The Boys in the Band

Plot synopsis:
The film is set in an Upper East Side apartment in New York City in the late 1960s. Michael, a Roman Catholic sporadically employed writer and recovering alcoholic, is preparing to host a birthday party for his friend Harold. Another of his friends, Donald, a self-described underachiever who has moved from the city, arrives and helps Michael prepare. Alan, Michael's (presumably straight) old college roommate from Georgetown, calls with an urgent need to see Michael. Michael reluctantly agrees and invites him to come over.
One by one, the guests arrive. Emory is a stereotypical flamboyant interior decorator; Hank, a soon-to-be-divorced schoolteacher, and Larry, a fashion photographer, are a couple, albeit one with monogamy issues; and Bernard is an amiable black bookstore clerk. Alan calls again to inform Michael that he won't be coming after all, and the party continues in a festive manner. But, unexpectedly, Alan has decided to drop by after all, and his arrival throws the gathering into turmoil.
"Cowboy" — a hustler and Emory's "gift" to Harold — arrives. As tensions mount, Alan assaults Emory and in the ensuing chaos Harold finally makes his grand appearance. In the midst of the scuffle, Michael impulsively begins drinking again. As the guests become more and more intoxicated, hidden resentments begin to surface, and the party moves indoors from the patio due to a sudden downpour.
Michael, who believes Alan is a closeted homosexual, begins a telephone game in which the objective is for each guest to call the one person whom he truly believes he has loved. With each call, past scars and present anxieties are revealed. Bernard reluctantly attempts to call the son of his mother's employer, with whom he'd had a sexual encounter as a teenager, while Emory calls a dentist on whom he'd had a crush while in high school. Bernard and Emory immediately regret having made the phone calls. Hank and Larry attempt to call one another (via two phone lines in Michael's apartment). Michael's plan to "out" Alan with the game appears to backfire when Alan calls his wife, not the male college friend Justin Stewart whom Michael had presumed to be Alan's lover. As the party ends and the guests depart, Michael collapses into Donald's arms, sobbing. When he pulls himself together, it appears his life will remain very much the same.

Tags: romantic

Review:
Kenneth Nelson's performance as Michael doesn't help: it's like an acting class exercise, all shrieking and hysterics.While the ensemble as a whole is strong, Leonard Frey's brilliant, definitive Harold enables him to walk off with the film.
The straight Cliff Gorman does fine work as the flaming, ultimately touching Emory; Keith Prentice is very good as the one well-adjusted party goer, the happy sensualist Larry; and Reuben Greene and Frederick Combs make the best of underwritten characters (Combs get lots of chances to show his rear end to great advantage, including a gratuitous nude shot).Besides good acting, the film has other points to recommend it.
And Crowley shows courage in leaving the question of Alan's sexuality somewhat ambiguous, despite his affirming his wife as the person he truly loves, thereby rejecting Michael as a gay man and precipitating his collapse.The themes of love, truth, self-loathing, friendship and relationships speak to audiences gay & straight.
The movie version came out a year after.The stage play was a surprisingly huge hit and fearless playwright Mart Crowley had the know-how, the resources, and keen sense to keep his talented stage cast together when it transferred to film, knowing the importance of a tight ensemble.
The self-imposed pacifist with little drive and even less direction, Donald concerns himself with just making it through the day with as little pain as possible.The exceptionally handsome couple of Keith Prentice (Larry), the man who's feeling the chains of his relationship, and Laurence Luckinbill (Hank), who prefers a  monogamous home life, gave me my first connection to what a mature but complex gay union could be like.
Despite their serious problems, I actually saw two, non-stereotyped gay men trying to make a go of it while dealing with the many pressures - one still craving an exciting night life of promiscuous sex and the other striving to overcome the guilt of leaving his wife and children.While Ruben Greene as the more centered but embittered Bernard puts a mild black perspective on the turbulent gay lifestyle, Cliff Gorman's Emory comes equipped with a ferocious swish and campy, razor-sharp quips to handle his hostility and self-loathing - sure to be the center of attention as a life-of-the-party diva.
You ain't got the facts STRAIGHT, ma'am.Unlike the gay comedies of today that are softened to appeal to a more mainstream audience (this is not a bad thing), `Boys in the Band' will be too bold in its observance to attract many outside the personal freedom fort.
