Elton John and his husband David Furnish have once again taken over West Hollywood Park.
A giant white tent has been erected between San Vicente and Robertson Boulevards for the return of the Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Award Viewing Party on Sunday. This year’s festivities — the 34th annual edition — will be co-hosted by Neil Patrick Harris and his husband David Burtka and feature a performance by freshly minted Grammy winner Lola Young.
The guest list includes Dua Lipa, Donatella Versace, recent Variety cover star Keke Palmer, Quinta Brunson, “Heated Rivalry” star Robbie G.K., Jon Batiste, Nikki Glaser, Adam Lambert, Melanie Lynskey, Jason Ritter, Orville Pack, Charlie Puth, Sharon Stone and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez.
“I would hope that we could raise north of $9 million,” Furnish tells me. “Last year was very challenging following the fires in Los Angeles. There were a lot of very necessary philanthropic asks for Southern California as a result of the fires. But our ticket sales are really strong this year. We’ve got a fantastic auction, and we’ve got Neil and David joining us as co-hosts. We’re asking people to be generous.”
While John has faced some health challenges in the last couple of years, he’s not exactly slowing down. “He’s great. He’s battling on. He’s keeping busy and moving forward,” Furnish says. “He’s happy being at home as a family with our sons. That’s why he came off the road. We really love parenting, we love our family, and we love being together, and that’s everything for us.”
I caught up with Furnish over the phone just days before the party.
Do you ever imagine what kind of party you will have if a cure for HIV/AIDS is discovered?
Yes. It feels like scientifically and medically, particularly when you look at things like long-lasting injectable PrEP, that we’re getting closer and closer all the time. But there are people who are vulnerable now, who aren’t being reached. We have 150,000 people in the U.S. who are living with HIV and don’t know it. HIV is the easiest thing to treat in the world. You get someone on the antiretroviral straight away and their viral load goes down to the point where it’s not detectable and they don’t pass it on to anybody else. It then reduces all of the strain on a heavily burdened healthcare system. There are nine million people globally who are still not receiving treatment. We’re excited and optimistic about the science, but we must not take our eyes off the immediate job at hand.
What is the foundation’s top priority today?
We’re living in times now in a philanthropic world where people are demanding more empirical kind of evidence of results. Funds are tight, times are tough. Governments are stretched. But we have a long history of starting small projects, innovative projects, new ways of solving the problem, and demonstrating that investment in those results pays out in the longer term. By doing that, we attract bigger pools of funding and focus on innovation. For example, we have a program that we were funding in Kenya with Zipline that delivers HIV tests and medications by drone into rural parts of Africa where they don’t have access to healthcare systems. We celebrated getting $150 million from the U.S. State Department to expand our drone delivery network because we proved that it works and we proved that it’s a cost effective investment.
But how much does it scare you when governments are cutting back, though? In Florida, 16,000 people just lost their coverage for HIV treatment. The state is also no longer offering Biktarvy, one of the top treatments for people living with HIV.
I think everybody needs to have access to these medications and the problem and the challenge with HIV medications is you can’t stop and start them. If you end up in a situation where people have limited access or reduced access to medication, some people skip a day. They try to ration those pills out or they share them with other people, and what we end up with is drug resistant strains of HIV, which is really sets us backwards. The medicines work so well, but you have to take them every day. People not getting the coverage and the support to get their medication is a big, great concern to us.
The party will include its signature live auction. Which item are you most excited to see people bidding on?
There’s an Irish painter name Jack Coulter. I gifted Elton one of his paintings. He has this amazing ability where he listens to music and he sees color in an abstract expressionist way. He had done a painting called “Candle in the Wind,” which he had painted listening to Elton’s “Candle in the Wind.” So now we’ve done something with Jack that he’d never done before. We had Jack come down to our gallery, set up his paints and his equipment, and brought in Elton’s piano and Elton played “Tiny Dancer” live while Jack painted. We have a beautiful painting that it truly is one of a kind.
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