Mart Crowley's Off-Broadway play The Boys In
The Band
drew standing-room-only crowds when it opened in 1968, as the curious and the
savvy alike peeked in on Crowley's then-novel examination of New York's gay
subculture. Prior to Boys, homosexuality in theatre and film had been
merely hinted at, exoticized, or marginalized, but Crowley depicted queerness
from the inside out, introducing a range of characters from flaming to tepid,
all talking openly about their jobs, their desires, and their fears over the
course of the worst party since Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? In the decades since, The
Boys In The Band
has often been criticized for being such a downer, because it starts light,
then curdles into accusations and self-loathing. But Crowley believed he was
being true to his time and place. Regardless, the play was revolutionary in its
acknowledgment of the gay community's unique set of signifiers and worries. To
a whole closeted generation, it was as much a hopeful portrait of camaraderie
as an indictment of homosexual insecurity.
Whatever a person's opinion of the play's
accuracy, William Friedkin's 1970 film adaptation remains gripping, translating
a story that takes place in a cramped apartment into a movie that rarely feels
stagey. Friedkin was 35 when he made Boys, and he'd been building a reputation for
helming films with an authentic "New York feel," like 1968's The Night They
Raided Minsky's.
(1971's The French Connection would follow.) Though Minsky's is a musical comedy, French
Connection
is a cop thriller, and Boys is a chamber drama, all three have a lived-in
quality, marked by subtle camera moves that treat city streets and cluttered
living rooms with the same casual sense of belonging. That approach is key to
the enduring power of The Boys In The Band, which features a lot of unknown faces,
most of whom went on to have relatively minor careers—some because they
died young of AIDS, and some because they were stereotyped as gay even though
they were actually straight. Friedkin, like Crowley, presented these characters
as though they needed no introduction, as though we should already know them.
And thanks to The Boys In The Band, a lot of people did.
Key features: A thoughtful commentary track by Friedkin
and Crowley, and a typically thorough three-part Laurent Bouzereau documentary
on the play and the film.