GLR May-June 2024

Don’t go any further. I’m sure it’s very good. We’re not inter ested,’ and hung up the phone.” Despite repeatedly getting a similar response, Law and Lucas persevered. So did a core group of creators, including producer Stan Wlodkowski, who also worked on Blue Window , and director Norman René. (Wlodkowski would go on to pro duce films such as American Beauty ; Eat, Pray, Love ; The Singing Detective ; Slums of Beverly Hills ; and the recent TV series Expats . René would succumb to AIDS in 1996.) Helping to get the film off the ground at its earliest stages was Alec Bald win, whose film career was taking off following hit roles in Married to the Mob , Beetlejuice and Working Girl . Baldwin agreed to play one of the main roles in Longtime Companion , but was then offered one of the most sought-after roles in Hol lywood: that of Jack Ryan in a major studio film based on the best-seller The Hunt for Red October . With Baldwin out of the picture, the search was on for other actors to commit. But no other major, or even medium-level, box office name signed on. “Let us know when you get Tom Hanks, then we’ll talk,” said one Hollywood exec to Wlod kowski. (In 1993, Hanks would play a gay man with AIDS in the mainstream film Philadelphia —and win an Oscar.) Said Wlodkowski at the time: “The issue of AIDS made it harder be cause so many characters do get sick and are portrayed as sick. I remember hearing a story about [actor] John Glover who was in An Early Frost . He played a person with an advanced case of AIDS so convincingly that his agent told me that when she sub mits John’s name [for roles], she is still asked if he’s sick or not. It’s just a movie !” Eventually cast in Longtime Companion was a group of re spected but lesser-known actors, predominantly straight ones: Bruce Davison, Dermot Mulroney, Mary-Louise Parker, Camp bell Scott, Patrick Cassidy, John Dossett, and Stephen Caffrey. Mark Lamos, who was an actor and artistic director of the Tony Award-winning Hartford Stage at the time, was cast in his first film role. He was the only “out” actor in the ensemble cast. There were also challenges in filming. During the shooting on Fire Island in May 1989, “there were residents there who demonstrated and tried to disrupt the scenes with noisemakers and stuff,” reported Lamos. “They acted like they didn’t want people to know that there were gay people on Fire Island and that gay people who lived there were getting sick. It wasn’t a huge group but enough to make us very worried, because if Fire Island was going to be against us then we were going to be in real trouble.” No major stars meant no up-front money from either major Hollywood studios or, more disappointingly, smaller independ ent distributors such as Miramax, New Line, or Orion Classics. Without that advanced financial backing, the project’s original budget was halved, from a modest $3 million to a shoestring budget of $1.5 million. American Playhouse, which was origi nally committed to finance only a portion of the film, took on the entire financial responsibility in an unprecedented move, thanks to Law. (There were some other angels along the way. Panavision waived a $50,000 camera rental fee. Irving Young of DuArt Film Labs donated $40,000 worth of film processing. The Screen Actors Guild helped with extras. Actors worked with far less than they would have otherwise made.) But even when the film was finished in the fall of 1989, May–June 2024

It’s closing time for an alarming number of gay bars in cities around the globe— but it’s definitely not the last dance “An accessible, absorbing look into an evolving form of queer culture, written by a brilliant sociologist.” — Library Journal , starred review

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