Before Comedy

Happy couple Geoffrey and Lillian move out to a rural country location so Geoffrey can concentrate on his work. Shutting himself off in a shed out back, Geoffrey is slowly consumed by his work as well as his impending madness.

After his first date at age 15 ended with the girl making out with another man at a party, aspiring writer Lester Grimm has treated all his girlfriends with jealousy and suspicion. While dating Ramona Ray, paranoia gets the best of him when he discovers that her most recent ex is successful novelist Dashiell Frank. Lester begins attending the same group therapy sessions as Dashiell to learn about Ramona's past with him.

It's the 1990s. Toby, just out of college in Wisconsin, comes to Manhattan to spend the summer with his older cousin, Packard, a gay man whose lover John R. has just died of AIDS. Toby is shy, the openly-gay society around him makes him nervous. Packard gives Toby a pair of John R.'s shoes; when Toby puts them on, he has powerful visions of the pre-AIDS scene in the 1970s, as if he's there. He also takes on a different personality when he wears the shoes, more sure of himself, able to express his interest in men. Wearing the shoes, Toby goes to a bar, hooks up with Dick, and wakes up in Dick's bed. How will he handle it? And what will happen to the shoes?

Touching documentary which interviews over 30 HIV-positive New Yorkers. Director Kermit Cole turns the statistics into real-life faces and stories as a range of people--black and white, male and female, gay and straight, young and old--share their experiences of living with an illness that is still stigmatized by public ignorance and fear.