Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 26, 1993 TAG: 9306260257
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICIA BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
So at the suggestion of a colleague, and with the partnership of producer David Paperny, he began appearing once a week during evening newscasts on the Vancouver, B.C., outlet of the Canadian Broadcast Corp.
In 111 installments, he documented the last two years of his life until two weeks before his death on Nov. 15, 1992. He had lived 6 1/2 years after diagnosis, well beyond the year or so his own doctor had forecast for him.
What neither Jepson-Young nor Paperny predicted was the celebrity he became. Gentle, soft-spoken Dr. Peter, as he was known to his viewers, was for many the first AIDS patient they'd encountered. Indeed, for many he was the first gay person they'd come to know, even through the medium of television.
His death was front-page news across Canada, and he became what Paperny calld "a household name" in British Columbia.
"The Broadcast Tapes of Dr. Peter" (Thursday night at 8 on HBO) is in many ways a remarkable one-hour video journal by a man who was not afraid to address tough questions dispassionately, and who saw the project as the last, best thing he could do as a doctor.
Jepson-Young lost his sight in the summer of 1990, from viral retinitis, before the video diaries began airing that fall and never saw any of them.
"When Peter began losing his eyesight in the summer of '90, he realized he had to look into other ways to be a productive member of society," Paperny said. "We never really knew how far this would go. The installments had to fit the exigencies of a local evening news show. We knew this was something a little different. Certainly we had to ask ourselves if this was good journalism."
Paperny believes it was, but colleagues worried that "Dr. Peter" was a sort of death watch, and they were concerned that as Jepson-Young grew increasingly ill, afflicted with disfiguring Karposi's sarcoma, viewers would become repelled.
But the audience for "Dr. Peter" continued to grow, even as the young doctor's face puffed up because of steroids and medication, as he endured radiation and his hair thinned.
Viewers saw the young doctor as a friend who was dying, but who maintained a sense of humor. He told them about his swollen leg, his breathing problems, his fevers, his radiation therapy, and observed that "just because you've got one illness doesn't mean you can't get another."
They watched as he went skiing, listening to instructions as he sped downhill. (He hit a tree once, he said: "It wasn't so bad.") He resumed piano lessons, taking his cues from his teacher at a separate piano.
They observed him with his 9-year-old niece, Rebecca, who brought him greater understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood. He told them about looking at his father's Playboy magazines ("to convert myself") but found himself ignoring the centerfolds; and about reading an Ann Landers brochure on sex that his mother had given him; and about not being able to tell his parents he was gay. He told viewers how his values changed after he went blind: "Going blind opened my eyes."
Viewers watched while he gathered his sister, her husband and three friends around a table and discussed how he wanted to die ("preferably in a large four-poster bed with down cushions and a red velvet bedspread and hundreds of weeping relatives"). He talked about spirituality rather than religion. He selected a gravesite on Vancouver Island and talked to the Anglican priest who would preside over his burial.
And the viewers met Harvey, his black guide dog. At his funeral, when Jepson-Young's companion, Andy Hiscox, invites the gathering to rise and recite the life-affirming declaration that Jepson-Young had composed, Harvey also stands.
Paperny said Hiscox and Harvey, Jepson-Young's parents and sister, Nancy, and other friends will travel south to Washington state to see the documentary when it runs on HBO.
by CNB