‘EARLY FROST’ A DRAMATIC LOOK AT AIDS

In November, 1972, ABC aired a television movie about a boy who learns that his divorced father is a homosexual. Although critically praised, the film, “That Certain Summer,” caused a certain stir because of its subject, then rare for TV.

Times and attitudes change. Homosexuality as a TV-movie theme no longer is considered daring. But more than casual attention doubtless will be paid this month to NBC’s “An Early Frost,” a two-hour movie airing next Monday night.

“Frost” concerns the reaction of a middle-aged couple (Ben Gazzara and Gena Rowlands) to a double disclosure that shocks them: Their grown son (Aidan Quinn) is a homosexual and is dying of AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Directed by John Erman, the film is the first network movie drama about the incurable disease, which in this country primarily afflicts homosexuals, hemophiliacs and intravenous drug abusers, and which has claimed more than 7,000 lives since 1979.

But it’s not the first AIDS-themed teleplay to air on a network. NBC’s “St. Elsewhere” did a story on the disease two years ago. Another set-in-a-hospital series, CBS’ “Trapper John,” has one scheduled for broadcast the night before “Frost” airs.

And “Brothers,” a Showtime cable-TV sitcom about homosexual characters, aired Oct. 23 and 27 a generally acclaimed episode about a professional football player who confesses that he has contracted AIDS.

In past years, any TV drama involving sex has tended to stir up criticism even before broadcast. A prominent example: a “Maude” episode on abortion that caught heavy flak from anti-abortion groups in New York in the mid-1970s. CBS aired it anyway.

The “St. Elsewhere” AIDS segment came and went with nary an outcry. And a Showtime spokeswoman in New York said recently that there have been no complaints about the recent “Brothers” episode. Instead, she said, “we’ve had a lot of calls praising it, and everybody so far has loved it.”

There have been no complaints so far about “An Early Frost,” says Perry Lafferty, a quiet, soft-spoken former NBC and CBS executive who is the film’s executive producer.

“It’s interesting that nobody I’ve heard of yet has taken any stand against this film,” he says. “But I don’t know who would do that.”

The drama will air at a time Americans may feel inundated by news reports on AIDS--much of that due to the heavy coverage given the disclosure last summer that actor Rock Hudson had the disease. The star died Oct. 2 of complications stemming from it.

But “Frost” can’t be accused, as sometimes happens with other topical dramas on TV, of being a hurried attempt to cash in on an emotionally charged issue currently in the headlines.

In a recent interview, Lafferty and Stephen W. White, NBC vice president for TV movies, noted that approval to start production was given and announced last June, a month before Hudson stunned the world by saying he had AIDS.

NBC first gave the green light for writers Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman to start work on the “Frost” teleplay in early 1983, a time when AIDS tended to be in the backs of newspapers.

AIDS then “was considered by most of the country as more of a homosexual problem, rather than a disease,” says Lafferty. “Now, of course, it’s totally turned around and people are aware that it’s a very serious disease.”

He and White say that the film, which employed a technical adviser, Dr. Michael J. Roth, a specialist in AIDS research, points out there is no medical evidence that the disease can be transmitted by casual contact or proximity to an AIDS victim.

While it doesn’t use clinically graphic language to describe how a person gets AIDS, Lafferty says, “we say it loud and clear” in general terms.

Although a stricken homosexual and his parents are the focus of the movie, there also are scenes underscoring that AIDS can affect everyone, not just homosexuals, he adds. “We have a group therapy scene where a heterosexual says he got it from a prostitute who probably was using dirty needles,” he says. “There’s another scene where a doctor tells the mother (of the character played by Quinn), ‘You’re not the only one. I had a hemophiliac who died today, and a baby who died today.’ ”

“I think there’s a lot of material that dramatizes the fact that you can’t get it (AIDS) from casual contact and people’s fear--in the movie--that you can,” White says.

When “Frost” first was suggested as a TV movie, Lafferty was a senior programming executive at NBC and supported the proposal. He says it wasn’t very difficult to get a go-ahead for a script, although it took several days of meetings before the project was approved by the network’s brass.

“Mostly, they were concerned that we would present a fair picture of the homosexual community; that it (the film) wasn’t loaded in their (gays’) favor or against them; that we wouldn’t have any technical inaccuracies about the disease, and that we wouldn’t send the American public into a panic.”

But there never was any point at which NBC brass said the picture wouldn’t be made, adds White. In making it, he says, everything possible was done to make sure the movie “is an accurate and fair portrayal” of AIDS and the family that must deal with it.

“We didn’t want to sensationalize it, we don’t want to whitewash the fears that people have and we don’t want to create excessive fear,” he says. “We don’t think we’ve done any of that. The true judgment of it is whether people can look at this movie in five years and say, ‘This was a damn honest film, and it still is today.’ ”

Still, might not “Frost,” no matter how thoughtful and well crafted, prove a viewer turnoff simply because AIDS has gotten so much publicity recently?

“I hope not,” Lafferty says. “Because I think the picture has a very strong emotional quality that will acquaint the mass audience with some of the truths about this disease.”

Neither CBS or ABC now has any TV movies with an AIDS theme under consideration, executives at those networks say. This is not because of fears that people are tired of the topic or that it may repel viewers or advertisers, they explain, but because neither network has yet been offered a worthwhile script on the subject.

“You have to be careful not to be exploitative,” notes Harvey Shephard, CBS senior programming vice president in Los Angeles.

Bruce J. Sallan, ABC’s vice president for TV movies, said his network received and rejected many proposals for AIDS-themed movies this year, the majority of them arriving before the Hudson disclosure.

A lot of these submissions showed up after ABC’s broadcast in February of “Consenting Adults,” about a college-age boy who tells his parents that he’s gay. Many of the proposals were similar to that which became NBC’s movie, Sallan says.

But NBC’s “Frost” was close to approval for production by then, he says, “and I wasn’t going to try to rush something to beat them. I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

Paying tribute to his NBC rivals, Sallan says, “It’s not an exploitative treatment of AIDS. It’s a sensitively done project.”