Chances are you’ve heard of Bill Gates, who is so well-known he’s commonly used to illustrate the statistical concept of outliers.* Equally likely you’ve never heard of Ric Weiland, who was the second employee at Microsoft and went to the same high school as Gates and Paul Allen, among others. Weiland cofounded the Lakeside Programmers Group and, while he did not become the richest man in the world, he did pretty well for himself, as you will learn in Aaron Bear’s documentary Yes I Am: The Ric Weiland Story.
Weiland was an out gay man in the 1970s, and according to the people interviewed in Yes I Am, his colleagues at Microsoft weren’t much bothered by that fact. Instead, they recall a man who was smart, creative, and hardworking, who brought his full self to work and loved to play with ideas. There’s a lesson there—prejudice not only robs targeted individuals of the chance to live a full life, but also steals from all of us whatever those targeted people might have created had they been allowed to simply get on with the work they could do best.
Unfortunately, not everyone was as accepting as Weiland’s coworkers, and those prejudices came to the forefront in the 1980s when a new and deadly disease started appearing among gay men. That would be AIDS, of course, and now we know that anyone can get it, but at the time it was commonly referred to as a gay disease. Cue the haters to come out from under their rocks, empowered by the opportunity to both blame gay people for their misfortunes and justify prejudice and discrimination against them as necessary to protect public health.
Like many gay men of his generation, Weiland tested positive for HIV. After a period of self-reflection, he retired to focus on investments and philanthropy (occasionally returning to work as a coder to earn money which he would give away). Weiland’s motto was “With great wealth comes great responsibility” and he lived according to that rule, giving over $200 million to more than 60 nonprofit organizations and causes including AIDS research and LGBTQ+ organizations. He also worked with The Pride Foundation, an organization whose members use their influence as shareholders in major companies to argue for gay rights in the workplace, Weiland himself delivered a speech before the shareholders of GM, arguing that it made business sense for the company to treat gay people fairly, because that would give them an edge in recruiting talented employees.
Yes I Am includes excerpts from Weiland’s diaries, read by Zachary Quinto. His own words reveal Weiland to be thoughtful and even a bit philosophical, someone who took seriously the obligation to accomplish something with his life and his talents, but who also took great delight in his friends and liked to have a good time. A wealth of pictures and home video are included (yes, Weiland did like to party), as well as animations and re-enactments in which Weiland is played by Gil Bar-Sela. There are also a lot of “setting the scene” video clips illustrating attitudes about gay people over the years as well as major events like the public display of the AIDS quilt.
I learned quite a bit from Yes I Am, including the fact of Weiland’s existence, and telling previously untold stories is an excellent use of the documentary medium. Unfortunately, this particular film can be a bit dry, to the point where it recalls the kind of boring documentaries you may remember from high school history classes. I also would have preferred more about Weiland and his work, and less about the times in which he lived (angry homophobes getting air time on national TV, for instance). Of course, I lived through the era in question, and young people or those who traveled in different circles may need that kind of footage to help them understand what it was like way back then.
Besides introducing this significant historical figure, Yes I Am offers thoughtful discussions about mental health (Weiland suffered from depression) and about finding ways to thrive as a gay person in a straight world. At just over an hour, it won’t take much time out of your life, and you’ll probably find it time well spent. | Sarah Boslaugh
*Bill Gates walks into a room, and on average we’re all millionaires.
Yes I Am: The Ric Weiland Story is distributed on DVD by Kino Lorber. The only extras on the disc are trailers.
