Original subtitles

(upbeat music)

Downloaded from YTS.MX

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

The thing I remember most about Tom

is what he feels like.

You know, I know what his neck feels like to kiss it

and to bite it, and I know what his head

feels like his forehead.

'Cause I was so used to just being able

to run into the other room and kiss him on the forehead,

or pester him, or bother him,

or get some attention from him.

And I can't do that anymore.

(upbeat music)

It was very scary to look at him

the first time after he died,

you know, look him in the face, but I did.

I don't remember it, but I know I looked at him.

And then I wanted to close his eye

'cause it's very strange seeing a dead person staring.

And I tried, just like in the movies, to close the eyelid.

It doesn't close.

It pops back open.

As I said to Tom,

I apologized that life wasn't like the movies.

In the movies you just sort of

dramatically close the eyelids and it's all over with.

But it didn't.

(upbeat music)

Tom Joslin was my film teacher

back in college in the mid-seventies.

He was my mentor, and later, he and his lover, Mark Massi,

became two of my closest friends.

When they were both diagnosed with AIDS,

Tom decided to shoot a video diary.

He asked me to finish it if he couldn't.

(upbeat music)

How's this?

This is the first footage

from the beginning of the first tape from "Silverlake Life."

And I thought I'd show this to Mark.

The message is gonna be clear.

How's that?

I love you.

(upbeat music)

Thank you very much.

Let's see how strong I am now.

Much better.

Tom, I think you have one more.

Okay.

Here we are at Thrifty's,

doing one of those tasks that just will never ever get done

unless you do it.

Of course, I want the bottom one.

And it doesn't come loose.

It's so tough.

The simplest five minute task, you have to go to the car

and lie down and put the seat back and rest

and catch your breath.

What a way to live.

Huh.

What a way to die.

(Lois chanting)

And now I'm going to call in Omrah.

Omrah is a healing spirit from our Northern 5th Dimension.

He works with many other spirits,

but he channels through me.

And he heals by the vibrations in the sound of his voice.

So if you will allow Omrah's voice

to penetrate deep into your psyche,

he will work with your own cells

to create a pattern of harmony and order,

so all disharmony will disappear from your body.

You will feel wonderful.

Your body will sing.

It'll be like a beautiful symphony.

So Omrah, we have a new friend here, Mark.

Would you please come and do a nice blessing on Mark?

(Lois chanting)

Okay, that's good.

Is there image up here?

Yeah.

There has to be image up there.

It's on standby.

It'll come up in a bit.

Yeah.

Seen it?

Not yet.

There we go.

Yes, it's up.

There it is.

All right, yay.

I want to be over here more.

When you first found out about your illness.

I have a lover named Mark,

and we've been together for 22 years now.

So we finally made the decision to get our tests done,

which was about six years ago.

And I went in, and I came out positive.

And it was very shocking to say the least.

And it's always hovering in the back of your mind,

and you're looking for KS spots or lesions,

or some sign that the disease is finally really here.

I was hit very suddenly with cryptococcus meningitis,

which is kind of a brain disease.

I've got to put this in, it's so beautiful.

Described by my doctor as,

"it's kind of like bats hanging

from the back of your brain stem upside down,

and slowly eating their way up."

Lovely.

Anyway, that hit with a smashing series of headaches

and high temperatures, and I got rushed to the hospital.

So the task of telling my parents that I had AIDS,

went to Mark.

How difficult was it for you

to tell your friends and family?

What sort of reaction did you get?

For a long time I didn't tell anybody.

I didn't want to tell anybody,

because AIDS is such a horrible thing in people's minds.

To everybody it's a death sentence.

So when you tell somebody that you have AIDS,

they start treating you that way;

like you're a sick person, or a leper,

or someone who's going to die soon.

And that's an uncomfortable way to live.

I mean it may be true that,

you know, I could die in six months or two years,

or five years, or whatever, but you can't live like that.

And to have people looking at you that way all the time

is really uncomfortable.

You feel crappy.

I think Tom started telling people that I had AIDS.

Because I've had AIDS for almost two years.

And when he got sick this past summer,

he ended up slowly telling people because he had to.

And then, it got revealed that I had AIDS.

That's it, and we're rolling.

It is rolling.

A lot of work, huh?

Yup.

This is funny because we should be looking at the camera,

but if you look at the camera,

you can't see yourself in the monitor.

Yeah.

Well, let's look forward into the void instead.

(sigh)

How's that for dramatic effect?

What a composition!

Watch this, this is really gonna,

this is gonna...

There.

You're supposed to imagine

that this is some kind of plant blowing in the breeze.

Ah.

It actually looks like an amoeba to me.

Well that's probably because you're more primordial

than I am.

So you can see my KS, the radiation burns.

One thing I've noticed on this here is your...

Where are you?

You're down here some place.

Is your eye,

where you have that red line on your eyelid there.

Oh, that's over here.

No, there's one on this side.

There is?

Yeah.

What are you saying?

There is one now, there isn't one...

There is one.

Where?

Right there?

That little line there.

Huh, that's new?

I don't know.

I've never seen it before,

but I haven't looked at your eyes in a long time.

I haven't either.

I haven't seen it before.

Maybe you'll get to have the...

Oh god, thanks.

The little lead shield stuck in my eyelid.

It sure feels like it.

(airplane engine roaring)

I would like to welcome you aboard,

Trans World Flight 868,

service from Los Angeles to New York.

Your Captain in command today is Captain Ray Burtle.

He's celebrating his 35th year with TWA,

and this is his last flight.

Well, "Silverlake Life"

normally takes place in Silverlake, California,

but in the end it goes where I go.

