He’ll quickly be forgotten, especially after yesterday’s tragic news about Heath Ledger, but I wanted to take a moment to write about Brad Renfro, who passed on January 15 at the age of 27.

He was the child star who got his big break in The Client, but I knew him from his role in the 1995 movie, The Cure. No, it wasn’t a biopic on goth-rock icon Robert Smith, it was a buddy tale about two kids- one a positoid, one a negatoid.  They are 11, and Renfo plays the part of good kid, befriending the ostracized positoid. Of course, I can relate on some level since I was 11 when I tested positive. It’s a nice little movie about two boys trying to find a cure in the pre-protease era.  And, though I haven’t seen it in about ten years, I’ll be revisiting it soon.

I never met Brad Renfro, though I did have the pleasure of IM’ing someone who was pretending to be Renfro about ten years ago or so. That’s how I found out about the movie, The Cure, as well as a little bit about Brad Renfro by proxie via some demented superfan posing as him.  Of course, the real Brad is gone, but his work as it pertains to raising awareness about HIV should not be forgotten.


Positively Yours,
Shawn