Fear of AIDS Movies : The major studios have yet to make a movie about AIDS. It has a lot to do with the fact that tragic movies don’t sell well. But it also has a lot to do with movie industry perceptions of AIDS and homosexuality and audience sensibilities.

In the nine years since the first case of AIDS was diagnosed, it has killed 80,000 Americans--more than were lost in the Vietnam War. This plague which has transformed the country so dramatically and so fast, however, has been all but shut out from your local theaters.

Not one major studio has released a movie about acquired immune deficiency syndrome or even given an AIDS-related project a green light. That’s in sharp contrast to television, which has been much faster off the mark (see accompanying story).

“It’s as though an elephant is sitting in the living room and no one acknowledges it’s there,” says Randy Shilts, whose best-selling “And the Band Played On” documented the political and scientific response to the outbreak of AIDS. “It’s bizarre. Almost surreal.”

Also ironic, since the show business community has been particularly hard hit. Each week, the trade publication Daily Variety runs five or six obituaries listing AIDS as the cause of death. “AIDS has become a consistent thread in the fabric of life,” says Richard Fischoff, senior vice president of Tri-Star Pictures. “We’ve all seen the worlds of vital individuals reduced to the size of a hospital bed. Who’s dead and who’s dying is the topic of the day.”

Industry observers see the foot-dragging on AIDS as business as usual. “There is no social responsibility or guilt in Hollywood,” says producer David Picker (“Lenny,” “Smile”), a former president of United Artists, Paramount, and Columbia. “It reacts rather than acts.”

“Hollywood is never in the forefront,” observes Vito Russo, author of “The Celluloid Closet: A History of Homosexuality in the Movies. “With civil rights, the Vietnam War, the vets, the feature film industry has has always been 10 to 15 years behind the times. ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ was considered daring in its portrayal of a man parenting his child more than a decade after it was first discussed by feminists.”

But, clearly, AIDS is a very different story from male liberation--and therein lies the problem. “Most of us would like to do a film on the subject,” says Sid Ganis, president of the motion picture group of Paramount Pictures, in defense of his colleagues. “We’re not consciously sweeping it under the rug. But it ain’t easy. We’re a business and need to have our own assurances that any film we invest in will make a profit. It becomes a business decision wrapped in emotion. The challenge is to find a way in.”

That challenge, according to the scores of producers, studio executives and gay activists interviewed by The Times, may be the greatest Hollywood has yet faced. The May 11 (May 18 in Los Angeles) release of “American Playhouse’s “Longtime Companion,” an independent feature distributed by the Samuel Goldwyn Company, as well the Los Angeles opening of the basement-budgeted “Men in Love” on May 4 provide an opportunity to examine some of roadblocks standing in the way of a mass market movie about AIDS. It’s also a chance to measure public interest in (and resistance to) a topic which, by everyone’s reckoning, carries an enormous amount of baggage.

Unlike the civil rights movement or the Vietnam War, two subjects which recently made it to the big screen, AIDS is a topic without closure. Or hope.

“An AIDS movie is, by definition, a tragedy,” notes Ricardo Mestres, president of Disney’s Hollywood Pictures. “And tragedy, to be satisfying, should be spiritually uplifting. But because AIDS is so utterly hopeless, there’s no catharsis after the suffering. It’s very hard to develop a story that doesn’t run great risk of being ultimately depressing.”

The chairman of another studio puts it more bluntly: “We’re here to entertain, not to make educational or industrial films. Movies are about happy endings and AIDS doesn’t have one yet. I’ve had friends I’ve watched die and it isn’t pleasant.”

Of course, it’s not just dying , but who’s dying that enters the picture.

The gruesome ends met by Ali MacGraw in “Love Story” and Debra Winger in “Terms of Endearment” didn’t spell box office poison. But because AIDS is associated with homosexuals and, increasingly, the underclass, it packs a double whammy. Its victims, rather than seen as ennobled by the struggle, are frequently ostracized and shunned--subject to the same “blame the victim” syndrome that surfaces with rape. As Susan Sontag says in “AIDS and Its Metaphors,” these “risk groups” are regarded as “tainted communities that illness has judged.”

