AIDS Quilt Story Weaves Saddest Threads of Love

The Los Angeles premiere of the HBO-sponsored documentary “Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt” was not a festive occasion. Word of the nature and intensity of the 75-minute film had already reached Los Angeles.

The film presents personal accounts of the making of the AIDS quilt, and the more than 400 guests at the pre-screening cocktail reception at the Directors Guild theater anticipated a jolting experience. “Common Threads” had premiered last weekend in Washington where the AIDS quilt was laid out in its entirety for the last time. It will air at 10 p.m. Sunday on HBO.

“It’s a very painful film,” remarked Sandy Gallin, one of the executive producers and the head of Sandollar Productions which, among other contributions, got Dustin Hoffman to narrate the documentary. “But so is this epidemic. I’ve lost many, many, many friends. So have so many others.”

Sandollar production executive Howard Rosenman connected Dustin Hoffman up with the film’s co-directors, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and producer Bill Couturie about a year ago. “Everyone wanted to get involved in the making of this film. Dustin had never done one of these. He saw the rough cut and committed right on the spot. I had girded my loins for this one, but it was easy to put together. They flocked to do this.”

Elizabeth Taylor, Whoopi Goldberg, Patrick Swayze and Danny Glover filmed special testimonial spots for the film. Grammy Award-winner Bobby McFerrin wrote the music.

Tony Perkins, with wife Berry Berenson, was trying to be cheerful during the cocktail reception. “The movie is not going to be cheerful,” he said. “We’re just trying to exchange some pleasantries now.”

Also there were Joe Piscopo; Rick Ducommun; producers David Geffen, Richard Fischoff and Barry Krost; director Hugh Hudson; actress Judith Light; Robert Desiderio, and socialite Gail Posner.

Suzi Mandell, one of the participants in the movie, stood by herself for a while before the screening. Her 11-year-old son David, a hemophiliac, died of AIDS in 1988. This would be the first time she’d seen “Common Threads.”

“I hope this is a healing experience for many,” Mandell said. “Seeing the quilt, making David’s patch, were for me.”

And then, for 75 minutes, the 400 guests cried, sighed and laughed with the five families who told the stories of cherishing and losing their loved ones, then making the patches for the quilt. No one left the theater unmoved.

A teary-eyed Lucie Arnaz had made one of the patches for her good friend Richard Christopher. “He was my very first roomie,” Arnaz sighed. “And I loved him dearly. There have been too many friends. . . .”

“Fifteen close friends,” husband Laurence Luckinbill added. “Fifteen.”

“Wheel of Fortune” host Bob Goen was near tears as he left. “A friend of mine lost his lover,” Goen said, “and I never realized what he was going through. I’m just devastated. Devastated. How can anyone watch this film and not be moved to action?”

“The quilt,” executive producer Gallin remarked on the way out, “it’s so beautiful, and at the same time, it’s the most horrible thing I have ever seen.”