Zero Patience

Starring:Zero Patience
Studio: Strand Releasing
Product Type: DVD

Product Description

"John Greyson, the director of Lilies and Proteus, has woven a tall tale of love and loss, sex and science, history and hysteria in the age of AIDS. Greyson revives renowned Victorian Sir Richard Burton who constructs a sensationalist multimedia museum display focusing on Patient Zero, the gay French-Canadian flight attendan accused of bringing AIDS to North America. Fast-paced, hilarious and provocative, ZERO PATIENCE is essential viewing." - Program note from Toronto International Films Festival

Customer Reviews:

Points For Sheer Audacity and Lunacy.......2006-09-29

Well, I am drawn to fantastical and different-sounding entertainment. So when I heard about "Zero Patience" I was intrigued. Let's face it--a story about AIDS typically wouldn't be produced as a musical comedy. Add to the mix a purgatory with synchronized swimming and the one of the main characters being Richard Burton, author of "Arabian Night", alive and young due to the fountain of youth and working as a Canadian taxidermist--well, you've thrown in absurd fantasy as well. So you know I'm going to be kind. This is high concept entertainment. And for anyone that says I'm just being nice to support this "gay" film, I'd counter that I would have had exactly the same reaction if the main storyline was about abortion--or any other topic at odds with the bizarre setup.

I am not giving the film my unconditional love--proceed at your own risk. This is adventurous ground and I believe a somewhat "love it or hate it" phenomenon. The budget was low and the film feels inexpensive, but I think this acts in the movie's favor. Not all the performers are as accomplished as you might like. Some songs work quite well, others are borderline. Most of the comedy comes from preposterous situations, and off the wall irreverence. I happen to like this sort of humor. Hell, I'd pay to go to a museum exhibit called "The Hall of Contagion", so that's just one of the elements that had me chuckling and rolling my eyes. And a duet sung be an unusual part of your anatomy is as inspired a lunacy as your likely to see in a long time.

The narrative drive is sometimes lacking--but the film isn't really about telling a conventional story. The "message" really isn't all that challenging or innovative, but was probably riskier when the film was made in 1993.

But I admire the film for taking chances at every turn. By being completely original in concept and execution, it stands alone in its genre. And I have a special place in my heart for someone who breaks the rules, throws away political correctness, defies logic. It's "balls to the walls" filmmaking where most films play it safe. So I'm giving this film much respect, though it's far from perfect. It's not for everyone--it is audacious and daring--but if it sounds like you'll hate it, you probably will! KGHarris, 9/06.

Great musical and lots of serious fun........2006-07-25

Don't miss Zero Patience. It't just one of those movies a person must see. Great music, great acting, great bodies too.

"He led such a promiscuous lifestyle!".......2005-09-15

Cheaply made, looking as though it has been cobbled together at a moments notice, with forgettable songs, and equality forgettable musical numbers, one might be tempted to discount Patience Zero is an irrelevance, a bad movie. However, if one reads between the lines, there's an amazing amount of quite profound information in this film as arty Canadian filmmaker, John Greyson examines a particularly forceful urban myth about the origin of Aids in North America.

Made in 1993 and now finally released on DVD, there is much about Patience Zero that seems dated. HIV drugs are now widely available in the U.S, people are longer dropping dead from AIDS, and the debilitating diseases that come with AIDS are largely a thing of the past. But although emblematic of an era, the movie still asks some probing and thought-provoking questions about the source of this terrible virus.

As the ghost of the French-Canadian flight attendant called Patient Zero (Normand Fauteux) wanders the city, the only person who can see him is the Victorian explorer/sexologist Sir Richard Burton (John Robinson). Together they plan a museum exhibition on the origins of AIDS in the Museum of Natural History in Toronto in order to debunk some of the myths of the disease.

As Sir Richard starts to collect his museum pieces, several activists and Aids patients swirl around the edges trying to clarify the exhibition's focus. Burton also explores the gay subculture, videoing men in saunas, and interviewing Patient Zero's mother, the doctor who first diagnosed him, along with various members of the Act-up community. Burton's initial motives are mercenary, but his encounters change his views on quite a number of things, including his own sexuality, as he eventually falls in love with the ghost.

Amongst all the corny musical numbers and tawdry songs, there's a rather well-told, touching subplot involving a teacher of elementary students (Ricardo Keens-Douglas) who is going blind as a result of AIDS complications. But by enlarge; Patience Zero, while an admirable effort, is dramatically bankrupt. The script lacks coherence and intelligence, and the acting is somewhat cheesy and silly, although Robinson is sexy and likable as Burton.