And It's Christmas time.

And this summer when I almost died

and my family came out and saw me,

one of the things that we talked about

as a way to keep me going, a goal to set,

and live towards, was Christmas when I'd fly back

and say hello to them all.

So, mid-December, Mark and I hopped on an airplane

ready to go back to the cold winter,

to share Christmas with my family.

There seemed to be some tension

about this trip to New Hampshire.

I was already sick.

I was worried about the cold.

And I think they were also worried

that I had started to make this tape again.

Because literally, 15 years ago,

I'd made a movie about being gay and growing up gay,

and it was asking a lot of them at the time.

And this is some of that material.

(upbeat music)

One day in this very spot,

this is less than 300 yards from my house,

I'd bicycled down here.

You know, this is around 14 or 15.

And I came across, I think it was right by this tree, yeah,

a rock, and under the rock was a note.

And it was right under here

and there was a note in it, you know.

And the notes were between two gay lovers.

And they were communicating when they were going to meet.

So I wrote back to them, the schedule of course.

But I wrote back to them, telling them about it,

and then came back, and they left me a dirty magazine.

And being gay,

every mother finds dirty magazines

that their kids collected,

you know, that they hide under the mattress.

But not dirty male magazines, you know.

And you develop this whole inner secretiveness,

where you learn not to tell people,

you know, and to hide things, and to cover things up,

and it begins to change your personality.

And you learn how to socialize with women

and pretend to follow the whole route

that all your peers are following,

when in the end it's kind of all a lie.

And you learn to lie pretty well.

And I'm tired of lying.

I don't wanna lie anymore.

So ah, I make this film.

Right?

What's your name?

What's your relationship to me?

My name is Mark Massi, and I'm your lover.

Back in college, you had decided

that you couldn't love anybody,

and you didn't want to love anybody,

and you were going to love everybody through film

by doing great, tender, romantic films.

And, I madly fell in love with you

'cause I was desperately in need to love somebody,

and our minds just seemed to work together.

We understood life kind of on the same level.

And it took almost a year of me yelling and screaming

and pulling my hair out, and getting very suicidal,

before you finally fell in love with me.

(upbeat music)

Okay.

What's your name and what's your relationship to me?

My name is Mary Joslin, middle name Kimball,

and I am your mother.

Okay.

Are you nervous?

Not very, no.

I am.

You are?

Yeah.

Can you remember, clearly,

the first time that I ever told you that I was a homosexual.

Yes, indeed.

Could you relate that?

Yes.

It was in the lobby of the New England Center

at the University of New Hampshire.

And I was standing, at the time, on an orange rug.

And I very shortly sat down.

I don't even like to think about it.

I think it's awful.

And I think we must've done something wrong to get that way.

And I don't think you ought to advertise it.

And I don't think in this movie

you ought to even mention it,

because it may not be embarrassing to you,

but it'd be embarrassing as hell to me.

Family life has always meant so much,

and to think that you would not have a family of your own

was a great disappointment to me.

What about Mark?

How do you get along with Mark?

I don't know how frank I should be about this, Tom.

I don't know, Mark is always, seems to be a nice guy.

There's two or three things against him

as far as I'm concerned.

First his looks.

He looks like he's gonna fall over,

and he looks as though he's got TB to me.

I don't know.

And of course he's got two strikes against him anyway,

having something to do with your,

ah, "married life," shall we say?

It doesn't seem quite normal, to us, to the normal people.

So naturally he's got three strikes against him.

On the other hand he's always very nice and pleasant,

to me anyway.

But, I don't think I should say anymore.

But in other words,

he isn't the type of guy I would pick out for a friend.

You understand.

There just wouldn't...

He and I couldn't get along, I'm sure.

I'm sure because he'd be...

We think in different circles, different ways and so on.

We just don't think alike.

We don't live alike.

I think he resents a great deal about me,

and I resent something about him.

She's a typical liberal, you know.

On the surface she's nice and kind to us,

you know, and says oh, okay, I realize that you are...

I mean she doesn't know what gay is, okay?

She says we're homosexual,

and she accepts the fact that we're homosexuals,

and she feels sort of sorry for us

in her own little way that,

you know, we can't live like the rest of the world.

And those sort of things just,

I mean when you build them up on a larger scale,

that's what makes homosexuals commit suicide.

As we begin to see who we are,

we've got to see that little, seemingly unimportant details

such as words and labels tell a story;

a fairy tale of sorts.

So let me say a little about gay as opposed to homosexual.

They are opposites.

And not just two words expressing similar objects,

because only one talks about objects.

In order to understand these words,

we must understand that this society is a multi-cultured one,

but in reality it recognizes only one culture.

The others are under genocidal attack.

So now for us it is a beautiful thing to be blatant,

where at one time it was looked down upon.

We have come to see that it is the fairies,

faggots, queens, etc.,

that were, through their blatantness,

the first to challenge the system.

In essence saying they had the right to be super-gay

because blatant is beautiful.

So we also know that it will not be

until what straights call blatant behavior is accepted

with respect that we are, in any sense, any of us, free.

The personal is the political, the economic,

and the cultural.

Gay is the revolution.

Do you love me?

Oh yes.

(airplane engine )

Well, when that showed on PBS,

there was a little consternation I can tell you.

So maybe some fear that I was redoing a new tape

also added to the pressure.

But I arrived and there was an entourage

to meet Mark and me.

Friendly people from the family.

This is ma mere.

Ever beautiful.

And back at home this is Sam

about to take a treat at the table from my father.

Don't feed the dog at the table.

