GAY
FILM REVIEWS BY MICHAEL D. KLEMM
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GAY
FILM REVIEWS BY MICHAEL D. KLEMM
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Pedro Wolfe
Video, Director:
Screenplay:
Starring:
Unrated, 93 minutes |
Pedro's
Real World
Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Milk, seems to have been busy this past year. Aside from playing muse to fellow out filmmaker Gus Van Sant, he also contributed the screenplay to another biopic: Pedro, the story of The Real World's Pedro Zamora. |
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At the same time,
teens also watched Pedro's health deteriorate, exposing them to what most
weren't learning in their high school health classes. This had such a
cultural impact that then-President Bill Clinton actually phoned Pedro
to thank him for his efforts. Regrettably, his health failed quickly after
filming was completed, and Pedro died the day after the last episode aired. |
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 This
film was produced by MTV and so I wasn't expecting a magnum opus. While
not the edgiest biopic I've ever seen, Pedro
achieves its purpose and it's not a banal Lifetime TV disease-of-the-week
movie. Employing a non-linear structure, the movie manages to touch on most
of the young man's remarkable life. It would have been possible, and perhaps
preferable to some, to have just assembled a documentary using clips from
The Real World but this approach, for better or worse, allows the
viewer into the rest of Pedro's life. A few of the highlights include his
family's exodus from Cuba, and a boyhood incident in which a Shaman predicted
that the young Pedro was born to help others. He gave Pedro a talisman (an
ankle bracelet) to "tie him to this earth" before evil spirits could take
him away too soon. |
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Only the movie was included on the screener that I viewed, but the finished DVD will feature deleted scenes, Pedro's actual audition tape for The Real World, three episodes from the 1994 series (which will please those who would prefer to watch the real Pedro), and an introduction by former President Clinton.
More On Dustin
Lance Black: Justina Machado
also appears in:
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 CLICK THE ABOVE BANNER TO PURCHASE THIS WOLFE VIDEO TITLE |
In
1994, the producers of MTV made a bold and ground-breaking decision when
they chose an openly gay, HIV-positive Cuban-American named Pedro Zamora
to be one of the housemates on their reality show, The Real World.
Pedro was 22 years old and had tested positive when he was 17. His tenure
on The Real World brought a face to the AIDS crisis as an entire
generation of kids embraced the first gay person that they could identify
with on television. Pedro used the show as a forum to raise awareness;
he even married his boy friend while the cameras rolled and MTV viewers
nominated them for the "Favorite Love Story" award.
Special
emphasis is given to the close bond Pedro enjoyed with his sister (played
by 
Is
this story still important? Well, the Pope just made a proclamation in
AIDS-ravaged Africa that condom use increases the plague's spread. Thanks
to the Bush administration's obsession with abstinence-only sex education,
and a surgeon general who removed all safe sex information from his government
website, new cases of HIV infection increased while the village idiot
drooled in the White House. So, you do the math.