Doc filmmaker David Weissman revisits AIDS darkest days (with hope)

That the new documentary film "We Were Here" takes an in-depth look at the 'Gay Plague' in San Francisco in the early 1980s may initially lead one to think the film is a total downer. Thankfully David Weissman, the film's director, will be the first person to tell you that it's anything but. Sure, the film has a group of subjects telling stories of a community that began to fall apart as gay men were dying left and right; but Weissman never lost sight of the fact that he wanted to maintain a hopeful subtext to the film's narrative.

There's also an unmistakable personal connection to the film because Weissman lived in San Francisco during the this time and witnessed first hand the devastation the epidemic had on the city and with his friends and acquaintances.

Weissman sat down with EDGE's Jim Halterman recently to talk about how he began charting the course that would become this film, how young people born after the AIDS epidemic erupted are perceiving the film, how he chose the subjects that tell the stories and just how difficult it was for him to go back in time to revisit this not-so-happy time.

The human experience

EDGE: This project must have been a massive undertaking. Where did you start?

David Weissman: I don't really know how it wound up being exactly what it is except that it completely reflects me and it completely reflects my experience of the epidemic. I lived in San Francisco in that exact period - I arrived in '76 - and I think there was a desire to have it reflect my kind of emotional and political sense of what I experienced in those years.

How it wound up being exactly what it is, I don't know. There was never a lack of clarity as we went along. I worked with Bill Weber, who I made "The Cockettes" (his 2002 documentary about 1960s-1970s San Francisco performing troupe) with, and I knew pretty quickly that I knew I wanted to emphasize the depth of the human experience rather than it being a fact-based movie. The decisions as they came up were never difficult.

EDGE: Did you know you wouldn't have a narrator and the people you talked to would tell the story?

David Weissman: Oh yeah, that's not our style of filmmaking.

EDGE: Where did you find the people who speak throughout the film?

David Weissman: The casting was very organic. I've used that word a lot. I didn't have any plan on how I would pick people and initially I thought maybe I'd have to do 25-30 interviews and maybe I'd use 12 of them. Or maybe I'd have to do 50. And, very quickly into the very first interview, which was Ed, I realized there wouldn't be more than seven people in the film because what will make this work will be the depth that we can get to and what will make the interviewees work is their capacity to really introspect honestly and generously. The casting was very intuitive. All the people who would up in the film are people that I know a little bit one way or another. None of them are close friends though they are becoming close friends. I think some of it was knowing that they had a history that covered the period that I wanted to cover but even more it was the sense of their internal warmth and generosity that made me think that they would be good.

A love story to SF

EDGE: Funny you used the word warmth because before I watched the movie I was thinking it might be a really depressing overall, but it really wasn't. There was a warmth in the film but was that a concern? That is would be too much of a downer?

David Weissman: Absolutely. If the movie was not going to have a sense of redemption then I couldn't do it. It's a love story. It's a love letter to San Francisco and, again, it reflects who I am. It reflects what I wanted to say from those years and I knew that audiences would need to fall in love with the characters really quickly to be willing to go on this journey. I think part of the light at the end of the tunnel is in the people you see onscreen because you know these people, who you are already starting to love, have gone through it all and look where they are. They embodied the sense of possibility and beauty that can come out of something so terrible.

EDGE: It didn't dawn on me that it's now been 30 years since AIDS first came onto the scene. For people today, especially young people, can they relate to this thing that happened way before they were born?

David Weissman: It's utterly present. There's nothing about gay life now that has not been shaped by the AIDS epidemic. Even my generation doesn't really intuitively grasp that it's started 11 years after Stonewall. I mean, we were just emerging and finding our identity in a homophobic world and suddenly a sexually transmitted disease starts killing us... The largest piece of queer history since Stonewall is the AIDS epidemic. To be able to understand that legacy and how we got to where we are is vital to issues that we are considering today. It is important to understand the context to compare it to the world today people who do happen to get infected, which is still a terrible thing, aren't going to die. These are huge things and I think it's very powerful for younger audiences to make these connections and go 'Oh, this is how we got to where we are!'

EDGE: Have you heard from young people at screenings and during the film festivals this summer?

slug>David Weissman: The response from young gay men has been incredible.

EDGE: What are they saying to you?

David Weissman: The universal response is 'I had no idea!' Young gay men know that they're supposed to use condoms, which they occasionally do. (But the biggest impact the film has on younger audience is to realize) the enormity of loss and care giving and fear and political activism that led to where we are now... I've had friends of mine and acquaintances of mine post on Facebook after they saw it saying that they wept through the entire movie thinking and picturing the faces of their friends and thinking 'How would I have managed and behaved? Would I have survived?' The movie is allowing them to enter into that experience in a way that they never had a chance before.

Really about community

EDGE: One of the most powerful images to me was in the obituaries that would repeatedly appear on screen throughout the movie. That just really hit me.

slug>David Weissman: Almost all the obituaries used in the film are friends and colleagues of mine.

EDGE: So, let me ask you how difficult this was for you to have to go back to this time?

David Weissman: It was and continues to be hard. Literally for the last three years of my life I've been talking about the worst part of the AIDS epidemic, all day, every day and it's hard. It's also deeply gratifying in some way to do this enormous piece of care giving for my community and to know that it's working well. It's challenging every time I do an interview or do a Q&A or I talk to someone who has seen it. It's a lot.

EDGE: Before one of your subjects said it in the movie, I thought about how the epidemic somehow brought our community together. That was a new thought for me but had you already thought of that before the movie?

David Weissman: San Francisco has always been a community that is really about community. Very political... that's where you went to be gay if that was your first priority. If you wanted to be free, if you wanted to be gay or a hippy, you went to San Francisco. It's why I made "The Cockettes," because it's a love letter to the unique magic of San Francisco. I wanted the movie to celebrate that. Certainly, it wasn't a perfect community and many people were unable to communicate for all sorts of reasons that I don't judge but, yeah, for me it was really central about what I wanted to capture. It's inspirational and the world will endlessly be faced with crises that we can't anticipate and if people have a sense that this happened and people rose to the occasion maybe they'll feel more confident if they're faced with someone terrible.

EDGE: The nude photos that we see in the movie was a friend of yours, right?

David Weissman: Yeah.

EDGE: Those photos were both shocking, sad and beautiful at the same time.

David Weissman: Those were probably the very first thing that I knew I wanted to have in the movie. Those photos to me embody just what you said. They embody horror and beauty and courage like nothing I'd ever seen. John was a beautiful guy as you can see in the obituary picture. He was an artist and a dancer and just suffered terribly with AIDS and took these incredibly formal pictures of his ravaged body that are so exquisite, so horrifying and yet it's 'Look at me. This is my art. This is my dance.' That's what I wanted the film to be about that even at the worst of situations you can locate beauty and courage.

EDGE: After the movie, I was inclined to talk about those people who I've lost over the years and not in a sad way. The movie just compelled me to relive some memories that haven't been thought of in awhile. Are you aware that the movie does that?

David Weissman: That makes me so happy. I think that it's the idea that the movie can open up the hearts of the audience to maybe go to some places they hadn't felt safe or comfortable to go to with their friends. I've had so many people tell me that after the screening they went out with friends and talked in intimate personal ways with old friends that they had never shared before and that, to me, is great.

Screening at Reeling
http://reelingfilmfestival.org/