very marginal
right wing, crazy character,
but he did catch a moment of lack of understanding
about HIV/AIDS.
- I'm afraid that I'm going to get it from causal contact.
I don't care what they say,
you can get it from casual contact.
- [Torie] Lyndon Larouche was able
to put this ballot measure Prop 64,
and it would've quarantined people with AIDS.
- AIDS victims must be isolated
from general society until a cure is found
so we don't catch that disease.
Am I right? - Yeah!
- At that point, 60% of Californians
did not know how AIDS was transmitted.
- If the only way to stop them stop it is quarantine people
I don't think any there's any way around it.
I think they're gonna have to do it.
- In the early '80s,
gay people had just been decriminalized 10 years earlier.
Then the American Psychological Association says,
we're not insane.
We had come so far to create a community
and all of a sudden they're talking about rounding us all up
and putting us in camps.
- At a time when I am facing the possibility
of my premature death,
I do not need the added stress of being told
that I might possibly be quarantined
or put away from people who could help me.
- A lot of the queer community was mobilized.
- [Group] No on 64.
- [Torie] For the Fighting Against the Larouche Initiative.
We did a direct mail drive.
We got Keith Haring to do the logo.
- [Group] AIDS education, not determination.
- [Reporter] In California opposition
to the initiative is building.
- When you had a particular proposition
like 64, you defeat it.
- [Reporter] The no on 64 campaign
it was a resounding victory.
But beneath the cheers and celebration last night,
there were also sighs of relief.
- Voters of California clearly made a choice
that they want public health policy
to stay in the hands of the professionals.
- It was roundly defeated
and it was a major step in our community.
(group cheering) (gentle music)
- The ethic that took root in the LGBT community
was we are gonna take responsibility
for stopping the spread of this disease.
- Welcome to AIDS Walk.
- We put together the AIDS Walk.
An AIDS Walk is where you get people
to volunteer not only to walk,
but to raise money from their friends to support their walk.
- As you begin your walk,
I wanna wish you good luck
and I want you to remember
that with your individual efforts today,
it takes us that much closer to our goal.
- [David] It was a spectacular day,
and Paramount Pictures hosted it for years.
- Fundraisers hope they can keep up this pace
Long after today's walk, there'll still be a need for money.
Judging by today's turnout, they're off to a good start.
- As far as I was concerned in our work,
whether you were HIV positive or not, in your mind you were.
It was only a matter of time.
And you were part of a community that glued itself together.
And so it started making people
be activists instead of just active.
(gentle upbeat music)
- [Reporter] West Hollywood, a recently formed city
with a large gay and lesbian community.
That community is protected by a city council,
which considers gay rights a priority.
- Because there was the first gay majority in the nation,
West Hollywood was the fertile ground
for an LGBT movement to spring fourth.
HIV and AIDS brought up all these medical issues,
but it also brought up all these legal issues.
- I was diagnosed in April and I was out of a job.
- People could lose their job,
or lose their apartment,
or lose their insurance if they were HIV positive.
And so the city of West Hollywood ended up passing a law,
no discrimination on the basis of HIV status.
- It extends protections to persons with AIDS
or persons who are thought to have AIDS
and those persons are protected by the city
because there is no state or federal law
that protects them at this point.
- Dealing from the point of view
of a discriminated small minority,
you had to use your brain and you had to control yourself
if you were gonna progress.
(gentle upbeat music)
No one offered us a seat at the table,
so we did things like established relationships
with politicians, with respected people
in the non gay community.
We got to the point where we could get admitted
to the mayor's office.
We were not shunned and we were able
to accomplish a great deal.
(gavel banging)
- Meeting of the subcommittee will come to order.
- Some members of Congress were waking up to this.
Henry Waxman, he had a safe seat
and he was chairman of the subcommittee,
the exact subcommittee we had to deal with.
I sat in Waxman's office and we talked about AIDS,
and he listened and he acted.
- This is not liberal or conservative,
it is not a Democratic or Republican position.
I believe that we have crafted legislation
that can slow the spread of AIDS.
- The bill has passed.
(gavel bangs)
- The federal government provided some money, not enough,
but money was provided and we struggled through.
- [Group] No on 64, no on 64.
- We defeated Prop 64 by a tremendous margin,
but the issues around discrimination
and criminalizing HIV continue to go on.
- The civil rights of the uninfected American people
are as much entitled to protection
as the civil rights of the infected.
- There was a guy named Dannemeyer from Orange County
who was a total creep.
- If you have the virus and you engage in sexual activities
with another human, you've committed a crime.
- [Phill] Bill Dannemeyer was so active in putting forth
these irrational discriminatory initiatives.
- They have failed to take action
to protect the public health
by shutting down these AIDS factories,
which we sometimes call bathhouses.
- And there were lots of victories for that side,
making it illegal to transmit the virus,
making it illegal if you're positive
to spit on a policeman,
making it illegal if you didn't disclose your HIV status,
even if you did not infect anyone.
And some of those laws are on the books today.
- We are acting in the best interest of the nation
by fighting AIDS and not the people with AIDS.
- When I became chair of APLA,
I wanted money and I wanted to kill anti AIDS bills.
That's just two things, but those are big important things.
AIDS Action Council was the AIDS lobbying organization.
APLA and the main AIDS organizations
in the country were members
and they were there to secure financing
from the government.
- I did go to Washington and I lobbied several times.
One day our older son Brett said,
"I've got something to talk to you about."