The film darts all over the place, and as such it's both informative and bewildering. Scenes are filled with quirky references to the politics of the time, such as the lack of drug funding, along with references to issues of denial, abandonment, fear, corporate greed, misinformation, and activism. It also takes a well-aimed jab at medical orthodoxy, which was quick to embrace unproven facts.

The choreography in the musical numbers is for the most part of simplistic and clunky, but endearing, and some of the songs have a dangerously absurd sense of humour and take-no-prisoners approach even if they do come across as enormously silly. Mike Leonard September 05.

Radical and Entertaining.......2005-09-07

When I saw that the only reviewer of this fine film had given it one star and raked it over the coals, I felt compelled to write a review that gave a fair critique of the film.
The film is amazing on many levels. As a musical, it works. If not for the subject matter, I bet Broadway would have scooped it up. The song "Six of Seven Things" is beautiful as are "Just Like Scherazade" and "Zero Patience." More importantly, the politics of the piece are important. While we no longer point fingers as one individual "Patient Zero" of AIDS, our culture still engaged in the rhetoric of blame when it comes to the disease in our demarcation of the "innocents" infected via blood transfusion and those who practice unsafe sex or engage in drug use. Zero's proclamation, "Tell the story, clear my name. We don't need someone to blame" echoes today in a culture that indicts those that engage in high risk activities as somehow deserving of the virus.
The film's creative vision is ingenious. The incorporation of the Victorian sexologist Sir Richard Burton as Zero's lover is brilliant! The theme of detecting the truth about the disease shows that things have not changed all that much in a hundred years. The motif of Burton's "A Thousand Nights and One Night" into Zero telling his own story in his own words is indicative of the powerful meshing of creative genius with radical polemic.
The film was one of the first to really give an honest voice to a gay man with AIDS. I defy anyone to say that films like "An Early Frost" or "Grief" or "Parting Glances" or "Longtime Companion" are as powerful and important as this one. AIDS does not serve as watered down melodrama here. It is the vehicle to indict a diseased society for its intolerance. This is one of the most underrated films of all time. Sure, it has singing anuses, but the ruse is used to question a cultural obsession with embracing Freud's death drive. You're not going to see that kind of intelligent engagement in the myriad other films about AIDS that use it invoke pathos, not profundity.
Buy this film. It is a truly beautiful piece of art!

A Waste of film and time.......2005-08-23

From beginning to end. . . . . boring! From beginning to end....a waste of time. From beginning to end....absolute and utterly valueless!!!!!! Acting ability - zero! Story line - zero & zero. Thought provoking>>>>zero zero zero. Entertaining - forget it! Don't waste you time and your money.

Average customer rating:

Hedwig's Cultural Parent -- From Canada with Love
Double meaning in "Zero Patience"
the politics of containment
A Frank and Touching Alternative View
Amazing -- a movie musical about AIDS

Zero Patience [Region 2]
Starring: John Robinson , Normand Fauteux , Dianne Heatherington , Richardo Keens-Douglas , and Bernard Behrens
Director: John Greyson
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Musicals & Performing Arts | Genres | DVD | Video

( Z ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
ASIN: B0002B96PC

Customer Reviews:

Hedwig's Cultural Parent -- From Canada with Love.......2001-12-01

I had the good fortune to see this film not once, or twice, but three times at the theatre. I saw it first at the Atlanta GLBT Film Festival.

From the director of URINAL, style and visual magic to spare. Plus, the longest sustained note ever held by a human on a soundtrack -- move over Ms. Streisand!

The music is angry, saddening, funny, sexual, and WAY danceable. This is a classic movie musical with a wide variety of musical styles. Think RENT without the whiney artists. Instead you get the unlikely pair of Richard Burton (the man who discovered the source of the Nile, not Mr. Liz Taylor) and Patient Zero (the man purported to be the initial source of HIV in the US).

Beautiful arrangements. Sly lyrics. And there are the singing (...) puppets! How can you miss?

If you love movie musicals, and want to see something every bit as good as Hedwig -- buy the movie AND the CD of Zero Patience. You won't be sorry.

Double meaning in "Zero Patience".......2001-11-07

For a film that was made in 1993, it is still is valid today. The double meanings in "Zero Patience" are the intolerance and discrimination that people living with HIV/AIDS must face and the zero patience that Gaëtan has as a ghost and scapegoat in being blamed for literally spreading the disease throughout North America. Greyson has camped it up in this film mocking the physique bodies from the 40s and 50s mail order mags, the musical, the documentary, and the interview. And they say Canadians can't make movies. Be sure to check out Lilies, Urinal, and Uncut. Also check out Greyson's 22 compliation Video Against AIDS, his contribution of the best videos produced from 1986-1988 available from most universities and community AIDS organizations.

