The AIDS Story

Randy Shilts, author of the best-selling history of AIDS “And the Band Played On,” is waxing enthusiastic about screenwriter John Gay’s four-hour miniseries adaptation for NBC, now in final revisions.

“I’m pleased with it, to be honest. I’m surprised,” Shilts told us. “It includes the major political themes (from the book) dealing with the negligence of the federal government and various institutions” in responding to the crisis.

Shilts’ greatest fear--”a major point of negotiations”--was that exec producer Edgar Scherick might sensationalize the saga by focusing on so-called Patient Zero, a gay Canadian airline steward who was believed to have spread the virus widely, even deliberately. The character is now included “in a very marginal way,” Shilts said.

As now written, he added, the “human drama” revolves around a heroic researcher with the Centers for Disease Control, a gay activist and congressional aide, and an infected psychotherapist who was an early AIDS activist/organizer.

Shilts, at his request, will have a cameo as “an obnoxious Washington Post reporter who’ll reflect the attitude of the media (in the early 1980s) that AIDS isn’t an important story until heterosexuals are affected or a movie star gets it.”

A source in Sherick’s office said that, contrary to a press report, a director has not been signed, and casting is not yet under way.