Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic
Page 32
St. Martin’s, Denneny continued to collaborate with Ortleb in producing
Christopher Street, a venture which drew perilously close to bankruptcy
on several occasions. In a creative solution to solve the fi nancial diffi cul-
ties of their magazine, Denneny and Ortleb founded another publica-
tion, the New York Native newspaper, in December 1980 to generate rev-
enue for their company.
In May 1981, this paper carried the fi rst coverage of the condition that
would become known as AIDS. Denneny proudly recounted, “So AIDS
had hit. We were totally on top of AIDS. The New York Native carried
the fi rst public article on AIDS— we beat the Morbidity and Mortal-
ity [ Weekly] Report from the CDC by eight weeks.” The Native’s cov-
erage of AIDS led the way for North American newspapers in terms
of its early attention, in the form of measured articles by Dr. Lawrence
Mass and in its sustained nature. For the fi rst two years of the epidemic,
its articles were read not only by many gay men but also by leading re-
searchers looking for new leads in the crisis.16 The coverage generated
sustained debate and criticism among many members of New York’s les-
bian and gay communities, drawing attention to the emerging health cri-
sis. As Denneny recalled, “Yes, they were really hostile and really agi-
tated, but they were really paying attention. I think it must have been the
best- read hated newspaper [ chuckling] that ever existed in the gay com-
munity.” Ortleb, who maintained the editorial stewardship of the news-
paper, drew increasing criticism from 1983 onward for the Native’s pro-
motion of theories of AIDS origin and etiology, including African swine
16. For more on the founding of the Native and its coverage of AIDS, see Kinsella,
Covering the Plague, 25– 47.
192
chapter 4
fl u and other cofactor conditions. Though the newspaper may have in-
creasingly lost credibility with mainstream researchers, it initially held
a trusted status with many LGBT individuals for its guarded question-
ing of government intentions. Denneny described Ortleb as his best
friend during this period; the editor was also well acquainted with Larry
Kramer, a prominent playwright, writer, and AIDS activist. Thus, he
was closely tied to the publishing industry and the forefront of AIDS po-
litical action in New York City between 1981 and 1985.
Describing the devastation brought by AIDS in the mid- 1980s as
“apocalyptic” and like “the Holocaust,” Denneny was keen to distribute
Shilts’s book to a wide audience, and he later emphasized the challenges
of releasing it. Before the era of centralized decision making, publishers
would use the reactions of other salespeople at conferences to set their
targets for a book’s publication run, and it was crucial to have the sup-
port of a sales team for a large- scale book release. At a sales conference
in early 1987, there was a powerful reaction to the sellers Denneny had
selected to promote the book to their colleagues. Denneny knew that
one was gay and the other lesbian, and he had counted on their being
able to translate the book’s importance to their colleagues, who were
mostly straight. Both spoke to the sales fl oor about the deaths of their
friends from AIDS and emphasized that each of them had canceled sev-
eral days of work to read Shilts’s book, such was the power of its prose.
According to Denneny, the results of this conference led to the decision
to increase the book’s print run from fi ve thousand to thirty- fi ve thou-
sand copies.17
Nonetheless, while the sales reaction drove up the editor’s hopes for
the wide appeal of the book, the mainstream media’s reaction to the
topic of AIDS presented diffi culties. Denneny recalled, “We hit a blank
wall. Everybody said, ‘Oh, it’s been covered. Newsweek did this huge
story, it’s been done.’ I pushed at the New York Times and got a very
snippy letter back, telling me that not only would the Sunday Times not
review it, the daily Times would not review it. They fi gured the subject
had been covered. We got turned down everywhere. There was going
17. More recently, Denneny discounted the fi gure of fi fty thousand copies disclosed in
“And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic,” Publishers Weekly,
September 11, 1987, 72. In his message, Denneny wrote, “We always lied to PW and other
media about print runs, all publishers do (or did)”; Michael Denneny, e- mail to author,
April 4, 2013.
Giving a Face to the Epidemic 193
to be no publicity, in essence.” Denneny explained that one Friday af-
ternoon, the publicist met with him in desperation. He remembered her
saying, nearly in tears,
“We’ve got no radio, we’ve got no television, we’ve got no fi rst serial, and
Time has said they’re not going to review it. Newsweek won’t review it, the
Times is not going to— we’re hitting a total blank wall.” So we spent an hour
trying to fi gure out what to do. I had a lot riding on this because I had got-
ten the publishing house to go out on a limb on a book that a lot of people
thought, while they respected Randy, et cetera, et cetera, they didn’t think
it was a book that would work. I had mobilized the sales force to the point
where they really were going out on a crusade with it, and [ chuckling] we
were getting no publicity.18
In desperation, Denneny contacted a friend who worked as a publicist
for advice and immediately sent him the manuscript.