For reviewers: when posting reviews please be accurate with your information. John Greyson is a Canadian director from Toronto, not the USA. Normand Fauteaux plays Zero/Gaëtan, not Michel Callen who plays the superb role of Miss HIV.

the politics of containment.......2000-03-05

I don't like the public much so I rarely go to the movies, and until recently the cinemas in my town were smelly and uncomfortable. Yet I went to this film and forgot where I was. It made me laugh like Peter Jackson's "Braindead". And it made me think about anthropology, and the complicity of us all in the reproduction of social exclusion.

As reviewers have noted, "Zero Patience" responds to Randy Shilt's "And the Band Played On" (there is also a film of the same title). While these works reveal the deafening silence of the Regan administration in responding to the growing epidemic, "Zero Patience" marks more explicitly the racialization of the global politics of HIV/AIDS.

Greyson plays together a range of genres, using the pleasure of spectacle to tell a story of the politics of misinformation. The story of the exclusions and silences around HIV?AIDS still require telling: this is a world where the myth of external agents of contagion can no longer be sustained. (I have a question here: what is the correlation between hiv rates of transmission and catholocism in colonial contexts? i am not trying to start trouble it is just a question). Where can people who are allergic to latex get condoms?

Zero Patience has particular resonance when we locate hiv/aids within a contemporary global politics which remains racialised; both within western nations, and across the so-called "developed" and "underdeveloped" worlds. At "home" in America the "right" can imagine a threat "out of Africa" (or as "Zero Patience" plays out, via the French Canadian "patient zero") but this isn't going to keep the kids safe. Talk about it.

"Zero Patience" combines the pleasures of "Can't Stop the Music" with the politics of Haraway, and the humour of the fatboy slim "Praise" video. Very cool.

Further reading: Sander Gilman, Douglas Crimp, Emily Martin, Donna Haraway, Kobena Mercer ....

A Frank and Touching Alternative View.......2000-02-11

This movie, though shot on a budget, provides the viewer with an alternative take on the history of the AIDS epidemic in North America, with a frank and revisionist view of the insane determination of science and the media to seek out and label a 'villain' upon whom to place the responsibility for the intrusion of AIDS into 'Western civilization'. The traditional scapegoating of Gaetan Dugas as 'PATIENT ZERO' is turned on its head as the ghost of Dugas and a manic museum exhibition curator and designer lock horns over how to structure an upcoming exhibit on the 'History of AIDS'.

Intertwined with their story is that of a Canadian schoolteacher and member of the Canadian equivalent of ACT UP caught in a dilemma of loyalty to the activist dogma of greedy pharmaceutical companies and uncaring government officials and a deeper fear that the entire charade of VILLAIN/HERO and VICTIM/VICTIMIZER may be standing in the way of any rational and helpful response to his condition. His story accentuates the Dugas Ghost/Curator story of gradual change and coming to terms with a radically new point of view.

The songs are, for the most part, excellent - with a touch of 30's musical and 50's flambouyance comingled with some biting social commentary. A particular standout is the medley that takes place in the museum as the exhibition animals transform into humans and belt out a ballad of anger and disdain for the projection of human frailities and failures on them.

This film will definitely make you re-think the entire history and historiography of AIDS - as well as challenge your perception of Gaetan Dugas. For as Gaetan himself said when he was alive, "If its sexually transmitted, then someone gave it to me."

Amazing -- a movie musical about AIDS.......1999-11-23

A very ambitious film telling a touching story with stunning cinematography and songs that are clever, catchy, and sometimes corny. The title sequence features a man dancing with a mirror ball, and a co-ed water ballet. Michael Callen appears to sing one of several reprises of the wonderful "Tell a Story (Scheherazade)". Not merely a divine singer, Callen literally wrote the book on safer sex.

The film is in part a response to Randy Shilts' AIDS journalism and his book "And the Band Played On". The protagonist is none other than Shilts' so-called "Patient Zero", the French-Canadian flight attendant who turned up at the center of the early "contact study" trying to trace the contagion of what was not yet known as AIDS. The story and the songs are about a yearning for love, PWAs' struggle for empowerment, philosophy of history, the need for us all to tell our own stories, the strengths and failings of science, and the politics of AIDS.

This film is not for children, nor for those offended by frank but not graphic depiction of love and sex between men. Some of it may seem a bit dated -- it's several years since I've seen it, and the world has changed a bit. The soundtrack still has some rollicking good songs.

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