SEATTLE, WA – MAY 19: Aaron Bear, director of “Finding Kim” attends the Seattle International Film Festival opening night on May 19, 2016 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Mat Hayward / Getty Images for Seattle International Film Festival)
You’ve probably never heard of Ric Weiland, but if you’re gay you’re better off because of him.
Weiland became gay as a teenager, when he told his close friend Bill Gates (yes, that Bill Gates) that he was attracted to other men. Years later, Weiland & Gates helped found Microsoft, the company that helped usher in the digital age. Following an HIV diagnosis, Weiland also became a low-profile advocate for LGBTQ rights, donating over $ 100 million to various queer charities including GLAAD, amFAR, Lambda Legal and PFLAG. He has also advocated for protections against LGBTQ discrimination at large companies such as Microsoft and General Electric. Despite all of his accomplishments, Weiland always avoided attention. He committed suicide in 2006.
So how does a man of such fortune and fame go unnoticed? Director Aaron Bear now confronts those questions and shines a light on Weiland’s life in Yes I Am: The Ric Weiland Story, which plays the Provincetown Film Fesitval online from June 16. With interviews from friends, boyfriends and associates like Bill Gates, Bear attempts to reconstruct the life of a low-key queer hero and explore the issues of his contradictions and untimely demise. For Seattle-born Bear, Yes I Am is the sequel to his previous documentary Finding Kim, a film about a middle-aged transgender man.
We took the time to chat with Bear about Yes I Am, Ric Weiland and the baffling questions surrounding his life. Yes I Am: The Ric Weiland Story plays the Provincetown Film Fesitval online starting June 16.
So how did you first meet Ric Weiland?
It’s funny, I was approached by one of his good friends, Michael Failla, after a screening of Find Kim, my first feature film at the Seattle International Film Fest. You know, at a movie festival you have all these five minute conversations. He was one of those. I was like of course, yes, email me. Well he did in August 2016. I went to Michael’s and got a glimpse of who Ric was. At first I was like who wants to hear about a rich white man from Microsoft? But the more I got into the dirt of Ric’s life, I began to realize that he had changed the scenery for all homosexuals and no one knows who he is. I got involved; I never thought I would make another documentary.
Ric weiland
Yes?
Naively, I thought this one would take a year. So I hear I’m four years later. It’s interesting. I never met Ric. He never gave interviews; he was willfully elusive and didn’t want to be in the limelight. So it was a huge challenge. The video you see of him in the movie is the only video that exists of him. I searched for it high and low.
Wow.
It was also a big challenge as a filmmaker. I tell a story about someone who is no longer with us, and a story through friends, who all have their own idea of who Ric was. I also put my own stamp on who I think Ric was. In the end, I think Ric was that queer pioneer at a genius level. Emotionally and his personal life, these were things he struggled with. But in business, he has clearly been successful in spades. But that doesn’t equal happiness. I never tried to figure out the “why” he committed suicide for. It would be so mundane as a filmmaker, and I would be doing a disservice if I tried to figure out why.
I understand.
For me, it was just trying to show who he was and what made him tick and the big change that all of us gay people are enjoying now. He was at the forefront of research on HIV / AIDS, same-sex marriage, philanthropic efforts, everything. The fact that he doesn’t want to be brought to light says a lot about him as a person. Honestly, David, it opened a cold case.
Rare images from Weiland’s childhood
You already mentioned the lack of stock footage you could use. How much of an obstacle is that for you as a documentary maker?
Initially, I turned to the usual suspects: old news footage, archives, more regional news footage, and Microsoft. Bless them, Microsoft ended up being a dead end. Fortunately, after his death, his belongings were donated to Stanford. So I contacted the Stanford Archives. They had him cataloged, but since I was a student I only had four hours. I had an hour to set up my camera, an hour to rummage through the boxes, an hour to film and an hour to get out of there.
Oh Lord.
Thanks to this I found his diaries dating back to 1975. In doing this I realized this is his voice straight out of his brain. So I digitized all his newspapers, which is quite expensive by the way.
