Like the gleeful pleasure at discovering a once-beloved pop-culture relic in an antique mall, so was my reaction at opening the package that contained the DVD for The Boys in the Band. It was pleasure because the movie brings back a flood of warm memories associated with my first encounter with this 1970 film that ‘shockingly’ focused on a gathering of homosexuals at a birthday party that goes off the rails. I’d read film critic Pauline Kael’s dismissive review in her book, Deeper Into Movies, but that only whetted my appetite to see the movie, which—back in the days before VCRs or cable—was next to impossible to do. Finally, somewhere in the mid-’70s, during my college days, a revival house booked the film and, at last, I got to see what all the fuss was about.
The impact Boys in the Band on me had more to do with its bitchery and fun than the guilt and repression that continue to drag down the reputation of the material to this day. I remember laughing at the quips tossed off by Leonard Frey as Harold, the pot-smoking, self-described ’32-year-old pockmarked Jew fairy’ and Cliff Gorman as the super-nellie Emory, who brought lasagna to the party and called herself Connie Casserole. (More than 30 years later, my best friend Marla and I are still quoting lines from the movie to each other.) I also vividly remember Frederick Combs as Donald, and the tantalizing glimpse of his butt as he stepped into the shower.
Michael (played by Kenneth Nelson), the self-loathing host with the closet full of designer sweaters and the fabulous Manhattan apartment who turns the evening from light to dark with his venomous behavior, didn’t make much of an impact. Even then, only six or seven years after its initial 1970 release, the self-destructive behavior of the character and his unrequited crush on the straight college roommate—boring, uptight Alan (Peter White), whose appearance at the party starts all the sturm und drang in the movie—seemed old-hat, stereotypical and much too contrived.
And that was still my reaction when I popped the new DVD into the player. Like many reunions, this one saw the initial joy of rediscovery—the veneer of the rekindled memories—quickly stripped away by hindsight: Though elevated by the performances of Frey, Combs and a few others, The Boys in the Band isn’t just a creaky relic of gay history, with its endless close-ups, claustrophobic setting and, especially, its stage-bound drama-queen dialogue and situations by Mart Crowley (adapting his play for the screen), it’s just not a very good movie.
Now if I, who remember adoring parts of this movie, find it a not very pleasant antique, imagine how out of date The Boys in the Band will seem to a generation of LGBT audiences raised in the post-‘Yep I’m Gay’ Ellen DeGeneres-Queer As Folk-L Word world we live in.
And yet …
And yet, like a loud, loveable relative who demands a bear hug and calls you by that dreaded childhood nickname but whom you still begrudgingly love, there is something about The Boys in the Band that nags for attention and makes it pertinent to film audiences now, especially GLBT ones. It’s less the film itself and more the performances, but mostly it’s the fact that in 1970—so soon after gay liberation—that The Boys in the Band existed at all and that the actors took huge career risks in playing gay characters. The DVD, with its new making-of documentaries, gets right to the heart of this and, yes, playing gay is no longer a big deal. (It’s actually closer to a potential Oscar-winning career move—see next week’s review of Milk, starring Sean Penn, for continued proof of that.) But nearly 40 years ago, the bravery of these actors in taking these roles—none of whom ever got parts this large on film again—is worth venerating, and because so many of these actors died from AIDS during the first wave of the pandemic, the movie has also become a bittersweet eulogy—a time capsule that lends the material the respect and attention it wouldn’t otherwise warrant.
Upon reflection, Mart Crowley and his The Boys in the Band—which paved the way for Making Love, Brokeback Mountain and Milk (and a case could be made for the indie queer cinema genre itself) —is, yes, on one hand a stereotypical curio that illuminates attitudes and cultural behavior (not to mention fashions) at an important moment in gay history. But it’s also a movie that needs to finally be acknowledged—unsullied—for the groundbreaking status that it deserves.
Film Notes:
—Columbia College will host an Against a Trans Narrative film screening and fundraiser Thursday, Nov. 20. beginning at 6 p.m. at the college’s Film Row Cinema, 1140 S. Wabash, 8th floor. The film, a documentary that focuses on gender issues, will be followed by a Q&A with the director and a food-and-wine reception. Tickets are $20-50 (sliding scale) and $15 for students/low-income residents. www.againsttransnarrative.com
—A talk with filmmaker Cheryl Dunye, who wrote, starred and directed The Watermelon Woman, and is often described as ‘the lesbian Spike Lee’ will take place Friday, Nov. 21, at the Film Studies Center, 5811 S. Ellis, Cobb Hall 307, at the University of Chicago. Dunye will screen and discuss The Stranger Inside, a 2001 short and excerpts from her early works. Admission is free; filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu
—Twilight, the hotly anticipated flick about teen vampires that opens Friday, Nov. 21, was not screened for Windy City Times by the time the newspaper went to press, but you can hear my review via my ‘Knight at the Movies Minute’ on a forthcoming podcast of Windy City Queercast. Visit www.windycityqueercast.com.
Check out my archived reviews and Knight at Home at the Movies column for DVD recommendations at www.windycitytimes.com or www.knightatthemovies.com. Readers can leave feedback at the latter Web site.