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And the Band Played On
Dec. 16th, 2005 01:41 pmI watched the DVD yesterday. Really great movie--the scriptwriter did a hell of a job making a screenplay out of an essentially non-narrative piece. I liked pretty much all of the acting (except for Donal Logue--he brings the funny in the VH1 pop commentary pieces like I Love the '80s but he always seems forced when he has to play dramatic. He's in the pilot of The X-Files--he's the guy who has lunch with Scully and warns her about working with Spooky Mulder--and was bad in that as well). Matthew Modine in particular is amazing--very understated but powerful performance. His instincts were dead-on--don't play the horror, react to it (especially since he's playing a character so concerned with facts and science). IOW, the situation will be spelled out for us--don't take on that job as an actor, don't tell us how bad things are. Trust that your audience will get it from the larger context and react to it. (The one time he did lose it was when he yelled at the blood bank people about "tell us how many deaths are acceptable so we don't annoy you until the amount of money you start losing on lawsuits makes it profitable for you to save people than to kill them!..."--very effective.)
I would've liked more imaginative directorial touches--I LOVED that bit at the Castro Street Halloween parade when the Michael Bennett character looks down and sees Death marching along. Another good scene was when one of the patients is being interviewed in his hospital room by Ronnie Masur (I think?) and he's quietly losing it. And then he shuffles to the window, the camera swings around....and outside his window are endless tombstones. WOW.
More thoughts:
I've always loved the title but it didn't hit me until recently what the title meant. It's a reference to the band on the Titanic, who played on the deck to help keep the passengers calm. And every one of them died.
Robert Gallo does not come off well at all--I wonder if he sued?
Alan Alda is so good at playing assholes. He's like Richard Dreyfus that way--it's as though those roles bring out the best in them (as actors).
Anacronism: Gaeton Dugas says he's a flight attendant--I'm pretty sure at that time, they called themselves stewards/stewardesses. The term had started to change sometime in the early-to-mid '80s--I remember in the movie Airplane! at one point you hear a passenger offscreen call for Elaine "Oh stewardess..." But I guess it's possible Dugas could've been on the forefront of that trend, since he was in the industry.
Photos of people portrayed in ATBPO.
Very effective how they keep updating each scene with the number of cases, and the number of deaths. This is what I mean about don't emphasize the horror too much, don't overplay it--just present the facts, they're horrifying enough.
I wish they'd had names for the photo montage at the end--it was also confusing since it included people who didn't die of AIDS, but were active in the fight against it (like Elizabeth Taylor and Diana, POW).
I would've liked more imaginative directorial touches--I LOVED that bit at the Castro Street Halloween parade when the Michael Bennett character looks down and sees Death marching along. Another good scene was when one of the patients is being interviewed in his hospital room by Ronnie Masur (I think?) and he's quietly losing it. And then he shuffles to the window, the camera swings around....and outside his window are endless tombstones. WOW.
More thoughts:
I've always loved the title but it didn't hit me until recently what the title meant. It's a reference to the band on the Titanic, who played on the deck to help keep the passengers calm. And every one of them died.
Robert Gallo does not come off well at all--I wonder if he sued?
Alan Alda is so good at playing assholes. He's like Richard Dreyfus that way--it's as though those roles bring out the best in them (as actors).
Anacronism: Gaeton Dugas says he's a flight attendant--I'm pretty sure at that time, they called themselves stewards/stewardesses. The term had started to change sometime in the early-to-mid '80s--I remember in the movie Airplane! at one point you hear a passenger offscreen call for Elaine "Oh stewardess..." But I guess it's possible Dugas could've been on the forefront of that trend, since he was in the industry.
Photos of people portrayed in ATBPO.
Very effective how they keep updating each scene with the number of cases, and the number of deaths. This is what I mean about don't emphasize the horror too much, don't overplay it--just present the facts, they're horrifying enough.
I wish they'd had names for the photo montage at the end--it was also confusing since it included people who didn't die of AIDS, but were active in the fight against it (like Elizabeth Taylor and Diana, POW).
