This movie was produced in 1997 based on Terrence McNally's 1997/98 Tony award winning play of the same name -- I did not see the play, and purchased the DVD for my collection in 2007 -- I did not watch the movie until 2016 as I suspected it might bring back memories that were too painful -- And indeed, viewing it was painful, but not in the way I expected -- It's about eight mostly upper-middle-class gay men, most of them in their early middle age, in the time of AIDS plague -- But the story is not about the love, valour and compassion I experienced back at the height of those terrible days when gay men, my friends and sons of mothers and fathers, were dying from a mysterious plague -- Instead the movie's protagonists are about as white and bourgeois as you can get -- To me they were (as as one review commented) "cartoon characters -- And not very nice ones -- Every distasteful stereotype is there" -- The folks I knew back then were not partying at luxurious country homes by a lakeside; they were struggling without jobs, housing, often dependent on hostile public social services, and sometimes ostrocized from their families and even their gay friends -- It was painful to me that such a prominent playwright as Terrence McNally should have glorified these delettants by the lake -- And even more painful that the public, including the gay public, seems to have bought it -- A friend said to me: "You should net be surprised -- The people by the lake are probably the only people McNally knows, he is, after all, a creature of the Hamptons and NY elite".