“Crowley and his 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, 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.”
Now we have Making the Boys, in which queer director Crayton Robey makes just such a case for the cultural landmark status both Crowley’s play and the subsequent film version deserve. Robey’s documentary tracks the intersection of Crowley’s troubled life as a struggling writer in the swinging Hollywood of the mid-’60s and openly gay lifestyle with the despicable treatment of gay people in America during the same time period. Crowley’s decision to write a gay-themed play was inspired by a nasty piece in the New York Times. Such was the mainstream animosity toward Our People at the time, however, that when Crowley met with an agent about representing the play, she refused to “officially” send it out to producers on company letterhead.
Nevertheless, when Crowley countered with a suggestion that the producer of the groundbreaking and controversial Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? get a copy of the manuscript—as an example of someone not exactly nervous about pushing the envelope—the agent reluctantly acquiesced. Both were stunned the following day when the producer enthusiastically phoned, requesting a meeting with the burgeoning playwright, along with Albee (the gay writer of Virginia Woolf who appears on camera here, decrying the stereotypical nature of Crowley’s play while acknowledging it’s cultural significance). The rest, as they say…
This is just one of Crowley’s telling and often razor-edged reminiscences in Robey’s lively, entertaining and engrossing overview of the behind-the-scenes machinations of the play and the movie. Crowley’s path to creating the play that first brought gay camp humor (and major gay guilt) to mainstream consciousness began in 1960 with a long period as Natalie Wood’s personal assistant. As Crowley struggled to make it as a screenwriter in Hollywood in the mid-’60s (a period when Wood’s superstardom was on the decline), failure led to self-doubt and a major drinking problem. A year in analysis (paid for as a birthday gift by Wood) followed.
Crowley’s memories—many captured as he sits in the tiny theatre where Boys in the Band was first performed in New York in 1968—are augmented by those of two of the surviving cast members and other Crowley contemporaries (including Albee, Terrence McNally, Larry Kramer and Robert Wagner). Robey’s movie, though, is light on the actual nuts and bolts of either the stage or film production (though surviving cast members and Friedkin weigh in and Crowley offers some juicy tidbits about studio politicking surrounding the movie). Part of that is obviously because of the enormously heavy toll that AIDS took on the cast and production team. The film also recalls the career risks of appearing in such a “scandalous” venture and, though Robey spares us the bitter details many of these men encountered once the trendy glow of the play and the movie wore off, he does include dish about the ironic fate of Robert La Tourneaux who played the hustler. La Tourneaux eventually became one in real life—selling his services by advertising his connection to The Boys in the Band—before succumbing to the disease.
The movie also features a chatty group of queer icons-in-training—such as Dan Savage, Cheyenne Jackson, Carson Kressley and Tony Kushner—who discuss the impact of the material on their lives and help give it historical gravitas. Fraught with controversy because of the adult nature of the then-verboten topic on the one hand and the stereotypical, stock characters on the other, both the play and the movie have always had a contentious place in queer history, which Robey’s film acknowledges.
Part of the contentiousness had to do with the sudden shift in queer politics—between the play’s premiere in 1968 and the film opening in 1970 the Stonewall riots happened, igniting the gay rights movement. Crowley’s work—which focuses on a birthday party for a pack of New York City queens thrown by the self-hating, bitter drunken Michael for his best friend Leonard (whose present from one of the attendees is the aforementioned hustler)—dated very quickly amidst the swagger and anger of the new queer movement. Regardless of his reputation within the community, Crowley was hot stuff for a while but couldn’t replicate the play’s success and eventually ended up back in Hollywood.
There’s no denying the importance of the Boys in the Band when it comes to queer artistic history, and the illuminating, entertaining Making the Boys clearly makes that point. For modern audiences wondering who to thank for everything from Will & Grace to the film I Love You Phillip Morris and other mainstream queer works, part of the credit has to go to Crowley and his “little play,” who got there first.
Making the Boys is having its exclusive Chicago screening premiere for one night only—Thursday, June 30, at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, in the Claudia Cassidy Theater at 6:30 p.m. The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, the Queer Film Society (of which I’m the founder and president), the Center on Halsted, Reeling International Film Festival and The Legacy Project are co-presenting the screening, and the local nightspot Sidetrack provided major funding for this presentation. The screening is free and open to the public.
Check out my archived reviews at windycitytimes.com or www.knightatthemovies.com. Readers can leave feedback at the latter website.