COMICS RELIEF: From his groundbreaking, Pulitzer-winning Holocaust novel Maus: A Survivor’s Tale to his work at the New Yorker — most recently, he inked an ominous and stately elegiac black-on-black silhouette of the World Trade Center towers for the magazine’s post-September 11 coverage — Art Spiegelman has done more than anyone else to raise the bar for comics as high art. So we’re looking forward to his appearance at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts on December 6, where at 6 p.m. he’ll present "Comics 101: Notes on the History and Evolution of Comics in America." The Carpenter Center is at 24 Quincy Street in Harvard Square; free tickets to the lecture are available through the Harvard Box Office (in Harvard Square’s Holyoke Center) beginning this Monday, November 26. Call (617) 496-2222.

ROYAL FAREWELL: After a riotous regional hit in "Do the Devil," a Rumble victory, a lawsuit-induced name change, a stint on a major label, a sophomore effort on Social Distortion’s label, a crosstown rivalry with drunk-punks Darkbuster, successful jaunts on the Warped Tour, and a general elevation of the profile of the New England rockabilly scene, the favorite sons of Providence, punkabilly greasers the Amazing Crowns, play their final show ever next Sunday. They were adopted Beantown heroes, too, so we figure a few of you will want to make the trip to Rhode Island to see the gig, which takes place at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, 239 Westminster Street in Providence. Tickets are $10, and the show will likely sell out. Call (401) 272-LUPO.

NEXT WEEKEND:

Life with AIDS

Actor-turned-filmmaker Jay Corcoran’s previous documentary, Life and Death on the A-List (1997), took an unflinching look at Tom McBride, a glamorous NYC model (he was, among other things, the face of Winston cigarettes) who was dying an unglamorous death from an AIDS-related brain disease. Corcoran’s new, equally compelling documentary — Undetectable, which is the centerpiece of the Museum of Fine Arts’ World AIDS Day observance next weekend, and which will subsequently air on PBS — confronts a specter only slightly less sinister than dying of AIDS: living with it.

Undetectable follows six people with AIDS — including a black church-going grandmother of three; a middle-aged married white woman who contracted AIDS from her unfaithful husband; a recovering Nicaraguan heroin addict; and conservative talk-show host David Brudnoy — over the span of three years, as they cope, with varying degrees of success, with treatment. (Two of Corcoran’s subjects eventually died.) A new breed of AIDS drugs known as protease inhibitors has the potential to smother, though not eradicate, the disease. But the drugs don’t always work — 20 percent of patients fail to respond to treatment. And even when they do, the process of finding the right multi-drug "cocktail" (more than 20 pills a day) is hit-and-miss; the physical and psychological side effects can be debilitating.

Corcoran is a stage and screen actor who has appeared in numerous Off Broadway productions including, in Boston, King Lear and The Island of Anyplace at the American Repertory Theatre (he’s also a grad of the ART’s Theatre Program). In 1996, he explains over the phone from New York, "I was living in New York as an actor, and then I came up to Boston to do a movie with Roland Tec called All the Rage, and also to be with my boyfriend Mike Roberts, who was at Harvard at the time. Living in New York at that time, all you did was go to memorials [for people who had died of AIDS] — it’s a little like the WTC situation now, it has that resonance of living with AIDS during that period. Then I came to Boston, which coincided with the beginning of protease inhibitors, and all of a sudden AIDS wasn’t discussed. It was creepy; it was like coming from a war zone to Boston where everything was suddenly fine. And I thought, ‘This is really weird, it can’t be this radical a transformation.’ And as I started talking to people, I’d hear stories about how it [the new drug treatment] wasn’t [always] working. One of my best friends called from LA, and the drugs were a bust for him, and I thought, ‘It’s not over. It’s still very much with us,’ and my heart just sank. What’s more, the people who weren’t doing well, it was like they were closeted, because they didn’t want to break the bubble."

Undetectable focuses on the day-to-day ups-and-downs of its subjects: hopes and anxieties rising and falling with their t-cell counts; the tangle of their complex emotional relationships with friends and lovers; their struggles to keep pace with emerging medical breakthroughs. "I think the message that’s been getting out is that everyone is thinking, ‘Look at all these HIV-positive guys, they’re on steroids, they’re buff, they’re on the cocktail and look how great they look.’ And it’s almost as if some of the younger guys were emulating them: they’re emulating the sickness. So many people — my good friend is doing great now, he’s really big — they’re fine, and that’s true in some cases, like Brudnoy. But it’s important to tell the other side of the story: what AIDS in America looks like in 2001. Especially for younger people, the message should be, ‘If you’re negative, you can stay negative.’ Because this is not a walk in the park. It’s not just a pill. It’s agony."

Undetectable shows next Saturday, December 1, at noon and 1:30 and 3 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts’ Remis Auditorium, 465 Huntington Avenue; the screenings will be followed, at 4:15, by a panel discussion with Jay Corcoran, David Brudnoy, and others from the film. Undetectable can also be seen on December 15 at 11 p.m. on WGBH Channel 2. (See Tamara Wieder’s interview with David Brudnoy in the News & Features section.)

Issue Date: November 22 - 29, 2001

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