It goes down fast, doesn't it?

It sure does.

(all laughing)

Oh, hi there!

I'm Whitey Joslin, I'm Tom's older brother.

H-hey!

Yes, it is me, Whitey Joslin.

It is I, excuse me, Whitey Joslin, the star of the previous

Tommy Joslin spectacular.

My wife, Susan.

What happened right away when you found out

that I had it?

You're saying when we found out you had AIDS?

Yeah.

It was just kind of...

It wasn't that we didn't expect to hear it,

because you had told us that Mark had AIDS

and that you did not.

And we started talking about you being sick,

and your dad said,

about his brother, Bob,

who had died a few years earlier of cancer,

that he had gone to see him, once,

and could only stay in the room five minutes

because it was just too painful for him.

Dad never went back, apparently,

after the first time he went to visit him,

and said he didn't want to see him,

and remember him that way, I guess.

At that point the phone rang, and it was you.

And you said to your mom,

and I'll never forget these exact words,

"Mom, I just wanted to ask you,

do you understand AIDS?

Do you understand what's happening?"

And she said, "Yes."

And you said, "Do you understand?"

I sort of sensed like you were saying,

"You know, I'd kind of like you guys to come out here."

And I said, I think, quite bluntly that, you know,

"You guys should go."

You know, and then, "Well, we'll think about it,

we'll think about it.

I don't know, I don't know."

And you turned around and said to them,

"Didn't you listen to that phone call?

Tommy wants you out there.

What's he got to do?"

I guess I just I find it hard that

your mom and dad just sort of,

are dealing with it as if it doesn't exist.

Oh!

Are we gonna open presents today?

(people chattering)

Okay.

(people chattering)

Now the idea was not to make you spend a fortune!

Okay.

They're supposed to stretch.

They stretch, keep going.

They stretch right on.

They stretch!

(people laughing)

(upbeat music)

(siren wailing)

Well, here we are.

Back in the hospital,

in the emergency room.

In the middle of New Hampshire.

I'm four days away from going home.

It's January First.

They always say

whatever you're doing on the first day of the year

is what you do for the rest of your life.

Well, here we are.

Now touch your nose, now my finger, nose,

finger, nose.

Now Biotusc LA, like Antex LA,

contains an over the counter drug called phenopropinolamine.

Now phenopropinolamine is a decongestant,

and it works pretty well as a decongestant,

but it does a whole bunch of other odd things,

including sleep disturbances, and palpitations,

and urinary urgency.

And the first thing we should do is to undo,

and that is to not take the Biotusc

and not take the cephalexin.

And I'm going to give you some hydroxis...

Well, by the time we finished

in New Hampshire this year for Christmas, I was sick,

exhausted, unhappy with my family,

and never so glad to get away

and come back to the lights of Hollywood.

(upbeat music)

(birds chirping)

Now you haven't had any cold or flu?

No, but could you check

and make sure there's nothing up here.

How was it?

I found the viral infection.

The blood stagnation seems to be pretty well cleared up.

Well I did a lot more walking too.

Good.

The fungus in the mouth looks good, too.

KS.

Yeah.

What's been happening?

I don't know.

I think it's pretty much the same.

I can't tell.

I see a lot more of that brownish.

There is more yellow?

Yeah.

More yellow around the lesions.

You haven't noticed any new lesions?

No, thank God.

Well, miracle of miracles.

We're gonna use the same formula two weeks in a row.

Nooo.

Hey guys, what's wrong?

Come on.

That's okay.

We went to Dr. Matt's.

Went through our usual thing this morning with him,

which was fine. And I got too tired to film towards the end,

and went and slept in the car while Mark had lunch.

I didn't have lunch 'cause we were gonna go right home.

I remember he said we were gonna go right home

and you can have soup and then I'll go shopping.

I remember that.

So he brought me some soup anyway

'cause the soup was so good.

So what happens next?

Next he...

We're on our way home, and I say,

"Okay, I've got enough energy,

go ahead and do the food shopping at APLA.

It's right between here and home.

It's an easy stop, and I'll go to the bank

and get my glasses fixed."

So he does that, and I do that.

And then we're on our way home, he says,

"Look, we're almost done,

I'm gonna go to the health food store."

Which is not on the way home, and it is now 3:30.

So we go to the health food store,

and I sit in the car and try to sleep and can't.

So then he comes back and says,

"Look, it's only one more stop.

I'm gonna the Mayfair, to get tonight's dinner

so I don't have to go out again.

We've got to protect my health."

Well I haven't had (beep) dinner!

I haven't had any.

Jesus!

Try to be helpful, getting screwed time and time again.

I hate being a nice guy!

Of course it wasn't really Mark's fault.

It's just anger at my incapacity to do the normal things

that I used to be able to do, and it gets me so angry.

There.

Voila.

KS medicine.

You were telling me something a minute ago

that I wanted hear and put on tape.

What?

About loving you?

Yes.

That's all.

No, I do.

I love you.

What did you ask me?

How much or something?

Yeah.

Well just do you love me?

I said, "It hurts."

Because I can't stand to see you sick.

It drives me crazy.

I can't do anything about it.

I can't control it.

I don't know what it is.

And it makes you unhappy and it makes me unhappy,

and it drives me nuts.

Sometimes it makes me very angry.

Lot's of times I thought I can't do anything about it,

and other times it hurts

because I can't do anything for you.

And then sometimes it scares me.

Now there's a good night kiss, huh?

I bet you people don't get those.

It's another bad night.

I sleep for about half an hour,

and then I wake up and can't get to sleep

for another two hours because of my head banging.

And then when I'm awake I just think of all these things.