And he said, "I've got AIDS."
And then a year later, our second son,
Michael called and told us he had just been diagnosed.
I was with each of my sons when they died.
It was pretty raw.
I finally pulled myself together
and I joined mother support groups,
but I had to do more than that.
(brooding music)
- I've never heard once in this chamber
anybody say to the homosexuals, stop what you are doing.
Do you realize that if they would stop what they're doing,
there would not be one additional case of AIDS
in the United States of America?
- We went to the Senate.
Jesse Helms walked over to us
and when we told him why we were here,
he pulled his hand back.
He didn't want to have anything to do with us.
(cameras snapping)
- Elizabeth became the spokesperson for amfAR,
(gentle upbeat music)
which was the National AIDS Research Foundation.
I traveled with her to Washington and we met with senators.
She wanted them to know
that they had to be supportive of funding.
- It is my hope that history will show
that the American people and our leaders
met the challenge of AIDS rationally
and with all the resources of their disposal.
- She was willing to do whatever it took
to get the politicians to get their heads out of the sand.
- Many of us have lost a dear friend to AIDS,
don't wait until someone you care for
is touched by this horrifying illness.
(group chattering) (cameras snapping)
- We did a fundraiser in Washington for amfAR
and Reagan had not yet said the word AIDS.
(group clapping)
Elizabeth met with him and said, "Do it for me."
("Hail to the Chief")
And Reagan spoke and uttered the word AIDS
for the first time.
- Spending on AIDS has been one
of the fastest growing parts of the budget.
And ladies and gentlemen, it deserves to be.
(group clapping)
- Just the fact that he was there
after so much silence was very important.
He signs bills,
I mean, he's the president of the United States.
The speech was going along fine
until he mentioned mandatory testing.
- I've also asked HHS to add the AIDS virus
to the list of contagious diseases
for which immigrants and aliens seeking permanent residence
in the United States can be denied entry.
(group booing)
- The President had never been booed, I am sure.
(dramatic music)
But I can assure you that me and many of my friends
blame him for many, many deaths.
- Americans working together can beat any problem
that comes our way and that goes for AIDS too.
- It had taken Reagan,
his entire presidency to even say the words,
and there was still unbelievable homophobia and bias
coming out of the Congress.
And so we had to multitask.
And we are a part of this community
and it belongs to us as much as it belongs to anyone else.
(siren wailing)
And then we began to look at the impact of HIV and AIDS
along racial lines.
- AIDS is an equal opportunity disease,
but we can all fight and win if we hang together.
(group chattering)
- At the time there was not really any sort of consideration
around bisexual people or trans people.
Of course, trans people should have been
a part of the conversation, but they were not.
- From the very beginning of the epidemic,
trans people were not included and many communities of color
were left behind unfortunately.
And so the challenges for me as someone who is HIV positive
and as someone who was trying to access healthcare,
there was specific to my needs there wasn't any.
(gentle music)
(group vocalizing)
- Los Angeles, it has a huge Asian community.
We had a good mix of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese.
We had a very big Thai community here in Los Angeles
and our big thing in Los Angeles
was that we need to get Asian people tested.
And at the time, Filipino men were the most infected.
And so being a gay Filipino man,
I had a personal investment.
I started doing AIDS work
and I found out that there were a lot of communities
of color who did not want to be identified
as a person living with AIDS.
(melancholic music)
- So was the shame that they have contracted the disease
that they didn't want to go out.
Some of them when their families found out
that they were HIV positive turned their back on.
- I used to volunteered over in APLA and some of the guys,
they wouldn't come to the food bank
knowing that I was there.
This is how deeply the shame cut into the hearts and souls
of a lot of those guys.
(group chattering)
I'd like anyone who has had a friend, lover, relative
who has passed from AIDS
to yell out their name as the song is being played.
- Leo. - Bob.
- [Man] Lucci.
- [Woman] Larizo Bob.
- [Man 2] Keith Bass.
- Chris. - Wayne.
- Dudley Jones! - Roger Deccan.
- Dan Rice. - Al!
- [Woman 2] Michelle Vincent.
(melancholic music)
- [Interviewer] Did you see a lot of people pass?
- Oh, too many to even mention.
From doctors, to teachers, to principals of schools,
to business folk, to bankers, to preachers.
Some good folks died.
I knew guys were being put out
and they would come to the club off the streets,
and so we used to have a buffet at happy hour.
Sometimes this was all that the folks had to eat.
(group vocalizing)
- Jewel saw these young black men get sick,
and these were her patrons, and these were her staff,
and these were her friends.
She was a black woman running the largest black gay club
west of the Mississippi.
And so when AID hit she saw it up close and personal.
(group cheering) (gentle music)
- We started the Minority AIDS Project.
Our mission was to help out and bring services to the hood.
(gentle music)
- [Phill] The Minority AIDS Project
was the first organization in Los Angeles County
that focused exclusively on people of color
to make sure that folks didn't die alone
and that there was someone who visited them in the hospital.
- When you talk AIDS in my community,
you talk AIDS in poverty,
and so you have to deal with it from that angle.
We see men, we see women, we see kids,
but the model that the white gay community has
would not and cannot work in our community.
We have to deal with people basic surviving, eating,
sleeping, a roof over their head.
- [Jewel] We got a home for the homeless, Dignity House.
And then we opened Ruth's House,
was a place for women and children with AIDS.
- Black folks stepped up and said,
we're gonna take care of our own.
