60 minutes rewind it's been six and a half years since basketball legend irvin
magic johnson stunned the world with the announcement that he had tested positive for hiv
the virus that causes aids and because he got the virus through heterosexual sex it changed the way
people thought about aids that it wasn't just a gay disease today magic johnson is again changing
people's attitudes about living with aids he's not just living with it he's flourishing this is the
way magic johnson starts every day with a two-hour workout that puts any fitness freak to shame
your body's actually changed yeah i've gotten bigger you've gotten bigger how
because i'm addicted to working out i run that medicine out of me
he's had to take all kinds of medicine ever since the day in 1991 that he told the world he had hiv
i plan on going on living for a long time he may have believed those brave words but at the time
hardly anyone else did back then hiv inevitably led to aids and death it was really scary it's
like you know your worst nightmare cookie johnson had married magic just a couple of months before
you were pregnant oh yeah the world stopped and at that point you didn't know whether you
had it or not nope you didn't know whether the baby had it or not and i had just i mean it had
the day we found out about him i think it was a week to that day that i found out i was pregnant
i told her she could leave if she wanted to because i would understand that you told her
she could leave you yeah and then when she decided to stay she first she smacked me wow and said look
i love you and i'm gonna be with you i'm gonna fight this with you so i didn't really hit him him
that's just a little tap i love that just to bring him back to reality um but and i just told him you
know what we can beat this thing six years later cookie johnson thinks that's exactly what they've
done she's hiv negative and so is their baby irving johnson iii or ej is now five years old
their daughter alisa was adopted three years ago and magic johnson is one of thousands of americans
staying healthy using the now famous cocktail that includes drugs called protease inhibitors
the medicine has been unbelievable the doctors and scientists are doing a marvelous job
i've i've been good i'm i'm all right i know i'm gonna be fine you don't have a sense that you have
it you can't feel anything no no and doctors can't find anything the medicine is working so well that
in magic's most recent blood samples the amount of hiv virus is so small that it doesn't even show up
in the lab tests and magic believes that all of his intense exercise is helping keep hiv at bay
besides his morning workout most days he rents huge paulie pavilion at ucla and
gathers a group of former college and nba players for two hours of pickup basketball
this is much more than you used to do yeah yeah i love it keeps me in better shape too it keeps you
in better shape but up here you you're able to tell yourself that you're healthy oh yeah yeah
because if i can't run make those passes direct the traffic then i know i'm slipping and maybe
i'm not healthy there's one more reason magic is out there directing traffic
night after night you're not gonna let these other guys win no we just beat them we're
going to beat them some more and then when i when the pros come home in the summer we'll beat them
that's the magic everyone knows the smile the gentle way with fans but when we asked his old
coach pat riley to tell us something most people don't realize about magic
he said simply he's a killer i keep hearing that you've got this sort of uncontrollable
competitive streak uncontrollable it really isn't just basketball it's every single thing you do
is this true very true i love to win i just take no prisoners i go after the juggler i i go to win
whether i'm playing against my kids my wife your kids you wouldn't let your your son no no
it could be the simplest little game like monopoly and he would really get into it
and have to win and then sometimes even will change the rules on you
but that's our secret magic johnson's killer instinct led the lakers to five championships and
helped produce the renaissance of the nba at 38 he knows he's over the hill but watching his old
adversary michael jordan still playing clearly gives him a twinge it makes me feel so good to see
him out there still the king because i tell these young guys you can't beat us because you can't
beat us here we love to play not for the money we love to play we love to compete see most of these
guys they'd rather have a shoe commercial on tv than win a championship i'm watching your face
i swear when you were just telling me about the game i looked at you and i said the man
is aching to play basketball well i'm not aching the play i just love it uh how much do you miss it
well you're always going to miss it not the games you miss the competition he misses it and so he
has built a life full of new contests and hard work which he learned from his dad i've always
wanted to be like my dad irvin johnson senior worked nights on the gm assembly line in lansing
michigan and days on the back of the rubbish truck he owned when you talk about supporting 10 kids
and going to work every single day working two jobs to see him do that for my lifetime
that's why i'm a worker today that's why i know nothing else but work
because of my dad magic worked to make a bundle from basketball and endorsements which he has now
parlayed into a business empire and a personal fortune estimated at a hundred million dollars