In this case,

it's about the auto show.

We're supposed to go to the auto show tomorrow.

It will be the first thing I've done all week

that isn't a doctor's visit.

But I don't think I have the energy to go.

I've already canceled a couple of visitations.

And I thought of taking a wheelchair,

but I don't think I'm ready to admit

that I want a wheelchair yet.

I don't wanna go through the hassle of that,

plus it's raining out so that will make that even worse.

And I guess I shouldn't go.

But if I don't, I'm admitting that I'm doomed

to lying here in this bed for the rest of my life.

That's an unpleasant reality.

So I don't know, I don't know.

Well, the real issue wasn't the auto show

or not the auto show.

It was about tossing and turning at night.

And you'll be happy to know

that we decided not to go to the auto show.

And now we're gonna go to the record store instead.

(upbeat music)

♪ To see your eyes shine like two desert stars ♪

♪ To see a life burning with a mission ♪

♪ To break the empty circle of living and dying ♪

♪ To leave a child with a vision ♪

♪ I need to heart-break-loose the wind ♪

♪ Dedela Umoya Wami Baba ♪

♪ I need to heart-break-loose-the wind ♪

♪ Dedela Umoya Wami Baba ♪

♪ Take my heart away ♪

♪ Take my heart away ♪

♪ Heart-break-loose-the wind ♪

♪ Take my heart away ♪

♪ Heart-break-loose-the wind ♪

♪ Take my heart away ♪

♪ Heart-break-loose-the wind ♪

Where are we?

I've got hot pizza in my mouth.

You haven't told me where we are yet.

We're at Hard Times Pizza.

This is our superman Strontium-90 rod here.

This is what you weren't supposed to drink

in the 1950's in milk.

Dr. Melbye also gave me a couple names of people

to check out about treatments for KS.

Uh-huh.

I heard of a couple of cases of successful treatment

of people who've had a number of KS lesions

where they've cleared.

One of the problems of course is the expense.

Are we on the third time for the alphabet

or the fourth time?

[X-Ray technician]We're on the third time.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

There we go.

(laughs)

Just before we got into this session

you said that both of you were not quite up to par,

or less than or whatever.

I wonder if it would be helpful

to talk about what has been happening.

How both of you are right now.

Well, I've really been sick since New Hampshire.

Fevers running an average of 101 and stuff like that.

And we went to Dr. Matt and got a tea mixture and stuff

that demanded every half hour,

which is a discipline that I'm not up to.

And then Mark was the alarm clock

and would bring the tea in.

And then I would fall asleep and miss a bell.

Tom, you don't miss a bell.

No, you're making it sound like you miss,

"Well I've just missed one or two today."

And you don't.

If you're left on your own,

you take like half or less of what you're supposed to take.

To me there's a problem there.

If you're supposed to take it every half hour

and you kind of forget and only take it

two or three times a day, that's more than forgetting,

to me there's something else wrong there.

But for me to like, say, "Okay, I can't do this anymore.

You do it."

In another situation, I could do that.

But the fact that we both have AIDS,

I have the added fear that, well, if he dies,

of course, I don't want him to do that,

that's the major thing, I don't want him to die.

But the other thing is that leaves me alone with AIDS

to die by myself with AIDS.

Can you explain to him, Tom?

No.

I can't.

I mean part of me says, "Well I do take my medicine."

And then it's true that I don't take all my medicine.

I guess one of the things that affects me a lot

is I probably am a "doomsday AIDSer."

You know, in the sense that statistically

and everything else it seems to have its arc, if you will,

and I'm pretty far down the arc.

And I know there are always exceptions.

But I do feel, you know, The Wall is not that far away.

And there's a certain amount of desperation

in relation to this kind of thing; the videotaping,

as compared to the other parts of life.

The difference between the two of you

in this issue that I see is that, given the same threat,

your way of fighting that threat is different.

Quite different.

You, Mark, you're trying to lower the threat.

You, Tom, you're trying to make the most out

of what you have.

This is my bedroom.

There's this shelf here with flowers,

food and tapes to be edited.

The camera I do my diary with.

There's Mark!

Here I am, Helga, with the laundry.

I have just done all of our little delicates,

our little undies, our things.

Thank you Helga.

This is the camera that I do my diary work with.

And then one, two, three cups of medicine that I drink.

And there's the tape deck.

And here's the monitor which is on an armateur device,

so it can be raised and lowered

and pulled out and pushed away.

This was all designed with the idea

that I'd end up sick in bed all the time,

and yet still be able to make my movie.

(people clapping and cheering)

I'm gonna tape this whole "Tequila," so make it a good one.

Oh, okay.

(upbeat music)

Oh no!

How are you doing?

I'm fine.

How are you?

Actually I'm pretty tired.

I've been doing this all day long.

Oh, that's terrible.

Yeah.

But you've got a long way to go.

Do you think you'll make it all the way?

It's going so fast, it's wonderful.

Really?

The people and the entertainment make it go so fast.

Oh yeah, I'll make it all the way.

Have a good time.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

(upbeat music)

(people clapping and cheering)

Well, let's see.

I've been very sick for two and a half weeks,

lying in bed mostly all the time.

I just seem to, the last couple of days,

be regaining strength.

You're only gonna see me on my good sides.

During that time I got extremely depressed.

Would have been happy to have just died.

The phrase that I came up with is

that I have lost the steam of life.

The steam of life.

The thing that powers you,

keeps you rolling towards something.

I know the lesson

is that you're just supposed to learn to roll.

Not roll towards something.

Like a rolling stone, you know?

It's old wisdom, and it is wise.

