FIRST OFF . . .

Three AIDS activists from San Francisco have been invited to Los Angeles by Lorimar Telepictures to screen a “rough cut” of a controversial “Midnight Caller” episode featuring a bisexual man who infects his sex partners with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus, HIV. In the original script, which has since been revised, the man knowingly transmitted the virus to a woman who later killed him. San Francisco protesters, fearing the portrayal would encourage violence against gays and carriers of HIV, disrupted filming of the episode twice last month. “We hope to see the revised episode soon--if not this week, then early next week,” said Rene Durazzo of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, whose representative will be joined at the screening by people from the Mobilization Against AIDS and the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. A spokeswoman from Lorimar confirmed that the screening will be scheduled as soon as editing has been completed. “We feel we have done a responsible show,” she said.