Philadelphia (1993) on Netflix
Andrew Beckett, a lawyer at a Philadelphia firm, hides his AIDS diagnosis and his homosexuality from colleagues. Fired, he asks attorney Joe Miller, who fears the disease, to sue the firm.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.7/10276,910 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
Andrew Beckett, a senior associate at a Philadelphia law firm, keeps two things from his colleagues: that he is gay and that he has AIDS. A partner, Walter Kenton, spots a mark on his face, and Beckett says he hurt himself playing racquetball. The firm hands Beckett a case that must be filed within ten days, and he does the work at home, where he can cover the marks on his skin. On the last day the papers cannot be found; they surface in time, and the firm still lets him go for incompetence. Beckett believes his illness and his sexuality were the real reasons, and he approaches Joe Miller, a personal injury lawyer, about a wrongful termination suit. Miller refuses at first, afraid of catching the disease and reluctant to take a gay client.
Cast
- Charles Glennas Kenneth Killcoyne
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Philadelphia (1993)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The story drew on the real cases of attorneys Geoffrey Bowers, who sued the law firm Baker McKenzie for wrongful dismissal in 1987 in one of the first AIDS discrimination lawsuits, and Clarence Cain, who sued his employer Hyatt Legal Services after being fired for having AIDS and won just before he died.
- TriStar initially refused to insure openly HIV-positive actor Ron Vawter and pushed director Jonathan Demme to recast him; Demme refused and even rearranged the shooting schedule after Vawter was hospitalized, and Vawter died of AIDS complications less than five months after the film premiered.
- According to the American Film Institute, of roughly 53 actors in the film who were HIV-positive at the time, 43 of them, including Ron Vawter, died within a year of the film's release.
- Bowers's family sued the film's writers and producers, saying producer Scott Rudin had interviewed them and promised compensation, and that 54 scenes were so close to events in Bowers's life that some could only have come from those interviews. The case settled after five days of testimony.
- Before landing on Tom Hanks, the lead role passed through several actors: Andy Garcia was the first offered the part but had to leave over scheduling, Daniel Day-Lewis turned it down for In the Name of the Father, and Matthew Modine and William Baldwin also expressed interest.
- To depict the deterioration of his character's health as the film progresses, Tom Hanks read the works of author Paul Monette and worked with two personal trainers to shed 35 pounds of weight.
- The film was shot in sequence, in chronological order, because Hanks had to lose the weight gradually over the course of the story and so that the actor could follow a clear emotional trajectory.
