The Road to 'Philadelphia'

That just isn't good enough for people like Kramer, a founder of the activist group ACT UP, who feels the film fails to depict the realities of AIDS. ''They say they set out to make a movie about a man living with AIDS,'' says Kramer, whose 1985 play, The Normal Heart, was among the first to address the disease. ''There's a three-second scene with the doctor and a scene in the clinic. This is living with AIDS?'' As for the argument that ''middle America'' was shown only as much as it could take, ''that's some terrified, intellectual liberal in Hollywood,'' says Kramer. ''How do they know what the people in Ohio can put up with? They watch [gay characters on] Roseanne — they know what's going on. We're second-guessing people in a very condescending way.''

Screenwriter Paul Rudnick (Addams Family Values), who is also gay, isn't so sure. ''I don't know what the public is ready for. If the film had been more graphic, would it have appeared at malls? Would stars have done it? I think every positive and negative thing being said about the film is true, and every gay man must be torn when he sees it.'' Unlike Kramer, Rudnick does not see the film's compromises as immoral. ''Kramer's right that Hollywood has been immoral and ignorant about AIDS,'' he says. ''I think this movie is just cautious.''

But the business of Hollywood has little to do with fine distinctions, and everything to do with box office. After one weekend in wide release, Philadelphia has earned an impressive $14 million. Yet even the film's financial success may not be enough to get other high-profile gay-centered films out of development and into production. The Mayor of Castro Street, about the life of Harvey Milk, which Oliver Stone has been developing for three years, has just lost its second director, Rob Cohen (Dragon), and Barbra Streisand, who optioned Kramer's Normal Heart in 1986, is only now in the script-writing phase. But allowing Philadelphia to determine how the film industry will treat AIDS, says Rudnick, ''is too hard a burden to place on the movie. As soon as you make this a litmus test, it allows people in Hollywood to throw up their hands.''

If anyone is throwing up his hands at this point, it may be Philadelphia's filmmakers. A frustrated Nyswaner says, ''I think this movie is going to help people. We wanted to present a simple and moral message: Homophobia is evil. I don't think it's a big goal — it's not a cure for AIDS. But it's a small and significant step.''