Longtime Companion **** (Campbell Scott, Dermot Mulroney, Bruce Davison, Stephen Caffrey) – Classic Movie Review 1531

Director Norman René’s heart-rending 1990 drama is a trailblazer as the first mainstream feature to tell the story of how the AIDS epidemic affected America’s gay community in the 80s.

It centres on a small circle of gay friends – actors, writers, lawyers – gradually devastated and transformed by the disease that is first mentioned in the New York Times in 1981.

Moving between Manhattan and Fire Island, the film chronicles the lives of the friends, taking them from their it-couldn’t-happen-to-me mentality of the emergence of the disease in the early 80s to the later terrifying all-invasive human destruction of the AIDS epidemic.

Craig Lucas writes a graceful, touching people-movie, stronger on unforgettable characters, incisive and telling dialogue and memorable, moving moments than story, just as it should be.

It’s gracefully and movingly performed by a stalwart ensemble cast headed by Stephen Caffrey (as Fuzzy), Patrick Cassidy, Bruce Davison, Brian Cousins, Campbell Scott, Mary-Louise Parker, Robert Joy and Dermot Mulroney. The standout performances in the cast come from Mulroney, Scott and especially Davison, who won a Golden Globe and was Oscar nominated as Best Supporting Actor.

Director Norman René died of AIDS on 24 May 1996 in New York City, aged 45. Screenwriter Craig Lucas was his regular collaborator from 1979.

The title refers to the refusal of the New York Times and other newspapers to acknowledge gay lovers’ relationships in their obituary section at the time, referring to survivors only as ‘longtime companions’ of the deceased.

The cast members reunited in 1995 in Los Angeles to be presented with the Video Industry AIDS Action Committee’s Longtime Companion Award, honouring AIDS awareness, education and care.

The poster and DVD cover showing the guys walking on the beach has been altered from the movie scene where Fuzzy is wearing an ACT-UP T-shirt showing two sailors kissing and saying read ‘Read My Lips’.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1531

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