Stories From the Plague - Outtakes from VITO (2011)
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- Опубликовано: 15 авг 2012
- "Vito" is available from the filmmaker to rent or purchase here:
vimeo.com/ondemand/vitorusso
The story of the AIDS epidemic from its early, ominous beginnings and the wave of death that followed, through the formation of ACT UP and the arrival of life-prolonging medicines. This program is comprised of interview outtakes from the documentary motion picture VITO, about gay activist and film historian Vito Russo.
Interviewees include:
Leonard Bloom
Former NYC Deputy Health Commissioner
Dr. Joseph Brewer
Co-Founder, Project Inform
Dr. Marcus Conant
Physician
Jeffrey Friedman
Filmmaker
Jewelle Gomez
Author and Activist
Dr. Howard Grossman
Physician
Larry Kramer
Author and Activist
Gabriel Rotello
Author and Activist
Nancy Stoller
Author and Activist
For more information about VITO please visit:
/www.vitorussomovie.com
/ vitorussomovie 
Кино
My great uncle died of AIDS in 1990 at 35 years old due to getting a blood transfusion with infected blood years earlier. This disease is so so terrible and it's saddening that there is still no cure for it, and I feel for everyone who has to either live with HIV/AIDS or had their life taken by the disease. It truly breaks my heart.
No cure and no vaccine. With COVID, a vaccine was developed in about a year.
I've been looking up history of the epidemic, since I was born in '81, when things really exploded in the States. This is a valuable piece of American History that more people should be aware of. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for watching Foxy. These are outtakes from my documentary VITO about the life of gay activist and film scholar Vito Russo.
+Jeffrey Schwarz Thank you so much, Mr. Schwarz for doing the film and releasing these outtakes. I am an activist for contested illnesses such as ME"CFS" and Lyme Disease. There are so many parallels to the federal government's denial of and misinformation re AIDS, it's almost uncanny (though there are some notable differences). As activists we look to AIDS history and ACT UP for vital inspiration and lessons. Histories like this help tremendously! Again, thanks!
Thank you Justin.
imabout your age, and i remember when i was a kid about the panic aids caused, ppl afraid of being around ppl with aids, the sick ppl with aids with ks lesions in their bodies i remember being very impressed about the whole thing, it was very strange decade the 80s
I found a documentary from before they discovered that HIV was isolated. Its a bbc horizon documentary from 1983 called "a killer in the village," and has interviews from Bobbi Campbell and Dr. Linda Laubenstein (the doctor on "the normal heart" was based on her).
I love listening to Dr Marcus Conant. So intelligent and fascinating to listen too.
He is brilliant, smartly spoken, with a lovely cadence
IKR! I listen to him to help me go to sleep. So shoothing
@@joshgarland9085 Yeh, I know what you mean.
Thank god for the persistence of Act Up and Larry Kramer!!!
CAPELLASAMPIERE there were people out protesting who were literally dying on their feet. The government did not give a shit until people marched, stormed the CDC, and were willing to get Maced rather than back down. It was a real horror; seeing people disappear, hearing in hushed tones who was sick, and who was dead. Larry Kramer himself said it; people were literally dying before their eyes, and the CDC and the government did nothing. The Red Cross nightmare helped bring it home to Jane and John Q Public, but watching the brilliant people from the generation just before us dying, and nobody caring, made my whole view of the world pivot on it’s axis.
GMHC (in NYC) in the 1990's was amazing.
I started my nursing career in 1983,,,at the time when the plaque was really getting start. Of course we were all scared because so little was known at that time. And sick people did come in,,,usually they were too sick to stay at home and came in the hospital to die. We worked at a Catholic based hospital and all medical personal were told by administration that no one could refuse to take care of AIDS patients. If anyone refused they were let go. Someone had to take care of them so we had to lose our fear of them and lose it fast. We wore protective gear and just took extra precautions when caring for them.
I commend all of you great souls in that hospital for being real human beings.
