Tom Hulce as Ned Weeks. Some pages from the theatre programme of The Normal Heart - Albery Theatre, May 1986
Look what came in the mail, oh my dearest king, sweetest, most wonderful Mr Hulce. There is literally nothing I would not do if it meant I could enjoy just a tiny 10 seconds of Tom as Ned Weeks... I would sell my soul to the demons a thousand times, what I would not give, just to hear his voice echoing, screaming those passionate speech. The love, the despair, the fight! The rage!
(from the script)
I am furious with you, and with myself and with every goddamned doctor who ever told me I'm sick and interfered with my loving a man. I'm trying to understand why nobody wants to hear we're dying, why nobody wants to help, why my own brother doesn't want to help. Two million dollars-for house! And we can't even get twentynine cents from the city. You still think I'm sick, and I simply cannot allow that any longer. I will not speak to you again until you accept me as your equal. Your healthy equal. Your brother!
...
The only way we'll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn't just sexual. It's all there - all through history we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth. And until we do that, and until we organize ourselves block by neighborhood by city by state into a united visible community that fights back, we're doomed. That's how I want to be defined: as one of the men who fought the war. Being defined by our cocks is literally killing us. Must we all be reduced to becoming our own murderers? Why couldn't you and I, Bruce Niles and Ned Weeks, have been leaders in creating new a definition of what it means to be gay?
