Dir. Gregg Araki
Starring Mike Dytri, Craig Gilmore, and Mark Finch
92 minutes.
Araki’s The Living End (1992) premiered at the Sundance Film festival and became synonymous with a movement coined by scholar B. Ruby Rich as the New Queer Cinema.
When the young-adult film critic Jon (Craig Gilmore) learns that he is HIV-positive, he runs across a HIV-positive hustler Luke (Mike Dytri), who has just escaped the clutches of serial-killer lesbians. Unsure what to do with the little life they feel they have remaining, the pair embarks on a love-fueled road trip/crime spree. Exploring the emotional experience of fear, loss, and uncertainty that come with a diagnosis of HIV, The Living End humorously and honestly tackles the effects of the disease on Generation X.