But I feel so empty,

and I feel so pointless, and I have so much trouble

remembering anything good I've done.

As if that brings value to my life.

I don't know, you see.

Of course it doesn't bring value to my life.

And I know the real story is that

you get what you get.

You live a happy life.

You've had a happy life.

If you live a tormented life and are always worrying

and nay-saying, that's the life you will have lived.

(upbeat music)

We see a chair and we're deciding if we're gonna sit in it

or continue to the next chair

in a brave effort of physical dynamism.

We pass the chair in a brave effort of physical dynamism.

And I love you Mark so much.

(upbeat music)

A little action please.

I was a sign.

We're here.

(upbeat music)

So glad to see you.

Props, props!

It's you.

It's me again.

I need some air.

Turn around.

How ya doing?

Hi.

Seeing that there is nobody here...

That's fine, sure.

The woman who invited us here, who owns the place,

is very nice.

She's been very nice to us

and she would like me to keep my shirt on

so I don't freak out any of the people.

And I do that, but it also then feeds

into that bad part of me that I don't, you know...

Being self-conscious and disliking my body and whatnot.

Mostly I worry about those things

because I don't wanna upset other people,

with having to look at ugly me.

So it ends up feeding into a bad part of me.

When I should just normally be proud of it,

because normally I'm proud that I've been alive this long.

It's like, "Screw you, I'm living, you know, I'm not dead."

Back into the cubby hole.

What?

What are you doing?

Flashing me your KS?

Yeah.

I'm being political.

(upbeat music)

This is the best part.

Oh, it's the best part.

(upbeat music)

What is this that passes before my eyes everyday?

I spend most of my time looking, seeing.

Just watching this strange thing pass in front of me.

I'm not much of a participant in life anymore.

I'm the distant viewer, just watching it all pass by,

knowing that I'm not gonna have that much longer

to keep my eye on the prize.

Hear that industrial sound in the background?

One of those big dumpsters being pulled up,

someone rebuilding their house.

More trash going to some dump that doesn't have room for it,

on a freeway that's full of cars.

This civilization is so strange.

I've never felt much a part of it.

I think being gay separates you a little.

Certainly having AIDS and,

being a walking dead, if you will,

separates one from the everyday world.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

It really is a beautiful day, by the way.

Wonderful sun.

Not too hot, not too cold, a little breeze.

I don't know what anybody could ask for more.

Dr. Jenkins, in the office the other day,

during our monthly visit says,

"Well it's kind of time Tom."

And then he looks at me and says,

"You know you should maybe start looking for a hospice."

The corollary of all of that information

of course being that, you know, the average life span

in a hospice is about two months.

"It's time,"

that kind of stuff.

Which was very startling to hear.

I didn't think I was that sick,

even though sometimes I sort of wanted to be.

It was greeted with very mixed feelings.

A real bombshell.

And that's about it.

That's that story.

And what have you been doing since then?

About the same as I was doing before.

Sleeping a lot,

rolling over, sleeping some more.

That kind of thing.

Taking my medicines.

Tell me about all the people coming to visit

and what you feel about it.

Well that's kind of hard.

We've been having a lot of guests

and we have a lot more coming.

It seems like they're coming to say hi before we die.

You know, that kind of stuff.

Let's stop and say hi to Mark and Tom

in case things are gonna get bad real quick.

Yup.

And what do you feel about Sue's visit now

that it's all over?

It was a nice visit, kind of innocuous.

It ended very quietly.

The last day and a half she almost stayed away from me

'cause I was sleeping a lot.

So I didn't get to see her much, which was okay

in terms of what I wanted to have happen.

She knew when to stay away, you know.

So I had no trouble.

You apparently had more trouble than I did.

Here, you take the camera.

What did you think of Sue's visit?

Well I'll wait till you get me in frame.

Okay.

Well, it's funny.

You probably slept through most of Sue's visit.

But Sue's visit was very helpful, very good.

She helped a lot.

I learned a lot.

She got me through a lot of bad times,

but it was a whole situation where Sue was into,

"Tom is dying of AIDS."

And the reason she stayed away from you those last two days

is because you were going through a quote, unquote,

"a period of acceptance and withdrawal,

and needed to be left alone

so that you could get ready to die."

Not that she was just leaving you alone

because you were sleeping.

It was very taxing in that way

in that it was like a barrage of death notices,

which I don't think was positive for me in the end

in that vein.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Good morning Tom.

As I said earlier, this is June 1st, and how are you today?

A delightful beginning.

You start on my urine bottle?

No, I started on your empty breakfast tray.

Oh, very good.

Thank you.

You made it another month.

We made it another month.

Yeah.

May, April,

March...

What is it?

It's June 1st, dear.

June 1st.

Wow!

June 1st.

My mind's been getting vague lately,

which is sort of a problem, carrying on a nice conversation.

Happened in the car the other day.

With who?

I don't know.

Who was I in the car with the other day?

Anybody?

The only car you've been in was with me

was to the doctor's on Tuesday.

Someone must have driven me to County.

No, you've never been to County, Tom.

Oh.

Anyway.

Here we are

having our fabulous European ocean cruise.

Mr. Joslin is out here on the deck with his sunglasses,

his walking stick, his little cap

to keep the sun off the top his head,

and his chocolate shake.

Welcome, welcome.

I hope you are enjoying your trip.

This is where we're going.

Somewhere in the Mediterranean.

So we'll keep you tracked

with further inputs on our journey.

It's a little shorter than we thought it was gonna be.

But then, that's life.

(upbeat music)

This is Judy.

Judy Linn is visiting.

