In the 1980s, when a gay man died of AIDS, newspapers would not name the person he loved as his partner. The obituary might use this careful phrase: longtime companion.

In 1990, a film took that phrase, the polite words that let a paper bury a man without admitting who he was, and made it its title. LONGTIME COMPANION was the first major movie to face the AIDS crisis head on.

It nearly wasn't made. When writer Craig Lucas pitched a story about gay men and the epidemic, one producer told him, "Don't say another word. We're not interested," and hung up the phone. Hollywood would not touch it, so public television paid for it.

The film opens on the July day in 1981 when the New York Times ran its first small notice of a "rare cancer," then returns to one circle of friends each year as the disease takes them one by one.

Bruce Davison earned an Oscar nomination, the Academy's first for a film about AIDS - predating Tom Hanks in Philadelphia by three years. Davison was especially praised for the scene in which he tells his dying partner it is all right to let go.

Norman René, who directed it, died of AIDS in 1996.