Visible: Out on Television (2020) s01e03 Episode Script

1
I sat with a young man that I was dating.
He was about 24 or 25.
And we were watching The Normal Heart.
Ryan Murphy did this sort of motif
where he would smash-cut
to men carrying their lovers,
running with their lovers
through the streets.
We are all walking time bombs,
waiting for whatever it is to set us off.
If this article doesn't scare
the shit out of you,
gay men may have no future here on Earth.
Our continued existence depends
on just how angry we can get.
This very young man turned to me
and was like, "Well,
isn't that a little over the top?"
Y'all don't know.
Y'all don't know.
This is what it looked like.
Wasting until you're gone.
Sometimes a year, sometimes a week.
People were dropping dead in the streets.
Jesus!
Hey, get the fuck out of the street!
Baby!
Oh, my God!
Help!
We forget. Our attention span is so short.
We lived through a plague, a real one.
A real plague.
Like the bubonic plague
that we talked about
when we were in school, in history class,
that's gonna be
in the history books like that.
You don't get to erase us.
That will never happen again.
In 1981, a mysterious disease
hit the United States.
Buried on page 20 of The New York Times,
an article described a rare cancer
found in homosexual men.
It would be months before television's
major nightly news programs
picked up the story.
The early coverage of AIDS
was really frightening.
I remember watching the news
and listening to them
talk about this gay cancer,
and how it was
affecting gay men in major cities.
Scientists at the national Centers
for Disease Control in Atlanta today
released the results of a study
which shows that the lifestyle
of some male homosexuals
has triggered an epidemic
of a rare form of cancer.
One of the things I have done
in my job recently,
is that I've gone back and looked
at some of the news archive footage
of coverage of the early AIDS epidemic.
And news organizations
had a decision to make:
how much of this they were going to show.
The images we have found
are brutal and heartbreaking.
But if America is to come to terms
with this killer, they must be shown.
No matter how many gay men died of AIDS,
even when the numbers got into
the hundreds and then the thousands,
it was still seen as an impersonal loss.
All this media attention and sympathy
for these AIDS victims
just really bothers me.
Let's call a spade a spade.
AIDS is a venereal disease
and the vast majority of its victims,
I think they're morally deficient.
We may not have a cure for AIDS,
but we do know how to prevent it.
There is no questioning
that homophobia grew tremendously,
because people were scared.
There was such a hysteria about AIDS.
People thought, "Well, this is something
that only affected gay people,
and if it's killing gay people
what is the big deal?"
And so they didn't care.
Little did they know
it wasn't just a gay disease,
and the impact it would have,
not only on America, but on the world.
The very first television movie
about AIDS
was in 1985, An Early Frost.
I remember watching An Early Frost
with my mom, in silence,
thinking, "Oh, she's gonna think
this is gonna happen to me."
I just remember how beautiful he was.
Aidan Quinn was this gorgeous man,
and those blue eyes
that looked right through you.
I'm sure you've heard of
acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
AIDS?
Are you telling me I have AIDS?
I remember getting the script
when I was 25
and just being blown away
by the emotional quality of it
and the content of it.
This was a time
before Rock Hudson came out
and was on the front page
of The New York Times.
And that happened actually
while we were shooting.
So the knowledge about AIDS
was very, very scant and minimal.
I wonder how many other people
will wanna shake my hand
when they find out what I've got.
We wrote the movie for Kansas.
It was for people who knew nothing
about AIDS, nothing about gay people,
because it was important that people
understood what was going on.
So, really what this is about
is that him coming home
and telling his family he has AIDS,
that he's sick.
But we did our research, and it turned out
that the majority of people who did this,
their families didn't know they were gay.
And that's why we included
the double whammy,
"I'm gay, and I have AIDS."
I have AIDS.
That's impossible. That's a
Who told you such a thing?
The doctors did. They did tests.
No, AIDS is that disease that's
I'm gay, Mom.
Dad.
No! No.
That scene was 31 years ago,
but it still comes back,
just thinking about it, to fight
for the respect the character deserved.
I know this is difficult for you.
And I know I should have told you
about myself sooner.
But I am not going to apologize
for what I am
because it's taken me too long
to accept it.
An Early Frost was acclaimed by critics.
It won four Emmy awards
and beat Monday Night Football
in television ratings,
capturing a third of America's viewing
audience on the night that it aired.
The most interesting fact
is that the movie did not have
one single advertiser.
- No one would advertise on our movie.
- There was one advertiser.
There was only one,
and it was for the Bible.
I like a Bible I can understand,
and for me The Book is the best.
For a truly traditional Christmas,
go buy The Book.
While I was watching it,
I had this bad cold.
And I was coughing away
during the broadcast,
and my boyfriend nudges me
and he says, "You sound like he does."
And he pointed to Aidan Quinn,
who was suffering from PCP pneumonia.
Hey, are you okay?
So watching an actor
portray AIDS on-screen
is what got me to go to my doctor
for this cough I had.
And that's how I found out.
I had to do the same thing
two weeks later with my family.
I had to tell them
that I was HIV-positive,
had been diagnosed
with AIDS-related complex,
and, oh, by the way, I'm gay.
And ever since, I've called it
"An Early Frost double whammy."
You try not to think about it.
You just know that
your best friend has died.
You just know that a person
you had a love affair with
is in Lenox Hill Hospital with PCP,
which has an 80% fatality rate.
We have to get the information around.
It's very hard because there is
no gay network, unfortunately.
I had heard, by that point,
of Larry Kramer.
I should have heard about him
in '81, in '82,
when he was screaming back then.
But the press gave him
virtually no attention.
But on my way to work
on Wall Street one morning
this cute guy handed me a flyer
for a demonstration
that was happening about an hour later.
And it was ACT UP's first demonstration.
- What do we want?
