At the time of its
release, The Boys in the Band was
groundbreaking for the simple reason of containing only gay and/or bisexual
characters—so it’s no surprise the movie has been praised and vilified in equal
measure. This ability to generate controversy is a credit to Mart Crowley, the
writer-producer of the movie and the author of the play upon which it is based.
In crafting a tense ensemble drama with nine characters representing various
archetypes of gay American males, Crowley essentially wrote a referendum on being
homosexual at the end of the ’60s, exploring camp, denial, gamesmanship, lust,
promiscuousness, regret, self-loathing, and other hot-button issues. The Boys in the Band is emotional and
humane, but it’s also deliberately provocative. Further complicating the
discourse around the movie is the fact that The
Boys in the Band was directed by a straight man, William Friedkin. All of
this behind-the-scenes tsuris suits
the material, since The Boys in the Band
is—in its own vernacular—a story about queens at war.
The entire picture takes
place in the Greenwich Village apartment of Michael (Kenneth Nelson), a
self-confident professional who’s throwing a birthday party for his old friend
Harold (Leonard Frey), to which all of their buddies are invited. Among the
guests are mincing Emory (Cliff Gorman) and stoic Hank (Laurence Luckinbill);
their wildly different styles of self-presentation are pivotal to the story. The
evening’s X factor is Michael’s old school friend, Alan (Peter White), who
shows up in New York the night of the party and insists on seeing Michael. Interpersonal
fireworks explode the minute Alan arrives, especially when Michael becomes a
mean drunk and Harold reveals himself as a vengeful monster.
Most of the drama
revolves around the question of how gay men live in a homophobic world. Emory
flaunts his identity in order to hide insecurity; Hank lives a double life,
splitting his time between a boyfriend and a wife; Michael exists openly but
hates himself; and Harold uses booze and sex to obscure reality (“I’m a 32-year-old,
ugly, pockmarked Jew fairy,” he moans at one point). Crowley strikes an
effective balance between leaving these anguished characters adrift and
providing narrative closure, so the theme of people living under cultural siege
comes through strongly. At its best, the film is harrowing, though it’s a good
20 minutes too long.
Friedkin uses intricate editing and meticulous pacing to
accentuate the performance rhythms of the strong cast, which was directly
transposed from Broadway. Frey gets all the best lines, entering the story late
and delivering grade-A bitchery from behind tinted glasses. He’s ferocious.
Nelson plays a huge range of moods well, even when he’s forced to articulate
the story’s themes in overly explanatory dialogue. Gorman, meanwhile, delivers
the movie’s lightning-rod performance, straddling the line between camp and
caricature.
The Boys in the Band is a
fascinating document of an era that’s long gone in some parts of the US—even as
the same fear and prejudice that inspired Crowley’s story remain in force
elsewhere. FYI, the behind-the-scenes drama of this project was explored in a
feature-length documentary, Making the
Boys (2011), which features remarks from Crowley and Friedkin, among others.
The Boys in the Band: GROOVY
The playwrights name is Mart Crowley, not Matt; spell check typically changes It to Matt. Mart Crowley was a production assistant on Splendor in the Grass and one of his responsibilities was assisting Natalie Wood so they become quite close friends. When she did West Side Story he acted as her personal assistant. She encouraged him to write and he ultimately wrote Boys in the Band.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally I’ve been following you on Instagram for a while and only this week started to explore your blog. It’s been fun looking up reviews of movies from my childhood, even if I don’t always agree with you. Lol.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reminding me about the spelling error. I actually thought I had changed that some time ago because I'm aware that spell check is not friendly to Mart Crowley. Another film figure who regularly suffers indignities owing to the unusual spelling of his name is Joseph Cotten, so I always appreciate when readers point out that a misspelling of his name has appeared.
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