‘Gift’ Documents Life With Mortality : Movie: Laguna Beach filmmaker seeks funding to complete a full-length film of people affected by AIDS or HIV infection.

Filmmaker L. Roy Nesbitt had little personal experience with the toll taken by AIDS until he renewed a friendship with a former classmate from UC Irvine.

When the friend told him he was infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, Nesbitt found his preconceptions challenged--John was a seemingly healthy and vigorous man, a surfer and outdoorsman in love with life.

Through John, Nesbitt came to know others, some HIV-positive and some with full-blown AIDS, who impressed him with their courage, strength and even humor in the face of the deadly disease.

“They’re heroes, I think,” Nesbitt said in an interview at his Laguna Beach home. “They are people going on with their lives and living life pretty well. . . . They’re finding empowerment in their lives.”

It is through their stories that Nesbitt began to conceive of a feature-length documentary film based on interviews with people with AIDS or the HIV infection who have found a renewed focus and dignity while grappling with their mortality.

The project is called “Gift of Legacy,” and so far producer Nesbitt and director Brett Darken of Los Angeles have completed a 10-minute promotional video they are shopping in Hollywood to raise money to complete the film.

The video features interviews with nine men and women of varying ethnic and social backgrounds, telling their stories of coming to terms with the disease. The people, unnamed in the film, tell their stories directly to the camera, without narration. The stories focus on emotional attitudes rather than on the clinical details of their infections.

“When I want to go to a park, I go--I don’t wait until tomorrow,” says one apparently middle-class woman who has become an activist on the issue of AIDS. “If I want to do something with my son, I go. When I want to give my husband a hug or a kiss, I do it at the moment the thought enters my mind.”

One man, after being told he was HIV-positive, traded in his old, rusting Camaro for a new Jeep. Another took up bungee jumping.

“If you’re focusing on moving toward an objective, you don’t have time to worry about fear or the pressures of everyday life,” says one man. “Especially if it’s something very personal to you, like staying alive.”

Adds another woman: “This is probably the best years in my life. I know what I want; I know what I have, and there’s not any blockage anymore.”

Nesbitt, 37, says the film “features subjects that challenge general assumptions about the disease and about life itself. They are an inspiration not only to others with HIV, but to all people who know that while life is short, it can be productive and fulfilling.”

By focusing on an inspirational side of the AIDS story, Nesbitt said, he is filling a gap created by the mainstream media.

“I think the media has sensationalized the horror, and they have captured society’s fears,” he said, adding that the coverage has reinforced the stigma against those with AIDS and HIV.

Nesbitt wants the completed film to help combat that stigma by allowing the public to hear the stories of his subjects directly.

“By this film, we want to stop the damage caused by fear and contain the damage,” Nesbitt said.

Mark Alan Smith, founder of the Orange County-based coalition Art for Life’s Sake, said the film is an early indicator of what will be a “new generation of education” in the AIDS field.

“What we’ve done in the past has been preventive,” Smith said. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t really seen anything quite like (‘Gift of Legacy’).”

Little of the education thus far has broached “how people are living and dealing with it in their daily lives,” he said. “I think the film attempts to show that side of the story.”

Nesbitt had been researching the project for about a year when he received $1,600 from a private donor to create the promotional video in January. He found his subjects with the help of friends and through AIDS service organizations. All are from Orange and Los Angeles counties.

After extensive interviews, a loose script was constructed, placing the subjects in settings that illustrate some of their favorite activities: cooking, walking on the beach, playing with their children, driving off-road. All of it was shot in Laguna Beach on March 13 and 14, and editing was completed in April.

The video has had one public showing, at an AIDS and HIV round-table discussion last month in Santa Ana at Rancho Santiago College, organized by Smith. Beyond that, Nesbitt and Darken have concentrated on showing it to studios and producers in hopes of raising about $400,000 to finish the documentary. Nesbitt is optimistic and hopes to have a finished product by fall.

“Everybody that’s seen this says the time is right for this message,” Nesbitt said. But no firm deals are in the offing.

A full-length film would concentrate on the same subjects with the addition of more minorities. (The only minority in the video is one black male.) The completed film would also include interviews with family members and friends.

Nesbitt hopes to attach a celebrity name to the project, someone who will add opening and closing comments to the film and help attract attention to the project (Isabella Rossellini and Julia Roberts are at the top of the list).

The marketing game plan, according to Nesbitt, is a short theatrical run, followed by cable airings and home video release.

Nesbitt would like to see the project lead to more independent productions. Since graduating from UC Irvine in 1981 with an MA in fine arts, he has worked as a production assistant on numerous studio projects.

“Gift of Legacy” is the first independent film he has undertaken. He doesn’t necessarily want to remain in documentary work, but he hopes to carry forward the theme of the his current project if he goes into feature film production.

“My love is to make films that call for a return to soulful living,” Nesbitt said. “I see that we as a society need some means of accepting our own mortality.”

Nesbitt said his one sadness associated with “Gift of Legacy” is that his friend John, who helped inspire the project, will not see the film. He died May 15, eight years after testing positive for HIV.