- A cure!
- When do we want it?
- Now!
- What do we want?
- A cure!
- When do we want it?
- Now!
I was on the trading floor
inside JP Morgan,
and the traders and the sales force
were talking about AIDS.
And the head trader, my mentor
decided he was gonna just
shut down the conversation
and he said, "Well, if you ask me,
they all deserve to die
'cause they took it up the butt."
So I was like,
"I'm gonna find this group."
ACT UP, get involved!
Tomorrow morning at city hall!
ACT UP, get involved!
Tomorrow morning at city hall!
I got to the very next meeting
that Monday night
and never stopped going.
It became quickly my life, my church,
my future, my savior.
Using TV and the media,
from ACT UP's perspective,
was the whole game.
We were about to give television
a picture they had never seen before.
I'm willing to meet with three people
if the rest of you leave.
The activists purposely set up
the performative aspects of their protests
so that there would be people kissing,
there would be same sex couples kissing.
There would be ostentatious displays
of gay and lesbian identity.
It was the first time
that could be televised.
The community was rising up
and willing, for the first time,
to take to the streets
in significant numbers
week in and week out.
ACT UP, get involved!
It's time to march on city hall!
Putting our bodies on the line
The whole world is watching.
The whole world is watching.
Going in front of the TV cameras,
showing anger and determination
and that we weren't gonna take it anymore.
And I think, for Americans, this was
the coming out moment for the movement.
This was the time
they probably first saw us
because it was on national television.
Crossfire: Against All Odds.
What would you tell some kid
who might have homosexual tendencies
- if you want him to live a long life?
- "Use a condom."
And also to use a lubricant,
by the way, that has a
- This is Russian roulette.
- It is not Russian roulette.
It is Russian roulette
to not give people this information,
when human nature dictates that they're
gonna go out there and have sex
- You mean celibacy is impossible?
- It's just not gonna work.
People aren't gonna do it,
and lots of people are gonna die.
60 Minutes was one of
the biggest audiences you could get,
and we thought it was high time
that 60 Minutes
did a story about ACT UP.
You might not like the extremes
they go to, but they couldn't care less.
They're angry, and they're dying,
and there's no cure in sight.
I do not want to go gentle
into that good night.
I want to fight
till the last possible moment.
It gives me a reason for living.
Fight AIDS! ACT UP!
As ACT UP's message spread across America,
activists focused on the urgent need
for affordable, accessible treatment
for people living with AIDS.
Don't ever give up the fight!
Health care is a right!
The government was still not spending
much money on AIDS research
or resources for people with HIV.
So we had been focusing
much of our activism on the FDA,
trying to get it to speed up
the drug approval process.
And we finally decided to take it
to their front door.
AZT is not enough!
Give us all the other stuff!
We are simply asking the FDA
to do it quicker.
Silence equals death.
Silence equals death.
Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!
And it was a major splash.
We were all over the news that night.
The whole world is watching!
The visuals we presented that day
changed that dynamic forever.
It started to lower,
according to Gallup, instantly,
a dramatic decrease in the backlash
that had been occurring
during the AIDS crisis
on Americans' views of gays.
And within three years
of that demonstration,
the AIDS research budget at the NIH
under two Republican presidents tripled.
That's the power of TV.
The FDA's approval of AZT today
is one of the quickest approval actions
on record
and will make the drug available
to the 14,000 AIDS victims
who can be helped by it.
By 1990, there was over a billion dollars
a year in AIDS research.
Just three years, that's all it took.
And those tax dollars
are why I'm here today
and why millions of people
around the world are still alive.
Do you think that you'll live
to see a cure?
No. No.
You expect to die from this?
Seeing that pessimism
that I was plowing through in '92
is very bittersweet
because I know that that was
the reality for most of the people
who were fighting back then.
It was a minority of us that made it,
that made it through.
And there's a lot of survivor's guilt.
And a lot of ghosts that we see
when we look at any of that footage.
Most AIDS story lines have been about
the white gay experience
and very, very few about
the African-American experience.
Practically anything gay on TV,
it was white.
Certainly when you saw story lines
dealing with the AIDS crisis,
it was always from a white perspective.
And the AIDS epidemic was devastating
to the black gay community, specifically.
So I wanted to explore that
with Noah's Arc.
I need to come clean about something.
I've slept with a lot of men.
Wow.
So it's likely that I'm HIV-positive,
and if you don't want to go out with me,
I completely understand.
Ricky, it's okay.
- Are you sure?
- No.
I'm positive.
We dealt with a lot of these issues
on Noah's Arc.
We dealt with HIV and AIDS.
But before that, it wasn't until
Jeffrey Wright in Angels in America
that I actually saw a three-dimensional
gay person of color
in a show about people living with AIDS.
Whatever happens, baby,
I'll be here for you.
Je t'aime.
Je t'aime.
And the thing about that role
is that he is this incredibly articulate
and passionate man of color
who was willing to stand up for himself.
I want a white nurse.
My constitutional right.
Find the vein, or I'll sue you so bad
they'll have to repossess your teeth,
- you dim black motherfucker.
- Watch yourself.
You don't talk to me like that,
not when I'm holding something this sharp
or I might slip and stick it
in your heart, if you have a heart.
On Pose, I feel there's no way of talking
about 1980s New York City
and centering queer and trans people
without talking about this
very apparent, omnipresent bogeyman,
when the people that you love most
and surround yourselves with,
the people who've given you resources
and love and care,
are dropping day by day.
It takes sitting in what makes us
feel uncomfortable,
asking ourselves
why it makes us feel uncomfortable,
and then moving to the next place
of release.
Pose pushes that envelope
for people of color and trans people.
So what does it say?
Come on. Don't keep me in suspense.
Rip the Band-Aid off.
