HBO’s 2014 film adaptation of The Normal Heart—written by activist Larry Kramer based off his play of the same name and directed by mega-producer Ryan Murphy—is a blistering attack on the lack of action by the government in the early days of the AIDS crisis. In it, Ned Weeks (Mark Ruffalo) fights to stop the rapidly escalating HIV/AIDS epidemic from killing every gay man in its wake in the early 1980s.
Click through for 25 facts you may not know about the award-winning HBO film.
Stan H
Larry Kramer is an icon. We have so many things that Larry Kramer fought for. Before Elton John there was Larry. Before “Ellen” we had Larry. You don’t have to know someone in order to love them. I loved him. I also love Harvey Fierstein. Icons of not just art but men who lived their life their way. Because of men like them I can be “Out and Proud”.
inbama
Founder of Gay Mens Health Crisis and Act Up, he was a true hero who was also unafraid to say tell our own community that we could help to stop AIDS by cleaning up our act.
PoetDaddy
Knowing Larry Kramer was one of the highlights of my life.
SparkyMICH
It’s a great film, but the landmark AND groundbreaking film about AIDS was Longtime Companion (1989).
Man About Town
During the time Barbra was involved, she was definitely going to play Emma, and I can easily see her in that climactic scene where she screams at the board “You want data? Here’s your f___ing data!” while throwing reams of paper at them.
KissBananaPeels
White gay men have NEVER told the story and/or included the lives of Black and Hispanic gay men who were dying of AIDS…it is VERY telling and it is just one example of the racism in the LGBT community…
MidCenturyQueen
So true. Most of the early AIDS films, Philadelphia, Longtime Companion, Early Frost – left us out in the margins. Most of LGBTQ history is told through that same lens. It is up to us to tell those stories now.
KissBananaPeels
Also it was always a certain affluent white gay man in these stories…
Many people do not know that part of the story that Philadelphia the movie was based on a Black gay man…Clarence Cain…
Two similar discrimination cases also inspired the film: Geoffrey Bowers, whose New York law firmed fired him when they found out he had AIDS, and Clarence B. Cain, whose Philadelphia law firm fired him when they discovered his illness. In both cases the men won, but Bowers died in 1987—six years before he’d be awarded $500,000 in damages. Because Demme and Nyswaner loosely based the film on Bowers’s life without compensating him, Bowers’s family sued the filmmakers. In 1996 the case settled in Bowers’s favor.
DBMC
Barbra Streisand is notoriously slow to start projects. She held the rights for a long time saying she intended to make the movie, but because of that it kept anyone else from making it as well. She has had several announced projects that never made it before the cameras. I can understand why Larry Kramer was frustrated.