When Magic Johnson (read a love letter to Magic Johnson) revealed on Nov. 7, 1991, that he had contracted H.I.V., the stunning announcement rippled across the National Basketball Association and professional sports, and changed the way that H.I.V./AIDS was discussed. Now, more than 20 years later, ESPN and the N.B.A. are preparing a documentary about Mr. Johnson’s decision to go public with his diagnosis, from a director who says that he doesn’t want to see H.I.V./AIDS disappear from the national conversation.
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You want to know how Magic Johnson knows today? ask Bill Plaschke LA Times reporter
"It's exercise and faith and three pills twice a day. "
I beg him to give me the name of the three pills. He says everyone asks, but his doctors have sworn him to silence for the sake of those who might try to use those three pills to self-medicate.
What the REAL reason he won't answer this question?
On Friday ESPN Films and NBA Entertainment are expected to announce that they will present the documentary, called “The Announcement,” on ESPN starting on March 11. It is directed by the filmmaker and writer Nelson George. (Mr. George has been a contributor to The New York Times.)
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Mr. Johnson, who stepped down as point guard of the Los Angeles Lakers after making the announcement (he had a brief comeback in 1996), played on five N.B.A. championship teams, was named the league’s Most Valuable Player three times and was a 12-time All-Star. The film will include new interviews as he discusses the events that led up to his news conference. Also appearing in the film are Mr. Johnson’s wife, Cookie; his fellow Lakers James Worthy and Kurt Rambis and the team’s former general manager Jerry West; and Larry Bird, the Boston Celtics forward who was his athletic rival and is an off-court friend.
Mr. George said in a telephone interview that his goal for “The Announcement” was not only to tell the inside story of Mr. Johnson’s personal deliberations but also to “make people aware this thing hasn’t disappeared.” He added: “People are still dying of the virus. People are living very tough lives because of it. It’s falling off the national agenda, I believe, and this in some way helps us reintroduce it.”
Mr. George said his memories of Mr. Johnson’s announcement were vivid and specific. He said the event was “for a lot of people of a certain age” the equivalent of “the Kennedy assassination or the King assassination.”
“He’s the biggest star in the N.B.A.,” Mr. George said. “He’s one of the biggest stars in professional sports, and he comes up with this disease, which at that time is an immediate killer. So even though he’s walking there and standing in front of everyone giving this press conference, as Karl Malone says, they think they’re seeing a dead man walking.”
Mr. George, who was then a New York Knicks season-ticket holder, said he recalled attending the team’s game that night against the Orlando Magic, where Pat Riley, then the Knicks head coach and the former coach of the Lakers, made a statement about Mr. Johnson and asked both teams to say a prayer for him. But, Mr. George said: “I don’t even remember anything else about that night. It wasn’t until we started working on the film that I realized the Knicks won the game.”
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Two years later Mr. George learned that his sister, Andrea Williams, had been given a diagnosis of H.I.V. Ms. Williams, who is now an AIDS activist in Brooklyn and was the inspiration for Mr. George’s HBO movie “Life Support,” appears in “The Announcement,” as does Michael Weinstein, the president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Johnson friends and confidants like Arsenio Hall are also interviewed in the documentary, as are longtime fans like Chris Rock.
But getting Mr. Johnson to agree to his interviews, some of which were conducted at the Forum in Los Angeles, where he played as a Laker and disclosed his diagnosis, “was the key to everything,” Mr. George said.
“Between the time he was diagnosed and the time he announced was 10 days,” Mr. George said. “And in that 10 days there was so much drama involved within, whether to reveal, how do we reveal? We need to get a second opinion. What’s that going to be like? Is Cookie infected, will my pregnant wife be infected? Will my newborn child be affected? Before he got at that podium, there’s a whole world of drama that we were able to really depict in incredible detail.”
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