Am I in focus?

Yes, you're in focus, dear.

Could you go into the living room

and get the photograph of Tom and Me?

In the frame?

Yes, the one in the frame.

Okay.

Judy is a photographer,

and this particular photo she's gonna show us

is one she made for us, for us.

A year and a half ago on our anniversary.

It's really good.

You might get some glare or something.

There we are.

There's Tom, and me and Tom in the picture,

a year and a half ago,

obviously right after he had a great haircut.

You remember who else is coming next week?

Next week?

No I don't.

You know what I should do?

I should make a big chart on the wall

with the calendar of everybody who's coming.

Elaine is coming.

Yeah.

Bo is coming next.

Probably Thursday or Friday after his "Compound Q."

And then Elaine is coming this next weekend.

And then next Thursday your mother and Betsy are coming.

And if Whitey can get a plane

while he's flying out to San Francisco,

he'll come up for a day.

And then Sharon and Matty are supposed to be coming

that same weekend.

And then after that Bill Benson.

What does Whitey do?

He's my brother.

What does he do?

Air Force.

Oh.

They should give him a plane.

Exactly.

They should give you a plane.

Exactly.

They should give me a plane.

Well, there you have it.

Let's write them a letter.

Do you love me?

Yes, I love you.

Do you like me videotaping you?

Yes.

I like videotaping you too, a lot.

Mark's making Tom's breakfast.

So what do we have here?

Well this is...

I'm not gonna give him now.

This is a little thick.

This is raspberry cream cheese.

Miso soup.

Cheese cake.

The egg.

Stirring.

Mash it up to make it easily edible.

It's egg.

I should have warned you, I'm sorry.

Today is Monday, and I think that's June 19th.

I'm not absolutely sure, I can check later.

Tom?

Hum?

You wanna wave?

Hi.

There we go.

Okay.

I love you.

You look like Queen Elizabeth.

Okay.

Thank you.

This is a letter that Tom wrote his mother.

It says, "I Love you."

And I'm gonna mail it for him today.

Our landlord, Mike,

just got his doctor's reports back on Friday.

And today he tells me he wants to go up

and see our herb doctor,

which means Mike's tests came back positive.

And Bob, Ron's lover, he's positive,

so he's going back to our herb doctor too.

I cleaned Tom's fingernails today.

I soaked them and cut them and cleaned underneath them.

Okay, you two, tell me what you thought of Tom,

how he looked and how he was.

I don't think I had seen Tom for about three weeks,

two or three weeks.

Or had talked to him.

And I was surprised how, how quickly he had gone downhill.

Yeah.

You haven't seen him the last time.

Probably.

He was skinnier than I've ever seen him,

and I don't know.

Eat a little bit more?

This is Dr. Matt's idea.

He said this is real easy to eat,

and turkey and rice is full of carbohydrates and protein.

Good.

Does it taste good too?

It sounds good.

Tastes a lot like baby food.

Yeah, it is.

(Mary and Mark laughs)

Don't forget you're my baby.

This came in the mail yesterday.

And this is Tom's Medi-Cal benefits have to be reestablished

because I guess it's been a year or something.

I don't know.

And they give you a cover sheet

with what kind of information they want,

and they check it off.

First they want the statement of facts for Medi-Cal,

which is this.

All these pages, both sides.

They want work history, they want everything, property,

what he owns, what's in the bank,

second parent or other spouse income.

This is the exact, same, stupid form

that you had to fill out to apply for Medi-Cal.

Also, down here, they want his current income verification.

As if they already don't know that he has AIDS

and he's on SSI and SSD.

They know that already.

Plus they want receipts for childcare costs.

Now why check that off?

They know that he doesn't have any children

when they look at the thing.

And his banking, savings, and checking information.

They've got all this information.

He can't fill this out anyways.

Did you sleep well last night?

Yeah, I did.

Elaine said she's gonna

take the camera to the Huntington Garden today.

Is that okay?

(indistinct)

What?

Is that what we're doing?

That's what we're doing.

Do you want me to stay home with you?

No, that's okay.

Ian's gonna be here, the housekeeper.

Sue said...

Sue told us that the Huntington Gardens are beautiful.

Well worth seeing.

She said "Be sure to go there if you can."

(upbeat music)

Today is June 25th.

And it's really, really hot.

It's over 100 degrees or something in the house.

And Tom's lying in bed here all nice and cool.

I'll show you.

See, he even has his pants undone here

so that he can be cool.

And I haven't done any video recording

for the last couple of days, because I felt really bad.

I gave Tom some food that didn't settle well.

And it made him throw up all night.

And it made him a little sicker and a little weaker.

And I was just ashamed that I had done that.

And I was afraid to turn on the camera

because everybody would see that he was weaker again.

I just love him so much.

This is Tom's right eyelid.

It has a KS lesion on it.

You can see that on the upper rim it's very dark,

and that hurts him a great deal.

See, I can pull the eye open, and you can see down the...

His eye inside.

But the top lid up here,

he says it hurts him now.

But his other eye over here, that eye's fine.

That eye he can see in the camera with.

Okay.

Tell the camera how you feel.

I feel pretty bad.

He says he feels pretty bad.

I don't feel chipper.

He doesn't feel chipper.

I feel (indistinct)

feel good.

He doesn't feel good.

(indistinct)

Oh, this is the first of July

and Tommy's just died.

My little baby's died.

And I sang to him.

I sang to him;

♪ You are my sunshine, my only sunshine ♪

♪ You make me happy when skies are gray ♪

♪ You'll never know dear, how much I love you ♪

♪ Please don't take my sunshine away ♪

Isn't he beautiful?

