surviving but thriving, still doing everything we can to live full lives of generosity to others.” When I asked him if he had any hesitation about being followed around by a camera crew filming some rather intimate moments, a bright “are-you-kiddingme?” smile spread over his still-youthful face—“Just put the camera on me!” It was slightly different for Kevin. “I wasn’t sure I even belonged in this film,” he said. “When I listened to friends talking about all the diseases and infections they’ve gone through—and I’ve been lucky, I haven’t gone through any of that—I just wasn’t sure why I was even in the film. I haven’t suffered enough.” The filmmakers convinced him—quite rightly—that his is perhaps the most relatable, the most universal of the stories told in the film. Opening night jitters before the premiere? Nope! I asked both, “What were you thinking about as you got ready for the premiere.” Kevin: “What am I going to wear? How do I look?” Harry: “To Frank N. Furter or not to Frank N. Furter!” Both have experienced overwhelming love and support from people, both friends and strangers, who have read the article or seen the film. During the Q&A after the premiere, Kevin spoke about a twenty-two-year-old man who read the article, found Kevin online, and wrote him asking, “What can I do to help change the world.” Harry teared up once when we talked: I asked him what it felt like the night of the premiere to watch the film with hundreds of other San Franciscans. “I was so humbled to be on the same stage with those other men and Tom Ammiano [an icon in SF gay politics second
Harry Breaux
only to Harvey Milk]. I remembered all the beautiful men whom I’ve sat with in the Castro Theatre. It hurt that they’re not still here to see this and I am. “I hope,” Harry went on, “that the film will open a path to an entirely new paradigm of societal support for each other, playing and loving together. I hope it shows that people can be cared for without being a burden.” “I want to go to the Oscars when it’s nominated!” Kevin said. “We want the film to be experienced all over the country,” Erin Brethauer told me. To that end, the film is being shopped to film festivals worldwide. It has already been slated for Frameline 40, the San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival (www.frameline.org); the Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival
(www.queerdocfest.org/); and Inside Out Toronto (www.insideout.ca/). There are also plans, post-festival season, for online streaming and DVD distribution. “We hope this film can reach especially those survivors living in isolation who don’t yet know about this loving community. We want them to know that they are not alone. We hope it sparks a conversation and brings some measure of healing to the community.” And so, they soldier on, these incredibly brave wounded warriors profiled in Last Men Standing. All but one, that is. Peter Greene, who owned Now, Voyager, the first gay travel agency in the country, did not live long enough to attend the film’s premiere. At the Q&A after the premiere, the empty chair placed alongside the other men sitting on the stage of the Castro Theatre spoke eloquently for Peter and the 21,000plus San Franciscans who didn’t live to see Last Men Standing.
photo by Tim Hussin
A trailer for the documentary, as well as photos and the entire text of the Chronicle article, “Last Men Standing: The Forgotten Survivors of AIDS,” can be found online at: http:// projects.sfchronicle.com/2016/living-withaids/documentary/ .
David Spiher and Ralph Thurlow MAY 2016 • A&U
Hank Trout edited Drummer, Malebox, and Folsom magazines in the early 1980s. His published writing has ranged from gay “smut” (his term!) to literary criticism of William Blake. A long-term survivor of HIV/AIDS (diagnosed in 1989), he is a thirty-six-year resident of San Francisco, where he lives with his fiancé Rick. He read two of his pieces at the National Queer Arts Festival in San Francisco in June of last year.
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