Speaking as objectively as possible, We Were Here is a well-made documentary by David Weissman about the early years of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. In it five people detail their individual experiences during the plague years, touching chronologically on key events of the period. Archival photographs, film footage and news clippings flesh out the broader story. The focus is on the eyewitnesses to history, each of whom had a unique perspective near the center of the action.
But no oneespecially not a gay manwho was alive in the '80s and '90s can watch We Were Here objectively. Each of us had his life affected in some wayby getting sick, losing friends and family members, becoming caregivers and activists, changing sexual behaviors and being scared shitless, if not straight.
I lived in San Francisco from 1979 to 1993, so the film brought back memories of people I knew, places I'd been, events I'd attended, experiences I'd shared. Lines that sound like clichés to me may be new to people who observed from afar, or from another city that experienced the same things on a smaller scale. There was a time I was attending memorial services every week, while also mourning friends lost in other cities.
Someone speaks half-jokingly of not buying large economy sizes because you didn't know if you'd live to finish them, but in San Francisco in the mid-'80s it was true. Death was all around and those of us who'd lived the same lifestyle as the deceased had no reason to expect not to be next.
Daniel Goldstein speaks with largely suppressed emotion about the partner he lost, an immunologist who got them both into one of the first drug studies: Suramin. Daniel couldn't take the side effects and dropped out after a month. Everyone else in the study died. He tells of attending the suicide party of a friend who'd been told he had only days to live.
Ed Wolf couldn't find a clique to fit into before AIDS but became a volunteer caregiver for Shanti Project and other organizations. An artist himself, he started Visual AID so his fellow artists wouldn't have to choose between buying food and art supplies.
Eileen Glutzer was a feminist who helped found the Haight-Ashbury Women's Clinic. She became a nurse just before a lot of men would have a sudden need for nursing and there was so much ignorance about AIDS that San Francisco General, the only hospital with a dedicated AIDS ward, left it up to staff members whether they wanted to work there.
Paul Boneberg came to San Francisco as a hippie but turned into an activist, leading the Mobilization against AIDS and other organizations. He wanted to be "one of the crazy dreamers" but wound up as one of the most practical and political of the lot.
Observing the passing parade from his flower stand in the heart of the Castro, Guy Clark had his heart broken repeatedly, watching once-beautiful men wasting away, but got to see the trend reverse in the mid-'90s when the pandemic turned a corner, deaths declined, men started living longer and the focus turned to prevention.
From the pre-AIDS party to the hope for a post-AIDS future, We Were Here cuts a broad arc through modern queer history. While images of disease-ravaged men qualify it as the horror movie of the year, it also shows how the disease brought us together as a community, including uniting lesbians and gay men. Though they'd been largely shunned by their brothers in the past, gay women stepped up to act as caregivers, donate blood and otherwise demonstrate their solidarity.
I was there, and We Were Here wasn't as hard for me to watch as I expected it to be, but I can imagine a broad range of reactions from others. Although our guides are pleasant it's not a nice story to reliveor for younger men to live for the first time. Weissman lays it all out, calmly and professionally, and lets you take it as you willlike a cinematic Rorschach test.
We Were Here is available for purchase at many retailers, including Amazon.com .