He's so beautiful.

This is for you, Tommy.

All of us, all of your friends,

we'll finish the tape for you, okay?

We promise.

We promise.

Bye.

Bye Tom.

Any rings, any jewelry or anything?

No.

Oh, I think he lost that ring.

I've got his hands crossed.

It fell off.

Yeah, it fell off.

On him here or?

No, no, a long time ago.

I need to get a little information, so...

There we go.

I'm gonna cover you up again, Tom.

All right.

Here we go.

He wants some information.

I don't know whether we can give it to him or not.

Well, you know his name, and his birth date.

Oh yeah, we know that sort of stuff.

Sure.

I sure don't wanna displace you.

What is Thomas' birth date here?

November 29th, 1946.

November 29th, 1946.

You know that better than I do!

In what state was he born in?

Massachusetts.

Do you happen to know

his social security number offhand?

If not we'll get it later.

We'll get it later.

So we're gonna use you, then, as the next of Kin.

It's Mark?

Right, M-A-R-K.

M-A-S-S-I.

This is same address right?

I can get it in.

These are designed to be one man cots.

I'm gonna wash my hands.

They're making a film.

(birds chirping)

I got this book in the mail today.

It's called "How to Survive the Loss of a Love."

It came from my counselor at APLA.

I've been laughing a lot at the book today.

I'm in the anger phase.

This is, the book tells you all about the different phases

you go through.

On the left hand column,

they have just plain old practical information.

On the opposing page they have little poetries,

little poems to tell you what they're about.

There's titles like, "What Loss Feels Like,"

as if I don't know?

Then they go through the stages of recovery.

There's first is "shock and denial."

One of the little poems I liked very much here was:

"I know it was time for us to part, but today,

I know I have much pain to go through, but tonight."

Which is kind of true.

It's kind of like I didn't...

I understood all this was going to happen,

but it always happens so fast.

They also have charts here on the healing process.

This is not how we recover.

This one here, which they call like a lightening bolt,

with dramatic leaps and depressing back slides,

this is how we truly recover.

"You can expect to be in shock for a while.

This emotional numbness may be frightening.

You may struggle both to believe and to disbelieve

that this could have happened to you."

I like that one, 'cause you do.

You struggle to believe it.

Like, "I can't believe it happened."

And then once you do believe it happened,

you don't want to believe it happened.

"It has happened.

It is real.

Recognize that a loss has taken place.

You are strong enough.

You will survive."

But that's it.

That's all now.

This is my self-help book.

It will definitely get me through this depression.

And how long, what day is this after Tom died.

This is day two.

Day two after Tom died.

And I actually,

there was a big dramatic change this morning.

All the pain and tension in my gut,

and the feeling that I can't do anything,

that I'm trapped and I'm going to throw up and whatnot,

and implode, that's gone.

And it is replaced with, as I said, anger,

which is much more comical and cynical to deal with.

I'm bleeding.

You're all over the place, Tom.

We should know that from the very beginning,

God gave all of his creation freedom.

God gave freedom for viruses to exist,

and one of those viruses causes AIDS.

It doesn't mean that god sends AIDS or any other sickness.

Bad things do happen to good people.

Jesus loves people with AIDS.

Jesus loves any sick person.

Jesus loves well people.

Jesus loves gay people.

Jesus loves straight people.

Let us never forget that on that cross,

Jesus shed His precious blood for all of humanity.

He didn't have a list of who was worthy and who was not.

That salvation was a gift given to all humanity,

and for all time.

These two characters really shaped my life a lot.

They brought me in.

They shared life with me very patiently.

They showed me New York, they showed me their relationship.

They showed me art and the price of being grownups.

And now they have shown me even more about illness and loss,

giving up, enduring, and about the boundaries of love.

And then my thoughts turned to other friends I had lost.

How many was it now?

It seemed I should be keeping count of these things.

My thoughts then flashed back to the years of the 60's,

and a time when we sat before the television set

and were given body counts from Vietnam.

250 enemy dead, 35 Americans dead.

It seemed that we, as a society,

want to assign importance to a situation by keeping score.

The 35 American dead were less important somehow

because the score was 250 to 35 in our favor.

And so now the count marches on in this battle.

But we are faced with a dilemma in our war with AIDS;

there are no enemy dead to count this time.

We are faced with the prospect

of counting only the dead among our loved ones.

My brother had a dream,

and he had the guts to dare to be different,

to follow his dream.

My brother, Tom, left us a legacy.

He bequeathed to us his unfulfilled dream,

"Silverlake Life: The View From Here."

When I last saw Tom, Mark and I spoke of destiny.

Perhaps it was Tom's destiny to die

in order to create the full impact of "Silverlake Life."

Well, before "Silverlake Life"

could have any impact, it had to be completed.

When Tom died, I was in France.

But five months later, I went back to California

to film an ending, and to visit Mark.

We talked about everything that had happened

since the last time I saw them.

What about Tom's parents?

What happened between you and his family when he died?

Family, Peter wants to talk about family.

Well, there was a big issue with Tom anyways,

way back when he first got sick

with the cryptococcus meningitis.

With whether his family was gonna come out here to see him.

And they didn't know if it would do any good.

And, you know, should they come out now,

should they come out later, all these kind of things.

And then when he got really sick this last time,

there was a question about who should come out again.

You know, was it time?

One of the things which I haven't even mentioned

in any of the tapes so far is Charlie's wonderful line of,

"Well, would it do any good" if he came out.

And I kept trying to tell Charlie

that "good" didn't make any difference.

It's: "Do you want to see your son one last time

before he dies?"