“The film community thinks that people won’t shell out seven bucks to see a story about ‘faggots’ or junkies. . . . That’s the bottom line,” says Gary Barton who left his job as vice president of production at Walt Disney’s TV division to work for AIDS Project Los Angeles last January. Adds Shilts: “Hollywood is like the Supreme Court. They don’t want to be too far ahead of what they perceive as mainstream America. And they’re so provincial that they think the rest of the country is a bunch of yahoos.”

Playwright William Hoffman (“As Is”) is less optimistic about the state of the nation. “A vociferous minority--large numbers of people, particularly in the hinterlands--not only fear gay people, but hate them. The film community correctly perceives that this poses problems in terms of marketing and box office.”

Which is why so many TV shows and film projects choose to sidestep homosexuality entirely in favor of less loaded story lines. “The reality is that most of the gay people are angry,” says Barton, “and it has less to do with the quantity than the quality. I’m a gay man and I don’t hear about the injustices. We see white babies, hemophiliacs. . . . It’s as if the people dying are heterosexual Middle Americans.”

Or, in the case of a screenplay Hoffman is writing for Warner Bros., a black female/recovering addict. The playwright’s Tony-nominated “As Is,” also about AIDS, was shot down by all of the networks, majors, and independent film companies before Showtime finally turned it into a TV movie. This one, he expects, has a better chance of taking off.

Both he and Shilts, whose AIDS book has been optioned by HBO as a possible miniseries, were instructed to lighten up as much as possible. “They were afraid of a film with all hospital scenes--intravenous units and bedpans,” recalls Hoffman. “That’s OK with me, though. ‘As Is’ is full of humor, which is people’s way of dealing with impossible situations.”

Another factor in the equation is Hollywood’s perception of AIDS as a political mine field.

“It’s quite a feat to get a story that works, that tells the truth, that won’t get you attacked by pressure groups,” says one production executive. “To make it palatable to the masses, you go ‘heterosexual’ and get attacked. If you go ‘homosexual,’ you get it from the forces on the right. The critics are all socially sensitive. It’s very difficult to wield your way through the politics of AIDS.”

Shilts claims that no one even tries. “Hollywood has avoided the political aspects which require it to make moral judgements. They’ll do a film about guys making love or coming to terms with themselves but nothing about letting gays teach or serve in the military. No one is willing to step forward and make the obvious statement that gays deserve full civil rights--let alone tackle the politics of AIDS.”

Some say that internal attitudes about homosexuality also get in the way.

“Homophobia here is probably more destructive than the overt hatred promulgated by the Jesse Helmses of this world,” says Barton. “It’s more dangerous in the end. Half the battle is knowing who your enemies are.”

Not true, says David Geffen, chairman of Geffen Films: “It’s a bogus issue. Homosexuals see homophobia everywhere. They have a ‘victim’ mentality. I see so little homophobia in Hollywood . . . much less than anywhere else in life.” Shilts takes the middle ground: “Ninety percent of the artists and money men in Hollywood probably believe anti-gay prejudice is bad. The problem is less their personal biases, than the fact that they are unwilling to make that statement on film.”

Gays in the system have drawn their share of the fire. “It’s shameful, so many gay people in positions of power in the studios and agencies, doing little or nothing” says Larry Kramer, whose critically acclaimed and commercially successful AIDS play “The Normal Heart” is in limbo after negotiations with Barbra Streisand (who was to star, produce, and direct) fell through. “It’s not an abrogation of responsibility, though, since they never assumed it in the first place.”

Hoffman is less judgmental: “Gays in Hollywood are no different from Jews in the industry during the Holocaust. There were very few references to the persecution and murder going on overseas because no one wanted to be called a “Jew” and call attention to himself.”

