This forgotten musical has butts, full frontal nudity, and political commentary
Zero Patience, however, breaks the mold completely, in the best possible way. I don’t often feel seen by the movies I watch (at least, not in a good way) but from the moment I pressed play on John Greyson’s offbeat masterpiece, I felt that I was being spoken to, and ever since I’ve been recommending this movie to everyone I meet, describing it as “one of the most Henry movies you’ll ever see.”The premise, admittedly, is extremely Henry: in this alternate history, 19th-century explorer and sexologist Richard Burton (not to be confused with the actor) is alive and well after a “run-in” with the fountain of youth.
Since the early 1900s, he’s been spending his time quietly working in the taxidermy department of a Canadian natural history museum.
Sometime in the early 90s, he decides to do an exhibit on the infamous “patient zero,” the flight attendant of legend who was randomly blamed and scapegoated for (erroneously) being labeled the first person to bring AIDS to North America.
We’ve since moved past this founding myth, but in Canada in the early 90s, not disclosing your HIV status could land you in jail, and “patient zero” was still seen as enemy number one by a world desperate to pin the blame of AIDS on one single, sexually-promiscuous person.Burton—who also rose to infamy in the Victorian age for his translations of the Arabian Nights and experiments regarding penis size—finds himself at first dispassionately interested in the story of “Patient Zero,” until the ghost of “Zero” himself shows up.