People of color, going to churches,
going to places where black families were
to say, love your children who may have AIDS.
(man speaking in foreign language)
- If you were poor and Latino
you live in the Echo Park Silver Lake area.
(siren wailing) (brooding music)
If you were positive in the Latino community,
not only you have to deal with the LAPD harassing you,
but you have to also deal with gang members
that will just beat you up for being who you are.
Oscar De La O, that was in his blood
to be involved in the community
to try to make life better for others.
So he started Bienestar.
(gentle upbeat music)
Bienestar means wellbeing,
and it's a space were you can come and be yourself.
We created our baseball team and we play in a gay league.
We were the first ones to do a gay prom.
We used to call it Amore Prohibido, Forbidden love.
We had many clients that were transgender
who would come in dressed as a boy
and they would go into the restroom
and come back as a woman
because that was the only space
that they felt that it was safe
where they can be themselves.
- My name is Chris Brownlie.
I believe people with AIDS
and their loved ones deserve the very best care.
- [Michael] Myself and Chris Brownlie,
we were very, very close friends
and we were talking about what should we do now.
Here in LA people really,
when they started that steep slope down,
people really had no place to go.
The least we could do is give them a dignified death,
and that's what led ultimately to the founding of AHF
as the AIDS Hospice Foundation.
- The person with AIDS has been treated
with neglect and disrespect by our society in general.
In Los Angeles County opening this facility today
says that that era is over.
(birds chirping)
- We got ahold of this old tuberculosis hospital
right by Dodger Stadium
and we built the Chris Brownlie Hospice.
The plan was that it would be a place
that Chris could go in the end.
For the longest time, we literally did not allow ourselves
to think about him dying,
but when it became clear that the time was short,
he and I were in the room alone
and I told him that it was okay,
that it was okay for him to go.
Chris took a breath, and then he took another breath,
and then he took another breath,
and then he didn't take another breath,
and I laid there with my head on his shoulder.
They came to take him away.
And I remember thinking, why are they in such a hurry?
Don't they know what just happened?
(brooding music) (group chattering)
- We marched on Washington on October the 11th, 1987,
and I know it's that date because I was there.
- I'm at the Capitol Mall where the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt
is to be unveiled.
Each panel of this huge two city block quilt
bears the name of someone who has died of AIDS.
There are over 2000 names on this quilt here today.
And what a graphic and loving tribute to our family.
- It had to be all flown to Washington DC
and it's because this was our cemetery.
We were laying our dead
before President Reagan and the Congress.
(dramatic drum music)
This is something we all had in common.
And out of that came a whole new level of activism.
- There just comes a breaking point
where people are just fed up with not being seen,
not being heard, not being honored as human beings.
And AIDS was one of the great catalysts of just saying,
we've had it and I know a lot of you
just want us to go away,
but we're gonna be even more in your face now
because we're fighting for our lives.
- [Group] Act Up, fight back, fight AIDS!
- Act Up was started by Larry Kramer in New York.
Out of that came Act Up chapters all over the country.
- [Group] Silence equals death!
- We're not here to please anyone, to make friends.
We're here to save our lives
and the lives of the people with HIV.
- [Group] We're not a red tape, we're not a red tape!
- I feel an urgency as a person with AIDS,
and if it hadn't been for Act UP,
I'm not sure that we would have the AZT
that is helping us stay alive longer.
Because ACT UP was instrumental
in getting the FDA to speed up approval of these drugs.
- The government today approved the sale
of the first drug for the treatment of AIDS.
The drug AZT is not a cure
because it doesn't kill the AIDS virus,
but trials last year showed that it prolongs life
for AIDS sufferers.
- AZT was very toxic, however AZT
showed that you could develop a drug
that would treat HIV.
(group chattering)
- In a world where the Desert Storm has taken our attention
away from a winter storm that has attacked America now
for 10 years, killing more people than the Vietnam War.
Tonight we take a moment to think about this.
I have to tell you that just three hours ago, Randy Stewart,
an employee for six years of AIDS Project Los Angeles
died of AIDS.
I had to spend, of course,
half of my time out raising money.
I mean it was cocktails and funerals in most days.
- APLA was barely solvent.
And so every way we could possibly think
about raising money, we raised money.
(upbeat music)
Everything from haircutathons,
to cocktail parties, to tribute dinners,
(cameras clicking)
APLA was able to get celebrities to step forward.
- We have the wonderful, talented Estelle Getty.
We're here with Heather Thomas.
It's nice for you to come out tonight Zsa Zsa.
- [Craig] There was another event called Summer Party.
(disco music)
Summer Party attracted 5,000 people
and it was entertainment and food
on the back lot of Universal.
- AIDS Dance A Thon,
I somehow think Jesse Helms won't be there,
but hey, he's invited.
Come on down, I dare ya.
- And it was a star speckled evening in Universal City.
The Call Celeb, a fashion show for AIDS research.
- [Craig] There was an annual fashion gala,
which was put together by a group of volunteers
from within the fashion industry.
And every year featured a particular designer.
- We ran APLA like a business.
I said, give me that cure,
I'll shut this organization down faster
than you can believe.
That wasn't appreciated by my staff.
(dramatic music)
Barry Diller was a top executive
in the entertainment industry and still is.
So I called Barry Diller and asked for a meeting.
And they said, "Mr. Diller invites you to dinner
at his home on Saturday night."
I show up and there is Barry Diller, David Geffen,
and Sandy Gallin, was one of the top agents.