+pretty bullet I'm heartened to hear the Catholic hospital stuck to it's principles, and made damn sure no AIDS patient was refused treatment. Normally, I'm angry with the Church for its conservatism. But in this case, Holy Mother Church did the right thing. Thanks for sharing your experience.
+pretty bullet I understand the fears and also pre-cautions at that time, but the virus itself is not very contagious and there is no danger in being in contact with hiv patients. Hopefully today there is more info and less fear and paranoia..
I have known people that even had full blown aids (lesions, infections etc..) and have eaten with them etc... No fear here.
Actually the rate of HIV transmission to hospital workers was far too high.
NarianLady-- The nurse above was talking about when her nursing career started and the AIDS epidemic was very new, in 1983. Now medical personnel, and hopefully most of the public, know that HIV cannot be transmitted by casual contact.
Awesome to see all these faces that I have read about from And the Band Played On.
Miranda Peascoe there is a really good documentary on RUclips by the bbc. It is in black and white from 83-84 . If you can find it, it is a very good archive. One of the best I have seen.
One of the best reads of my life.
That movie was so upsetting on so many levels. The American scientist was a total ass. His desire for a Nobel prize cost many lives. I studied his behavior in an ethics class in college.
@@brandiguarino1778nothing on the book. Thr book is amazing
this is an awesome commentary on the early days of AIDS, i find it heartbreaking that the early years of AIDS are being forgotten.
so do i! Such an impressive example of what being human means. And so clever activism, too. Should be taught in school. Perhaps after 2020/21-covid more people will realize the incredible amount of courage these people put together to survive or die...
I remember reading an article in Time magazine in the very beginning and it said “scientists are still unsure if AIDS can be caught from using the same door knob of someone infected due to sweat”. I was TERRIFIED!
“How to Survive a Plague” is another excellent documentary.
Yeah it is
Thank you for this documentary. It is great! I came out in 1983 in the Dallas- Fort Worth area. In 1996 I was diagnosed with AIDS. My doctor at the time said I had probably been infected ten years earlier in 1986. This piece filled in a lot of info that I had missed at the time even though I was living through it.
Rick Hall c
So glad you survived this horror!
@Nelson Robert Willis many thanks for that well-thought reply. But as you may well know,..the straight folks held political power. They were at the helm of decision making level. Beyond that, my point of anger is....what did the non bigots did???
The gays were crying for somebody to do something. Their days on earth were on a countdown. They were racing against time. To me...it's a case of one bad Apple.
I was in Dallas then. I remember wondering which of my friends would get it and die, or if I would get it and die. I wonder how many people from 'O.P. or the Round Up are no longer with us from the plague.
@@swysocki3920 We lost so many great people durng that time. It was terrifying. I remember seeing someone out one weekend and a few weeks later hearing they had died of AIDS. I got to where I could tell by looking at someone would be gone soon. And orher times there were no signs.
I have been searching for stories about the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Thanks so much for posting this!
Thanks for sharing this excellent film. It's hard to find documentaries on HIV/AIDS history online, most are denialist films. Thanks again.
I remember the grid era..I was a kid but I attended NCsa...I was told not to use bathroom's or water fountains...I had a friend later on there who passed away from aids. I'm 46 now...I can't believe the thing's I've seen in my life. If you were born after 95-98...you won't understand...and be glad you didn't see it...I worked with aida task force 93 94 sat next to man covered in ks....
I highly suggest the film (silver Lake life - the view from here) brutal film but beautiful too... it will definitely open your eyes....
‘An Early Frost’ with Aidan Quinn. I highly recommend that film. 1985, one of the first AIDS movies
Thanks for sharing. Hope there will be a recongnition of that terrifying war. Incredible example of humanity and bravery. Gives hope for the future too, for all of us on earth... Wish u the best
Mark and Tom ❤️ mark KS was so much worse and it was so sad to see Mark go through that. Bc he was alone , he didn't have Tom with him. His KS was really bad . It was a shock bc from the first video he looks healthy, then the second video was devastating 😢 💔 really sad
Was a terrifying time! Very sad!