his latest project is to bring upscale stores and services to the inner city
don't give us a third rate store and that's usually what's been happening in our neighborhoods
and we don't want that we want the same thing that everybody else has the opportunity to buy
give us that same opportunity and we would show you that we will support it
and we will take care of it he's proved that with this a 15 screen multiplex called magic theaters
right in the middle of south central l.a which he built three years ago in partnership with sony
minorities used to or still are the number one moviegoers of any group of people but they don't
have any in their neighborhoods we have to go 20 30 minutes now when you say it it sounds so
logical but no one else wanted to do it no so i talked to sony which has been a a great partner
they shared my vision and uh yeah you had to drive them around the neighborhood yeah they didn't just
know you had to sell it didn't you there was no question about it i mean how many of
them had really been to a community like south central l.a probably none of them
that theater has been there like three or four years hasn't been touched still looks beautiful
as it was when it first built it it grosses some great numbers it's one of the highest
revenue producers of any movie complex in the country that's right that's right and so we've
changed hollywood i think a little bit and their mindset so much that he and sony have new theaters
open in houston and atlanta and plans to build others and inner cities all over the country
and now other companies are clamoring to be his partner to do the same thing
with friday's restaurants and starbucks coffee shops magic says he's showing that black customers
are eager to support businesses owned by blacks and staffed by blacks like these employees at the
new theater in houston never thought you could do it in your own neighborhood huh
and if creating literally hundreds of new inner city jobs isn't hard enough
and you're going to do that every night beginning this summer he'll host a syndicated
late night talk show called the magic hour hi how you doing all right at a tv programmer's
convention he was shaking every hand and selling the show to every station executive he could reach
how are you nice to meet you john how you doing today you having a good time enjoy yourself okay
and he's taking speech and interviewing classes to get ready is there any more intense contest
than that late night slot you've got leno you've got letterman this is really a tough
arena that you're getting into yeah why are you doing that because it's a tough arena
there's no tougher arena than fighting hiv and magic success in that gives new hope to
all americans with the virus thanks to the drug cocktail in the last two years us aids deaths
have been cut by nearly 70 percent he and patients like him are at the forefront of of aids research
dr david ho is an aids researcher who helped pioneer the cocktail he's also helped treat
magic from the beginning you know it used to be that the picture of aids was a person wasting away
and now we have magic johnson healthy vigorous working this is the new face of aids well it
it's it's symbolic for the situation for many people hiv has been controlled through combination
therapy and instead of a death sentence it's now a manageable disease and it's a life sentence
sort of sort of and and this is a turning point in in aids the story will continue after this
but cookie johnson credits magic's turning point to something other than medicine
she caused a stir with an interview in ebony magazine last year claiming a healing miracle
from god do you really think he's cured yes in my heart i believe he is cured because i believe
in jesus christ and i believe that you know he does answer prayer and he can make miracles happen
david hoe doesn't like to hear anyone talk about a cure for aids miraculous or medical are you
afraid that if the message got out that there was a cure that people would become complacent maybe
feel that unsafe sex was safe again that kind of thing well we're already in that
situation i think there's been a great deal complacency just because of the progress
that's been made in treatment david holt worries that some patients might even stop taking their
medicine and he has a concrete example to bear out that fear magic johnson i think previously
he had not followed his medications as religiously as he should have and we've seen the virus
pop up you mean he'd stop well this is some time ago in the last year well about a year ago
yeah he believed himself that he was cured so he gave himself a little test
is that what you're saying i don't know whether that was the case or simply
the fact that he did not keep up with the drug taking regimen magic insists he wasn't running
a test just missed a few doses but if he had wondered he had his answer the virus was still
there somewhere chasing him are you cured i'm healed there's a difference that's a difference
see cure means that oh it's gone forever it's gone forever and i'm not gonna sit here and say
that because i would be misleading a lot of people you can't go off the medicine no no no no i won't
go off of it you know um i think like i said uh between that and god i got the two highest
powers the one highest power and that's god and then the medicine the way it's reacted is doing
wonderful so i'm i'm gonna keep doing what i'm doing do you ever get down um no i'm not a down
person you don't get depressed no no oh no i don't know what that word is only about losing