They were all moguls in the entertainment industry
and rich, which was nice.
And at the end of the meeting, I was politely dismissed
and two days later, the treasurer called me and said,
"We just got the big check
from Diller, and Geffen, and Gallin,"
and fundraising became easier.
- When the first person I knew died,
I couldn't bring myself to throw his Rolodex card away,
so I saved it.
I now have a rubber band around 341 cards.
- David was such a powerful, influential force of nature
in the creative community.
David is the one who introduced me to APLA.
I was always influenced in the world
in which it was the obligation of people that have
to take care of people that have not.
I felt given the positions of influence that I had,
that it made it safe for other people
in our community to show up.
(group chattering)
- The first Commitment to Life was the success.
And then the second one raised just under a million dollars.
Commitment to Life grew and it became an annual event.
(upbeat music)
(suspenseful music)
(group cheering) (group clapping)
* I feel pretty, oh, so pretty *
* I feel witty, and pretty, and bright *
* And I pity any girl who isn't me tonight *
* I feel charming *
As it went on Commitment to Life
was the flagship event of APLA.
- The Commitment to Life award.
And I had to come to the Valley to get it.
(group laughing)
- From that moment on Commitment to Life
became something special and extraordinary.
They stood as amazing fundraising events
because they raised millions of dollars
and they were great entertainment.
They were great fun.
* A kiss on the hand may be quite continental *
* But diamonds are girl's best friend *
(group cheering)
Even though you're at a big AIDS fundraiser,
people wanted to have a really good time
and celebrate the people they love and lost.
* I had some friends but they're gone *
* Something came and took them away *
* And from the dusk till the dawn *
* Here is where I stay *
(group clapping)
The generosity of the audience and the performers,
the spirit that was in the room,
you could put all the pain aside
and escape to a really great show.
(group cheering) (group clapping)
- You knew that you were in a moment, at least for us,
you were in our moment.
(R&B music)
* And when I go *
* Please carry on *
(group clapping)
- We all know that all these beautiful Hollywood women,
they have a gaggle of LGBTQ people behind them
who build their confidence
and make sure that they look good from head to toe.
(camera snapping) (upbeat pop music)
(camera snaps)
* And you can dance *
- I wasn't really paying attention to like movie stars,
but I was paying attention to Madonna.
- Number one is because I really believe in AIDS Project LA.
(group cheering)
- Madonna was one who stepped up for the LGBTQ community.
- If you do have sex, use a condom.
It may be the most important thing you ever do.
- When the AIDS crisis happened,
people who were part of her circle
were people who were HIV positive or have AIDS,
and that's why it was important for her
to make sure that she advocated for us.
* Come on, come on *
- Madonna was very involved early on,
and so we decided that we were gonna honor Madonna
for Commitment to Life.
Vince Patterson, who did a lot of her choreography
directed the show.
They had done the MTV Awards the night before.
Madonna paid for bringing the whole set
and her whole crew over the next night.
(group chattering)
And nobody in the audience knew she was gonna perform.
I'm getting chills just thinking about the moments
that curtain went up and the music started.
(dramatic pop music) (fingers snapping)
(group cheering)
- I attended every Commitment to Life.
It was festive occasion
and if you were involved in the trenches
to escape from that for an evening,
which was a very good thing.
But to be completely honest,
it was a healthy reminder of the work that I needed to do.
* Somehow *
* Someday *
* Someway *
- We'll raise $4 million tonight,
which will feed and take care of and clothe
a great many people who are in great need.
And so it's really wonderful night.
(group chattering)
David was fierce.
(group clapping)
He cared about this issue.
He would go after people.
He would call 'em up and say,
"You gave a hundred thousand dollars, that's it."
"What is a matter with you people?"
"Do you really expect us to accept this as a gift?"
- AIDS makes your responsibility more urgent to be positive
about our lifestyles and nurture and protect young gays
who look up to us for hope
that they too can lead a life
uninhibited by fear and guilt and shame.
(group clapping)
As a gay man, I've come a long way to be here tonight.
(group cheering)
- This is one of the leading people in Hollywood
who everyone in the community knew was gay,
but had never publicly acknowledged that fact,
which now has become sort of like,
oh yeah, I'm gay, get over it.
But that was not the case in those days.
(group chattering) (brooding music)
- It was one thing to go to a big star studded banquet,
it was another thing to work
with people with AIDS on the set.
- [Reporter] For many in Hollywood with the virus,
it's a secret, one they feel they have to keep
or risk losing their career.
- [Interviewee] I have to remain anonymous
because I don't want to be subjected
to the discrimination that is out there.
So I don't tell people that I'm gay,
and I certainly don't tell them that I'm HIV positive.
- I got calls from a number of different actors
who were diagnosed with AIDS,
who were terrified that they were never gonna work again.
And a lot of times, actors who were well known
who died of AIDS,
their obituary said they died of something else.
(door clicks)
(audience laughing) (brooding music)
- I knew in 1985 that I was HIV positive.
I never told anyone.
And I had such fear, I was so governed by fear
that this was going to get out in my life.
My condition is something often found in young men
in the prime of their lives.
But I don't feel that it impacted my work.
But now that I was in the public eye,
you did not want that shit out.
- People with AIDS describe
how Hollywood's fear of the virus
is forcing them into the shadows.
- [Director] All right, very quiet please, this is picture.
Hold the talk.
- It was really about discrimination.