Dr Marcus Conant is a Saint!
Excellent movie about a very scary time. It highlights the typically human reactions of fear, denial and confusion that characterized that time. I came out in 1986 at 22 and it was terrifying to even kiss someone. So many of us are still caught between the fear of the disease and the guilt about not having done enough for those who passed.
And it shows the selfish self centerness of humans that wouldn't give up their drive to even put a dent in this disease that's one of the #1 killers on humanity.
Very informative and the first person accounts are horrific. RIP to all who have passed from this terrible disease.
Sauvignon Blanc is a white wine. It's not purple. He must have meant Cabernet Sauvignon at 2:01.
Ah, I see you are something of a Sommelier ... good call.
Hence the word blanc
@MisGuided Me That's all I got from listening very carefully to everything said.
Good catch, DCFunBud!
Boy I sure hope somebody was fired for that blunder
I was in my late teens when this disease struck the world and saw it first hand. I am more aware now, about the realities of just how dreadful these people were treated, than I've ever been. I lived in the city, went to gay bars, and knew many gay people. I am a straight female and I can't believe that 3 PRESIDENTS did virtually NOTHING! God Bless these people! They've been through hell and back.
theresa42213 Three presidents did nothing what are you talking about the government spent billions it didn't have in that time for a completely avoidable disease.
Douglas Smith It is absolutely true that Reagan, G. H. W. Bush and Clinton didn't help Americans who were affected by this scourge. Reagan never interfered with the pharmaceutical companies use of homeless and impoverished peoples plasma being the basis for clotting medication given to hemophiliacs and thousands of families were destroyed just from that small group of those hit by AIDS. That's just one example out of hundreds I can point to. Like +theresa42213 , I came of age when AIDS was at its (first) peak and I saw children my age (teens) dying from this thanks to child sexual abuse and then -- even with a diagnosis -- no to poor healthcare (that was directly the fault of Clinton and indirectly that of Reagan and Bush; Reagan directly stopped aid and healthcare to the poorest Americans, and as a result more people became drug and alcohol addicted, prostituted, committed crimes, and infected with AIDS who passed it on). There was a well-documented lack of help for at-risk families (if the family lost the parent that was the breadwinner they were screwed and that was because they had no actionable laws like anti-discrimination plans in place, plus insurance companies wouldn't pay to cover the medical bills, life insurance would keep families in litigation for years over policies so children couldn't go to college, all because one of the parents might have had unprotected sex way back in 1980). In my church we cared for those who were dying and whose families wouldn't care for them for fear of catching the disease. Often their HIV/AIDS status meant they were discriminated against and couldn't keep their jobs, their apartments (if renting, obviously), and on and on. All three of those leaders fought wars overseas, sent multimillion dollar space shuttles into space but not one initiated actual, useful programs to help Americans that were dying left and right from this. All three just reacted once the noise got loud enough. Republicans and democrats are to blame for the epidemic getting so bad and there is another wave of HIV happening now which will likely create more heartbreak. Hopefully some things have changed. At least now it's against the law for health insurance companies to drop a patient for costing too much, but then, that has to be proven in court with lawyers -- and time and money.
+theresa42213 Reagan was criminal. Bush was very bad, maybe criminal. Things happened under Clinton. $14B a year at NIH when they finally got on to it, I think under Bush. True, Bush would definitely ha done nothing as long as he could have, as that was the modus operandi of the federal govt year in and year out under Reagan and Bush, but ACT UP and mounting deaths and 'the Rock Hudson Incident' lol forced his and NIAID director Fauci's hand. Fauci was and is an amoral/immoral complete political opportunist.
By overstating the case, you weaken it. That's an injustice to the patients.
lf you want to find out a few things about the ''Bush'' legacy, check out a documentary called ''Everything's a rich man's Trick'' the long version, not part 2.
This documentary should be mandatory learning. lt's unbelievable!!
lf not, then fine.
