Now on DVD, 21 years after its television debut, is An Early Frost, the first film to ever deal with AIDS. In the mid '80s, a time when AIDS was viewed by many as a death sentence, writers and life partners Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman (producers of Showtime's Queer As Folk) gave viewers a chance to see someone living with the disease not as a statistic but as a human being, someone's son and brother. The movie premiered on NBC on Nov. 11, 1985, just weeks after actor Rock Hudson's death.

An Early Frost tells the story of Michael Pierson (Aidan Quinn), a successful, gay lawyer and his battle with HIV. The film takes the disease out of the medical world and into the lives of Michael's family and loved ones, all of whom are inevitably affected by his HIV-positive status. It took two years and several drafts for the network to approve Cowen and Lipman's script, which, within the confines of 1980s network television, focuses on how AIDS affects Michael's family. The producers addressed this issue fifteen years later in their Showtime adaptation of the British series Queer as Folk by focusing on how living with HIV and AIDS affects the gay community.

An Early Frost was honored with a Peabody Award, a Golden Globe and four Emmys. In 2006, GLAAD honored producers Cowen and Lipman with the Davidson/Valenti Award for giving LGBT characters and issues a voice on national television.

The newly released DVD (Wolfe Video) includes commentary by Cowen, Lipman and Quinn, as well as the 1987 Emmy-winning documentary Living with AIDS.

For more on An Early Frost, please click here.

For more on Living With AIDS, please click here.

For more on Queer as Folk, please click here.

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