I just watched this old film last night for the first time. It's about a group of gay men throughout the 1980s dealing with AIDS.
The first character to die from AIDS is named "John Deacon". Not sure of the spelling since he's only listed as 'John' in the credits
(link but I found this a strange coincidence.
The film was released in January 1990, so it's not like a later homage to Freddie or Queen having suffered a loss, but I just thought it very strange to hear people saying "John Deacon" all the time in a film about AIDS.
Thought I'd mention it.
So how did you like "Longtime Companion"? I thought that it was much more subtle than "Philadelphia," which everyone carried on about so much. I really believed the characters, and I like the way that the movie did not succumb to politically correctness in general. From "Philadephia," it is clear that the movie goes out of its way not to stereotype gay people. At the same time, I simply did not buy Tom Hanks and Antonio Banderas as gay guys. With "Longtime Companion," the movie was not afraid to make some of the characters a little bit effeminate, which I think made it more authentic.
The other thing that I love about "Longtime Companion" is the way that it portrays those haunting early years of the epidemic. It was such a strange time, and I think that you can understand why some people did not even bother to take it seriously. After all, was there any reason to believe that a cure would not be right around the corner? Who knew anything about the complexity of retroviruses?