Oh yeah, access to good, affordable health care is SO much better today....gimmie a break!
Thank you for sharing this valuable source of information about the AIDS epidemic in its beginnings. The only thing that amazes me is that only 538 people have seen it and that nobody has even bothered to say comment on it. Of course most are busy watching and listening to garbage.
Remember reading an article in Time mag., ~ summer of '82 regarding a strange new disease seeming to strike gay men (called GRID, in those very early years)...had just graduated college and was living in Houston - remember clear as day, sitting by the pool of our apt., reading about this. Fast forward - 2000 through 2006 worked at AIDS support service, in between participating in 2 AIDS Rides (SF - LA) and multiple fundraising to financially prop up our AIDS-specific food bank serving over 500 clients in the South Bay (Calif.). Through those years, lost many dear friends, aquintences, and clients to the disease...went and talked at far too many funerals and memorial services.
Lefties should learn so luch more about Act uo. Sooo clever and efficient and brave.
The most impressive human right fight i ever saw. Still the example i think about when i m about to give up hope in humanity. Thank u all for that. Hope greed won t kill us all soon...and after covid, more people will realize the incredible amount of courage u put together to go through that hell. Heoes.
Lived and survived the terrible 80s (early to mid 90s was just as bad) Saw so many people die, young people in their 20s, 30s and 40s. By the mid 90s I lost all my gay friends. I don't think the young gay men today have any clue just how bad it was. Now that I'm getting older I think more and more about all the loss that occurred back then. I wonder what they could of been or where their lives would of taken them if they survived like I did. It haunts me today....
It is strange that all the bombardment of information during that era seems to have had the opposite effect after a generation, from inspiring dread to indifference. I feel that since it now a manageable condition many are taking a very sanguine view about the illness. I mean just because a suppressing cocktail is working today won't guarantee anything for tomorrow.
juankenon a person can live with it, for a while... talk to anyone who has been living with it for 10-20 years, and you’ll find out that prevention is absolutely essential. I am so worried for these young people who seem to have this misconception that it’s an inevitability. Condoms aren’t fun, and trudging to a needle exchange is a pain, but having to take up to 20 pills a day, some that have horrible side effects, for the rest of your life (and increasing your chances of certain types of cancer) is enough to make protection worth it.
People like you should start educating young gay men today, they think because there's PrEp and medication that can reduce the virus that safe sex is optional. Please show them, tell them it can happen again!
I know exactly how you feel. I was one of the 5% or so who contracted in the early eighties who survived. It's a known syndrome called Aids Survivors Syndrome. I'm English and returning to Key West, NYC and California in December for some kind of closure. There is an organisation called Lets Kick Ass headed by Tez Anderson set up to help those who live in the aftermath. Take care.
Word for word, what you have written is my exact story as well. I stood in a gay disco in my home town of Melbourne, Australia in our summer of January 1988 looking at a packed house of gay kin and suddenly having the realisation that the majority of these men would probably die over the following years - and they did. It was a horrific time. So many beautiful precious men dying so horribly - and not just from the disease .. there were suicides as well to avoid the horror of having to face AIDS. Like you, I wonder what the world would have been like had they all lived. And I agree, this younger generation do not understand what came before them ... maybe they don't need to? However, the trauma we lived through still lingers while we breath. Best wishes, Berjaboy.
Again, so sad to see telling people they should modify their behavior for safety reasons was met with such resistance. Again and again in human history...
I agree!
It’s disgusting
Even nowadays, we, gays, don't use condoms.
You mean that they should use condoms?
I was born around this time. Thank God
I miss the mark & the plague.
My physics teacher lost her elementary school teacher to AIDS in the late 80's
to early 90's
Larry Kramer is a hero
Thanks for watching, Jay.
I had a uncle who has his name on the wittman walker clinic in DC died in 92 what a terrible thing to witness.
I am honestly sorry to hear that.. May every person who suffered not die in vain, and I hope we can teach this next generation to protect themselves and arm them with knowledge so no one else has to die. Sorry for your loss.
