Trailer
Plot summary
Sir Richard Burton drank from the Fountain of Youth in 1892. He is now 170 years old and works as chief taxidermist at a natural history museum in Toronto. Needing a centerpiece for his Hall of Contagion, he settles on AIDS and the Patient Zero hypothesis, which blames a single man for bringing HIV to North America. Zero's doctor, his mother and his former airline colleague Mary, an ACT UP member, all decline to condemn him. Zero's ghost materializes in a gay bathhouse, unheard and unseen by everyone there. Only Burton can see him, though he stays invisible to Burton's camera. The two strike a bargain: Zero helps with the exhibit if Burton can make him visible.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Zero Patience (1993)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The real case the film counters: flight attendant Gaëtan Dugas became popularly identified as the vector that brought HIV to North America after Randy Shilts's 1987 book And the Band Played On described the cluster study, though Shilts himself never claimed Dugas was the first.
- The soundtrack album was dedicated to performer and AIDS activist Michael Callen and other friends the filmmakers had lost to the disease. Greyson, composer Glenn Schellenberg and producers Garfield and Stratton said they wanted to explode the opportunistic myth of Patient Zero and celebrate the AIDS activist movement.
- Zero Patience won Best Canadian Film and Best Ontario Feature at the 1993 Cinéfest and a Special Jury Citation as Best Canadian Feature Film at the 1993 Festival of Festivals, and Greyson dedicated his award to Jay Scott, the influential film critic who had died of AIDS a few months earlier.
