Stuck right in the middle of all this is JEFFREY (’95), which American playwright and novelist Paul Rudnick adapted from his own 1993 off Broadway play about a young gay man dealing with dating with the specter of AIDS hanging over him in Clinton-era Manhattan. The original cast included such now-familiar character actors as John Michael Higgins and Bryan Batt, and while some cast reshuffling occurred by the time it went before the cameras for Orion Pictures, the stage version’s director, Christopher Ashley (who later ushered in the stage versions of XANADU and FREAKY FRIDAY), was retained for the film. Batt was wisely retained, but numerous marquee-friendly names (at least among the more pop culture savvy) were brought in for the supporting cast including Patrick Stewart, Christine Baranski, Victor Garber, Camryn Manheim, Kathy Najimy, Sigourney Weaver, Nathan Lane and Olympia Dukakis. That’s probably the most impressive cast out of any gay-themed film of its era and a large reason why this received far more mainstream attention than was usual at the time, outside of the Oscar-winning PHILADELPHIA and PRISCILLA.
Read More On StreamLine: JEFFREY ('95): Love in the ’90s Is Paranoid