Scary and sad times......
I find it so weird that there are so many people who didn’t live thru this. But I was a lesbian in my 20s during the 80s and it was horrible. You just felt like all of our gay brothers would die. Shit i lost a lot of friends. And no one would say EXACTLY what caused it until 1988? 1989? So the public freaked. Most people felt like gay men deserved it. It was awful. The first I remember was in 1982 when they called it the gay plague.
When people talk about how great the 80s were, i quote Hot Tub Time Machine: “Reagan and AIDS.”
what I got from it all was the CDC told the gay community hey there is a disease that we don't know what is you should be very careful use protection and maybe just chill out for a bit till we find out more and the gay community said don't tell us how to live and who to have sex with you just don't like us cause we are gay so they did whatever with whoever whenever got really sick and said what's happening why isn't anyone doing anything you did this to us it's not fare
They had just won their freedom in a big way.. so yes, people should have been more careful, but in a fairness no one even knew for sure if it was sexually transmitted, it wasn't as obvious as it is to us in hind sight... not to mention the blood banks KNEW the supply was tainted and infecting people. They KNEW, and they let 30,000 people get infected from transfusions and factor 8. Why is no one in prison for that decision that resulted in the deaths of thousands? If doctors did nothing, if the government won't even acknowledge it exist, how can you expect a regular person to just know? Like I said, you are right, and many gay activists including Larry Kramer begged that very point, but it was only a theory, and people are only human..
You are intellectually inconsistent.
@Dusty Heartbreak Yep. Randy Shilts clocked it and took sooo much flack in San Francisco for advocating preventive measures. I also used to get after my gay male friends all the time about the astounding promiscuity (also not such a good thing in hetero pickup bars), because I saw them dealing with chronic and debilitating STDs. I was told in no short order that it was part of their "liberation" and "freedom" and "self-expression". Yes. They "liberated" themselves right into their graves. I lost 11 friends because of the wilful blindness, and the febrility of gay male political identity that showed itself to be insecure in its very stridency.
Dusty Heartbreak If society wasn’t shitty they would’ve been more cooperative
@ 9.18 min. - "The blood banks infected 28,000 people...", including a dear friend via blood transfusion for a ruptured spleen. Received a letter two-three years later from the hospital, saying he needed to come in for an HIV test. He tested positive, made them run it three times before accepting diagnosis. Lived almost 20 years until brain lesions caused the seizures that ultimately killed him.
Sorry for your loss Lisa 💗
So sorry. 😔
Why can’t I find the movie VITO!!?!? Not even on amazon or hbo
Here's where VITO is available:
automatpictures.com/vito/
Im guilty. I was terrified. I was never scared of gay people. That never happened. But i was terrified of mosquitos. I was scared of rodents. Sounds so stupid today. I was so uninformed. Now i know better. Thankfully.
I am too. In 1993 my boyfriend's brother-a hemophiliac-died of AIDS. He was only 18, a sweet innocent kid who had never had sex. But I was afraid to use the bathroom at their house. It was stupid and- I understand what you're saying. But in 1993 in the midwest-AIDS was not talked about-and when it was it was scary. We were uninformed and dumb.
I read a book yrs back that spoke of gay men having 1000 of partners. heck, 10 a day. that shocked me.
Beat Girl-- TEN partners a day? Wow, what stamina!
In college a very good friend of mine had sex with two different girls in the same day on two separate occasions. And even though that was in my...I mean, his sexual prime (20 years old), there is no way he could have handled 3 different girls....much less TEN!!
Beat Girl I have compassion for people but didn't understand when the government was being blamed the blame game on either side of the issue is destructive
Compare the government response to Legionairre's disease to AIDS then see if you understand.
Read “And the Band Played On”. Everywhere else in the world, this was a body fluid borne disease, not a ‘gay’ one. Had this been something that could go airborne (like Ebola for instance) our leadership would have killed us all with their crappy response.