Geffen bucks the notion that gays bear special responsibility: “It’s not appropriate to ask if gays should be doing more. AIDS strikes everyone and should be a subject of concern to all thinking human beings. But you can’t go out and commission an AIDS story any more than you can get an Egyptian story. It begins with inspiration, with the creative process . . . and I haven’t seen a good script on the subject.”

In an effort to find a “way in,” Universal is developing a project which approaches AIDS as a detective story, focusing on the doctor who first identified the virus in 1981. Director Alan Pakula and Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau are working on a comedy/drama on AIDS for Disney--the same studio to which Si Maslow, Tom Hanks manager, also sent a script. Based on the true story of a Minnesota farm boy stricken with AIDS, the project has yet to receive a go-ahead, but Hanks is being dangled as a possible lead and Judith Guest (“Ordinary People”) has been lined up to write.

“If the collective opinion is that a script is ‘non-commercial,’ ” says Picker, who is producing “Normal Heart,” “the studios won’t do it unless a filmmaker or actor with enough muscle says it’s a pre-condition of something you care about. That’s why, at United Artists, we let Otto Preminger make ‘Saint Joan.’ The studios might make an AIDS film as the price of doing business.”

Oliver Stone’s commitment to executive produce was said to be crucial in generating interest in Shilts’ “The Mayor of Castro Street” (the story of slain gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk) at Warner Brothers: “No one wanted to do ‘Gandhi’ until Richard Attenborough forced it through . . . or Buddha until Bertolucci got behind it,” says Stone. “Or Christ, for that matter, until Scorsese got ‘The Last Temptation’ off the ground.”

All well and good. But, in some quarters, playing gay--let alone a person with AIDS--is considered a professional risk that actors (or the agents who represent them) would just as soon avoid. “A ‘personality’ such as a Tom Selleck or Burt Reynolds selling his heterosexual image would have a hard time,” says Russo. “But an ‘actor’ like William Hurt or Dustin Hoffman could do it. England may not be the U.S, but Ian McKellen came out a couple of years ago and proceeded to play John Profumo--a raging heterosexual--in ‘Scandal.’ ”

Dollars and cents are also a deterrent. With low budgets and even lower box-office expectations, AIDS films necessarily become labors of love. “I’d probably do ‘Longtime Companion’ with Oliver Stone and Tom Cruise,” concedes one top production executive. “But I still wouldn’t expect it to be ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ . . . or pay Tom Cruise $8 million to do it.”

Consider the plight of “Longtime Companion” producer Stan Wlodkowski who had far less money in his coffers. Because no one was willing to co-finance the film with Lindsay Law of “American Playhouse,” his $3 million budget was slashed in half. “It’s a Catch 22,” he recalls. “Without names you can’t raise money and without money it’s hard to get names. We pay scale--$1,400 a week--and were talking to guys--A-,B-,C-,D-list actors--who make $500,000 a picture, minimum. I was told: ‘Kiefer Sutherland has a mortgage to pay. He can’t afford to work for that kind of money.”

The film, which took six weeks to shoot, required twice as long to line up a distributor. All of the majors took a look (“No one wanted to miss the next ‘Crocodile Dundee,’ ” says Wlodkowski, “but 10 minutes into the film, they knew there was no danger of that.”). All turned it down. The independents, despite lower overhead and greater experience in nurturing smaller films, also proved resistant. “A couple actually said they wouldn’t do anything on AIDS and I admired them for their honesty,” recalls Wlodkowski. “The others said that it was not right for them but were sure someone else would pick it up.”