I have met numerous "Michaels" who shrug responsibility, live off credit cards and (try to) drown their insecurity in endless parties; Walk into any bar in Chelsea and you'll see at least a dozen snide, contemptuous "Harolds" skulking around radiating disdain for everyone around them; and let's not get started on the legions of airhead pretty boy "Cowboys" out there!This is not to say that all the gay men I know are like this.
The whole tone of the movie, the suppressed anxiety the characters feel about themselves, and the bitterness they feel towards each other, the resentment the gay men feel for the (possibly) straight guy, and above all the need for the characters to bury their self-esteem problems by getting drunk and partying with abandon happens too often among people I know to dismiss as long ago and far away..
In some ways this movie does play like a gay version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", with it's host turning the unassuming party into a game of "get the guests" (to use a phrase from VW).
Cliff Gorman is wild as the flamboyant Emory...his is probably the most stereotyped character of the lot, but he plays it with a good degree of dimension and sincerity, different then some of the lispy one-dimensional gay stereotypes seen in films up to that time.
As a "Surprise Sneak Preview" we also got "The Boys in the Band."  The next morning, after a Wisconsin style hearty breakfast in bed, I found that I could not remember a single scene or line from "Endless Summer," but to this day I remember nearly all of "The Boys in the Band."  Caroll and I were not an item for too long, but several years later when I bumped into her strolling on Michigan Ave. with her new husband, she mentioned "The Boys in the Band" and how glad she was that we'd seen it.The reason that I liked it so much then, and even went to the trouble to hunt down a very hard to find copy for a weekend mini-film-festival that some friends and I held two years ago, is that it is a brilliant play about people.
Talk about dated!As far as filmed stage plays go, the production effort on "The Boys in the Band" is not really fabulous, but it isn't bad enough to detract from the story or it's impact.
But it's also a period piece, and the final legacy of a number of talented actors lost to the AIDS epidemic -- yes, I know they made other movies, but the gay community isn't going to remember Leonard Frey primarily as Motel Kamzoil.
The film follows what happens during a single evening when a group of nine gay men get together to celebrate a birthday and are infiltrated by a supposedly straight friend of the party's host.
Boys in the band really hits the mark...even today in our modern 'civilized' times.I would classify it as a 'must watch' movie for everyone to see.It gets to the heart of humanity and how much we still must come yet to understanding each other.The drama and acting is incredible and intense.
Lines like Emory's lips being blue from rimming a snowman or the shrink/hairdresser who shrinks your head before combing you out are classic, and you feel like the straight folks watching the movie must feel like they are missing out on something.Several of the other commentators talked about the movie dating itself and/or portraying a negative stereotype of gay men who just don't exist anymore.
I gotta tell the truth and shame the devil, I didn't know if I WANTED to purchase the new DVD release of The Boys In The Band; all the self-loathing and bitchy camaraderie was just a little more than I could stand last time I viewed it (1998).
Perhaps time has mellowed me a little more compassionately to my fellow freaks (and I say that with love and respect to the characters) and I wasn't wincing at all, unlike the '98 viewing.Also lovely to look at were the mini-documentaries included on the disc: one for the original off-Broadway play; two, for the actual filming of this movie, and three; 40 years later, what happens in terms of the landmark this film has made.It also contains the commentary track by director William Freidkin, which I will soon see, but if the documentaries are any indication, I will warm more to him than I have in the past (see Cruising).My only bitch (CBS/Paramount, are you reading this?): once again, there's no informational insert card with the DVD.All-in-all, The Boys In The Band is still a magnificent train wreck, but now an enjoyable one, nevertheless, thanks to CBS/Paramount..
I don't mean *I'm* attracted to him, but I can see how any gay man, open or closeted, would fall for him.---One of the many things that "dates" the film is Emory's racial cracks against Bernard (African Queen, indeed!) But for all that, I can sense that Bernard feels much at home in this group.
As a straight WASP, it's almost impossible to say even very positive things about gays, African-Americans, or persons of other ethnic or religious heritages without others thinking it pretentious or patronizing.However, I thoroughly enjoyed this film when I first saw it, a number of years ago, and when I saw it again recently.As a movie which was released early in the 1970's, it was actually a 1960's story, and that was the period of the long-running stage presentation which preceded it.