You know?

But anyway, when Tom died, and we're all crying,

Charlie comes running into the room.

And the first thing he tries to do

is to get Mary to leave the room, saying,

"It's all over now.

Come on, come on out here.

Don't do this to yourself."

And I finally had to yell at him and say, you know,

"Leave her alone. Let her stay here.

This is the last she's gonna be with her son."

But that whole experience between Mary and I,

and Tom dying and taking care of him,

did change her opinion of me.

I've been adopted as pretty much a son to her

because we both went through something together,

that only she and I went through.

Nobody else did this but she and I.

So this "experience" has really brought us together

and made us really close.

Seems like there's more than a little bit of irony

in the situation.

Oh yes.

The fact that Tom had to die

for her to see how much I really did love him.

What about your father?

We've never gotten along very well.

But when Tom died, I sent him a letter

and told him about it.

And I was surprised, he wrote me a letter back,

and this is it.

This is the only letter I have ever gotten from my father.

"Hi, Mark.

I have never written you, but I am now.

I know you have a problem, but take it one day at a time.

I had to make the best of it.

I had the two of you to take care of.

I did tell both of you if you are gay,

just don't tell the world.

Heck, I told you of gays after me

and you said I might like it.

Well, I had a gay come to my apartment.

Wow!

Well anyway, keep up the faith, it will all work out.

Your Dad."

This is a very weird letter.

This is a surreal letter.

But I think that letter does recognize,

in that letter my father does recognize

that Tom and I were a couple, a family.

Because he talks about it

in terms of him losing his wife, my mother.

How long did you and Tom live together?

Almost 22 years.

It'll be 22 years January 11th.

Tell me about life now?

Life now?

Life now is very confusing.

I mean, it's even hard to organize thoughts in my head

to talk about it.

Because I'm in horrendous physical pain all the time

because of my rectal problems.

I'm on lots of pain killers which make me weird.

I have my own AIDS, my own falling T-cell count.

I'm just really beat.

That's probably the easiest way to put it.

I'm really, really beat.

Along with the gas still is that inability to digest,

you know, foods, so I'm still only eating

two meals a day at the most.

And it also means I haven't been,

just the last couple of days,

I haven't been able to take all my medicines at night,

because they just won't digest.

Doesn't it look like it's still getting lighter?

Well you know, it's the same thing.

The center of the lesions are all blanched out.

Yeah.

They're still yellow around the edges too.

They're still very yellow around the edges.

More so, I would say, than last week.

You think they're yellower?

Yeah, see, this is a lot yellower,

and these are more blanched out than they used to be.

But we still have the other problem

that the newer ones are still growing.

It's still pretty good.

Okay.

(upbeat music)

I figured that dying is just the end,

and that it's a big, black, boring,

horrible void afterwards.

Not that I wanna believe that,

but some part of me just has never believed

that there was anything else.

Until Tom came back.

All of a sudden zoom from,

Tom always comes from up here somewhere.

Zoom down, he was standing behind the chair,

and kind of like leaning into me,

and with his head like kind of resting on my shoulder,

with his head up against the side of my head.

And he just stayed there for the longest time.

And it really is this strange energy

that comes from up high, and it comes zipping around.

And it's not really attached to the world we live in.

One conversation I had with him,

I was telling him that it was really nice to have him around

'cause it was really hard to live day-to-day without him.

But then I said, "Well, but if it's your time to go,

and you've got to go dissipate into the universe,

and become one with it all,

you know, don't hang around here for me."

I said, "I'll survive."

And I got this very clear message that said,

"You idiot, I've got nothing else to do now."

You know, so he doesn't have anything else to do.

He's free.

He can do what he wants to do.

So he's come and visited me probably

about three or four times now.

Why do you think he's only come

three or four times?

Why doesn't he just hang around all the time?

I mean, I can only,

I mean, you know, he's never given any kind of indication.

I can only guess.

Because I think it would probably be bad for me.

I couldn't get on with my life,

which is hard enough to get on with anyways.

And he's gone.

I mean, he's dead.

So I think he is somewhere else.

It's like, you know, I can't go there,

he can't come here that often or something.

I don't know.

But I think mostly it's because he's dead,

and he knows he is.

So he's not, like, stuck here.

♪ Well I met him on a Sunday ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

♪ And I missed him on Monday ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

♪ Well I found him on Tuesday ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

♪ And I dated him Wednesday ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

♪ And I kissed him on Thursday ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

♪ And he didn't come Friday, no ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

♪ When he showed up Saturday ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

♪ I said, bye, bye, baby ♪

Ah, Mr. Bones?

Yes, Mr. Telapider?

Could you tell me what Gertrude Stein's last words

to Alice B. Toklas were?

Alice turned to Gertrude on her deathbed and said,

"Gertrude, what's the answer?"

And what did Gertrude reply?

"What's the question?"

(upbeat music)

♪ Goodbye sadness ♪

♪ Goodbye goodbye ♪

♪ I don't need you anymore ♪

♪ I wet my pillow every night ♪

♪ But now I saw the light ♪

♪ Goodbye goodbye sadness ♪

♪ I don't need you anymore ♪

♪ Goodbye goodbye sadness ♪

♪ I can't take it anymore ♪

♪ Goodbye sadness ♪

♪ Goodbye goodbye ♪

♪ I don't need you anymore ♪

♪ I lived in fear every day ♪

♪ But now I'm going my way ♪

♪ Goodbye goodbye sadness ♪

♪ I don't need you anymore ♪

♪ Goodbye goodbye sadness ♪

♪ I can't take it anymore ♪