The Samuel Goldwyn Company did, after initially putting it on hold. “I don’t want to lionize ourselves or fault our competitors, but it took nerve,” says Tom Rothman, senior vice president in charge of worldwide production. “It’s expensive to acquire and release a film worldwide and we’re exposed. We’re dealing with the single most scary subject out there--but it can be sold if the film delivers. We’ve been straightforward in our marketing in line with the tone of the picture. The ad campaign shows two guys kissing and will be heavily quote-driven. ‘Rolling Stone’ called it ‘the best American film of the year so far.’ ”

The fates smiled on Goldwyn. Two weeks after the company picked it up, “Longtime Companion” won the Audience Award as “most popular film” at the U.S. Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and not long thereafter, did a reported $2 million worth of foreign sales at the American Film Market. “The irony is that they’ll make a good bit of money on that film no one wanted to make,” says Picker. Will that encourage others to embark on other AIDS-related projects? “You didn’t see a host of white-mistress-black-chauffeur scripts in the wake of ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ ” observes one top executive. “Cloning’ doesn’t apply in the case of quality films.”

“Men in Love,” a $350,000 picture co-written and produced by Scott Catamas (“a happily married heterosexual”) and distributed by the tiny San Raphael-based Movie Visions, also stands to break even at the box office. It may even turn a profit with home video sales. The movie begins with a memorial service for an AIDS victim, then explores the recovery process on the part of his lover. According to the producer, an estimated 10% to 20% of the audience is “crossover.” Though straight men tend to squirm during the love scenes, he says, heterosexual women are responding well.

Catamas says his determination to make the picture was heightened by a friend’s description of a Paramount story meeting two summers ago. “ ‘Last Temptation of Christ’ was bringing Universal a lot of flak at the time,” Catamas recalls. “And Paramount made it clear they weren’t interested in a script that presented homosexual love in a positive light.”

“Safe sex,” then, is tailor-made for the Hollywood sensibility--a relatively risk-free way of acknowledging the reality of AIDS. “You won’t see a movie today that doesn’t depict contemporaneous sex without condoms,” says one studio chief. “Just as you see everyone buckling up seat belts. There’s no code imposed, but we all feel a vague sense of social responsibility.”

Well, maybe not everyone. “When we can do something creative and funny and organically related to the plot, portraying safe sex is fine and heightens public awareness,” says Mestres. “But I don’t think we have the responsibility to be the AIDS police.”

Philanthropically, Hollywood gets far better marks. Shilts points out that in the early days, only two celebrities--Joan Rivers and Debbie Reynolds--were willing to get involved. Then Elizabeth Taylor gave the cause legitimacy; Rock Hudson brought it closer to home; and even Ronald Reagan jumped on the bandwagon, recording public service announcements for pediatric AIDS (“Like having Hitler do PSA’s for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith,” says Shilts about Reagan’s ad.) Last year, $200,000 to $300,000 of the $10 million AIDS Project Los Angeles budget came from entertainment industry fund-raising. All the networks and studios contributed, with the exception of MGM/UA.

Skeptics would say: Far easier to reach into your pocket than to put yourself on the line. Optimists respond: Hunger for material, if not altruism, will turn things around.

“AIDS raises the issues of life, death, saying goodby, interpersonal relationships--things everyone can relate to,” points out Alan Gerson, NBC vice president of program standards and broadcast policy. “Of the five or six universal themes, an AIDS story can touch on most of them. It’s good stuff for drama.”

So thought one producer who sat down with a studio head recently. His idea: a movie on Patient Zero, the gay airline steward whose irresponsible sexual behavior as chronicled in Shilts’ book was said to have escalated the spread of the disease. Another producer raised the possibility of a movie about a man with AIDS who hates women and gay men. “A modern-age slasher movie,” says the studio executive. “It was just terrible. People are trying to make a buck off of it.”

It’s a fine line: Bolstering the “commercial” without slipping into “lowest common denominator.” A problem with which the industry is still wrestling. “It’s unrealistic to ask Hollywood to stop acting like a business and start acting like a foundation,” says Danny Goldberg, a music manager and chairman of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. “That’s naive. But we pay a price as a society for having corporate profits dictate our actions.”