Discrimination about people who were suffering
from HIV and AIDS,
but were healthy enough to work
and in fact, were working all the time around them.
My husband was Brad Davis and he was an actor.
He identified as heterosexual,
but he never had any problem playing gay.
As an actor he felt that it was his job to take risks.
(gentle music)
He was working, but the truth was that by that point,
he was actually HIV positive.
In LA if somebody was even rumored,
these were the kinds of things that could lose you a career,
and so you didn't talk about it.
Never any of our friends, never any of our family,
no one knew, so he suffered a lot alone.
I knew that Brad was going to die very shortly.
And just before Brad died,
he said he felt it was important to come forward
and tell the truth about how he died.
(gentle music)
Brad was working in your shows,
he was working in your movies,
he was doing this work and he was HIV positive,
and that was Brad's intent,
to shock the community
into awareness and let them take it from there.
- Whatever the rules are today in Hollywood,
they must be changed so that people like Brad
can come forward before they die.
(group clapping)
- I think that was the thing that triggered Mr. Diller.
When he discovered people who had AIDS
couldn't get a job that angered him.
And he went to a friend of his named Sidney Sheinberg,
who was CEO of MCA Universal.
He called him up, he said,
"We gotta do something about this."
- Hollywood Supports has been established
by leading figures in the entertainment industry.
And it is using the services of AIDS Project Los Angeles
in providing education and counseling to the industry
to counter AIDS phobia and homophobia.
What Hollywood Supports is about is no more Brad Davis's.
- Hollywood Supports, it sent a message
not just to Hollywood,
but to the rest of the business world,
that this is the new standard
of how you're gonna treat people.
And we may not have our rights
guaranteed in the Constitution or by the laws,
but we are going to give it to you on the corporate level.
- There's a quilt being unfolded in our meadow.
A quilt dedicated to all the people that have died of AIDS.
- Television has tremendous power to open people's minds
and to give them some empathy
towards people they might not know.
(gentle music)
"The Real World" is about seven individuals coming together
from different backgrounds,
and so we had a wonderful opportunity to explore things
that were going on in America.
- I am a person living with AIDS and I am a gay man.
- On "The Real World" Pedro wanted to help educate
other young people about AIDS.
Pedro put out a very positive but honest representation
of what it's like to be HIV positive.
Pedro taught America that people live with HIV.
They go on living until their last breath.
(patient gasping)
- Let go.
(patient gasps)
All the pain,
(patient gasping)
let it all go.
- I remember "Longtime Companion", which was very moving.
- I know I'm losing it.
Can barely remember half the things I wanna say.
- There had been this history
of movies taking on these themes
but they were smaller, independent movies,
playing mostly to arthouse movie audiences.
We admired those movies very much,
but somewhere the challenge came to make the movie
that you could show at the mall cinema on a Saturday night.
Why don't we try to reach the biggest audience possible?
(melancholic music)
- Tom Hanks at that point
was certainly the biggest movie star in the world,
and for the tens of millions of people who saw that movie,
even though it was a fictional story,
it helped people understand.
And Tom Hanks won the best actor Oscar for Philadelphia.
- I know that my work and this case is magnified by the fact
that the streets of heaven are too crowded with angels.
As the calendar continues to make our world
a lesser and lonelier place,
grace, it seems springs from many sources.
It is a sense of goodwill, of mercy, of beauty.
I'm inspired once again by your Commitment to Life.
It is part and parcel to AIDS Project Los Angeles.
- We had outgrown our building
and there really was only one of the size we needed.
It was a record studio on Vine, two blocks south of Sunset.
It was perfect for us,
but we didn't have the money for a building.
So I called up Mr. Geffen and after a few pleasantries,
he said, "All right, what do you want?"
I said, "A million dollars,
I need a building, it's a down payment."
He gave it to me and we got the building.
(gentle music)
- When APLA bought that building in the early '90s,
almost everybody who got AIDS died.
So those first few years were really, really, really bleak
and we had no effective treatment.
So what was needed in that era
is this place where they can be where they could come
and if they wanted to hang out all day,
a place of community,
a place where they could get all the services they need
in our community service center, and that was the model.
- They bought that huge building to be a one-stop shop
for all sorts of AIDs services, and it was,
but then there became a tension
between the one-stop shop idea and then the proximity idea.
- People of color were coming to us
from neighborhoods all over Los Angeles County.
It wasn't convenient for them.
And so there were criticisms lodged at APLA.
(group chattering)
What's the role of organizations
that were founded by white folks,
but now are organizations
that serve a majority of people of color?
- At that time, we were on different pages.
The overall purpose of all of this
is is to make this black community, the black gay community,
a very viable one that will be recognized
all over the world for sticking together
to love one another and being present.
Thank you very much.
God bless you.
The Minority AIDS Project had the same purpose as APLA,
but our little agency didn't have the money and the prestige
that APLA had.
And so we had to go to the ancestors sometimes
to pull it together.
Like doing a barbecue
instead of a Commitment to Life. (laughs)
Start having the Divas Simply Singing with Sheryl Ralph.
It was a show featuring the divas of the time,
so we were just winging it and adding our flavor to it.
(group cheering)
- Jewel was a black lesbian woman with a voice.
She was running a hot club in town.
She had access to an audience,
and our issue was trying to get to certain audiences.
- I was asked to be on the board of directors
by Stephen Bennett.
He called me and he said,
"Nobody else has what you have to bring to the table."
"We gotta talk."
And I told him I was not gonna be the token.
