Love him or hate him, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is well known for his philanthropic efforts, while his late friend and former co-worker Ric Weiland has received significantly less recognition for his notable philanthropic contributions. In Yes I Am: The Ric Weiland Story, filmmaker Aaron Bear sets out to right this wrong, establishing Weiland as a humanitarian and fundamental LGBTQ activist.
A talented computer programmer, Weiland was one of the first five employees at Microsoft. In the tenth grade, Weiland and his friend Paul Allen, along with two eighth-graders, Bill Gates and Kent Evans, formed their high school computer club, the Lakeside Coding Group. A few years later, Gates and Allen founded Microsoft in 1975 and invited Weiland to join their new company as a programmer and developer. He briefly left the company to attend a few semesters at Harvard Business School, then returned as a project leader for Microsoft Works.
Director: Aaron Bear
Writers: Wade Laurels, Aimee Palacios
Stars: Bill Gates, Zachary Quinto, Gil Bar-Sela
Gates credits Weiland with being instrumental in the company's success. In personal journals, narrated by Zachary Quinto, Weiland confesses to not being as interested in personal computing as Gates and Allen. He approached his work as a programmer as a mode of creativity, stating, "Computers are the art form I relate to." In an interview with Gates, he says that Allen and himself were more self-centered in his work, determined to prove they were the best. Weiland, on the other hand, "had nothing to prove."
In 1988, at the age of 35, Weiland retired after amassing an enormous amount of wealth through Microsoft stock. Not knowing what to do with so much time and money, he developed a second career as a philanthropist.
Those closest to him describe Weiland as quiet and difficult to read, but he did not hide his identity from those in his professional or private life. Coming out to Gates, Allen and Evans at the age of 17, being gay while working at Microsoft never posed any issues for him.
However, he recognized that many people in the LGBTQ community did not have the same experience, nor were they given the same opportunities. Thus, one of his greatest achievements as an activist was delivering a speech at a General Electric shareholder meeting, urging them to end discriminatory hiring policies. His work with The Pride Foundation has credited him as the architect of shareholder strategy for changing corporate policy.
Weiland began his advocacy and philanthropy work in the midst of the AIDS pandemic, which had a profound impact on his life. He buried many of his friends during the 1980s and 1990s, and he himself tested positive for HIV.
The film uses a montage of stock footage, mostly news clips, to illustrate the sociopolitical climate during the AIDS crisis and the barrage of misinformation polluting the airwaves about the virus and the LGBTQ community. The structure of the film hints at the juxtaposition between the beginning of the information age with mass production and the spread of misinformation.
Dr. Hans Peter Kiem has spent much of his career finding a cure for HIV. Weiland invested a large initial sum of money in his research, which allowed them to collect preliminary data for more funding from the NIH (National Institutes of Health). Throughout his life, Weiland donated more than $20 million to more than 60 organizations.
Despite being a defender of human rights, Weiland felt disconnected from others. He perceived his wealth as a barrier to making personal connections. He expressed dissatisfaction in his social life and often attributed it to an inherent flaw in himself. "Maybe I'm not finding these kinds of relationships because I'm not the person I should be," he reflected in his diary.
His ex-boyfriend, Ben Sharpe, remembers angering Weiland when Sharpe told him that he loved him: "I really loved him, but I think I felt he didn't deserve it." Suffering from chronic depression for many years, Weiland took his own life in 2006.
Bear's film serves more as a eulogy than a biopic, drawing heavily on interviews with Weiland's close friends, colleagues, and romantic partners to secure his legacy. Sharpe says that he worries that people will remember Weiland as a very rich man without knowing who he really was. Through the use of Weiland's diary entries and the testimony of his loved ones, the film avoids framing a portrait of the hardships of an exorbitantly wealthy man, instead focusing on a story of human suffering and triumph.
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