Hollywood Heart: Where kids with HIV spend their summers

In 2006, when David Gale was running MTV Films, I wrote to him asking for a job. 

I had just graduated from college and was contemplating The Big Move to Los Angeles, blindly sending out resumes to anyone whose email I could wrest from family and friends in Miami who knew someone, who knew someone, who knew someone … who was big time in Hollywood. 

Gale was one of maybe two Hollywood executives who wrote me back.

I should have realized then that he was one of the good guys. But I didn’t learn how good until two years later, when as a staff writer for the Jewish Journal, I made a trip to Wilshire Boulevard’s Gindling Hilltop Camp in Malibu, where Gale was putting on the production of his life. 

The same verve, creativity and doggedness that helped him get movies such as “Election,” “Jackass” and “Varsity Blues” into theaters he was applying to the operation of Camp Hollywood Heart, a free, weeklong arts camp for HIV/AIDS-impacted youth. 

“It’s almost like Mickey Rooney going, ‘Come on, guys! Let’s put on a camp!’ ” Kate Solow, Hollywood Heart’s executive director, said of Gale. 

The glorious Malibu setting offered a touch of paradise, but the realities that breezed through camp were somewhat darker.

I will never forget how it felt to talk to Stephon Cooperawls, then 17, who sat quietly with me in the Rabbi Alfred Wolf Amphitheatre sharing what it felt like to be born with HIV. At a time when my biggest concern was declaring independence from my parents, Cooperawls had faced the mortality of his: His father had died of AIDS, and his mother was living with the disease.

For one week, I wrote in that 2008 story, Gale offered 80 teenagers reprieve from their tangled lives, which often included not only illness, but in many cases abuse, abandonment and poverty as well. Camp was a place where they could live among peers, judgment-free, where they didn’t have to deal with the stigma of HIV or public fears surrounding ordinary activities such as using the school bathrooms or public swimming pools. At camp, Cooperawls and others didn’t have to hide. Instead of shame, they found support. 

Last week, Hollywood Heart celebrated its 20th year of camp. And for the second time in seven years, I ventured up the hill to visit, where a gala performance called “Dreams,” showcased camp creations in music, fashion, creative writing, culinary arts, visual arts, acting and filmmaking. In true Hollywood style, there was a red carpet, a culinary feast and vogue-ing to Madonna.

More than once I was overcome as I watched and listened to the campers demonstrate their newfound confidence — some wrote and told their own stories, others sang from the depths of their souls, and quite a few made the strut down the runway as if life were all fun and games, with nothing to worry about except what to wear. 

In some cases, the products of these arts workshops were truly impressive. There may have been a future Maya Angelou in the mix, the next Sonia Sanchez, an up-and-coming Paris couturier. For two hours, 150 guests experienced endeavors ranging from spoken-word poetry to cookie-crumble bruschetta with blueberries.

And that is the biggest difference between the camp created two decades ago and camp today: What was once envisioned as a weeklong escape has turned into a more serious investment in the campers’ professional futures.

“On Saturday, we had a career fair,” Gale told me when we spoke by phone after the gala. “We’ve given them meaningful tools that they can walk away with, and we want them to take whatever they’ve learned, in the process of feeling capable, and apply that toward getting a job, getting a scholarship, getting into college. These are really transferable skills.”

Two decades ago, Gale didn’t know whether the campers would live long enough to have a future. Some died between one summer and the next. But a nurturing environment and advances in medicine have changed the equation: Today, campers dream of being big film directors, Oscar-winning writers or the next Top Chef.

Gale recently hired Solow as the new executive director, with the assignment of transferring the magic of camp to at-risk public schools in Los Angeles. “We’re taking what we’ve learned from watching these kids thrive and change, and applying that to our local community,” Gale said.

Beginning this fall, Hollywood Heart will roll out a pilot program at Los Angeles High School that will integrate arts learning into core academic classes, including language arts, history and leadership training. It will also conduct after-school arts workshops at charter schools, including Animo Watts College Preparatory Academy and Bright Star Schools. In line with its mission to serve truly vulnerable populations, Hollywood Heart hopes to equip the youth of Los Angeles with marketable arts skills that will help them get jobs.

“A lot of these kids haven’t had the greatest educational opportunities in math and science,” Gale said. “The arts [are something in which] you can immerse yourself quickly and find another path.”

Gale, too, has recently found another path. After becoming one of the first executives in the industry to have the words “new media” in his title (he founded MTV’s new media division), he abandoned what he calls “traditional” Hollywood and started a website and media company for the approximately 125 million members of the U.S. military community called We Are the Mighty. “It’s like Buzzfeed for the military,” Gale said. 

Launched on Veterans Day 2014, Gale said wearethemighty.com already has become the second-most-trafficked military website, with more than 3 million unique visitors per month.

“I made this remarkable change in my life,” he said of giving up Hollywood.

Perhaps some of his campers will soon say the same. Except that they will add: “Thanks to a Hollywood guy with a big heart.”