That I would do it as long as it
would bring some resources to the minority communities.
So I went to the board and the benefit for me
was to be on that board
and to see how things operated from the inside out.
- When Jewel joined the APLA board,
she made a impact eventually leading
to bringing more people of color on the board
and diversifying the staff at all levels.
- [Reporter] AIDS Project Los Angeles
has a new executive director.
- Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not naive.
I do clearly understand that there are tensions.
Folks come to the table with whatever they have
and we try to share it.
If you've got bread and I got peanut butter,
we got a sandwich.
- And over time it was repositioning the organization
vis-a-vis what was really happening in the community.
Quite honestly, one of the challenges was the gay money.
(group chattering)
Gay money came from white gay men.
And so we had to make sure that our donors understood
what we were doing and why.
It wasn't to save just your boyfriend or you,
it was to save others.
- The money you have raised tonight is $3,914,000.
- The dichotomy that existed at APLA at the time
was that many of the supporters
were these unimaginably uber rich folks.
And so it was interesting to spend time
in South Central Los Angeles in the daytime
and then go to an event at David Geffen's house.
- Oh yeah, (laughs)
I was on the board with someone those.
They were big time, big business,
and they had influence in politics.
One time, two of the board members
helicoptered in for lunch.
I said, okay.
You know, it makes you feel a little different,
but I got along with everybody.
(upbeat music) (group cheering)
- [Announcer] He's in the back court,
the pass great game, four on four,
Magic all the way, throws it up, down it goes, he's scores!
- Magic Johnson NBA player extraordinaire.
(group cheering)
He was an amazing athlete
and I grew up as a kid watching him play.
I remember the press conference.
- First of all, let me say good, good after late afternoon.
Because of the HIV virus that I have attained,
I will have to retire from the Lakers today.
- Magic, he was this iconic man
who my family absolutely loved and adored,
and so it, it was almost like a family member.
(cameras snapping)
- You know, sometimes you're a little naive about it
and you think it could never happen to you,
and it has happened,
but I'm gonna deal with it and my life will go on.
- I do think it built an awareness definitely.
There was much more conversations amongst youth, for sure.
* Let's talk about sex, baby *
* Let's talk about you and me *
* Let's talk about all the good things *
* And the bad things that may be *
* Yo, let's talk about AIDS *
* To the uninformed *
* You think you can't get it *
* Well, you're dead wrong *
Then TLC came in
and Left Eye had the condom in her glasses.
- Condoms represent safe sex.
Protection is a priority, so we stand by strongly.
- [Traci] And so it became a little more like,
let's talk about it.
Let's test.
Let's build some awareness in the community.
- I'm really scared about AIDS.
- God, I can't believe we're talking about this.
- I think these people need a little education
about the HIV virus.
- This AIDS business is serious and it's not going away.
- I don't know a whole lot about AIDS,
but I wanna introduce you to a couple of guys who do.
(static hissing)
- People saw it, they heard it,
whether they did something about it was different.
I remember in my generation it was more like a threat.
Like you better wrap it up.
You saw what happened to Eazy.
- Rap Singer Eazy-E has lost his battle
with AIDS just 10 days
after revealing that he had the disease.
(melancholic music)
- Eazy, he knew his status three months before he passed.
Imagine what would've happened to a Eazy E
had he had education, knowledge, and testing.
He would've probably lived longer.
He would've been able to help people understand more,
but we don't know.
Part of it is the shame, stigma, and silence.
It's something that we are still grappling with,
and it's something that if we don't grapple with it,
it's gonna hurt us in the end.
(dramatic music)
- You have very generous in coming out tonight,
but I'm gonna ask for one more favor
from each and every one of you.
I want you to do it for APLA,
and for yourselves, and for your country.
I want you to make sure that you're registered to vote
and I want you to vote.
(group clapping)
If we can elect leaders who care more about other people
than they do about themselves, we can beat this disease.
(group clapping)
- [Group] George Bush, you can't hide!
We charge you with genocide!
George Bush- - Mr. President, yesterday,
10s of thousands of people paraded past the White House
to demonstrate their concern about the disease AIDS.
- I am very much concerned about AIDS.
We've got to care.
We've got to continue everything we can,
and all of us are in this fight together.
All of us care.
Do not go to the extreme.
- [Group] 150,000 dead, where was George?
- I don't think President Bush
is doing anything about AIDS either.
I'm not even sure he knows how to spell AIDS.
- Most of us have preferred to believe AIDS
is not our problem, but the truth is,
it is everybody's problem.
We don't have a person to waste in our country,
and viruses do not discriminate.
I know how it hurts.
I've got friends who died of AIDS,
and that's why I'm running for president
to do something about it.
(group chattering)
I feel your pain.
- When Clinton became president things started to change.
There was more talk in government about the issues.
- Every person who's living with AIDS
deserves not only our compassion but our respect.
- Bill Clinton said something which he probably didn't mean,
but it didn't matter, we needed to hear it.
He said, "If I had a magic wand and I could get rid of AIDS,
I would give all this up."
We had been waiting for a president
to say something like that to us for years.
- We are part of the American family.
We are not a special interest group.
We are men and women.
We are old and young.
We are gay and straight, we are Americans,
and we want an end to this epidemic.
- Yeah, I think your time will be soon.
What do you think?
- I hope.
- You hope so. - He hopes.
- I think your hope is gonna be realized real soon.
