"Dallas Buyers Club, film by Jean-Marc Vallee, 2013
No one wants to remember the HIV/AIDs epidemic – the Ebola
of the 1980s in the U.S. Which is why it seems to have taken 30 years
for a film indicting the government FDA, Big Pharma and the compliant U.S. legal
system for dragging its feet on cures or symptomatic alleviation for AIDS
patients. This film is it. Basically, the Reagan government didn’t care
if gay people died. So they did.
It is based on the true story of Ron Woodruff, a supposedly
hard-drinking, hard-fucking Texas
electrician, who had to question his own homophobia and that of those around
him to extend his life after getting AIDs. (A flashback shows some gay sex, perhaps many
years earlier in 1981.) The film Woodruff
lost his rodeo friends and instead becomes allies with a cross-dressing gay man,
Rayon, who had AIDs too, who he invited to become his first business
partner. Woodruff always has an eye for
the buck, but he also relentlessly tried to stay alive. The corporate doctor had given him 30 days to
‘get his affairs in order.’ Instead he
learned everything he could about the disease. He had paid a Latino janitor to
steal AZT for him, as it was only available as a ‘trial’ drug at that point –
sugar pills being given to some of the human guinea pigs. When the AZT ran out,
the Latino gave him the address of a doctor in Mexico. And saved his life for awhile.
Woodruff went to Mexico in desperation and meets a
‘barred’ physician, Dr. Vass, a grey-haired hippie doctor. Vass prescribes vitamins, Compound Q, ddC, an
antiviral, and the protein “Peptide T.” None
were yet approved by the FDA in the U.S. to deal with HIV. Eventually he realizes with Dr. Vass’ help
that AZT in the high doses being prescribed actually did not work, and could
instead harm people. Woodruff got better
and 3 months later, decided to start his business, the “Dallas Buyers’
Club.” For $400 a month, people could
get as much of his ‘drugs’ as they needed.
Dozens of HIV/AIDs patients line up outside his apartment every
day. To do this, he has to smuggle the
drugs into the U.S. from Mexico and
contend with the FDA, who want to shut him down. He goes to Israel,
Europe and Japan
to get non-FDA-approved drugs, the latter alpha Interferon. He eventually convinces a sympathetic doctor
at the local hospital that his treatments should be allowed, and that AZT doses
were too high. He later sued the FDA in
1987 when they blocked the importation of the Peptide protein into the U.S. While the
judge is sympathetic, the ‘law’ is against the Club, and he ruled against
Woodruff. Later, only Woodruff was
allowed the protein.
The FDA had made a deal with GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of
AZT, and evidently no other drugs could be used to treat AIDs, and no other
dosages prescribed. Then, as now, the
FDA was a complete captive of the industry it regulated. However, AZT is effective at lower doses
as part of a full therapy – unlike Ron’s claims.
The ‘Washington Post’ claimed that all the drugs Woodruff
smuggled into the U.S.
were ‘useless,’ including Peptide T. This, of course, is the Washington Post, the
#3 top ruling class paper in the country.
Others contend Peptide T has some beneficial effects for AIDs
patients. Whatever the exact detail on
the drugs smuggled in by Woodruff, it doesn’t change the basic dialectic that
the government moved slowly on AIDs. Woodruff
lived 7 years, not 30 days, even riding a bull in a rodeo one more time,
according to this film. He stopped using
cocaine and started to eat non-processed food. As he is played here, he was a
monument to a non-passive approach to fatal diseases.
Critics have pointed out that the gay movement is invisible
in this film. Here it took an aggressive red-neck to help all those poor helpless
gays! Woodruff does mention he got the
idea of a ‘buyers club’ from another city.
However, no national gay movement, no ACT-Up, no protests. No nothing. Just one individual hero, a typical Hollywood
proposition, just like the Mandela film. (See review of ‘Mandela,’
below.)
Say what you will about the obnoxious Mathew McConaughey,
he’s a good actor, though he usually plays the same character, which is probably himself. In this one he portrays an emaciated HIV victim,
losing 47 pounds for the film. Just
doing a film about AIDs had to make a dent in his macho. Even as a possible bi-sexual, McConaughey has
to ‘kick ass’ numerous times - but this is a Hollywood
film, and his macho has to be preserved somehow. The real Woodruff was not like that.
McConaughey made a dreadful 2013 acceptance speech after
receiving the Best Actor award for this film for playing Woodruff. In that speech he thanked God and himself for
winning. He also reprized a line from
his first film, ‘Dazed and Confused - ‘alright, alright, alright!’ - which I
almost heard him mutter again in this film too.
McConaughey portrays mostly working-class rebels, which is a good job to
have. The film before this, “Mud,” is a
reprise of the Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and runaway Jim story – McConaughey
playing a white Jim in modern times named ‘Mud.’
Truths normally takes years to come out, especially in the U.S. Waiting 30 years for a mainstream movie on
the AIDs/HIV crisis that is critical of the government seems normal. It is because film makers and those who fund
these films will not take political risks.
Just as MLK was hated in the 1960s, and a target of government spying
and ultimately murder, but now lionized.
Just as Mandela was called a terrorist, he is now a ‘saint.’ ‘Time heals all wounds’ - because the
reactionary initial response of government or corporations cannot be challenged
until the real-time political impact has been reduced to almost nothing.
Red Frog
August 25, 2014
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