When Blanca went into the hospital
to find out her status
Blanca,
the test confirmed that you have HIV.
the world needed to see her perspective
of it and how she would handle it,
because no one ever shed a light
on a trans woman who had HIV.
- Thank you.
- For what?
It must be hard having to tell people
they're gonna die day after day.
These shows cracked the conversation open
in a way that we just have not had it yet.
It's powerful. It's so powerful.
GLAAD started in 1985
in the midst of the AIDS crisis.
We started protesting media journalism
and the coverage of the AIDS crisis,
'cause they were villainizing gay men,
and we quickly realized
that not only did we have to correct
the record in media and journalism,
we also realized that we were losing
so much ground
in Hollywood and in storytelling.
The industry's silence
is at best ironic and at worst tragic.
There weren't many willing people
to tell those stories.
And there weren't many actors
willing to play LGBTQ roles.
So our visibility took
a really enormous step backwards.
In the midst of the AIDS epidemic,
as LGBTQ characters
were disappearing on television
LGBTQ audiences began to look
for representation
in the most unlikely of television shows.
Golden Girls, I mean,
I live for The Golden Girls.
It is my nighttime ritual: go home,
unwind, watch The Golden Girls.
I've seen every episode
two or three times.
Oh, my, my, my, my, my, my!
Why do I feel the need to bathe?
The Golden Girls is an iconic show
about a family that someone
kind of created themselves.
And I think a lot of gay people,
especially my age and older,
who may have not always been embraced
by their families,
we really connect with those characters
who are kind of a chosen family.
And of course, they had gay story lines.
Blanche, we don't have to worry about what
the world thinks about our relationship.
It just doesn't matter,
because we're there for each other.
I'd do anything for Doug,
and he'd bend over backwards for me.
I look at Golden Girls as, really,
they're all gay archetypes.
There's a real genius there
because you couldn't get away with,
having guys on it at that time,
but there's a way to subvert that
and, you know, trick the status quo
by making it about these older women.
You really haven't grasped the concept
of this gay thing yet, have you?
There must be homosexuals who date women.
Yeah, they're called lesbians.
They remind me a little bit
of the biting humor
that drag queens can sometimes have.
I think that gay men
can kind of relate to that,
those dry looks
that Bea Arthur would give.
I call it the Tennessee Williams effect
in terms of how gay men,
for a very long time,
had to be in the mouths
of female heroines.
You know, every story that Tennessee
Williams told was about a gay man.
And that replacement
that we had to make for many years
is why we love our divas so much.
Just so embarrassed to be seen
in this old thing.
It's like we can relate
to those narratives
inside of something like The Golden Girls,
inside of something like Designing Women.
I think there's a great symbiosis
between women and the LGBTQ community,
particularly gay men.
They have both been marginalized
by society.
So it was so easy for me to just put all
those male voices I loved into the women.
Finally they're speaking,
they have their own names.
Now, the truth is that we women
haven't had enough power
or money or confidence
to start much of anything,
but we sure as heck
get the blame for everything.
I'll tell you something else!
So I think once the LGBTQ community
knew that we were on their side,
every speech that was made
on Designing Women,
no matter what it was about,
was a liberal diatribe
against bigotry, prejudice,
and they felt a kinship with us.
That is the night
the lights went out in Georgia.
Julia Sugarbaker, you know,
all of those speeches
you could have put it
into the mouth of a gay activist,
and that's why we responded so much
'cause it's like you're saying the shit
that needs to be said!
To watch a show that you just love
because you love it,
and suddenly they're dealing with
a gay issue, or they have a gay character.
I want you to be in charge of it.
You know, design it for me.
Why do you want us to design your funeral?
Because I'm dying, and I like your taste.
I knew I already wanted to stand up
for the LGBTQ community on television
because I felt that cause profoundly.
But that was way ratcheted up
after my mom got AIDS.
And we were in the hospital,
my mom was in the hospital with just her
She got it through a blood transfusion
during heart surgery.
But there were 17 other young men
on the floor,
and they were all dying of AIDS.
I would be sitting in the little room
where you look at TV at night,
and they were dying alone in their rooms
with just a game show on.
And it just broke my heart.
And my mom was treated abysmally,
probably better than any of the gay men,
but still horribly.
Nobody knew how you get it,
so we're all in gloves and masks
and her medicine's
kicked into the room in a bucket.
And one day I heard one of the nurses say,
"Well, if you ask me,
this disease has one thing going for it.
It's killing all the right people."
And I just thought,
"Okay, I'm gonna remember that.
And that's gonna be on TV."
Now, I don't like to hurt
anyone's feelings,
but if these boys hadn't been doing
what they do
they wouldn't be gettin'
what's comin' to 'em now.
As far as I'm concerned, this disease
has one thing going for it.
It's killing all the right people.
Imogene, I'm terribly sorry.
I'm gonna have to ask you
to move your car.
- Why?
- Because you're leaving.
What are you talkin' about?
All of us, all of the "other thans,"
all of the "pushed asides", you know,
we've gotta stand together and
we've gotta say, you know, "Hell, no."
Imogene, get serious!
Who do you think you're talking to?
If God was giving out
sexually transmitted diseases
to people as a punishment for sinning,
then you would be at the free clinic
all the time.
I told my mom, "I wrote the show for you."
And it was justice for her,
and I felt a little bit of justice
for those 17 young men who died
while I was on the same floor with them.
AIDS is terrifying.
You never get used to it.
People are afraid.
There's no cure, Angela.
In the late '80s, as AIDS deaths
dramatically increased,
daytime soap operas
began to address the epidemic.
We do know that you cannot catch it
from a towel,
from a kiss on the cheek
or a hug or holding hands.
Jesse
I promise you, it will be all right.
Soap operas had an extra
emotional element,
because they were like
a lifeline to people.
Soap operas were your friends
during the day.
