Life is a goddamn laff riot — again!
The absurdly quotable 1968 Mart Crowley play The Boys in the Band will be determinedly prancing back into our lives via a limited-engagement Broadway revival.
The show — mounted to commemorate the play’s 50th anniversary — will star openly gay actors Matt Bomer, Zachary Quinto, Andrew Rannells, and Jim Parsons. The cast also includes Robin de Jesus, Brian Hutchison, Tuc Watkins and Michael Benjamin Washington.
The Hollywood Reporter reports the role of impossibly airy hustler known only as “Cowboy” has yet to be cast.
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Joe Mantello will direct, and Ryan Murphy and David Stone are set to produce.
Of the production, Murphy says:
“The significance of The Boys in the Band cannot be underestimated. In 1968, Mart Crowley made theatrical history by giving voice to gay men onstage, in this uncompromising, blisteringly honest and wickedly funny play.”
Adds Stone:
“The play was groundbreaking in its exploration of how gay men treated each other and how they were made to feel about themselves. And while some attitudes have thankfully shifted, it’s important to be reminded of what we have overcome and how much further we still have to go. Everything has changed. And nothing has changed.”
Attention must not be paid.
Chevelter
The Boys In The Band is far from a dream to me, it’s a nightmare. I saw it decades ago as a budding gay and it made quite the scarring impression. THAT’S my future?! I was horrified. I’d like to buy up all the prints and burn them along with the film negative.
davegun2
I think it must be done again. Younger people have forgotten how difficult it was having a positive view of yourself. Society made us Boys in The Band. We eventually learned to overcome that. But you must not erase our struggle. I lived that life you see in the play. I went to “that” party and those things happened, fight and all. Please, I will die soon. But remember me! I fought so hard to give you what you have. See my novel War on Repose, from Da Nang to Stonewall.
AndThenTheresMax
I don’t agree. It’s important that the message of this movie and play continue to cast a mirror on younger generations who take their LGBTQ freedoms for granted.
Greg
Which character were you? Which character are you now?
Knight
Cheventer I agree. I think the people who like this movie were simply gullibly convinced by Hollywood that this was how they should be at the time. As I wrote below, there were MUCH better portrayals of gay men in film back then (they just didn’t have the studio “power” behind them like this movie did).
AndThenTheresMax
I remember seeing this movie and thinking, “This is groundbreaking and fabulous.” Little did I know how TRUE TO LIFE The Boys in the Band truly is. When I came out I knew one gay man who was like every single character in the movie (including that pot marked queen). I refer to this movie and play all the time to the younger generations and say, “Learn from the men who came before you. Things haven’t changed at all in the 45 years since this was a hit. Not one bit.” Queens still go into debt for fashion. Gay boys still pine over the boy the didn’t kiss. Queens still get into blood gushing fight (yes that’s in the movie). Any gay man who doesn’t like The Boys in the Band isn’t mad tat the play or the movie. But at the mirror the play and movie holds up about what it’s really like to be gay. That’s what they don’t like. Sometimes being gay ain’t pretty JUST LIKE being: bi, straight, trans, or assexual ain’t pretty sometimes.
He BGB
What have you got against Maria (Montez)? She was a good woman.
I watched it the other night and was howling. Yes, it was a nightmare during that time being gay, but seeing how it gets/got better, I really enjoy watching it.
Greg
Oh Mary, don’t ask.
He BGB
I’m just surprised the movie is by the same director who did The Exorcist. And to a lesser degree, Cruising.
Stephen
What is highly important and honorable to know about this play/film is that in 1969, BOYS IN THE BAND made the cut as (the every decade) ‘Best Five Plays of Each Decade of Broadway’. Best plays of 1960 to 1969 included BOYS IN THE BAND. It is akin a Tony for best 5 plays of the decade. That’s a huge key to the high standard of dramatic quality of the play, comparatively.
“BOYS IN THE BAND” had a Vancouver remake in 2002? and we extended the run an extra week! I play ‘the Birthday boy’ Harold. (Who later was Oscar nominated Motel Kamzoil in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF’. It was an honour to be in and a powerful ensemble production that was one of my top five theatre pieces in my career.
How funny, friends and family warning me ‘not to play a gay character, you will destroy your career.!” That’s like saying being in ‘60’s’ drama …. ‘WHOS AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOLFF will destroy your career as being a neurotic bully. Great drama is great drama. BOYS IN THE BAND still stands tall. Equal to every decade in being one of only the top five plays! We only updated our production to the 1980’s in costume, sets and included the disco hit, ‘ITS RAINING MEN’ for the dance sequence. Only play with lead gay character(s) until ‘SEPARATION BY SIX DEGREES’ & ‘THE NORMAL HEART’.
