And the Band Played On

And the Band Played On is an American film that was produced in 1993 and directed by Roger Spottiswoode. Based on the 1987 book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts, the movie chronicles the AIDS epidemic that broke out across the United States beginning in 1981. As controversial as the AIDS epidemic was at the time, the movie helps to raise awareness of the terrible disease and uses accounts of real patients and doctors to formulate an intense storyline that starts with the first accounts of Kaposi Sarcoma in homosexual men and concludes with the discovery of the HIV virus, which stands for human immunodeficiency virus and is the cause of AIDS. With much backlash from the community as well as the government, the film captures the true essence of the attitude toward AIDS, which before it was officially named was unofficially called GRID standing for gay-related immune deficiency, in the early 1980s. Dr. Don Francis, played by Matthew Modine, was a leading epidemiologist during the AIDS outbreak in the United States and the movie recounts his strenuous experiences trying to identify what was causing AIDS. Due to backlash, the CDC had minimal funding because of the taboo surrounding AIDS and Matthew Modine captures the true essence of Dr. Francis's frustration in trying to identify a disease that was causing so much pain with little to no funding. A truly remarkable aspect of the film was the frequent appearance of one single line of words at the bottom of the screen. As the film progressed, portraying the true sequence of events that occurred during the AIDS epidemic in the United STates during the early 1980s, the number of U.S cases of AIDS and the number of deaths would flash across the screen. Beginning with the first case of AIDS, the final tally reported in the film was 4123 U.S. cases and 2937 deaths just before the HIV virus was identified.

Darrow, William W. “And the Band Played on: Before and After.” AIDS and Behavior, vol. 21, no. 10, Oct. 2017, pp. 2799–2806. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s10461-017-1798-2.

“Remembering When the Band Played On and the Tragedy of Patient Zero.” HIVPlusMag.com, HIVPlusMag.com, 8 May 2014, www.hivplusmag.com/stigma/2014/05/08/remembering-when-band-played-and-tragedy-patient-zero.