Plan B Forum

The screen adaptation of The Normal Heart, Larry Kramer's groundbreaking play about the earliest years of the AIDS epidemic, premieres tonight (Sunday May 25) on HBO. For those who have never seen the play, and/or who are not old enough to remember the indifference and even hostility faced by those earliest activists who sounded the alarm about what was coming, this is a must see.

Read here for more.

Hopefully it will be for rent via streaming sometime soon.

How was it Scooter? I was a little concerned about the casting. I recall seeing it in London in the mid 80s and it was pretty powerful then. Did it stand the test of time?

I loved it. It was obviously different than the stage version of which I have seen 4 or 5 different productions over the years, because there are things you can do on screen that wouldn't work on stage and vice versa. They redacted some of the longer monologues that I remembered as quite powerful in the stage version, perhaps it was question of film having to move faster than stage, but I don't think it suffered much for it.

I thought most of the casting choice were genius. I thought as I initially watched that Matt Bomer might have been a bit too "pretty" for the role he played, but as his character's illness progressed it was clear how well he captured it, including the physical tranformation he underwent - he must have lost 30 or 40 pounds for the closing scenes. Mark Ruffalo was completely believable for me as the character based on Larry Kramer. Interestingly though, the casting that always seems for me to be the gauge of the quality of the production is who is playing Tommy Boatwright, if you remember that character, and Jim Parsons was fucking MAGNIFICENT, it was so spot on.

Bottom line - did it capture the spirit of the times and stir those reminiscent visceral emotions for me in the same way that the best stage productions did - absolutely yes.

Scooter, I'm staying at a hotel with HBO while at this CLE conference, and there are several showings of A Normal Heart in the next few days - WOOT! I won't have to wait for it to get to Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Let me know what you think.

I certainly will!

I never saw the play and my knowledge of the history of HIV/AIDS activism was learnt - as it was happening - through the mass media, meaning it was nearly entirely inaccurate - it blows my mind how many people died before the government started talking about it. It's the policy position of Reagan's that is most hateful of all.

Anyway, I thought the movie was very powerful - it made me angry and was heartbreaking and the acting was very compelling. I look forward to watching it again. Mark Ruffalo was just great.

Thanks very much for letting us know about it!