The Dallas Buyers Club By Ron Woodroof

The Dallas Buyers’ Club is based on a real life story of Ron Woodroof. He is a wealthy Texas cowboy whose heavy smoking, drinking, and drug use life is disrupted in 1985 when he was diagnosed as HIV positive and given 30 days to live. After being rejected from many of his old friends and bereft of government approved medicines, he decides to come up with an alternative for his treatments. His pathway leads him to Mexico, where an American medical doctor who had his license revoked prescribes him with ddC and protein peptide T. He begins to export it over the border not only for selfish reasons, but for sale for other HIV people. He becomes business partners with a transgender woman named Rayon for better access to the gay community. As the

business, “buyers’ club” expands, Ron’s rougher edges begin to smooth away by suffering and compassion for his condition and others around him who are HIV+.
At a sports bar, Ron meets Frank Young on the news discussing AZT, before the channel changes to a baseball game.

He reads up on the drug at the library. At Burroughs Wellcome Pharmaceutical Headquarters in North Carolina, Dr. Sam Broder from the National Cancer Institute meets with David Berry, VP of research, who thinks AZT is too dangerous and untested without enough market potential. Broder’s impassioned speech convinces Berry to change his mind. Ron does more research at home. Berry meets some executives to push forward on the AZT trials, as they’ll get a tax break from the government. The underfunded FDA research lab, headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci turn their entire attention to the drug. Ron, suffering from an assortment of ailments, goes to the hospital. When he starts to get rowdy, Eve puts him in his place. Later, she sits with him and explains that Sevard works for Burroughs Wellcome, who pays the hospital to run the trials. Protocol dictates that not all those accepted into the programs would receive AZT, but a placebo instead. “You give dying people sugar pills? He brings up other options available in foreign countries that work and are non-toxic. Unfortunately, they’re not FDA-approved. “Screw the FDA, I’m going to be DOA.” After his anger subsides he tells the doctor, “You sure are easy to look

at.”
At the bar that night, Clint makes gay jokes at Ron’s expense. Ron leaves and goes to Draddy auditorium, which is hosting a support group for patients dealing with the disease per Eve’s recommendation. FDA administration director Richard Barkley is there to tell the hostile crowd about AZT, which is still far off from being available. Ron starts getting AZT through the hospital orderly. He pops two pills and gets disoriented in a trailer park. He sells all of his belongings. The orderly sends him to Mexico.
When an audience member at an information meeting is told how long until AZT is ready, somebody shouts, “We’ll be dead by then.” Caution is encouraged and thalidomide is cited as an example of rushing matters, which resulted in “flipper babies.” Another responds, “We aren’t having babies.” While the circumstances were going through and nothing to laugh about, gay men can always be counted on for their ironic mix of seriousness and camp, which this script admirably attempts to recreate. The story also delves into the politically incorrect with other minorities. A hospital orderly mops the floor and swipes Ron’s shoes in the process.
Eve, the doctor, is there as a device to reaffirm Woodruff’s sexuality. If audiences are put off by the rather limited affection he expresses towards Rayon an MTF transsexual, they can certainly take solace in his love for the ladies. The only problem for the screenwriter is the ick factor that it would elicit in the more close-minded, so while Woodroof may pine for Eve, thanks to the script, his disease will always keep him at an arm’s length from romance. This comes with its own baggage of mixed messaging, it’s okay to empathize with the guy, but God forbid his love should go unrequited.
The early reviews have reported there being a conceit in the film used to remind audiences every so often of just how long the main character has had the disease. There are elements which stuck out for me, like, at one point, Rayon visits her disapproving father for money, and we see her give it to Woodroof dressed in a men’s business suit. I was also in disbelief at how naively the script handles the initial diagnoses. When Woodroof finds out he has not only HIV, but full-blown AIDS, he expresses surprise. The story has just begun, but someone with such a low T-count as Woodroof at this point, along with the weight loss, would have to know that something was the matter with them, and it wasn’t just a head cold.
While HIV/AIDS is disproportionately prevalent in the gay community, the story challenges the stereotype that it’s a gay disease. By focusing on a straight man’s fight for his life and a remedy to manage his illness, it stands the chance of reaching a segment of the audience that wouldn’t normally open themselves up to a story as this. Woodroof symbolized the American can do spirit of facing adversity in a situation and using all his wits to come up with a workable solution that represented a growing phenomenon of these buyers’ clubs spreading across the country to serve a desperate group of people who had nowhere else to turn. The healthcare system and the government were of no immediate help even the contrary during a very dark chapter in the United States. Woodroof had to look outside the political and national boundaries.
Of course, it is just one man’s story, albeit a very unique one.

The truth is that the long-game of dealing with how HIV/AIDS affected the United States medically and economically is much more complex and naturally, can’t be told in a two hour movie. While there have been movies that have dealt with AIDS, they have mostly been fictional dramas about the emotional toll on one or a few characters and their friends and family, like Longtime Companion and Philadelphia, not really the fight to how the U.S. has got to a place where it has managed the disease and perhaps come close to finding a cure, and the grassroots movement that help make it happen. In fact, there really hasn’t been anything outside the documentary world; the recent We Were Here and How to Survive a Plague come to mind. So, it goes without saying that this film will ruffle the feathers of some of the activist segment of the gay population. It will also be courting controversy with its hardline stance against AZT, as well as perhaps its portrayal of Burroughs Wellcome, the research firm behind the drug which greatly benefitted from it

financially.
In 1991, San Francisco, Ron goes forward with his lawsuit against the FDA. It doesn’t appear that he has won anything greater than what the FDA has already offered him. People celebrate at the Club and he dies a year later.