(birds chirping)
- HIV came into our understanding in the early '80s
and from the early '80s to 1995,
we did not have effective treatments.
All we had was hope.
(gentle music)
- I don't feel like I'm dying.
If anybody stands a chance of surviving this thing,
I think I do.
Maybe I'm overly optimistic,
but I would much rather be hopeful
in the face of hopelessness
and continue to believe in my life today.
- The next big breakthrough on drugs
came through in 1995 with the protease inhibitors.
Dr. Ho, who became Time Magazine Man of the Year,
and others showed that using three drugs together
from the get-go, the viral load went to undetectable.
- It has been a long, tiring, and often uphill struggle,
but I have to tell you, we have made progress.
- I was at the International Conference on AIDS in Vancouver
that summer where it was announced
that they had found that the cocktail treatment,
the combination of protease inhibitors and antiretrovirals
were actually helping people live.
- I look upon this as another step
in the direction of trying
to completely suppress or get rid of the virus.
- It was just the most amazing thing,
and I wept for joy that it was going to change now.
- In 1996, I got very sick
and my doctors thought that I was not going to survive.
I was an intensive care with less than 24 hours to live.
Protease inhibitors had been discovered,
but they weren't widely distributed.
All the calls went out and I was able to get my meds.
I nearly died,
but I was on the new cocktails and I was getting better,
and in fact, I was feeling better than I had ever felt
at any time in the previous 10 years probably.
- One of the great good news stories
in the last couple of years has been the dramatic reduction
in AIDS related deaths.
Thanks to a new generation of drugs,
AIDS deaths dropped by nearly half last year.
- How you feeling?
- Oh, much better today.
- For the vast majority of people,
as we put them on these drugs, their health got better
pretty quickly and pretty dramatically.
And when you started seeing the death rates drop
in '96, and '97, and '98, the world changed on us.
- The drug regimens themselves are very complicated.
These are the medications I take in an average day,
nine of these a day three with meals,
one of these twice a day,
one of these once a day,
and you can't take a drug holiday from this routine.
If you stop even a few times
over the course of a couple of days,
the drugs might lose their effectiveness.
And then you're back to square one.
- People would have their pill carrier with a timer,
and you'd go to dinner with people
and the buzzer would go off,
and it was time for them to take all of these pills.
- When I thought I was dying,
I didn't have to worry about the future.
And so when suddenly you're gonna live,
what do I do now that my credit card is maxed out
and I don't have a job to pay it off with?
And so there was a lot of, oh boy,
I'm gonna live as well as, oh God, I'm gonna live.
- We also didn't know if these treatments
were gonna last forever,
so we couldn't dismantle what we had built,
but we eliminated our buddy program.
It wasn't needed anymore.
We changed our Necessities of Life program.
Our goal is to get you in and out of an APLA NLP site
in 30 minutes or less.
We wanted them to get on with their lives.
(gentle upbeat music)
- As this disease turns another corner
from life killing to life sustaining,
tonight, maybe this last night
that we do Commitment to Life.
- This evening is dedicated to the millions of beings
who we have lost.
And to those millions who continue
to demonstrate awe inspiring courage
in their valiant struggles to survive,
we cannot let them down.
We will not let them down.
(group cheering)
From the bottom of my heart,
I thank you tonight for your commitment to life.
- [Barack] Good morning, everybody.
- Good morning.
- It has been nearly three decades
since this virus first became known,
but for years we refused to recognize it for what it was.
It was coined a gay disease.
A number of events have broadened our understanding
of this cruel illness.
One of them came in 1984 when a 13-year-old boy
from central Indiana contracted HIV/AIDS from a transfusion.
- I became known as the AIDS boy.
- It would've been easy for Ryan and his family
to stay quiet and to fight the illness in private.
But what Ryan showed was the same courage and strength
that so many HIV positive activists
have shown over the years.
And because he did in 1990, the year Ryan passed away,
Congress came together and introduced
the Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act,
the CARE Act, which was later named after Ryan.
And over the past 19 years,
this legislation has evolved from an emergency response
into a comprehensive national program
for the care and support of Americans living with HIV/AIDS.
It's often the only option
for the uninsured and the underinsured,
and it provides life-saving medical services
to more than half a million Americans every year
in every corner of the country.
But let me be clear,
this is a battle that's far from over
and it's a battle that all of us
need to do our part to join.
What we can do is keep fighting each and every day
until we eliminate this disease from the face of the earth.
So with that, let me sign this bill.
(group clapping)
- In 2010 and with Obamacare,
Medicaid was expanded from a program
that served primarily women and children
to a program that served everyone
as long as your income was low enough.
So that meant for AIDS Project Los Angeles,
we realized that we could expand into healthcare
and begin by enrolling many of our clients
into our own services.
(upbeat music) (group cheering)
- And so in 2016, APLA Health was born.
It's a federally qualified healthcare center
with locations across Los Angeles.
Our mission is to provide care
to underserved LGBTQ populations
and to people living with HIV.
But we serve patients with all diagnoses.
Of course, there are cure strategies in the works,
and there're interesting case studies of people
who have been cured of HIV.
- I'm cured of HIV.
I had had HIV, but I don't anymore.
(machine whirring)
- However, the idea of having medicines
that will be globally available
to cure people who have HIV is a bit of a pipe dream.
(brooding music)
Fortunately, this evolution of therapy
has been fine tuned to be compact.
We have single pill regimens
and of course people with HIV would rather live without it.
But the point is that they can live well with it.