Cocaine and methamphetamine, baby!
the numbers of opioid deaths today are on the level of Aids deaths at their peak in the early 1990s.
Does this sound familiar?
First transfusion case has been misrepresented / lied about for forty years.
It's stunning and mystefying to me that gay men at that time could see their friends suddenly dying all around them and defiantly continue to not at all modify their behavior. I get the fact that gays have struggled for so long and that the gay movement had just made some progress, and i also get that it was a new disease , but I would think that if it were me, I would be so freaked out by what was happening around me, that I'd take some precautions, and just wait and see. I would think an intense fear and a survival instinct would kick in and trump my feeling that i have a right to do as i wish. For all of the anger directed toward the government for not doing anything, they could and should have directed it toward focusing on what THEY could do to help their own community. It seems that some tried, but were either ignored or called, "Sex Nazis". Totally baffling. In any case, it's just so tragic.
The fact that that they became active politically and demanded money for research and meds is all fine and good, but the most effective thing they could have done, which was well within their power, was to make some behavior changes. Tragically, it seems that many were just not having it.
A teacher once told me, dont bite off your nose to spite your face. On one hand, it was almost as if they were killing each other out of spite for the government. On the other, many were probably infected by the time of the fallout anyway. I still have compassion for how everyone infected was treated at the time.
Excuse me, but all of the men and women here are so brave, so brilliant. Gays, at least the ones I know, can be such fantastic human beings.People under age 30 have no concept of how we gays were discriminated. Nonetheless, we gays in the 1980's were many in number, being baby boomers. We were in universities, united in brotherhood underground.
He wasnt....Haitian?? Didnt know that was a risk factor
It was noticeably spreading throughout the gay community (predominantly) and the Haitian community back then.
*Baumer....(sp?)
Closing the bathhouse wasn't a stupid idea, Gomez! FFS! We need to rehash this? You haven't learned anything?
neither was handing out brochures in bath houses to promote safer sex.
You can try to lie to God, but you should never lie to your doctor. Your doctor needs to know everything!
, @8:15.....the closet kills.@43:24-together for the next time.
The Catholic Church is now the largest private provider of care to HIV/AIDS patients in the world
+Dave Long That does not make what i said untrue.
+Dave Long How many of them do you actually know? Whatever your not responding to anything i am saying anyway. Youre just going on your weird little rampage.
The Catholic Church should be the largest care provider for HIV/AIDS patients. They had a hand in the deaths of many by speaking against the use of condomns. They had the power to do so much to prevent the spread especially in third world/under developed nations and they did nothing.
Aids is so sad I watched a person die back in 93 and what i dont get is these people go around and srew everything with out any thought then all of a sudden they get it and want to save the world I don't by their bullshit.
Mike Smith I wonder how many of them repented
You mention something I don't understand either-the sexual appetite of gay men. Going out every night to have sex with strangers and have sex with as many as they can. I don't get it-why do they do that? Why does someone want to have so much sex with so many people so often? Why? Lesbians, heterosexual men and women-don't do that (in general, there are always exceptions). I just don't understand that behavior.
darcylkc
A hell of a lot of heterosexual men would do that if it were possible But women aren’t as sexually motivated. Many guys try but fail haha.
It's called testosterone. And it is one powerful hormone. And the men l've spoken to over the years about it have said the same thing--once the testosterone kicked in during puberty--it was almost overwhelming at times. Very strong urge to merge with whichever gender floated the boat. With gay guys, that's 2x the testosterone. And no roadblocks met, unlike, in general, heterosexual relationships--the estrogen factor. That's also why, in general, lesbian ladies' behaviors are slower-paced.
Nancy and Ronald were some of the worst kind people. Yes, they were republicans, which in itself breeds selfishness and hate. But besides that fact, besides their political affiliation, Nancy and Ron were just two horrible people. Their own son is gay. I can’t even imagine how he felt growing up.
Many loved gay pornstars died :(
loved them
Aaron Ventura Straight pornstars too