They were just huge. They were staples.
People talked about soap opera characters
like they knew them
and would get emotional about them.
Any soap opera moments do I remember?
How much time do you have?
I grew up on All My Children.
Everyone always says this was the first
gay character on daytime soaps, this was.
But I remember the lesbian lover
of Donna Pescow.
I don't want you to see her!
I don't want you to see anyone else.
I love you.
I want to be your lover.
As soap story lines adapted
from the late '80s to the early '90s
We were involved
in equestrian things together.
He needed somebody to talk to, to be with.
So did I.
LGBTQ characters appeared
with increasing frequency.
Well, maybe you don't want me here,
Mrs. Clayton, but I know Charles does.
Over my dead body.
And in 1992,
One Life to Live set its focus
on gay teen Billy Douglas,
highlighting
the LGBTQ youth experience,
which had rarely been seen on television.
When I was a producer at CBS This Morning
Ryan Phillippe was playing a gay character
on One Life to Live.
And I was like,
"This is super groundbreaking!
This is a really important story line,
we have to cover it."
And I remember interviewing
Ryan Phillippe, who was so young.
My mom's favorite TV show
was One Life to Live.
So my first real acting job
was on my mother's favorite soap opera.
You know, I was a senior in high school
in Delaware at the time,
somewhat naive, didn't know anyone
who was openly gay.
But I knew the character
was a gay teenager.
At that time, this was well before
Ellen and Will & Grace
and all these other things,
so it felt like a pretty big decision
at that point in my life.
It's a topic that's under the spotlight
in your own living room
every day at 2:00 in the afternoon.
Here's what's happening right now
in the fictional town of Llanview
on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live.
The pivotal player is this 17-year-old,
Ryan Phillippe,
who just graduated from
the Newcastle Baptist Academy
in his hometown of Newcastle, Delaware.
I was really young at that time,
but I remember people talking about it
and being on the news.
I'm 17, just getting out of high school,
I still care a lot about what friends,
family, church thinks.
And I'll tell you,
it took a lot of prayer.
Nights, I stayed up late thinking
about it. I'd talk to my parents.
I was at the time enrolled
in Christian school,
and the reaction, once I did take the job,
was pretty serious
in terms of they weren't happy
with the fact that I had taken this job.
Damn it, Joe, you think it was easy?
You think I go around
telling everybody that I know,
"What would you like on your pizza?
Oh, by the way, I'm gay"?
The important thing about Ryan Phillippe
on One Life to Live
was, yes, he was playing a gay teenager
and, yes, it was important
for teenagers to see that,
but let's remember who the audience
for soap operas is: stay-at-home moms
who for the first time, for many of them,
were seeing a gay teen
on their televisions.
When we started getting the fan mail
was when I realized
I was doing something that mattered.
And any fears or reservations went away.
"Dear Ryan, as you act on One Life to Live
as a gay teenager, I also act.
I act as a straight, normal 21-year-old.
It has become routine to act
like the perfect son or brother.
You are the first person I've ever told,
and maybe the last, that I am gay.
I don't think I will ever be able
to tell anyone the truth.
Had not your portrayal in this story line
of a gay teen hit me so deeply,
I probably would not be telling you.
I feel that way because of things I hear
my family say about homosexuals.
I know this is just your job,
and I'm sorry for throwing
all of my problems at you like this,
but it feels good just to tell someone.
Thank you for your time."
Those letters, man, that's when I realized
I'm actually doing something here
that matters,
that even though it's on a soap opera,
even though I'm 17,
even though I had reservations initially
about it, that this is having an impact.
As soap opera characters captured
the attention of daytime audiences,
another daytime format, the talk show,
beamed real-life people into
the television sets of viewers.
I remember watching Donahue,
and one of their guests was a gay person.
And that was the topic.
Like, "Can you believe we're talking
to a gay person today?"
Dick came out to me, I guess, in 1980,
before I was ever out.
It's been very difficult
with my parents, and
How did you feel when you learned
that your brother was gay?
It's been an incredible,
incredible thing between us.
It brought us much, much closer.
Yeah, but how did you feel
the moment he told you?
I was floored.
I was home alone when it was on,
and the second my family came in
I changed the channel.
This was Phil Donahue, which was
the most successful syndicated show
up until Oprah Winfrey came along.
He was the afternoon show
that everybody watched.
Phil would bring somebody on
and spend an hour with them
and talk about everything in their lives,
and take questions from the audience.
On the way up in the car today,
in the conversation,
we were wondering what your show
was going to be about.
And we prayed it wouldn't be
a bunch of gays and lesbians.
- A bunch of
- That's what we prayed about.
So God did not answer your prayer.
- No. You
- I'm sorry, what?
- This is interesting.
- Oh, you like the show?
I think it's great. It's interesting.
Phil Donahue introduced
"forbidden" and taboo topics
to the American woman
in a way that didn't patronize her.
And to be able to reach that audience,
which is the core of America,
I think vital in that kind
of format and platform.
I cannot be nor will I accept
anyone putting me into the closet.
You can't do it to me.
When you go on a talk show,
you're gonna get some audience members
that give you a little pushback,
and you're gonna hear
the hatred and the ignorance.
And you're gonna get to respond to it
in real time.
All the people I know who've had it
are homosexual or junkies
Tell me why 95% of the people
who have AIDS in Africa are heterosexual.
Does that mean heterosexuality is evil?
Maybe in Africa,
but that's not the case here in America.
But Donahue wanted to cover issues
and cover them in their totality,
not just the personal, but the issue.
If we cannot speak to this woman,
we are nowhere.
And I suppose we shouldn't be surprised
that prejudice does not go away
on the occasion of one Donahue show,
however powerful may be my platform.
To his credit, as far
as talk show coverage of HIV/AIDS,
Donahue was up to bat first.