- I'm a long-term survivor.
I am undetectable and I surpass the life expectancy
of a trans woman.
Because of the treatment, I had the opportunity
to leave the world of drugs behind
and dedicate myself to support those communities
who have been left behind.
And so I felt that I had a purpose.
- The goal of putting somebody on medications
is to reduce the amount of virus in a CC of blood
to an undetectable level,
which then allows the immune system to recover.
As we know now, if you have an undetectable viral load,
the likelihood of transmitting to somebody else
is as close to zero as possible.
How far have we come,
and what a great testament to the people that died,
that we live our lives as fully as we possibly can.
It's a great blessing.
But I really want to make sure that we don't forget
that the treatments we have today
came on the backs of the lives
of 10s of thousands of people before them.
- The core of the embracing of marriage equality,
it was really a legacy of losing your partner
in life to AIDS.
And we all knew that there's no way
we're ever gonna be equal
if our relationships are not seen as equal.
- In one of the most momentous civil rights decisions
in its history, the Supreme Court of the United States
found that gay and lesbian Americans
have a constitutional right to marry.
- I believe that marriage equality is the phoenix
that grew from the ashes of HIV.
There's no question about it.
- There are a lot of things
that as a result of the AIDS pandemic,
that I am grateful that they exist today.
But I'm not sure there's one of them that I wouldn't trade
for getting all my friends back.
(melancholic music) (group vocalizing)
Chris died in November of 1989.
That was over 30 years ago now.
Wow.
The way I dealt with the worst days of the pandemic
when Chris was actually dying
was to decide that I had to focus
on the next thing that needed to be done
and that I would get back to this grief later.
And I am discovering that that grief
actually doesn't go away,
and that there is always a day of reckoning.
And I think for a lot of us over the last few years,
that day of reckoning has started to happen.
(leaves rustling)
- My name is Ty Gaffney-Smith.
I am a outreach coordinator here at APLA Health.
I work in our Baldwin Hills location
in the prevention department.
(door clicks)
Steven.
I love talking to people about their HIV status,
their STD status, their knowledge about PrEP and PEP.
(upbeat music) (graphic whooshing)
These are the tools that we have now.
PrEP, P-R-E is pre so beforehand.
Say you're going out tonight
and you know you might engage in some risky activity.
You might get laid.
You want to take your PrEP
and make sure that you are on your PrEP continuously
to protect you from getting an HIV diagnosis.
What happens if I, you know,
slip up and have sex without a condom?
That's where PEP comes in.
This is a tool for us to make sure
that we are protecting ourselves
from anything that could possibly happen.
(camera snapping)
- I noticed the ad that if you have been undetectable,
it's safe to have sex, unprotected sex.
That blew my mind when I heard the first time,
just thinking where we came from to where we're at.
- In this era of PrEP,
it changed so much that nobody remembers.
Folks that take PrEP, they take it to prevent a disease,
but they don't realize what is actually preventing.
They weren't around during this time
so they can't picture AIDS.
It's lost somewhere.
And then you have folks that do remember.
I still cry. (chuckles)
I still cry because I remember.
(slow tempo piano music)
- Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles
are the angels of our community
because we sang at so many funerals and memorial services
for people throughout the epidemic.
* There is a light *
* In the darkness *
Probably 150 of this chorus died of AIDS
in the worst of the AIDS years.
* There's a light *
* Burning bright *
* Showing me the way *
* But I know where I've been *
(group cheering)
- [Reporter] Over 30,000 people turned out today
to walk the six miles through Los Angeles.
The first AIDS walk in the world
started here in Los Angeles in 1985.
The fight for a cure is more urgent than ever.
(woman vocalizing)
- For me, it starts with honoring the people who died.
* A light *
I won't ever quit grieving that.
I learned lessons that have changed my life
and been a blessing.
* There's a road we've been travellin' *
* Lost so many on the way *
* But the riches will be plenty *
* Worth the price *
- In the past four decades an estimated 36 million people
have died of AIDS related illness.
And today, as we look back in the past 40 years,
we once more raised two story tall red ribbon
on North Portico, the White House
to remember how far we've come.
We're gathered today with hope in our hearts
and for the future that's within our grasp
as we recommit ourselves to finishing the fight
to end the HIV epidemic
and support all people living with HIV.
* I've been *
- I'm so grateful to be alive
and to have survived all of that.
And you know, none of us have any guarantees
about being here tomorrow.
All any of us have is right now,
and in this moment, I feel alive.
* There's a road *
* We must travel, we must travel *
- The generation that lived through it never gave up.
* We must make *
This fight has to continue
and there's so much more work to be done.
I wanna be a part of that.
We still want to bring an end to this
and I don't want that fight to die.
* And the chances we take *
- This is our time!
This is our deciding moment!
Together, we are greater than AIDS!
* Struggle *
- There's still people that are suffering with AIDS
and still those that are contracting AIDS,
but I think we're as close as we've ever been.
* Lift us up *
I would love for it to happen in our lifetime.
* To sit still would be a sin *
All they have to do is wait, survive, stay in the moment.
And as Martin Luther King said,
"I might not be here to witness it,
but I kind of feel that maybe,
maybe we'll get to the mountaintop"
* Where I've been *
* Know where I've been *
* I'll give thanks to my God *
* 'Cause I know where I've been *
(gentle upbeat music)
(fast tempo upbeat music)
(gentle music)
(upbeat music)
(gentle music)
(gentle dramatic music)