Life and Death on the A-List
Released: 1996
Length: 45 minutes
Director: Jay Corcoran
Cast: Tom McBride
This striking documentary by New York actor and playwright Jay Corcoran, details the life and death of Tom McBride, a New York actor and model dying of Progressive Multi-focal Leucoencephalopathy (PML), an AIDS-related brain disease.
McBride’s “All-American” good looks made him a familiar face in television commercials, print ads and films through the ’70s and ’80s. He even became that most emblematic of masculine images: the Winston man. For many gay men, McBride became an icon exemplifying life on the “A-List” — the whirl of sex, drugs, theme parties, and summers on Fire Island that made New York’s gay scene famous. But McBride’s glamorous life was stalked by his sexual obsession and compulsive drive.
Undetectable: The New Face of AIDS
Released: 2001
Length: 56 minutes
Producer: Jay Corcoran
Executive producer: Michael Roberts
Cinematographer: Jay Corcoran
Editor: George O’Donnell
Composer: Scott Killian
Undetectable is a feature documentary, following for three years six Boston residents on the new multi-drug therapies for HIV disease. The film examines the complex physical and psychological effects of the treatment on three women and three men of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and the importance of AIDS education and advocacy within both the gay and poor and minority communities. It was broadcast on PBS, Independent Lens.
Rock Bottom
Rock Bottom
Released: 2006
Length: 61 minutes
Producer/Director/Camera: Jay Corcoran
Producer: Colin Weil
Editor: Kenny Wachtal
Original Music: Scott Killian
Executive Producer: Joe Lovett
Distributor: Vanessa Domico, Outcast Films
Rock Bottom follows the journeys of seven gay men struggling with meth addiction and recovery against a backdrop of an emerging second wave of HIV infection. From grappling with the drug’s effects on their physical and mental health to wrestling with their darkest sexual desires, Rock Bottom delivers a chilling portrait of a community in crisis. With an unflinching eye the film captures their stories over a two-year period, from sex clubs to hospitals to family gatherings. It takes enormous courage to face these demons, and even more to allow the world to watch.
- April 5, 2010
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- Films
New York Diary
New York Diary presents one New Yorker’s personal take on September 11 and its aftermath. How was the immediate, unintelligible horror of the attacks digested and domesticated in the days and weeks that followed?
Harrowing images from the first thirty-six hours give way to the rituals of missing posters, makeshift memorials, to posing for pictures with policemen and buying t-shirts and other 9/11 memorabilia. The film asks disturbing questions about how the global electronic village assimilates and banalizes terror and mass murder.
New York Diary was broadcast on Thirteen/WNET.