Here is a leader for our time,
Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
I did go on Phil Donahue's program
in that dress made by Jean-Paul Gaultier
in order to raise money.
I usually wouldn't do things like that.
However, I did that because of the urgency
to raise awareness about
that dreadful disease of AIDS.
We have to say we need money
not only for a cure
but also for the care
of those very unfortunate people
who have that disease.
Dr. Ruth was just so perfect
to talk about sex
in a way that was really disarming.
You just ended a relationship
that was beautiful.
It was very serious, for me anyway.
I fell quite in love with him.
The way I hear you talk about it,
it still hurts.
She was so open to answering questions
about any kind of sexuality,
and I think that went a long way
to making it very safe.
What I think you must do
is to be out there.
You're a very good-looking man.
Don't get discouraged so easily.
The talk shows during the day were watched
by housewives in the suburbs.
They were watched by people who didn't
have any contact with homosexuals.
So these talk shows were crucial
of changing the attitude
towards homosexuality.
When I was growing up, I grew up
with a single working mom,
so television really was kind of like
the surrogate babysitter in a way.
When I was younger
there was a lot of talk shows,
and so I feel like my first,
you know, exposure
to trans and LGBTQ representation
was largely through those shows.
The only trans images
that I ever saw growing up,
right before I started my transition,
were on, like, Geraldo or Jerry Springer.
Jerry! Jerry!
I was born to be a man.
Most of those shows with trans people
were, like, "Guess which one
is the real girl"
and they would have a bunch
of trans women on
and a couple of cis women on.
Did you think ever in your life
you would sit here on national television
distinguishing a man and a woman,
you say "I'm not sure"?
Maury Povich pulling somebody out,
saying "Which one of these girls
is a man?" on national TV
for the world to laugh at
and giggle and point and, you know
How rude.
For some talk show hosts,
the ratings were very, very important.
And that was very detrimental
to the community.
- What's your name?
- Robbie.
Robbie, you're a very statuesque
young lady.
Yeah.
You are a young lady, aren't you?
I mean, I don't know.
There wasn't anything more.
It wasn't "Gay people who"
It was "These people are gay,
and they're gonna talk about it."
And it was usually some club kid
sort of like, "I'm gay, okay? Hey!"
Anybody that was sort of alternative
in that way
was sort of portrayed
as a freak or as a joke.
But the fact that you would have
these queer kids on TV
at 3:00 in the afternoon on Geraldo,
I think club kids and club life
and gay life
really became a circus
that you could join.
- Everybody say love.
- Love!
- Everybody say love.
- Love!
Y'all at home, touch your TV set,
'cause this is the most important show
you'll ever watch.
A lot of those talk shows during that time
was, like, we were the joke,
until with Jenny Jones,
then they saw how horrible and how wrong
and tragic it could be.
On March 6th, 1995,
in front of a live audience,
Scott Amedure revealed his secret crush
on his unsuspecting straight neighbor
Jonathan Schmitz.
Let's have Jon come out here
and see who has the crush on him.
Here's Jon.
The people at the show were laughing.
They think it's hilarious.
Did you have any idea
that he liked you this much?
No, no. No, I did not.
But then when these guests go home,
he ends up murdering the guy.
Three days after the taping,
Schmitz shot and killed Amedure,
later confessing to the police
that the murder
was the result of extreme embarrassment
from his appearance on the show.
That man killed that gay man
because of, I don't know,
his embarrassment, I suppose?
The secret crush episode
was pulled from broadcast.
Jonathan Schmitz was found guilty
of second-degree murder
and sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison.
He was released in August of 2017.
You know, the fact is,
there was a lack of responsibility
in the conversation, in the way
that those issues were handled
because it was all about ratings,
and it wasn't about, for the most part,
informing the lives of people.
I made the intentional choice
that I would cause no harm.
And I did that by causing harm,
I think, in the beginning.
I was just following everybody else's lead
and doing what we used to call
confrontational television.
So you're upset because they call you
names in front of the children?
They tell my children they shouldn't
love me because I'm gay and it's wrong.
That's not correct. What matters
is what's factual and happened
In the beginning,
I was just happy to have a show.
And then about '88, '89, before every show
I would have the producers state to me
their intention for the show.
Like, I'm not gonna do something
that I don't purposely intend to do
'cause I made a decision I was gonna
use the show as a force for good.
And so I started
to change the way I thought about
how television could be used.
I think I have a lot of gay friends,
so I now understand,
but it was one of the main points
of ignorance for me for a long time,
and I know that there are a lot of
other people out there who are watching,
'cause 20 million people watch this show,
who really are like I was,
who don't understand what you mean
when you say "We're in love."
Everybody was learning the language.
Everybody was learning
how to talk about it.
So when Oprah would take up our issues,
it was with care and understanding
and love.
Whatever your personal feelings
about homosexuality are,
whether you think it's right or wrong,
we ask that you listen to the people
in this studio today.
My name is Juanita, and I want to tell
my family and friends that I'm gay.
And I hope it doesn't hurt their feelings,
or they're not disappointed in me,
because I'm still the same person
that I've always been.
There were so many people
who felt secure enough
to come out on the Oprah show,
and they hadn't told their parents yet.
So we started to have people
sign an agreement
that said you're gonna tell your mother
before the show airs
'cause they should not hear it
on national television.
Is it easier to tell them on television
than it is to sit them down in a room?
Yeah. This way I don't have to see them,
and I'll hear it later. Yeah.
Oprah had so many episodes
where it was something that was
out of this world
to have on television at the time.
And the audience wasn't accepting of it,
the in-studio audience.
Homosexuality is wrong.
And if you are going to say
that you also support that,
it's double-standarding.
The God I serve doesn't care
whether you're tall or short or gay.
