Dallas Buyers Club is a 2013 American biographical drama film written by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack, and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée. The film tells the story of Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), a cowboy diagnosed with AIDS in the mid-1980s, a time when both the etiology and the treatment of HIV/AIDS were poorly understood and its sufferers subject to stigma. As part of an ongoing experimental AIDS treatment movement, Woodroof smuggles unapproved pharmaceutical drugs into Texas to treat his symptoms. Here, he distributes them to fellow people with AIDS by establishing the "Dallas Buyers Club", all the while facing opposition from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Two fictional supporting characters, Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner), and Rayon (Jared Leto), were composite roles created from interviews with transgender AIDS patients, activists, and doctors. Presidential biographer and PEN-USA winner Bill Minutaglio wrote the first magazine profile of the Dallas Buyers Club in 1992. The article, which featured interviews with Woodroof and also recreated his dramatic international exploits, attracted widespread attention from filmmakers and journalists.
Screenwriter Borten interviewed Woodroof in 1992 and wrote the script, which he polished with writer Wallack in 2000, and then sold to producer Robbie Brenner. Several other actors, directors, and producers were attached at various times to the development of the film, but left the project. Universal Pictures also tried to make the film, but did not. A couple of screenwriters wrote drafts that were rejected. In 2009, producer Brenner involved Matthew McConaughey because of his Texan origins, the same as Woodroof's. Brenner selected the first draft, written by Borten and Wallack, for the film and then Vallée was set to direct. Principal photography began in November 2012 in New Orleans, continuing for 25 days of filming, which also included shooting in Baton Rouge. Brenner and Rachel Winter co-produced the film. The official soundtrack album featured various artists, and was released digitally on October 29, 2013, by the Relativity Music Group.
Dallas Buyers Club premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival and was released theatrically in the United States on November 1, 2013, by Focus Features, entering wide release on November 22. The film grossed $55 million worldwide against a $5 million budget and received widespread critical acclaim, resulting in numerous accolades. Critics praised the performances of McConaughey and Leto, who respectively received the Academy Award for Best Actor and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at the 86th Academy Awards, making this the first film since Mystic River (2003), and only the fifth film ever to win both awards. The film won the award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling and garnered nominations for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing.
Plot In 1985, promiscuous Dallas electrician and rodeo cowboy Ron Woodroof is diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and told that he has about 30 days to live. At first, he refuses to accept the diagnosis until he remembers having unprotected sex with a prostitute who was an IV drug user. Woodroof's family and friends ostracize him, mistakenly assuming he contracted AIDS from gay sex. He is fired from his job and evicted from his home. His doctor, Eve Saks, tells him an antiretroviral drug called AZT—the only drug yet approved for testing in human clinical trials by the FDA—is thought to prolong the life of AIDS patients. Saks informs him that half of the trial patients receive the drug and the other half receive a placebo, since this is the only way to determine whether the drug works.
Woodroof bribes a hospital worker to get him AZT, which, exacerbated by his cocaine and alcohol abuse, causes his health to deteriorate. Recuperating in the hospital, he meets Rayon, a drug-addicted, HIV-positive trans woman, whom he is initially hostile toward. As his health worsens, he drives to a makeshift Mexican hospital to get more AZT. The facility is run by an American, Dr. Vass, whose medical license was revoked because his work with people with AIDS had violated US regulations. Vass warns Woodroof against AZT, calling it "poisonous." Instead, he prescribes a cocktail of drugs and nutritional supplements centered on ddC and the protein peptide T, which are not yet approved for use in the USA by the FDA. Three months later, Woodroof finds his health much improved and realizes he could make money by importing the drugs and selling them to other HIV-positive patients. He is able to get the drugs over the border by masquerading as a priest with cancer and claiming they are for personal use. Dr. Saks starts to notice the adverse effects of AZT, but her supervisor, Dr. Sevard, tells her the trials cannot be discontinued.
Woodroof starts selling the drugs in Dallas on the street, at gay nightclubs, and discotheque bars. He reluctantly partners with Rayon since she can bring in more customers. The pair establishes the Dallas Buyers Club, charging $400 per month for membership and giving away the drugs to members to circumvent the laws that made it illegal to sell the drugs. The club is extremely popular, and Woodroof gradually begins to respect Rayon as a friend. When Woodroof is hospitalized for a heart attack caused by an overdose of recently acquired interferon from Japan, Dr. Sevard learns of the club and its alternative drugs and is angry that the buyers' club is interfering with his trial. The FDA confiscates the interferon and threatens to have Woodroof arrested. Dr. Saks agrees that there are benefits to clubs for HIV drugs, but feels powerless to change anything. The process the FDA uses to research, test, and approve drugs is considered flawed and part of the problem for people suffering from AIDS. At that time, the USA and the FDA were particularly conservative by international standards in testing and approving anti-AIDS drugs. They were hostile to imported drugs to the point that they were made contraband. Dr. Saks and Woodroof begin a friendship.
