Gifted young ( 24 when he finished the film ) producer-director-editor Daryl Wein paints a portrait of the world he was born into in Sex Positive, a documentary that's the East Coast equivalent of And the Band Played On, without the all-star cast.
It's also a sequel to Gay Sex in the '70s, from which it borrows some footage. That film covered the good times, when unabashed hedonism was a result, if not the intent, of the gay movement. For more than a decade we demanded our rights and took our pleasure, apparently without consequence.
Then a mysterious illness reared its head. A 1983 report says 800 had died, 70 percent of them gay men. ( And yet Rev. Jeremiah Wright claims it was deliberately spread among African Americans. If it was a plot the real target seems clear. )
With the religious right calling AIDS "God's punishment" on homosexuals, it was politically incorrect to suggest we had brought the disease on ourselves; and yet, as the initial hysteria started to fade and some rationality was brought into play, it became obvious that some lifestyle factors entered into the equation.
Sex Positive focuses on three men who became pariahs in the gay community for trying to sound the alarm. S/M hustler Richard Berkowitz ( pictured: Richard Berkowitz, left,and Michael Lucas, right ) who came from a "liberal Jewish working-class family," met virologist Dr. Joseph Sonnabend when he went to a clinic for treatment of an old-school STD. They stayed in touch and a couple of years into the epidemic agreed a warning needed to be issued, however unpopular it made them. Berkowitz, with a journalism degree from Rutgers, offered to write it. Sonnabend hooked him up with singer-songwriter Michael Callen, who already had AIDS.
The article was published in the New York Native. Not unexpectedly it drew a strong negative response, but the paper wouldn't allow the writers to answer their critics. Old clips show them making frequent TV appearances, usually having to debate writer-activist Larry Kramer, who represented the majority fear that they wouldn't be able to persuade the government to fund AIDS research if it looked like we were "getting what we deserved." The controversial Kramer's approach was to found Gay Men's Health Crisis to offer practical assistance and later ACT-UP to fight for help from the government and drug companies.
While the scientific world debated whether AIDS was caused by a "single exposure to a new biological agent" ( virus ) or multiple factors, including a promiscuous lifestyle that offered "accumulation of risk" through "continued re-exposure," Sonnabend/Berkowitz/Callen were dismissed as "sex negative" by gay men who would sooner give up breathing than fucking. Berkowitz, as horny as anyone, started working on an article that grew into a booklet: How to Have Sex in an Epidemic. It offered common-sense suggestions for eliminating the transmission of possible infection-carrying fluids without giving up sex or necessarily reducing the number of partners. Of course this included the use of condoms, which gay men had never considered.
It didn't make Berkowitz any more popular in the community but when he resumed his career, after a year off in Florida, he became more in demand than ever as the first "safe" hustler. Initially reluctant to discuss "an Enquirer version of my life," he opens up about hustling and S/M in general, going into a lot of detail.
Berkowitz, 51 at the time of Wein's interviews, is the film's central focus. He was close enough to the epidemic for its history to be seen through his eyes. Sonnabend is interviewed but not as extensively, and the late Callen is seen in archival footage. More than a dozen others, including Berkowitz's mother, also provide commentary.
While Callen is still remembered for his music ( "Love Don't Need a Reason" and his recordings with the Flirtations ) and a Manhattan clinic is named for him and Audre Lorde, Berkowitz, living on welfare, is largely forgotten. This film, in which he's honest about his flaws as well as his accomplishments, should help change that.