To me in my mind I thought,
"Okay, my parents are gonna be
It's gonna make it easier
for them to accept me
because they'll see
that Oprah says it's okay."
And if Oprah said it's okay,
then all right. Let's go with it.
There's the very iconic Oprah moment
when the news was maybe
not giving us all the information
and our president wasn't even
mentioning the word "AIDS,"
we would look to talk show hosts,
and I remember watching Oprah
going to a small town in West Virginia.
AIDS hit this small town one day last July
when a Williamson man
suspected of having AIDS
took a dip in the local swimming pool.
And much to my surprise,
the people of West Virginia were willing
to have a town hall meeting about it.
Why would you think you would be
welcomed here if you had AIDS?
Because I felt I was dying,
and I thought they could overlook the fact
that I was a homosexual
and see that I needed some compassion
and to be in my hometown.
The thing that was
really difficult to watch was just
the anger and the rage
being directed at this man
who was already living in fear.
I'm repulsed by his disease,
and I'm repulsed by him.
This is a disease of nature.
Nature will take care of something
that's wrong, it'll eradicate it.
And if they were all put 'em
all together, without any women,
they would be extinct
from the face of the earth in no time.
AIDS would kill 'em off anyway.
The vitriol in that room,
I mean, the thought of it
makes my eyes water.
Because so many people didn't understand
how to approach someone with AIDS.
It's not just the fear of AIDS.
A lot of people have a fear
of homosexuals, period.
Or a disdain for homosexuality.
The fact that Oprah Winfrey
had such compassion for him
and was using her platform
to really educate the entire country
through this one story,
you know, that gave me hope.
What I understood is the common
denominator in the human experience
different things make us joyful,
different things make us sad,
but when you're sad, that feeling
feels the same for somebody else
anywhere else in the world.
And it was my role to get
the millions of people who were watching
to understand that.
And so I used it as an intentional tool
to get to help people
see themselves differently
through the lives of other people.
In high school, I remember
watching An American Family,
the PBS series about the Loud family.
And I was mesmerized by this idea
of taking real life
and turning it into a TV series,
which led me to The Real World.
- Find out what happens
- When people stop being polite
And start getting real.
The Real World: San Francisco.
We had been hired by MTV
to create a scripted drama
about young people
starting out their lives in New York.
And then MTV said,
"This is too much money."
And so we said, "Well, what about
an unscripted series about young people?"
What if we took six young people
from different walks of life
and we put 'em in a house together?
Oh, my God! Holy !
What?
It was racially diverse,
it was socioeconomically diverse.
This is totally insane.
There would be lots of conflict.
- It's fun.
- All I'm saying
And that conflict would result in growth,
and that growth would be our story arc.
And Lauren Corrao,
the MTV exec we pitched it to,
looked at us, and she said,
"That's exactly what I lived
when I moved to New York."
And they bought it by lunch.
For us, I was just one of
the young people watching
and thinking "That's kinda cool.
It's really cool."
We all watched MTV pretty much
24 hours a day back then anyway.
Young people
were so tuned into the channel.
From the moment they got home
from school, MTV was on.
It was setting the agenda,
it was getting out the vote.
It was highlighting important issues
facing young people.
If you had it to do over again,
would you inhale?
Sure, if I could. I tried before.
The first season of The Real World
was beyond successful.
I want my MTV.
And MTV really hadn't had
appointment viewing up to that point.
People were making an appointment
to watch The Real World.
So you go, "Okay, I guess
this is really what's going on.
This is what the real world looks like
to people outside my limited experience."
And Bunim-Murray decide to cast
an openly gay person.
And not just once, they continue to do it.
I'm the lesbian.
The third season, they cast Pedro Zamora.
- I'm Pedro.
- We found our six other cast members,
and MTV says to us,
"We really think it's important
that the roommates know that someone
is gonna be HIV-positive in the cast."
When we were moving into the house,
we all knew
one of the roommates was HIV-positive.
We just didn't know who it was.
I think in theory you're like,
"I don't know what it's gonna be like
living with someone with AIDS."
It seems very scary.
But once you're actually faced with
this movie-star-beautiful young man
who's friendly and who's funny
and likable and disarming,
you actually meet the person.
- Pedro Zamora
- Pedro.
- Pedro.
- Pedro Zamora.
- Pedro.
- Pedro.
Everybody my age watched The Real World,
and that meant they were watching Pedro.
We fell in love with him on that show.
How could you not?
My reality today is that
I'm a person living with AIDS.
I'm not dying. I am living with it.
I do remember there was quite a bit
of variation among our roommates
with the amount of comfort
living with Pedro.
I mean, I felt uncomfortable.
He's the one with the disease.
He should make me feel comfortable.
And that's selfish, but that's how I felt.
Lucky for us, Pedro was an AIDS educator.
So he very carefully,
somewhat strategically,
kind of unpacked a couple of things.
I will probably not see the age of 30.
I will probably die
before I turn 30 years of age.
But that, of course,
is statistically speaking.
And what I have to remind myself
constantly is that I am not a statistic.
I think sometimes people forget
that Pedro was just 22,
and then, although
he was so mature and so poised,
he was still just a kid.
He was still
He was this 22-year-old kid from Miami
who left home for the first time
and wanted people to know who he was.
He's in the city of love,
where, you know, you can meet another guy
and you guys can go out on a date.
Any likely chance
that you'd move out here?
Maybe.
And you guys can hold hands,
and you're not worried
that you're gonna have someone
chasing you with a baseball bat.
But it took everyone by surprise
that he was dating and falling in love.
We're very pleased to have you all here
to celebrate the relationship
that we have with two incredible people.
He basically makes life very easy for me,
and it is a lot easier for me
to face my own fears
and face the uncertainty of my own life
knowing that he's there.
So, I love you.
This is 1994,
and nobody on TV
was talking about gay marriage
in any kind of real way at all.