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Without a doubt.
Then it was a task to read them – journals written in pen from 1975 until his death. It was a bit confrontational. These are private journals. So I wanted to keep the important things, but nothing salacious. I chose the path of honoring his life and his legacy. Whoever I’m making a movie about, I want to honor that person, how they would like to be seen.
It is admirable. Tell me more about his journals. A recurring theme in his life is this strange feeling of inadequacy. He constantly felt like he had nothing to offer people. And he was a very popular, very handsome man, who had an interesting job, he was very rich.
Yes. On paper, he had it all. It shows, no matter how much you have, sometimes it never seems enough.
Why do you think he felt like he wasn’t enough then?
I do not know. I think an insightful clue to what motivated him: Ric would write in his journals, and he would color-code the journals.
What?
Yes. All blue had to do with Microsoft. Everything that was green was money. Red was sex, dating and love. Yellow was in the family. So in a way he did a lot of work for me. But then again, I don’t even know what you would call this kind of person. I sometimes reread my diaries, but there color code them. So it was easy to refer to things, but the fascinating human thing was no matter how much money he had, it didn’t matter. I think Ric’s brain just worked differently in a certain way. I would have liked to have had a more concrete answer.
That says a lot about him, although I don’t know what. I’ve never heard of anyone color coding their own newspaper. I mean, why? For his own reference? I guess that speaks to his genius brain.
I feel like he was at a great level of thought. Again, he was so adept at his job, but in his waking emotional life he found it difficult to connect with people. Throughout all of this, I also began to see a therapist and for the first time immersed myself in my own sanity. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I think it played a role in how I made the movie.
One anecdote Bill Gates recounts here is how Ric revealed himself to everyone when he was 15, and everyone shrugged their shoulders.
Yeah, for Ric, it was that fact thing. I think as queer people we all anticipate some sort of backlash. I think Ric did that, but when Bill and Paul were like Oh okay. This has allowed him to be much more successful at work. Ric’s impact at Microsoft is significant. He wrote Word and does all of these things at Microsoft while quietly leading the way for organizations like ACT UP and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. All of these things that exist now would not exist without him.
I have the impression that he was a proud homosexual.
This is another puzzle. All of these things Ric went through – being gay wasn’t one of them. He was so sure he was gay. It was just a scientific fact.
Well, and so it is. Maybe that’s where that confidence comes from.
Bill Gates
You include in-depth interviews with Ben, her former partner, and Mike, her latest partner. What interested me was that they didn’t discuss much about who he was as a boyfriend or their day-to-day life. I know you say you wanted to avoid anything dirty but was that something they were reluctant to discuss?
I did. Ben mentions it very briefly: Ric had a hard time accepting love in general. Ben would say “I love you” and Ric would have a hard time figuring out how to navigate love. It would be amazing if someone had all the presents. I think Ric has received a lot of gifts in his own world, but in romantic relationships he has done his best. There was immense love there. I had a longer cut with more personal stuff, but it slowed the movie down a bit. Maybe one day I’ll make a longer haircut.
It would be great to see. The other question I was wondering was that everyone, in the last days of Ric’s life, could see that something was wrong. He was breaking up. After talking to everyone and reading his journals, did you get the impression that he was just reluctant to get help? Or was it his HIV – someone speculates that could have caused changes in his brain?
By speculating, I think that was the culmination of things. All of his philanthropic efforts were a well-oiled machine at this point. So he felt like Now what? His HIV was getting worse and this combination of pills he was taking has since been taken off the market. I think he was just questioning everything in his life. And…
[Long pause]
All his friends, his partners were there to help him. But at the end of the day, if you want to do something, no matter what other people say, you do it. Ric, if he had something in mind, he would.
That’s a really gloomy thought, but is it possible that he feels like he could do more good in death? In other words, did he know he could give all his money to charity?
This is actually a great question. As dark as it is, I think it crossed his mind. Before committing suicide, he went to buy a book called Final output on how to properly commit suicide. He wanted to do it …
