Video Lifeline

When Hugh McPherson found out in 1992 that his persistent cold was actually a symptom of AIDS, he was not shocked by the news. McPherson, a native of Canada who had been working at a Silver Lake video store for four years, is gay. He had seen many friends and customers afflicted by the dreaded virus. His lover was HIV-positive.

He spent many days in the hospital (“it was a pretty close call”) and when he was released, he was no longer well enough to work.

With his lover still able to work, McPherson spent his days alone at the home they shared, bored and rapidly falling into depression.

Then one day he decided to have a yard sale to get rid of the stacks and stacks of old videotapes that he had collected while working at the video store.

“But then,” he said, “I thought I could do something better for the people who are stuck at home.”

McPherson approached the AIDS Service Center in Pasadena, where he is a client, about starting a video library where homebound people with AIDS and their caretakers could check out tapes for free.

The service center agreed and the first branch of the Hugo Au Go-Go Video Lending Library opened in 1993. (Hugo Au Go-Go is McPherson’s nickname, dating back to the days when he moonlighted as an underground club promoter.) Today there are five branches of the library, offering thousands of videos.

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McPherson gets people to donate new and old tapes by distributing fliers advertising his library. A few weeks ago, he received a new copy of “The Wizard of Oz” from a Kansas woman who wanted every child to have a chance to see the movie. “I just thought that was so sweet,” he said.

Many of his tapes come from local video stores. The stores receive hundreds of promotional tapes that often end up being thrown away. Entertainment-related companies, such as Virgin Megastore and Capitol Records, also contribute extra copies of both tapes and CDs.

The lending library, now a nonprofit organization, has other branches at AIDS Project L.A., AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Minority AIDS Project and Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team.

The library at AIDS Project L.A. is the largest, with more than 2,000 videos. “It is extremely popular,” said Joseph Onesta, living skills coordinator for the group. “When people are dealing with a health crisis as well as a financial crisis that is caused by that health crisis, entertainment is just shot out of the window. Here, they can get entertainment at no cost.”

The lending library has become both a legacy and a lifeline for McPherson, who is now 35 and endures AIDS-related bouts of low energy and depression.

“It’s my only extra activity. . . . Sometimes I’ll spend a whole day on the phone. I do it all out of here,” he said, gesturing to the living room of his modest house in Eagle Rock.

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The room was decked out with tiki-style doodads and quasi-religious trinkets, the kind of stuff McPherson loves.

In the bedroom lay McPherson’s lover (who asked to be identified only as Jim), mostly bedridden and requiring a wheelchair to get around.

Neither McPherson nor his lover drive. They rely on public transit to get to their medical appointments.

Like many other people with AIDS, McPherson lives on medical disability payments. After paying off bills, McPherson said, he is left with about $100 a month.

“It’s stressful,” he said, adding that he understands how watching a video at home can provide a much-needed “two hours of escape.”

McPherson encourages donors to give all sorts of movies, not just ones about AIDS such as “Philadelphia.” He says people with the disease are already bombarded with information about it.

“A lot of people with AIDS, they go to the doctor, they go home and they go to the video store,” he said. He recalled one customer from his days at the video store who had a severe case of Kaposi’s sarcoma.

“He told me, ‘I think I really look ugly. I’m like a hermit. I don’t know what I’d do if it weren’t for a video store around the corner.’ ”