Birmingham SHOUT Gay + Lesbian Film Festival 2009

WORLD PREMIERE. Richard Heyman moved to Key West in 1973 and helped transform a crumbling Navy town into a gay mecca. He bought real estate on the island and opened an art gallery representing many gay artists including a younger, attractive New Yorker named John Kiraly. By 1979, less than a decade later, Key West had become the most gay-friendly city in America and the hottest gay tourism destination in the world. That year, fearing an anti-gay crusade sweeping the country, a group of gay men growing wealthy from gay tourism convinced Heyman to run for the city commission. After winning the election and serving four years as a commissioner, in 1983 Heyman ran for mayor, the same year his life-partner and at least eight other gay men living in Key West were diagnosed with a mysterious new disease. But Heyman's mayoral campaign sparked a vicious anti-gay backlash. In response, after the election, Heyman distanced himself politically from the gay community. Even as close friends, political allies and his life-partner began dying from AIDS, Heyman chose to remain silent about the ballooning epidemic; protecting himself and the gay tourism industry that had supported him. Within 10 years, half of all gay men living in Key West, including the mayor himself, would be dead. *Director John Mikytuck will be in attendance.