In a distinct departure from his role as director on the film The Cockettes, David Weissman dissects the world of HIV/AIDS in San Francisco for his most personal venture to date—We Were Here.
The film screens at Reeling 30, the Chicago Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival, Sunday, Nov. 6, 3 p.m., at Landmark Century Centre Cinema. See reelingfilmfestival.org/ .
We Were Here takes the willing viewer on a powerful ride through the Castro before HIV/AIDS is discovered and then, in a monumentally moving manner, during and after the epidemic runs rampant through the neighborhood that was home to so many gay men in the early '70s and '80s. The interview subjects in the film—Ed Wolf, Paul Boneberg, Daniel Goldstein, Guy Clark and Eileen Glutzer—provide the soundtrack to a haunting, yet imperative, history lesson that needs to be taught to current and future generations.
In this telling project, Weissman's vision is unmatched and his candor, humanity, communication technique and approach to our most trying time in LGBT history is unwavering in effort. This is a film not to be missed and Weissman is a name not to be forgotten.
Windy City Times: We have been waiting for and needing this documentary for quite some time. I haven't seen anything like it. Why did you decide to make this film now? Is it in conjunction with the 30th anniversary of HIV/AIDS or did the timing just seem right?
David Weissman: When this project started, I was actually completely oblivious to the 30th anniversary mark. It was more of a coincidence than anything else. I think there is something in the air with historical traumas like this and I think enough time has to pass before people are ready and willing to revisit it—the people who lived through it. It just seemed like it was the right time for this movie. There's a lot of AIDS-related material being produced right now by people from that early era as well as by young people who are starting to revisit that piece of gay history.
The idea to make the movie came from a boyfriend of mine who was much younger and had heard me talk about my experiences during those years a lot. He had suggested that I make a movie out of it and the timing was right. Once he suggested it, I felt that, "Of course. This is what I am supposed to be doing."
WCT: There is a definite teaching moment to be discovered in viewing this film. The younger generations that have lived with HIV/AIDS their entire lives will learn something that cannot be obtained by opening a textbook.
DW: I think there are very few people—even the people who lived through that period—that really pay a lot of attention to the fact that the AIDS epidemic started just 12 years after Stonewall. It really has been the biggest piece of post-Stonewall gay and lesbian history—the AIDS epidemic. When you really think about that, it's kind of mind-boggling. To think of how young of a community we were when we had to deal with this enormous thing and how it both devastated us and also forced us to grow up [ as a community ] , consolidate power, and unite in ways that we might not have been compelled to do without the [ AIDS ] crisis.
WCT: The photographs depicting the AIDS crisis in the early years were incredibly moving—haunting. The video footage was as well. How difficult was it for you to track down the materials needed to illustrate the stories being told on-screen?
DW: The footage and photographs came from a wide variety of different sources. Some of it came from really early films that were made in the '80s in San Francisco. There were four films in particular [ Fighting for Our Lives: Facing AIDS in San Francisco, Living With AIDS, Silverlake Life, Chuck Soloman: Coming of Age ] which were invaluable because they were from the very early years. The news footage is from VHS tapes that people recorded [ during that time ] because most local news footage is not available anymore and was not archived. We were lucky that people had actually recorded stuff on their home video systems when all of this was on the news. The archival photographs came from a pretty wide variety of sources. Was there an image that spoke to you?
WCT: Well, of course the images of the men with the purple splotches on their backs and stomachs. Also, the early hospital footage really got me. It was truly heartbreaking to see because it's something we don't really talk about with all of the new medications out now and people living much longer lives.
DW: Yeah, in a way I think that even those of us who lived through it, it's sort of mind-boggling to look at things with this vantage point and to be reminded of how enormous it is—I think that it's one of those things that has been very powerful for this generation who didn't live through the early years of AIDS to see and have it spoken out loud. To have it captured in this way is very validating in a way. We're able to say, "Yes, this really did actually happen. We actually did live through this time." It's an absolutely incredible thing. I think that for younger men in particular, it's been very overwhelming to see the film and to realize that if they had been born in a different time they may have been confronted with the exact same thing. If the previous generations had not gone through what they had gone through, they would still be going through the same thing. The fact that there are drugs available now, that there is political support around HIV/AIDS, that there are all kinds of community support … I mean, all of that is built upon the work, suffering and death of an entire generation. I think it's really important for that lineage to be understood within our community.
WCT: How did you find the people you used as storytellers in the film? Was it a tough task to locate them after all of this time?
DW: No. I didn't really know how I was going to find people. I mean, the thing that I knew at the very beginning was that I only wanted to interview people who had come to San Francisco before the epidemic. I wanted to interview people who had come to San Francisco because of the magic that the city represented—not only to gay people, but to people who were adventurers and free-spirits. San Francisco was always a beacon. So, I wanted to have people with that San Francisco spirit and then follow them as their lives changed with the coming of the epidemic. The five people who wound up in the film [ Ed Wolf, Paul Boneberg, Daniel Goldstein, Guy Clark and Eileen Glutzer ] are all actually people who I knew a little bit. The reason they wound up in the film was because I happened to bump into them somewhere and in the course of conversation, it occurred to me that they would be interesting people to interview. So, they are in the movie partially through chance encounter and partially through intuitive sense on my part that they could provide what I wanted the film to relay.
WCT: You nailed it right on the head with the casting. Every single one of them had a distinct story to tell. Their stories humanized the epidemic for generations who didn't live through the beginning of HIV/AIDS. Being that the subject matter was intense, did you find it a challenge at all to get the storytellers to share or did it flow pretty easily during the filming?
DW: The intuitive part of the casting piece for me was the sense that there would be a certain level of trust between me and the interviewee and also the willingness and capacity on the part of the interviewee to do that kind of introspection. I think that that is where the casting works. The interviews were not really conventional. They were conversations where people shared the same history and they were very intimate conversations. I also didn't have a particular subject matter that I tried to get from particular people, I just let the flow of conversation lead to wherever it would go.
WCT: Have you found that there has been any sort of pushback in regards to the film's subject matter, the images, video footage, etc.?
DW: No, I mean, there's been pretty unanimous appreciation of the movie by people who have seen it. I think the hardest thing has been audiences fearing to see it because they think it's going to be depressing. I think that what has worked as the film gets better and better known, is that the word is getting out that it's not a depressing film, but a very inspiring film. People are coming out of the theater in a very positive place and not a "down" place. I think that it's the hardest thing to overcome with a film that has this type of subject matter—letting people know they won't be bummed out.
WCT: Lesbians played such a pivotal role in the early days of HIV/AIDS. It's a fact that many in the younger female generation may not necessarily know because history hasn't always been passed down and there is such a divide between the gays and lesbians. We Were Here really depicts that timeframe when we were all together working as one—thank you for that.
DW: There is a lot of information regarding the gay liberation movement and the politics surrounding it that are not well-known now. In smaller towns there's always been much greater integration between lesbians and gay men, but in the big cities, because of the women's movement, many lesbians were much more oriented towards women's movement politics and, I mean, partially because a lot of gay men had not really dealt with their own sexism, too. You know, it was part of the political structure of the time. There was much more separatism among lesbians than there is now. There was a strong feeling of lesbian separatism that existed in the bigger cities and the more politicized communities. I don't think it was just the epidemic that changed that, but certainly the epidemic allowed for a huge coming together and a tremendous amount of generosity, energy, political, and care-giving activity on the part of women. Every gay man who lived through that era will speak to that.