And I recall a magazine article, featuring Cliff Gorman (the most overt, "swishiest" character in the film), showing him with a cigar, in a macho demeanor, and titled something like "The 'Man' in 'The Boys in the Band'." He obviously felt the need to try to avoid being subsequently typecast, and while he was never an "A-list" actor, his subsequent roles seemed to be especially concerned with a macho aspect.Laurence Luckinbill has been married to Lucy Arnaz for many years, and would be presumed "straight;" and Peter White has continued to appear on screen and t.v. in conventional parts, and having never been married (that alone not being always definitive), one could raise the question, as was done about his character in the story.
And, being curious, I checked various sources, and most, perhaps now all, of the others in this film and the play preceding, have died of the disease.I believe it was from Leonard Maltin that I read the description of this movie as "a filmed stage play," but even so (and with the few external shots at the beginning and one or two within) it captured the feel of New York City, and the Greenwich Village/gay community, excellently.The story remains poignant and intense today.
Sure, it's a landmark film, but the adaptation to the 1967 play lacks any real merit about homosexuality; in fact, it presents a very negative view on the subject of gay people and how they act.
In a sense a year after Stonewall, the film version of The Boys In The Band was already outdated.But what Mart Crowley has done is forever given us an indelible impression of what gay life was like from the male perspective before Stonewall.
And the film was nicely transferred to the cinema with the entire off Broadway cast in the eight roles.A quick look at Mart Crowley's biography and you'll readily see that he's written himself in as the host, Michael played by Kenneth Nelson, is throwing a a birthday party for Leonard Frey who is the last of the characters to make an entrance.
The anger and the powerful self hate that is still a factor in our lives, reinforced by society that exploded in the Stonewall Rebellion soon to come.What I think a straight audience might find most amazing is that of all the characters, the gay cowboy hustler that Cliff Gorman buys for Leonard Frey seems the most well adjusted, despite the fact the others just dump all over him intellectually.
It was an intelligent but controversial drama of gay life in New York City with a group of thirty-something men who throw a birthday party for one of their friends.The film version is directed by William Friedkin, who would go on to win a Best Director Oscar the following year for the hard boiled thriller, The French Connection and later get further acclaim for his film The Exorcist.Michael (Kenneth Nelson) is Catholic, he drinks too much, acerbic but can also be witty as well as waspish is preparing the birthday party for his friend Harold.
A seminal off-Broadway-turned-feature-film revolves around a group of gay men in NYC from playwright Mart Crowley, THE BOYS IN THE BAND is indisputably a trailblazer of American queen cinema reckoning with its time, it is directed by the future Oscar-winning director William Friedkin.
Also, extremely unusual for today's climate, the filmmakers recruit all the play's original cast, to reprise their roles in this film adaptation, despite that none of them are name actors, the truth is, it is a silver screen debut for most of them.After a passing montage briefly introduces all of the nine characters before their ultimate convergence in the birthday party (on a trivial note, Friedkin's previous directorial work is called THE BIRTHDAY PARTY in 1968, based on a Harold Pinter play), the setting almost exclusively locates inside an Upper East Side apartment of our protagonist Michael (Nelson), who is throwing a party to celebrate his friend Harold's (Frey) 32-year-old b-day with close friends.
In Crowley's incisive concoction, each of the characters has his token correspondence with certain stereotype of gay men: Donald (Combs), a simpatico blue-collar type and Bernard (Greene), a sentimental black bookworm; Emory (Gorman), the quintessential effeminate queen and his birthday gift to Harold, Cowboy Tex (La Tourneaux), a simple-minded rough trade jock; then, a couple, Larry (Prentice), a libertine who cannot endorse monogamy and his boyfriend-cum-roommate, Hank (Luckinbill), a closeted married schoolteacher, who is undergoing a divorce, also we have the heterosexual intruder Allen and Harold, the haughty narcissist, finally, what about Michael?