So he spent the weekend reading it and Monday we had lunch, and I said,
“What do you think?” He said, “I can tell you how to make the book a best-
seller, but you’re not going to like it.” And I said, “What?” He said, “Pull
out the story of Patient Zero. I can sell that story. I can tell you. I mean I
can guarantee that you can get the Post, the whole front page of the Post—
the headline will be ‘The Man Who Brought AIDS to America.’” Literally.
Which of course I think was almost word for word what the headline was.
And he said, “This is the only way the media is going to touch the story. But if
you use this angle,” he said, “everybody will pick it up. Everybody.”19
The archival evidence supports this view to an extent. Shilts fi nished
the book manuscript on March 16, in all likelihood just before the sales
conference (which Denneny estimated to be about nine months before
18. With hindsight it appears that the August 10, 1987, Newsweek issue on “The Face
of AIDS” may have given voice to a question— what is the face of AIDS?— which neatly
set up an answer from the “Patient Zero” publicity. Denneny also had experienced the dif-
fi culties of media neglect with Shilts’s fi rst book in 1982 when the New York Times had
come to an “editorial consensus” not to review Mayor of Castro Street; see David Rothen-
berg, “Unfi t to Print,” NYN, May 10– 23, 1982, 11.
19. Denneny, recording C1491/22, tape 1, side B; emphasis on recording. The fi rst exten-
sive documentation of Denneny’s explanation of the book’s publici
ty strategy appeared in
an LGBT community newspaper in Vancouver; see Babineau, “The Prettiest One,” 13– 15.
194
chapter 4
the book’s release). It seems, however, that Denneny recognized the ap-
peal of the “Patient Zero” story much earlier than he would later recol-
lect. The editor wrote to Shilts just over a month after the manuscript’s
completion, on April 30, asking, “Do you have any photo of Gaetan? For
second serial.”20 It may be that Denneny, though recognizing the sala-
ciousness of Shilts’s depiction of Dugas at an early stage, had not con-
ceived of it as being suffi cient to launch the book and was convinced oth-
erwise by the advice of his publicist friend. In any event, the editor wrote
back to Shilts on August 17, 1987, to inform him that the “fi rst serial use
of the patient zero story” had recently been sold for $3,500 as an exclu-
sive to California Magazine for its October issue.21
According to Denneny, Shilts was against the use of the “Patient
Zero” story as a promotional hook:
I mean it took me most of a week of really hard fi ghting with Randy. He was
appalled by the idea. And I said, “You don’t do this we are going to sell four
thousand copies of this book, and Larry [Kramer] says two hundred thou-
sand people are going to die.” And I said, “I don’t know if his number’s right,
but a shitload of people are going to die. You know, I don’t mind getting my
hands dirty. I don’t mind using yellow journalism. If this is the only way we
can get this damn book on the agenda, we’ve got to do it. It would be im-
moral not to do it.” And I said, “I understand it’s tabloid journalism at the
worst. I understand all your objections.” The book is massively an attack on
the Reagan administration. The media was not going to review an attack on
the Reagan administration— they simply were not, in 1986. They were not go-
ing to pick up the failures of the medical research establishment, or the gov-
ernment. That wasn’t a sexy story to them. Yeah, but the man who brought
AIDS to America, especially because he’s a fag, and a foreigner? That was a
sexy story to them.22
20. Michael Denneny to Randy Shilts, 30 April 1987, folder 3: Editor’s Corresp., box 40,
Shilts Papers. A second serial is a reprint appearing after a work is fi rst published.
21. Michael Denneny to Randy Shilts, with enclosure, 17 August 1987, folder 3: Edi-
tor’s Corresp., box 40, Shilts Papers. This would be California Magazine’s October cover
story.
22. Denneny, recording C1491/22, tape 1, side B; emphasis on recording. Larry Kramer
consistently made use of the rising number of infections and deaths in the gay community
to rouse support; see, for example, “1,112 and Counting,” and “2,339 and Counting,” in
Kramer, Reports from the Holocaust, 33– 51, 68– 74.
Giving a Face to the Epidemic 195
Eventually, Denneny recalled, Shilts begrudgingly relented. “If you
looked at the media,” the editor explained, “he spent most of his time
backing away from that and trying to refocus the attack on the govern-
ment. But without that little piece of yellow journalism, we would never
have gotten on to the national agenda. Absolutely no question in my
mind. . . . They [the media] were incredibly recalcitrant for the fi rst four
or fi ve years. They just didn’t want to cover it.”23
In any event, Shilts appears to have rebounded quickly. By August 22,
1987, the journalist had reviewed the edits for the California Magazine
feature, which he thought were “terrifi c” and which left him feeling
“very heartened.” He made suggestions to one of the publication’s fea-
ture editors about how best to present Dugas’s fi nal years. Shilts urged
for the important insertion of a conversation from his book between
William Darrow and Dugas “because it’s the point at which somebody
tells Gaetan he may be giving this to others— or that someone may have
given it to him. (He obviously paid attention to only the latter part of the
observation.)” Shilts suggested that it might be useful to foreshadow that
Paul Popham was “getting AIDS too (more virus courtesy of Gaetan).”