And I think the big thing on TV
at the time
was there was gonna be a gay kiss
on Melrose Place.
Good night.
But they cut away at the last minute.
And we felt like, you know,
they're making this big deal
that Melrose Place might have a gay kiss.
Oh, my God.
But we are having a gay marriage
on our show.
As soon as we moved out of the house,
I remember we had a wrap party.
They showed the first episode
of the show at that party,
and we had never seen it before.
And I remember crying and crying
as I was watching the first episode,
and it was really being so relieved
that Pedro was coming across
with such richness,
and that the story was really
gonna be, like, fair to him.
I don't know if anybody knew
why I was crying
when I was watching the first episode.
But it really came home to me at that time
that that was what was really important
about our season.
The series is just at the halfway mark
when Pedro was hospitalized.
So we're having
this surreal experience where
It was supposed to be fun.
We're supposed to be enjoying
the stupidity of being famous,
and, you know,
people wanting to meet Pedro.
When he got sick,
it just made this weird turn.
Been having some kind of lesions
or something like that,
you know, in my brain,
it's just really spooky for me.
It's really scary.
I
I mean
So the great communicator,
Pedro Zamora, couldn't talk.
The first thing he was losing
was his ability to speak.
And it wasn't like he couldn't understand
what was going on around him.
He just couldn't put words to it anymore.
It was the evening of November 10th.
And Pedro is very, very sick.
And so we stayed with him overnight.
Just being present,
kind of listening to him breathe.
And then morning came,
and the nurses came in
to just change his sheets
like they did every morning.
And they just pulled his sheet back,
and he died.
Pedro passed away the day after
the last episode aired.
Over the past few years, Pedro became
a member of all of our families.
Now, no one in America can say
they've never known someone
who's living with AIDS.
The challenge to each of us
is to do something about it
and to continue Pedro's fight.
It is 24 years later,
and he's been gone longer
than he was alive.
He died at 22, and it's been 24 years.
But I take heart in the fact
that it's been 24 years,
but he is still remembered.
I think Pedro achieved something
really special.
He got to put a real story
in the living rooms
of millions of people across America.
And especially at that time,
there really was nothing else like it.
I'm completely biased, but I will say that
I think this is reality TV's high point.
I think it was the best thing
ever to happen in reality TV.
I don't think that a single show
from then on out
didn't for one second consider,
especially ones looking
for a young audience,
"Can we call ourselves authentic
without having an LGBT character?"
'Cause all of a sudden we all know
that we know one or two.
And The Real World said
it's not real without one.
Before there was a real world
on television,
out writer Armistead Maupin
created a groundbreaking
serialized newspaper column
called Tales of the City
inspired by Maupin's own life
as a gay man in San Francisco.
There were several efforts to make
Tales of the City into a movie,
but it never really quite contained
the story the way I wanted it to.
So when I realized
that I had landed in television,
it was very exciting because
it is our most powerful medium.
We sit down and turn that thing on
and let it tell us something
about our lives.
Contrary to families traditionally seen
on television at that time,
Tales of the City depicted a chosen family
and prominently featured LGBTQ people
as fully-developed characters.
Tales of the City told the story
of San Francisco
and our community
in a way that was so beautiful
and so loving and so accurate.
It was about a family
of different origins,
but a family still, nonetheless.
I think I'm going home to Cleveland.
- That's not close to death, that is death.
- It's what makes sense right now.
Come over here.
It's time for some girl talk.
I remember making a speech
at Warner Brothers
when they said, "The gay characters
can't be featured at all.
It might be a neighbor."
That was the model,
the funny neighbor down the hall.
"You could do that,
but it can't be about their lives.
We can't go to bed with them."
And I said, maybe a little grandly,
"Taking the gay people out of Maupin
is like taking the poor people
out of Dickens."
I knew I wasn't gonna do this again.
What I had created was a story
that now has run for 45 years,
and I couldn't derail it just because
some idiot in an office in Burbank
wanted to get the queers out of it.
On the evening of January 10th, 1994,
Tales of the City
had its US premiere on PBS.
Its representation of LGBTQ life
was unprecedented on public broadcasting.
I was home at my little house
on Parnassus Heights.
I'd smoked a joint that afternoon,
and I had nodded off into this
blissful reverie with the television on.
And suddenly Entertainment Tonight
came on.
Nude scenes, sexy romance,
graphic language, gay lovers, narcotics.
We are talking X-rated movie, right? No.
It's a miniseries right in Mr. Rogers'
neighborhood on PBS.
"This is happening right here
in Mr. Rogers' neighborhood on PBS."
The first thing I thought of was,
"Hallelujah, this is fabulous publicity."
You know, by making it scandalous
they made everybody tune in to a PBS show.
There had been no gay kissing
on network television,
and we were on PBS,
so that means we were network.
We broke the kiss barrier
in Tales of the City
when the characters Jon and Michael
were kissing after a date in a car.
And it caused a bomb threat
in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
the night of the show.
The American Family Association,
which was being infuriated at the time,
the Reverend Donald Wildmon,
whose son now runs
the American Family Association, said
The question is whether or not
tax dollars, taxpayers,
are gonna be forced to help pay
for one homosexual
to have "annal" intercourse
with another homosexual
and to put that into a movie.
"Annal" intercourse. Poor man.
"And put it on TV,
where our children can see it."
Well, first of all, we didn't do that.
When the American Family Association
organized against Tales of the City
and sent a videotape
to all members of Congress
with what they considered
to be the naughty bits,
they created the smut reel. Yeah.
Look at all these naked people,
look at all these men kissing each other.
Look at these trans people on television,
that sort of thing.
And sent it to every member of Congress,
who watched it in the privacy
of their congressional chambers.
And probably had
a great deal of fun with it.
And PBS ran scared.
