Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 11, 1993 TAG: 9309240366
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACKIE HYMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
Among them was actor Matthew Modine.
``I don't think anyone imagined making this into a movie,'' he said, ``because it's so complex.''
Modine, the star of ``Married to the Mob'' and ``Full Metal Jacket,'' read the book when it came out six years ago. Now, he's playing the lead in HBO's production of ``And the Band Played On,'' which debuts tonight at 8.
The cast is crammed with stars: Alan Alda, Richard Gere, Sir Ian McKellen, Lily Tomlin, B.D. Wong, Phil Collins, David Dukes, Glenne Headly, Anjelica Huston, Swoosie Kurtz and Steve Martin.
Some HIV-positive people and AIDS patients also appear in the movie, directed by Roger Spottiswoode and written by Arnold Schulman.
Modine plays Don Francis, a medical researcher for the Centers for Disease Control, whose fight to sound the alarm and get basic funding for his laboratory is the focus of the script.
Interwoven throughout are the stories of individuals affected by AIDS, the contest between American and French researchers to isolate the virus, and the political fallout involving the Reagan administration, blood banks and the gay community.
The movie unfolds like a detective story. The villain, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is a killer constantly enlarging its scope.
``This is not a story that can be politically correct,'' Modine said. ``You can't go back and treat something like this with revisionist history. You have to step on people's toes and be honest about the past.''
The actor flew to New York and Los Angeles to publicize the broadcast. He came from London, where he was filming ``The Browning Version,'' an adaptation of a Terence Rattigan play about a disillusioned professor at a boys' school. Modine met the real Don Francis before portraying him.
``I didn't follow him around and try to mimic his movements,'' he said, stretching long legs cramped from an airplane ride as he relaxed in a suite at a Los Angeles hotel. ``I just tried to take this difficult subject and huge amount of information and make it intelligible.''
He was drawn to the role, he said, because of the many colleagues who have died of AIDS.
``Recently, it's become an avalanche of people that have been dying, people that were HIV positive and now have got AIDS,'' Modine said. ``If you don't see somebody for a year, a year and a half, you start to wonder if they've died, so young.
``We tend to consider ourselves as groups of people or tribes. I'm in a performing tribe or an acting tribe. My tribe has been devastated. It's like a brush fire has gone through. Too, too many people have died.''
Modine hopes the film will help correct misinformation about AIDS.
``It's a shame when I go outside metropolitan areas, people think this disease discriminates, that it's a disease only gays or IV drug users get, that it's God's wrath,'' he said. ``People have to learn that's not the case, that this is not a disease that discriminates.''
Prejudice and a low priority placed on health care contributed to the epidemic's spread, Modine said.
``This all could have been nipped in the bud,'' he said. ``The film illustrates how understaffed the CDC is and how difficult it is for them to get money for research.
``They (politicians) are very willing to spend money on machines to kill people, but for disease control it's very difficult to get the money. Hopefully, this will help to put things in the right priority.''
Modine, a Loma Linda, Calif. native, fell in love with acting as a child. He was inspired when his father, who managed a drive-in theater, showed him a promotional clip of young actors learning to sing and dance in the musical ``Oliver!''
After moving to New York, Modine was discovered by a casting director and landed a role in John Sayles' 1982 film, ``Baby It's You.''
``I've been working ever since,'' he said.
Modine can be seen in the film ``Equinox,'' in which he plays twins, and also stars as a brain surgeon in Robert Altman's feature ``Short Cuts'' this fall.
Still, it will be hard for him to shake his role in ``And The Band Played On.''
Since doing the movie, the 34-year-old actor sees a gloomy parallel between man's destruction of the environment and the way the HIV virus attacks its victims.
``We're the ones that are killing our host, so the virus isn't any different, is it?'' he reflected. ``We know that the ozone is being depleted, but we continue to create things that will destroy it. If we don't evolve, we will become extinct.
``I think we've reached our apex and it's all downhill from here,'' he said. ``The only open spaces you see when you fly into New York are graveyards.''
by CNB