He also scribbled a point in the margin that “stresses the fundamental
point I want to have totally covered: That there were many responsible
gays, like Paul, who did good things, as opposed to the rare sociopath,
like Gaetan [whose] viral legacy continued to haunt people.”24
After Denneny had decided to generate more attention through the
New York Post’s tabloid reporting, a well- oiled publicity machine en-
sured that the story got out, in the time leading up to and beyond the
book’s late October release. Shilts would be fl own on a fi fteen- city tour
around the United States in October and November on a print, radio,
and television promotional campaign that highlighted the role played by
“ Patient Zero.” The publicity materials that were provided to the produc-
ers of TV and radio programs emphasized that Shilts was able to speak
to a wide range of issues. Nonetheless, the order in which they were ar-
ranged suggested a priority of interest, and of apparent importance: “the
identity of the fi rst person to introduce AIDS to North American [ sic];
how the government refused to provide funding before it was too late;
how blood banks caused the needless deaths of hundreds of hemophili-
23. Denneny, recording C1491/22, tape 2, side A; emphasis on recording.
24. “RE: Patient Zero,” Randy Shilts to Bob Roe, 22 August 1987, box 40, Shilts
Papers.
196
chapter 4
acs; and how scientists and doctors sworn to save lives, did not.”25 The
strategy to get the book noticed worked precisely as planned. As Den-
neny recalled, “The week after that Post headline, which was exactly
word for word what [the publicist friend] had predicted, we got fi ve sto-
ries in the New York Times, a Sunday New York Times review and a
daily New York Times review.”
Despite Denneny’s recollection, the book had generated a signifi cant
buzz before the Post released its story on October 6, 1987— to the point
that Hollywood studios had made inquiries into acquiring the produc-
tion rights. First Kirkus Reviews and then Publishers Weekly, two in-
fl uential publishing magazines, both gave positive prepublication re-
views to the book. The Kirkus reviewer noted the “incredible story of a
handsome French- Canadian airline steward named Gaetan Dugas (but
known as ‘Patient Zero’ in government studies).” The Publishers Weekly
review mentioned neither Dugas nor “Patient Zero” but emphasized that
the book’s “importance cannot be overstated” and praised Shilts’s abil-
ity to present “one alarming story after another without letting his own
passions—
evident in the sheer enormity of the project—
compromise
the excellent reportage.”26 A late September article in the Hollywood
Reporter indicated that the book had attracted interest from studios,
largely because of the strong Kirk
us review.27 Though some readers may
wonder whether the secondary publicity push from the Post’s article was
in fact necessary, Denneny maintains that it was vital, in his and his pub-
licist’s professional opinions.
When asked about the use of a questionable story to launch a book,
Denneny recalled an interview from the mid- 1990s with the newscaster
Robert MacNeil and his gay son.28 The activist Larry Kramer had ac-
cused the father of avoiding coverage of AIDS on his popular MacNeil-
Lehrer news show, partly out of embarrassment over his son’s homo-
sexuality. In the interview, MacNeil’s son defended Kramer’s actions,
25. Diane Mancher to Producers, n.d. [1987], untitled St. Martin’s Press publicity
folder, box 1, Shilts Papers.
26. “The Man Who Gave Us AIDS: Triggered ‘Gay Cancer’ Epidemic,” New York
Post, October 6, 1987, 1, 3; “Shilts, Randy, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and
the AIDS Epidemic,” Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1987, 1303– 04; “And the Band Played
On,” Publishers Weekly, September 11, 1987, 72.
27. Robert Osborne, “Rambling Reporter,” Hollywood Reporter, September 25, 1987.
28. Georgia Dullea, “A Father and a Son, Growing Up Again: At Home with Robert
and Ian MacNeil,” New York Times, May 5, 1994, C1, C8.
Giving a Face to the Epidemic 197
saying that “part of all that is to use any weapon anywhere to publicize
the AIDS issue,” and if that meant intruding on someone’s private life
as a means of raising awareness, then doing so was acceptable.29 While
admitting that he had not thought about the effect of the story on Du-
gas’s family and friends, Denneny insisted that his decision to focus on
Dugas was a “venial” rather than “mortal” sin and that it would have
been far worse to take no action in the face of thousands dying from in-
action, prejudice, and hostility: “It is like the Holocaust was going on,
and so maybe you have to fi ght dirty. The world doesn’t always give you
the option to keep your hands clean. I mean had I not done that and we
sold four or fi ve thousand copies of the book and essentially resulted in
silence on the national level, then I would feel real guilty. That I think
would have been a real mistake.”
“The Monster Who Gave Us AIDS”: