Drop Dead Gorgeous (A Tragi-Comedy)

Steve Moore took an actively unfolding tragedy and tried to turn it into television. Built around his experience as an HIV-positive gay man in the late 1990s, the show treats his own mortality with a stubborn dryness. He mixes stage work with autobiographical storytelling, pulling his real parents into the production to smoke medical marijuana and discussing his lavender marriage of convenience to a Canadian lesbian.

Filmed at the HBO Workspace, the set is heavily interrupted by flashbacks and sketch elements from directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. Moore was mostly known at the time as a warm-up comic for the sitcom Roseanne, and the broadcast functioned as his public coming out. He talks about growing up in Danville, Virginia, and delivering newspapers to Natalie Wood right before she died. The heavy-handed editing and fake film reels frustrated some critics, including an irritated Tom Shales at The Washington Post, but the project earned a Cable Ace award and stood as a major cultural marker for HIV visibility.