FOR ITS FIRST FEW WEEKS OF release, Philadelphia, Hollywood's first big attempt to tell an AIDS story in a feature film, played to good business in a scant four theaters nationwide. The picture was like a gay person who is cherished by his friends but reluctant to come out of the closet. In mid- January the movie finally fanned out on 1,200 screens and, of all things, it was a hit. America seemed to be accepting a few heretical notions: that a homosexual could earn respect and sympathy; that a star like Tom Hanks could play a gay man with credible grace; that another star, Denzel Washington, could play a homophobe who gets an education in brotherly love; that a film about AIDS could attract the mass audience thought to be hostile to films about the disease and its victims.
All this was very nice for director Jonathan Demme and TriStar Pictures, which had nervously spent $26 million on the drama about a gay lawyer (Hanks) who contracts AIDS, is fired by his staid Philadelphia firm and hires a streetwise attorney (Washington) to press his case. The public was buying Philadelphia, or at least paying to see it. But among homosexuals all over the country the film was stoking an agitated debate. Their central questions: Is the movie accurate? Is it good for gays? And does its success mean a more gay- friendly cinema -- one that admits to the existence and humanity of this besieged minority?
For playwright and gay activist Larry Kramer, the answers are No, No and Who Knows? In an article, "Why I Hated Philadelphia," which ran in seven newspapers, Kramer wrote, "It's dishonest, it's often legally, medically and politically inaccurate, and it breaks my heart that I must say it's simply not good enough and I'd rather people not see it at all."
When TriStar executives read Kramer's diatribe, they might well have uttered joyful yelps -- the show-biz equivalent of "The Eagle has landed!" Even if their feelings were bruised, the movie's makers had reason to cheer. Now Philadelphia was not just a worthy film and a likely moneymaker; thanks to Kramer, it was a flashpoint for argument. As Demme says, with a soft laugh, "Any kind of debate about a movie is always stimulating to public interest in the film." Translation: controversy sells.
It has certainly sold the movie to gays; Philadelphia has been the hot topic for a month, and nobody wants to miss out on the dish du jour. Cocktail parties are peppered with objections to the plot: Why does Andy Beckett (the Hanks character) get no more than a chaste kiss from his lover (Antonio Banderas)? Why is his case rejected by 10 lawyers, when even a simpleton knows that the ACLU, the LAMBDA defense fund and many other groups would jump at the chance of a precedent-setting suit? Why is Andy's huge family so conspicuously loving, so unanimously supportive? Why do the good guys have to be so pristine and the bad guys -- senior law partners, of course -- so ostentatiously venal? Andy's last joke is one that all viewers are expected to applaud: "What do you call a thousand lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean? A good start."