A recovering alcoholic with a Roman Catholic upbringing, who is afflicted by an inimical self-hatred of being what he is, which will soon ejaculate venom onto those near him when tensions mount after Alan gatecrashes their flamboyant party.The first half of the movie mostly dwells in the patio, where an exuberant stream of ceaseless banters and rejoinders tellingly contrives a unique phenomenon among the kind, apparent viciousness is actually an ironic expression of affection among the suppressed culture, it is refreshingly honest to represent such a taunting scenario (particularly through Emory's unbearable campiness and Harold's overbearing diva-stance) to perversely edify viewers that why equality matters, since it is all about to tolerate another human being even he/she ostensibly grates your temperament to the core, to accept his/her difference no matter how unpleasant that makes you feel, this is the only key to respect ourselves as a civilized species and therefore, there is a future for us.After a rambunctious kerfuffle between Emery and Alan, and a sudden downpour forces everyone retreat inside the apartment, which also inaugurate the second half, where Michael abetted by alcohol, proposes a cruel telephone game, to call someone you have been in love with and tell them on the phone if you dare.
There is a significant change of tone with Michael becoming increasingly embittered and presumptuous, jovial laughter is ebbing away, conflicts and confrontations emerge and subsequently evolve into psychological torture: nerves fray, wounds are exposed, misunderstandings are elucidated and hopes are dashed, the most egregious part is Michael's wanton racist sniping aiming to the amiable Bernard, heavy-handed it may seem, it shows Friedkin and Crawley have no scruples about revealing the basest trait of our unwholesome nature to corroborate their standpoint, a stinging thing is that it is still a hot button today after 46 years, and the maddening truth is, none of these arguments and disputes have completely lost their relevance yet.The ensemble does a commendable job (most of those gay actors would prematurely die of AIDS or AIDS related complications), Cliff Gorman is not gay in real life despite his Emory is incorrigible counter-heterosexual, an outstanding endeavor mixed with declamation and affectation.
I find the Boys in the Band to be a movie that does not hold up to the test of times in terms of its stereotyping of gay men, the self-loathing aspect of homosexuality and the intense drinking.
If The Boys In The Band (TBITB, for short) was really supposed to be an accurate depiction of what happens at a party consisting of only gay men, then it sure looked to me like these unhappy campers didn't know how to have a good time (sober or drunk) when they were in each other's company.
If these sorts of comments appeal to you, then, perhaps, TBITB will, indeed, entertain you to pieces - If not - Then you can always choose another movie to watch."There's nothing more boring than a queen doing a Judy Garland impersonation.""Who would want to be a flaming, little sissy like you?""Show me a happy homosexual and I'll show you a gay corpse.""Just the same, old, tired fairies.""You remind me of an old maid, school teacher."(Get the picture?)*Note* - This sort of chit-chat went on and on and on, non-stop, throughout the entire course of the story.Personally, I believe that if director William Friedkin (who 3 years later directed The Exorcist) had thrown a few lesbians into the mix at Harold's birthday party, then that, I'm sure, would've helped heaps to alleviate some of the brutal pettiness and irksome monotony that prevailed from TBITB's swishy beginning to its trite and tearful finale..
The story is simple; a group of several gay men in New York gather for a birthday party for their mutual friend, Harold (the late Leonard Frey), a self-described "32 yr old, ugly, pock-mocked Jew fairy." He forgets to mention his scathing wit and strong presence, as ALL of these characters seem to exhibit, except for "Cowboy" (Robert LaTurneaux), one of Harold's 'gifts'; a young, pathetic male prostitute who becomes an object of ridicule among the sophisticated, but bitchy group.
The fun comes to a screeching halt, however, like a turntable needle scratching a record, when Michael's old, straight college buddy, Alan MacCarthy (played by Peter White, in a deliberately ambiguous performance) crashes the party and becomes the catalyst for an evening of intense examination, acid-tongued humor and self-loathing within the group.
But even today, more than 40 years later, gay men can spot such like characters among their own associates, so the mock phrase, "A fugitive from Boys in the Band", can sometimes be real, ableit a bit shockingly cruel, but filled with truths when evidence points to the similarities.
The entire original stage cast is here, and the only thing missing is part of a monologue by Michael (Kenneth Nelson) at the beginning of the film that would have rendered the scene something of an anachronism in light of the Stonewall riots of 1969 (the play opened in 1968).The cut is a small one, however, and what Crowley and stage director Robert Moore gave us in 1968 is pretty much what Friedkin gives us here.I think by now most people know the bare bones of the plot: eight gay men gather for a birthday party at the Greenwich Village apartment of one of them.
Like Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, director William Friedkin brought another controversial adaptation to the screen with Mart Crowley's seething gay drama: The Boys In The Band.