"Longtime Companion" (1989)

 (This is the first in a 2-part review of narrative films about the social and political effects of AIDS. I look at how feelings of uncertainty and desperation in the midst of today’s global pandemic recall the fear and loss of that grim period in the 1980s, especially for the gay community.)

“Do you remember when the world was 

Just like a carnival opening up?” --Zane Campbell, “Post Mortem Bar”

“Longtime Companion” is a gripping, personal story about the beginning of the AIDS crisis, and the physical and emotional toll it takes on a group of gay men and their friends during the 1980s.  The film, set on Fire Island and Manhattan, adroitly introduces us to its large, interconnected cast of young professionals, lovers, neighbors, and friends.  It recreates the mood and atmosphere of that wonderful moment when the gay community felt a liberating sense of pride and freedom, to explore their sexuality and their world more openly, just before tragedy struck. 

Willy (Campbell Scott), a shy newcomer and athletic trainer, is the audience’s surrogate. He revels in beachside parties with his fun-loving best friend John (Dermot Mulroney). Willy begins a tentative but lasting relationship with the gentle and bearded attorney, “Fuzzy” (Stephen Caffrey).  

Fuzzy’s close friend Lisa (Mary-Louise Parker) lives next door to an attractive gay couple: Howard (Patrick Cassidy), Fuzzy’s client, an up-and-coming actor on a daytime soap-opera; and Howard’s partner Paul (John Dossett), a business executive.   

David (Bruce Davison), the gregarious yet comforting big-brother figure to them all, is a wealthy, down-to-earth owner of the beach house where Willy and John spend the summer.  Sean (Mark Lamos), Paul’s lover, is a screenwriter who is responsible for the scripts on the soap opera in which Howard appears.

The film is structured in a series vignettes spanning nine years, from 1981 to 1989.   

As the film opens on July 3, 1981, the holiday atmosphere is interrupted by characters reading and reacting to a fateful New York Times article headlined: “Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals”:

Doctors in New York and California have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer. Eight of the victims died less than 24 months after the diagnosis was made…… Doctors investigating the outbreak believe that many cases have gone undetected because of the rarity of the condition and the difficulty even dermatologists may have in diagnosing it.  In a letter alerting other physicians to the problem, Dr. Alvin E. Friedman-Kien of New York University Medical Center, one of the investigators, described the appearance of the outbreak as ''rather devastating.''…

The ominous article produces familiar reactions.  Some are dismissive, thinking it’s a fluke.  Others make light of it, jokingly pointing at imaginary purple spots on their friends’ bodies.  Some are mildly alarmed, wondering if they might have been exposed by a casual pickup in a bar, or by the use of amyl nitrate (poppers).  

No one is overly concerned.  Life is great, it’s a holiday weekend, and everyone feels carefree among friends and potential new lovers.

As each vignette fades to black, and the story follows subsequent years, these characters face illness, loss of livelihood, and loss of friends, moving through various stages of denial, compassion, and fear.

  

Willy’s friend John contracts pneumonia, and is thought to have a compromised immune system; he winds up on a respirator, alone and terrified.  Sean worries about a spot on his neck and night sweats; David rationalizes it all, hiding his fear of losing his partner: “You have always had that mole; you’re sweating because it’s hot and we have no air-conditioning; I haven’t had sex since our last trip, so it’s beyond the incubation period.” 

Early in the film, another friend, Michael (Michael Schoeffling), believes that AIDS is a function of negative thinking, while Lisa reminds him that it’s a virus that doesn’t consider attitude. Later, some of the characters volunteer for Gay Men’s Health Crisis, or deliver meals to the sick, or use their diagnosis to try to encourage others.

We care about these people, drawn into the inevitable pain of their stories.  The group gets smaller each year, and by July 1989, the final segment, only three remain.  They walk the beach, and speculate what might happen if there’s a cure.  “It will be like the end of World War II”, one of them predicts.  They fantasize a glorious reunion on the beach, embracing all of those who have died since the virus was first discovered.

This scene, scored to Zane Campbell’s plaintive eulogy, “Post Mortem Bar”, is both shattering and healing.  In retrospect, in the face of the current health crisis, it hits the perfect emotional notes,  mourning a life that seems to have been taken away  from us, while looking forward with some hope for a treatment in the near future. 