They had the biggest hit in their history
since Upstairs, Downstairs.
It was a giant hit.
They had previously told me
that they couldn't wait to do
More Tales of the City, the second one.
So we were moving ahead with plans
to produce the second miniseries,
and suddenly they dropped it.
And they made every lame excuse
in the world
except the one that was the truth,
that they were afraid of
the American Family Association.
While the religious right campaigned
to keep LGBTQ stories off TV,
a writer named Winnie Holzman
was developing a high school drama
that would inspire LGBTQ youth
for generations.
So the beginning of My So-Called Life
was about
doing a show
from the point of view of a teenage girl.
I'm in love.
His name is Jordan Catalano.
He was left back, twice.
He's always closing his eyes
like it hurts to look at things.
I came up with this idea
that she was completely gonna
change her life
and start to hang out with a new crowd.
Somehow it was very natural for me
that that new crowd
had a gay friend.
You're Angela's mom?
Yes, I am.
- I like your house.
- Thank you.
Who are you?
But I didn't even think of it
with the word "gay,"
to be honest with you,
because I liked thinking of it more
like somebody sexually ambiguous.
I find Rickie a little confusing.
Okay, so maybe he's bi. Who cares?
- His cousin can still drive.
- What? He is what?
Do you hear these terms
she's throwing around?
- "Bi"?
- It means bisexual.
I remember talking to the casting person
and saying to her
"I don't think this is gonna be like
we can just call up some agents."
Like, we're gonna have to get creative
about how to find this person.
Let's face it.
The industry wasn't developing
young, gay Latino people of color.
But my agent said,
"I want you to read this.
It's the role of Rickie.
And I just think that he's somebody
that you would really understand."
I actually understood it to the point
where I felt
like somebody had been
following me around high school.
So I went in for the audition.
And I remember walking into
the waiting room,
and I was the only person there
who I thought was dressed like him
because they all had, like,
khakis and polos
and I was like, "That kid
would never be caught dead in a polo."
I had this Cross Colours shirt
that was striped,
and I had, like, hair-sprayed my hair
as high as I possibly could
and had my eyeliner on.
So I walked in, and I met
with Mary Goldberg, the casting director,
and we did the scene.
And I started to walk out the door,
and before I walked out,
I turned back to her and I said
"I said, I don't know
if I'm ever gonna see you again,
but please tell whoever wrote this
that it means a lot to me.
That it would have made a difference
if I had seen this
when I was 15 years old."
And she turned back and said,
"Don't worry.
You're gonna be able
to tell her yourself."
Wilson was, by an incredible coincidence
or a stroke of fate,
he was incredibly similar to
what I had been picturing in my mind.
Watching My So-Called Life
was really intriguing and refreshing
and exciting
because it was kids in high school
really expressing
what they really thought and felt.
- You want to have sex with him.
- Who?
"Who?"
Rickie, give us the male perspective.
The character of Rickie Vasquez
really spoke to me.
He was Latino,
and he felt like an outsider.
This was somebody who hadn't even
completely admitted to themselves
that they were gay.
And he's starting to feel like he needs
to kind of decide who he is.
So I was thinking
of asking her to the dance.
Why?
Well, I know you think
the dance is really stupid.
Why don't you ask him?
Shut up!
I love that show. It's unbelievable
that it was only on for a season.
- I can't believe that.
- It was so realistic.
Like, a brown gay boy on TV.
That was That is wild now,
to think about that, in 1994.
I really think we'd be good together.
Okay, but you're gay, right?
I don't like
Winnie wanted to show
Rickie's journey of self-love.
Yeah. I'm gay.
Now for the cast of My So-Called Life.
My agents at the time thought it was smart
to not say much about
my own personal story.
But I let them know pretty quickly
that that was not an option.
I was a 15-year-old
closeted homosexual at one point.
And the fact that it's on the show
is still amazing to me.
A queer person playing queer
was beyond just groundbreaking.
I think what Wilson did was he put a face
to every queer person
that's ever been an adolescent,
that's ever wanted to fit in
and grappled with the idea
that their lives would be different.
There were, at that time,
really no representations
of young queer or trans people on TV.
He was the first and the only.
And so, having his
very complicated existence
as a person of color,
as a gender nonconforming gay boy,
was a close enough reach for me.
He had curly hair.
He had enough melanin in his skin.
And I think that you grab on to
whatever you can as a young person
when there's so few images.
The simple bravery of owning oneself,
both in front of the narrative
and behind the narrative,
is the kind of act that changes the world.
Wilson Cruz became the first out actor
playing an out series regular
on network television.
I really believed
it would be more powerful
if young people understood
the person playing that role
stood behind that story.
But when we made the pilot in 1993,
ABC didn't pick it up.
So we went through a whole year
where we were put on hold.
I made a pact that if we got picked up
that I would come out to my parents.
We got picked up, and I told my mom first.
It went okay.
I told my dad,
and my dad threw me out of the house.
We had about three months
before we started to go into production
on the series.
And between my car
and some friends' couches,
I made it through three months.
And when I told Winnie my story,
she decided that that was
also gonna happen to Rickie
on My So-Called Life.
I was starting to feel
this sense of responsibility
toward just expressing what I understood
was really some young gay people's
experiences in life.
I mean, obviously not all,
but, unfortunately, too many.
So Christmas of '93 I tell my father,
and we stopped speaking.
And in December of '94,
the episode in which Rickie
is thrown out of his house airs.
Ten, fifteen minutes pass,
and my phone rings.
And it's my dad.
And
he says, "You know,
I think it's about time we talked."
There is not a day that goes by
that I don't get a message from somebody
who says their life was changed
because of Rickie.
And I wonder sometimes, you know,
how many fathers turned
to their sons or daughters and said,
"I think it's time for us to talk."
That's the power of TV.