Zero Patience - Production

Production

John Greyson became interested in offering a counterpoint to the Patient Zero story as early as 1987, when the Patient Zero meme began entering the public consciousness following the publication of Randy Shilts's book And the Band Played On. The book described the cluster study which led to the popular identification of flight attendant Gaëtan Dugas as the vector through which HIV was first brought to North America. It should be noted, however, that Shilts himself never claimed that Dugas was the first. In early 1991 Greyson was given a development grant for the script from the Canadian Film Centre, of which Greyson is an alumnus. Over the next year Greyson, in collaboration with Film Centre partners Louise Garfield and Anna Stratton, continued to develop the script, eventually presenting it with producer Alexandra Raffé in a workshop format. During the first half of 1992, the production team secured additional development funding from the Canada Council, Telefilm Canada and the Ontario Film Development Corporation. By June of that year the script and the songs were completed and that autumn, with funds from the Telefilm Canada and OFDC grants along with revenue from the sale of British broadcast rights to Channel 4, pre-production and casting got underway. Principal photography began in November 1992 and wrapped after five weeks. Sneak previews took place at the Seattle International Film Festival and a number of LGBT film festivals across the United States before its official debut in September 1993 at Toronto's Festival of Festivals.

In dedicating the film's soundtrack album to performer and AIDS activist Michael Callen and other friends they had lost to the disease, Greyson, composer Glenn Schellenberg and producers Garfield and Stratton explained their reasons for making the film. "We wanted to explode the opportunistic myth of Patient Zero....More importantly, we wanted to celebrate the courage and sass of an international AIDS activist movement that has tirelessly fought for the rights of people living with AIDS."