“Longtime Companion” is a film of depth that raises other  issues that were important to the emerging gay community.  

Sean writes a storyline for Howard in which his character shares the first gay kiss on daytime TV.  Howard worries that he will be typecast in gay roles and lose his career as a mainstream actor (a fear that is still prevalent in show business).  

The Reagan Administration is called out for its complacency, and for not even mentioning the word AIDS, even as thousands are dying.  

Gay men who finally found the courage to come out of the closet now confront a more insidious fear about entering same-sex relationships, or even touching one another.

As a twenty-something new to Phoenix in 1984, I was painfully ignorant of AIDS, until I went to a plasma center to earn a little extra cash. I was shown a placard that warned that anyone who was a "practicing homosexual" was not allowed to give their plasma. 

I had not put myself at risk. But soon I heard more and more stories about the disease, and conflicting accounts about what it was, and how it was transmitted.  Symptoms like rapid weight loss, rare skin cancers, and severe night sweats, worried me.  

The disease seemed to be infecting gay men, but it was unclear exactly how. I was in the process of coming out, and yet I was afraid of physical contact with anyone.  Any time I got a blemish on my skin, or lost a pound, or woke up in a typical Arizona summer sweat, I worried about my mortality. I ate to gain weight, a silly and unhealthy way to prove that I was not sick. There was no testing available, no cure, and no one was recovering.  

This movie brought back that whole scary time.  Living through the uncertainty of the coronavirus elicits the same feelings of fear that many of us felt having lived through the early days of the AIDS crisis. 

(Even now, the slightest dryness in my throat, or a single cough from a person nearby, can create suspicion. Am I sick? Is that person carrying the coronavirus? Was I exposed?  We make ourselves sick with worry, and there is little good information to reassure us.)

In portraying the confusion and shortcoming of a healthcare industry dealing with an unfamiliar and rapidly-growing epidemic, “Longtime Companion” has become chillingly familiar.  Doctors struggle to treat infections and illnesses that until then had been rare to nonexistent.  A patient (Robert Joy), frustrated by lack of attention, and scant information about his condition, rips his IV from his arm, bleeding with potential contagion.  Willy reacts in anger after visiting his best friend in the hospital, noting the lack of beds, and even the unavailability of blankets in the Emergency Room. These scenes used to make me feel sadness and disbelief; now they are infuriating. How little we have learned in the last thirty years.

The film also carries a unique perspective for those who have survived an epidemic like AIDS.  It is interesting to see how a lack of information resulted in panic and irrational application of preventative measures.  Before anyone knew about the sexual transmission of AIDS, visitors and hospital workers wore masks and hazmat suits.  Willy scrubs his hands and face desperately after kissing a sick friend on the neck and touching his arm.   After the mode of transmission is determined to be through sexual contact, a couple lie in bed together, terrified to touch one another: they sadly talk about being able to make love again, someday, "after we die".

In a fulm of average length, we are overwhelmed with emotions, incidents, and characters.  Each actor gives authenticity and life to his/her character.  Each vignette builds suspense and emotional release.  

Best of all is the famous “Let go” monologue  performed by Bruce Davison.  Trying to give final encouragement to a suffering partner, Davison avoids the histrionics that the scene might reasonably allow.  Instead, his pain is all the more heartbreaking for being held in check. 

Davison earned the film’s only Oscar nomination, as Best Supporting Actor.  In my estimation, the film deserved much more recognition, for all of its performances, for its screenplay by Craig Lucas, and for the superb direction by Norman Renee, who juggled a large cast and an array of complex plot developments into a smooth and compelling piece of cinema.  Norman Renee himself died of AIDS in 1996.   

"Longtime Companion" is a great film that has regrettably become almost impossible to find. If you do find it available, do anything you can to see it.

One thing has changed for the better since the era depicted in the film:  Before gay relationships were recognized as legitimate, and before same-sex marriage was even considered possible, obituaries for those who had died of AIDS referred to the surviving life-partner as a "longtime companion". 

That term is now, thankfully, obsolete.