Stephen
I lived as open gay in the 1960’s, teenager. I came out to the bullying in school talking about this play, Stomnewall and Homosexuality. PLUS … A panel of 3 gay men and a lesbian woman. A+. And the principal fired the teacher two days later after my presentation. Contributioning to juvenile delinquency. Just a year after Trudeau said, “the government has no rights in the bedrooms of Canadians, and put through his new justice bill decriminalizing homosexual by sexual orientation.” 1968! Canada!
Alan down in Florida
That IS a wet dream of a cast. I hope they tape it for PBS’s Great Performances program which just recently aired the revival of Falsettos.
sdd
Omg! It is full of stereotypical gay men….so what?… it has the best lines and it oh so funny! Mary, don’t ask!
Knight
I guess the older generation hasn’t figured out that calling another man “Mary” hasn’t been “in” or remotely funny since the 70s. In other words, we just don’t care to “get it”.
Doug
“The Boys in the Band” is a homophobe’s dream. It plays into every gay stereotype there is, and Mart Crowley himself described it as a play about self-hate decades after he wrote it. I saw it as a teenager, and it was a big contribution to keeping me in the closet. I’ve seen the movie a couple of times since, and it’s still as depressing as hell; it was like watching a grinning skeleton. I can’t imagine why anyone, especially Quinto, Bomer and/or Parsons, would want to celebrate this as a “significant” part of gay history.
OzJosh
I saw Boys in the Band again quite recently, and it has not aged well. At best, it’s now a museum piece, but I’ve no doubt the star power behind this new production will draw crowds and the producers will delude themselves into thinking they have breathed new life into a theatre classic. But the truth is what was once brave, daring and sometimes mordantly funny is now just dated, cliched and sad. The play’s most quoted line is: “Show me a happy homosexual and I’ll show you a gay corpse.” Hardly an uplifting outlook for a new generation.
Knight
Doug I couldn’t agree more. Yes, I appreciate “the struggle” of the generations before me. But I had my struggle as well, and this film perpetuated stereotypes that fed into WHY men who had feelings for other men would never want to identify as “gay”…because they didn’t want to be one of “them”. and the reality is, for many of us, we never were. Too many gay men have misguided expectations that other gay men MUST behave, think and feel a certain way. If not, they are “closet-cases” or a host of other epithets they have been taught to use against anyone who goes against their “norm”. Diversity in the gay community only applies to skin color. And this movie is I believe a contributing factor.
Knight
As someone born decades after this was made, I never could get into this movie. I tried on two separate occasions, but could only tolerate 10 minutes of it here an there. It simply sounded like a bunch of bitchy, sarcastic jewish east-coast queens who hated life. Maybe someone who lived during that time, place and background would find it relevant. As far as the old standards, “Long-time Companion” or “A night at the baths” are much better portrayals of gay men.
PinkoOfTheGange
But loved and cared for each other deeply.
GayEGO
Fortunately I live in Massachusetts where I met my lifetime partner of 55 years, married 13 years. We saw the movie – Boys in the Band with a couple of our gay friends, and we recognized some of those characters, but our lives were not as troubled as their lives were. I also remember the “Alice B. Toklas lasagna” in the movie that supposedly had marijuana in it. I remember a straight couple had come to watch the movie and sat behind us. When they saw it was a gay movie, they got up and left!
BigWill
I just saw the movie again recently and also the doc “Making the Boys.” I’ve seen the movie a few times over the years, and I saw a Broadway revival…it must’ve been the 1996 one, but I don’t have any memory of it.
I have mixed feelings about the movie; in my 20s, I hated it. I remember when gay guys commonly talked like that (“Mary,” using the female pronouns), and I especially disliked the Emory character. When it gets to the telephone part, it’s really a slog for me.
Today I have an appreciation for it of sorts (the second half is still a chore for me to get through). The movie starred the original Broadway cast. Frederick Combs: I had forgotten how beautiful he was. Same for Keith Prentice. Laurence Luckinbill turns in a really nice performance. Leonard Frey was terrific.
Watching the doc gave me an appreciate for how important the play was; it opened for what was supposed to be something like a 10-day run in a 250-seat theater, and the next day, people were lined up for blocks to see it, and a couple months later it moved to Broadway.
Heartbreaking to see that one after another, five of the gay actors died of AIDS. Cliff Gorman, a straight actor who played Emory, died of leukemia. And as hard as it is to believe in this day and age, Reuben Greene, who played Bernard, can’t be located (per Mart Crowley).
Luckinbill and Peter White (a.k.a. Linc Tyler), both straight, are the only two actors from the original play and movie in the documentary. It’s definitely worth a watch.
The play is such a period piece, I’m not sure, stellar cast aside, that it holds up. As I say, the revival I saw made no impression at all. Yet I think it’s important, so I’m basically all over the place about it.