The FDA gets a warrant to raid the Buyers Club, but can do nothing but fine Woodroof. The FDA changes its regulations in 1987, making any unapproved drug illegal. With the club strapped for cash, Rayon begs her father for money and tells Woodroof that she has sold her life insurance policy to raise money. Woodroof travels to Mexico to get more peptide T. Upon his return, he finds that Rayon has died in the hospital and is extremely upset by her death. Dr. Saks is asked to resign when the hospital discovers she has been sending patients to the buyers club, but she refuses, insisting they will have to fire her instead.
After Rayon's death, Woodroof begins to show more compassion toward LGBT members of the club, and making money becomes less of a concern; his priority becomes providing the drugs as peptide T gets increasingly challenging to acquire. Woodroof files a lawsuit against the FDA in late 1987, seeking the legal right to take the protein, which has been confirmed as nontoxic but is still not FDA-approved. The judge is sympathetic toward him and admonishes the FDA, but lacks the power to do anything. The FDA later allows Woodroof to take peptide T for personal use. He dies of AIDS in 1992, seven years later than his doctors had initially predicted.
Cast
Matthew McConaughey as Ron Woodroof, a real-life person with AIDS who smuggled unapproved pharmaceutical drugs into Texas when he found them effective at improving his symptoms. In an interview with CBS News' Lee Cowan in February 2014, McConaughey said that he selected the role because he thought it was not just a normal story, but it was a story of a "wild man". McConaughey was raised near Dallas, so he was very familiar with the culture. Additionally, he thought that the script was "incredibly human, with no sentimentality". McConaughey lost nearly of body weight to play Woodroof in the film. Jennifer Garner as Dr. Eve Saks, who treats people with AIDS, like Woodroof and Rayon. Upon Garner's casting, after reading the script she expressed: "I had heard about it, and I had seen pictures of Matthew losing weight. And really couldn't imagine how I was going to do it, and was so happy at home." Jared Leto as Rayon, a fictional trans woman with AIDS who helps Woodroof. To accurately portray his role, Leto lost 30 pounds (13 kilograms), shaved his eyebrows, and waxed his entire body. He stated the portrayal was grounded in his meeting transgender people while researching the role. He stated that when he moved to Los Angeles in 1991, he had a roommate who died of AIDS. He "[worked] on Rayon's voice for weeks" and refused to break character during filming; director Vallée stated, "I don't know Leto. Jared never showed me Jared." Denis O'Hare as Dr. Sevard Steve Zahn as Tucker, a Dallas Police Officer, Ron's friend Michael O'Neill as Richard Barkley, an FDA agent and antagonist Dallas Roberts as David Wayne, Ron's lawyer Griffin Dunne as Dr. Vass, a Mexico-based doctor Kevin Rankin as T. J., Ron's friend Bradford Cox as "Sunflower", Rayon's lover, a cross-dresser dying of AIDS Scott Takeda as Mr. Yamata Joji Yoshida as Dr. Hiroshi Adam Dunn (cameo) as a bartender
Production
Development The film is based on the real life of Ron Woodroof, a patient of HIV and AIDS, who was the subject of a lengthy 1992 article in The Dallas Morning News written by journalist and author Bill Minutaglio. (original article) A month before Woodroof died in September 1992, screenwriter Craig Borten was told about the story by his friend, so he went and interviewed him to create the screenplay; Borten recorded many hours of interviews with Woodroof and had access to his personal journals. Borten wrote a script for what he believed would make a great movie and attempted to attract interest in making the film in mid 1996, with Dennis Hopper attached to direct. Columbia Pictures was set to buy the script but the film was unable to secure financial backing.
In an interview, Borten revealed that he met Melisa Wallack in 2000 and asked her to help with the script, to which she said yes. In 2001, after one year of working on the script, they sold it to producer Robbie Brenner, who then set Marc Forster to direct the film for Universal Pictures, but left due to some personal delays. In June 2008, Craig Gillespie and Ryan Gosling were in talks to join the film, which was to be produced by David Bushell and Marc Abraham for Universal Pictures and Strike Entertainment. Chase Palmer was writing the script that time around, and screenwriters Guillermo Arriaga and Stephen Belber had reportedly also written the subsequent drafts for the film.
In 2009, producer Robbie Brenner got involved again and rejected all the rewrites of the script, and the original version by Borten and Wallack was sent to actor Matthew McConaughey to see if the Texas native would be interested in playing the role. On March 9, 2011, Jean-Marc Vallée was confirmed to direct the film based on the script by Borten and Wallack. Rachel Winter also attached to produce the film.
On November 14, 2012, it was announced that Remstar Films had acquired the Canadian rights while Entertainment One would handle the United Kingdom rights for the film. On April 23, 2013, Focus Features acquired the United States and Latin American distribution rights for the theatrical release of the film. In May 2013, Voltage Pictures and Truth Entertainment closed a deal to produce the film.
Casting