i just didn't -- cleve jones, who was harvey milk's political aide -- i was using him more as somebodyke, i traveled the country, i made calls around the world for about a year looking for real people. and originally, i heard the name roma guy. everywhere i went in the country people were talking about this activist who had been fighting for women for some time. for women's equality. everybody knew her name. i had never met her. i called cleve and i said would you introduce me to this roma guy, and he did. she was the first to sign on and say yes. but i realized in that research how rare it is that someone is a lifetime activist. >> yeah. >> seth: yeah. >> like cleve jones had been. that someone who fights from their teenage years all the way until now. which is what all these characters do. and that they never give up that fight. it's incredibly difficulty work. my mom called cleve jones the gay forrest gump. >> seth: uh-huh. >> as a film maker i call him the gay zellig? because he was literaly at every -- >> everything, yeah. >> single critical moment in the movement. and he always t

they crossed paths with cleve jones over the years. he's a lifelong political activist.ed partially on his life. dustin lance black wanted to hear more from roma and dion. >> lance and others fell in love with our family. they had found some sort of a gold mine to tell a story. it was a good san francisco story. >> that family included many men stricken by aids. >> how has it changed over the last five years. >> well, the numbers have changed. >> abc news has spoken to dion many times over the years. she was one of the first nurses to treat hiv patients at san francisco's general hospital. she was there when they started the aides ward. >> when we opened the ward it was a 12 bed ward that often times wasn't full. >> reporter: she ended up working with mostly men. >> i was assigned to the adult medical service which was ward 5c. and half of the patients on that ward were patients living with aids. >> many of the gay men who died in the wards had been abandoned by their families. women from the women's building, and nurses stepped in to fill the void. >> we're drawn to the

they crossed paths with cleve jones over the years. he's a lifelong political activist. partially on his life. dustin lance black wanted to hear more from roma and dion. >> lance and others fell in love with our family. they had found some sort of a gold mine to tell a story. it was a good san francisco story. >> that family included many men stricken by aids. >> how has it changed over the last five years. >> well, the numbers have changed. >> abc news has spoken to dion many times over the years. she was one of the first nurses to treat hiv patients at san francisco's general hospital. she was there when they started the aides ward. >> when we opened the ward it was a 12 bed ward that often times wasn't full. >> reporter: she ended up working with mostly men. >> i was assigned to the adult medical service which was ward 5c. and half of e patients on that ward were patients living with aids. >> many of the gay men who died in the wards had been abandoned by their families. women from the women's building, and nurses stepped in to fill the void. >> we're drawn to the car