'Longtime Companion' Turns 25

In the summer of 1990, the AIDS crisis in the United States was almost a decade old. By the end of that year, the disease would claim over 120,000 lives to date in the United States alone. Though AIDS had begun as an obscure and seemingly isolated medical crisis — one that had been introduced to most of the country via a 1981 New York Times story featuring an ominous, now infamous headline, “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals” — it had exploded into a terrifying epidemic with no end in sight.

In May of 1990, Lucas and director Norman René set about doing just that with the premiere of their debut feature Longtime Companion. With a deceptive simplicity, the movie unspools like a newsreel, telling the story of a group of gay friends in New York City from 1981 to 1988, as their panic rises and their numbers dwindle. It was the first movie about AIDS to get a wide release and major media attention, and it earned costar Bruce Davison a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Critic Roger Ebert praised the movie, saying it contained, “one of the most emotionally affecting scenes in any film on dying.”(keep reading)