| The Boys in the Band | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | William Friedkin |
| Produced by | Mart Crowley Kenneth Utt Dominick Dunne Robert Jiras |
| Written by | Mart Crowley |
| Starring | Kenneth Nelson Leonard Frey Cliff Gorman Laurence Luckinbill Frederick Combs Keith Prentice Robert La Tourneaux Reuben Greene Peter White |
| Cinematography | Arthur J. Ornitz |
| Editing by | Gerald B. Greenberg Carl Lerner |
| Studio | Cinema Center Films |
| Distributed by | National General Pictures (Theatrical) Paramount Home Entertainment (DVD) |
| Release date(s) | March 17, 1970 |
| Running time | 119 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $5.5 million |
| Box office | $2,695 |
The Boys in the Band is a 1970 American drama film directed by William Friedkin. The screenplay by Mart Crowley is based on his Off Broadway play of the same title, Crowley penned a sequel to the play years later entitled The Men From The Boys. It is among the first major American motion pictures to revolve around gay characters and is often cited as a milestone in the history of "queer cinema".
The ensemble cast, all of whom also played the roles in the play's initial stage run in New York City, includes Kenneth Nelson as Michael, Peter White as Alan, Leonard Frey as Harold, Cliff Gorman as Emory, Frederick Combs as Donald, Laurence Luckinbill as Hank, Keith Prentice as Larry, Robert La Tourneaux as Cowboy, and Reuben Greene as Bernard. Model/actress Maud Adams has a brief cameo appearance as a fashion model in a photo shoot segment in the opening montage of scenes.
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The film is set in an Upper East Side apartment in New York City in the late 1960s. Michael (Kenneth Nelson), a Roman Catholic and recovering alcoholic, is preparing to host a birthday party for his friend Harold. Another of his friends, Donald (Frederick Combs), a self-described underachiever who has moved from the city, arrives and helps Michael prepare. Alan (Peter White), Michael's (presumably straight) old college roommate from Georgetown, calls with an urgent need to see Michael. Michael reluctantly agrees and invites him to his home.
One by one, the guests arrive. Emory (Cliff Gorman) is a stereotypical flamboyant interior decorator; Hank (Laurence Luckinbill), a soon-to-be-divorced schoolteacher, and Larry (Keith Prentice), a fashion photographer, are a couple, albeit one with monogamy issues; and Bernard (Reuben Greene) is an amiable black bookstore clerk. Alan calls again to inform Michael he isn't coming after all, and the party continues in a festive manner. However, Alan does appear unexpectedly and throws the gathering into turmoil.
"Cowboy" (Robert La Tourneaux) – a male 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. Michael begins drinking again. As the guests become more and more intoxicated, the party moves indoors from the patio due to a sudden downpour. Michael, who believes Alan is a closeted homosexual, begins a 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. 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.
The bar scene in the opening was filmed at Julius in Greenwich Village.[1] Studio shots were at the Chelsea Studios in New York City.[2] According to commentary by Friedkin on the 2008 DVD release, Michael's apartment was inspired by the real life Upper East Side apartment of actress Tammy Grimes. (Grimes was a personal friend of Mart Crowley.) Most of the patio scenes were filmed at Grimes' home; the actual apartment interior would not allow for filming, given its size and other technical factors, and so a replica of Grimes' apartment was built on the Chelsea Studios sound stage, and that is where the interior scenes were filmed.
Songs featured in the film include "Anything Goes" performed by Harpers Bizarre during the opening credits, "Good Lovin' Ain't Easy to Come By" by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, "Funky Broadway" by Wilson Pickett, "(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave" by Martha and the Vandellas, and an instrumental version of Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love".
The film has a pure 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 15 reviews.[3]
Critical reaction was, for the most part, cautiously favorable. Variety said it "drags" but thought it had "perverse interest." Time described it as a "humane, moving picture." The Los Angeles Times praised it as "unquestionably a milestone," but refused to run its ads. Among the major critics, Pauline Kael, who disliked Friedkin, was alone in finding absolutely nothing redeeming about it.
Vincent Canby of the New York Times observed, "Except for an inevitable monotony that comes from the use of so many close-ups in a confined space, Friedkin's direction is clean and direct, and, under the circumstances, effective. All of the performances are good, and that of Leonard Frey, as Harold, is much better than good. He's excellent without disturbing the ensemble . . . Crowley has a good, minor talent for comedy-of-insult, and for creating enough interest, by way of small character revelations, to maintain minimum suspense. There is something basically unpleasant, however, about a play that seems to have been created in an inspiration of love-hate and that finally does nothing more than exploit its (I assume) sincerely conceived stereotypes."[4]
In a San Francisco Chronicle review of a 1999 revival of the film, Edward Guthmann recalled, "By the time Boys was released in 1970 ... it had already earned among gays the stain of Uncle Tomism." He called it "a genuine period piece but one that still has the power to sting. In one sense it's aged surprisingly little — the language and physical gestures of camp are largely the same — but in the attitudes of its characters, and their self-lacerating vision of themselves, it belongs to another time. And that's a good thing."[5]
The Boys in the Band was released on VHS by Fox Home Entertainment on December 6, 1980. It was later released on laserdisc. The DVD, overseen by Friedkin, was released by Paramount Home Entertainment on November 11, 2008. Additional material includes an audio commentary; interviews with director Friedkin, playwright/screenwriter Crowley, executive producer Dominick Dunne, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Tony Kushner, and two of the surviving cast members, Peter White and Laurence Luckinbill; and a retrospective look at both the off Broadway 1968 play and 1970 film.
Nelson was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year - Actor. The Producers Guild of America Laurel Awards honored Gorman and Frey as Stars of Tomorrow.
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