Dallas Buyers Club is everything amazing and yet everything terrible about life all at once (but more so amazing, don’t worry). After seeing this movie that I already knew was going to be my favorite, I wanted everyone to know about this incredible story not only because it’s the real real, but because it’s important.
The movie, which centers around the devastating initial stages of the AIDS outbreak in the middle of the 1980s, tells the true story of good ole Texan boy Ron Woodroof (played by the unbelievably 50-pound-slimmed-down Matthew McConnehey). And by good ole Texan boy I mean that, uhh, this guy is a total f*cking dick: a drunken coke head that’s set in his hedonistic and homophobic rodeo cowboy ways whose ignorance ends up creeping up on him after accidentally ending up in the hospital one day.
And nobody just expects to be diagnosed with AIDS without at least some forewarning, especially this cowboy. So when Dr. Sevard (Dennis O’Hare) and Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner) give Woodroof the news he now only has 30 days left to live in 1985, well, let’s just say “there ain’t nothin’ out there that can kill Ron Woodroof in 30 days” and he walks right out the hospital doors.
The initial denial of the disease is shown through post-diagnosed Woodroof continuing his rituals of blowing a bunch of coke, partying, and ALMOST coming close to drunkenly sleeping with a girl until his conscience overtook him: at that moment he knew he had to do something. But he probably never imagined it would eventually lead to the Dallas Buyers Club.
Wanting a second chance for his now haunting past, Woodroof sets out to be a part of a study being conducted on AIDS patients seeking treatment with a new drug called AZT. But due to regulations and high demand of patients, the hospital is unable to fit Woodroof into their trial, leaving him with no other options to deal with the increasing symptoms.
Finally deciding to take matters into his own hands and doing some of his own research about the disease, Woodroof learns about alternative medicines that actually prove to work better than hospital-regulated studies but aren’t yet approved in the United States. Meaning: technically illegal—but with the help of doctors around the word including a particularly resourceful Dr. Vass (Griffin Dunne) and the fact more patients are actually getting sick on the hospital trials, Woodroof uses his new found courage and empathy to start what would become the Dallas Buyers Club.
And much thanks to Woodroof’s new found friend Rayon (Jared Leto) he met while in the hospital playing cards, who also happens to be quite the social butterfly among the gays in the neighborhood, the two come together with Woodroof’s new found empathy to successfully administer Dallas’ first buyers club to distribute the drugs en masse via a monthly membership of $400.
Rayon proves right away she can handle doing the biz and the Dallas buyers numbers continue to grow outstandingly, leading to the two’s relationship morphing from their desperation of wanting to live and their inner demons into a friendship that shines most through laughable moments making fun of each other’s annoying only human habits.
It turns out Dallas Buyers Club is almost 100% accurate in showing Woodroof’s rough life down south and his endeavors in breaking through against the FDA, along with his radical beliefs against the pharmaceutical system. In fact over 10 years of research and interviews were conducted by producers and screenwriters before its final release. However, Rayon is a fictional character added to depict the earnestness of Woodroof overcoming his homophobia—and I wouldn’t of had it any other way, as Leto gave an awe-worthy performance alongside McConaughey who will honestly just blow you away.
(photos via Daily Mail, New Now Next, & Entertainment Weekly)
