In the more than four decades since it premiered, The Boys in the Band has inspired every kind of reaction imaginable. Based on Mart Crowley’s landmark play about a birthday party attended by a group of gay men, Boys has often been hailed as groundbreaking for its honest depiction of homosexual characters and occasionally been greeted with scorn for allegedly perpetuating queer stereotypes. In the accomplished hands of William Friedkin, the 1970 film (now available on Blu-ray) remains a vivid document of gay life in pre-Stonewall Manhattan, with unforgettable characters (the entire original stage cast repeated their memorable performances) and Crowley’s crisp, biting dialogue is still immensely quotable. Who hasn’t walked into a soiree and shouted, “Who do you have to fuck to get a drink around here?” The director would go on to win an Academy Award the following year for helming the riveting police thriller The French Connection and scare the bejesus out of the world with 1973’s smash The Exorcist. Cruising, his 1980 true-crime drama with Al Pacino set against a backdrop of murders in New York’s gay S/M clubs, generated a different kind of horrifying reaction. During the making of Cruising in the summer of ’79, Friedkin was greeted with unprecedented outrage and protests from gay activists, attempts at disrupting filming and even death threats for presumably depicting a link between homosexual orientation and homicidal tendencies. In a wide-ranging interview, Friedkin, renowned as one of the great raconteurs in show business, chatted with Queerty about his experience making Boys, the backlash against Cruising, the film’s recent critical reevaluation and what he did to make Barbra Streisand comfortable with her appearance when they worked together on a music video.
Queerty: Each time I watch The Boys in the Band I’m surprised at how cinematic it is. I always expect to be entertained, but I also expect it to be talky and theatrical. I’m amazed by the interesting ways you found to move your camera and frame the dialogue sequences.
William Friedkin: I appreciate that and I don’t disagree with you because I was really inspired by it. It compelled me to visualize it as a film and not think of it just as a filmed play. It is that, but I felt it could be cinematic within a very confined space, which I’ve been attracted to in a number of films — a kind of claustrophobia.
Mart Crowley probably didn’t intend this, but Boys now plays like a referendum on being gay in the late 1960s. Were you and the cast aware that this project would have such a lasting impact?
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No. I don’t know if the rest of the cast felt that. What I know they did feel and what I felt, as well, was this was a wonderful script and these were great roles. Most of their agents advised them not to do it. Some members of the cast were gay, others were not, but they were told if they did this it would be the end of their careers. That’s how bad it was at that time. When we filmed it, it was just after Stonewall so the first steps had been taken toward gay liberation. Strangely, show business has always had a great many declared and undeclared gay people from the turn of the 20th century and probably even before. Yet there was still this fear that if you played a gay character you’d be so labeled. All of them who experienced that simply defied it because the knew these were great parts that were beautifully written. I was told the same thing.
Your agent really advised you to not direct the film?
Oh, sure. He felt it was too risky and people would label me… I couldn’t have cared less about that. A script like that really comes along once in a lifetime. I thought of it as a beautifully-written love story with great comedic moments. Ultimately, a very dramatic turn, which is always a hat trick if you can go from comedy to drama in the same piece with the same characters. Mart Crowley accomplished that. Mart and I never talked about this being a statement about gay life. We simply discussed it in dramatic terms. Mart told me on a number of occasions that certain characters were based on people we both knew. The operative phrase is “based on.” He was writing about a birthday party he had attended. It was definitely autobiographical in that sense. I don’t know if you’re aware but he had been encouraged to write this by Natalie Wood.
Mart had worked as her assistant before he became a writer.
He’d been her assistant and told her stories. She urged him to write it as a play. He did reluctantly because I’m sure he didn’t think people would flock to producing it. It then had a kind of bumpy road leading up to its first production and ultimate success.
You mentioned Stonewall. Were you and the cast aware of the riots while you were making the film?
We were filming it at the same time. What affect Stonewall was going to have on the release of the film, I didn’t know and didn’t really care. I lived in New York at that time and it didn’t originally resonate as the sort of first notable step that it became in the gay liberation movement. It really became known across this country that gays were no longer going to tolerate that kind of oppression just because they were gay. It was rampant. I lived on the east side of New York and I would regularly see raids on gay bars. It was pretty common.
Was there any sense that Boys would contribute to the seismic shift for gay rights that was happening in the country?
I think it may have. I would probably be the last one to say. It wasn’t in Mart’s mind or mine as a “J’Accuse” [Emile Zola’s famous open letter condemning social injustice]. It wasn’t meant as that. It was meant as a very entertaining, touching and funny drama, which it was. We, of course, weren’t blind to the fact that there were no such other films around at the time.
Right. There had been a few plays, though.
I’m now working on a film for HBO about Mae West with Bette Midler. Mae West was writing about gay people in 1926 when she wrote The Drag, which was banned. It was an all-gay play. It had a few performances out of town and never made it to New York. There were others. There was a lesbian play called The Captive that starred a very popular actress at that time called Helen Mankin. She was busted for being in that play. There were a handful of gay plays from the turn of the century, culminating in Mae West’s The Drag, which made national headlines. Until about 1954 there was a Society for the Suppression of Vice that was led by a guy named John Sumner and he was going around busting everything that was away from the norm, like James Joyce’s Ulysses and anything with sex or gay material — even if it was just double entendre.
Do you think that’s why so many playwrights wrote covertly about gay characters?
Are you aware of the story of when Mart met with Edward Albee? Mart took the play to a number of possible producers. One of them was Richard Barr, who was Albee’s production partner. Richard loved the play and wanted to produce it. Albee did not. He didn’t like it and didn’t want to do it, but they made an agreement that Barr could do it on his own, but it could never be presented on Broadway. It’s never been on Broadway because of that agreement. It premiered on W. 54th St. in a theater which I think later became Studio 54.
That’s an interesting bit of synchronicity. I’ve heard that Albee was very harsh in his opinion of the play.
Mart had a meeting with Albee. He said, in essence, this is a terrible piece of work and will set back the gay rights movement 50 years. Albee was Mart’s idol and he tore it up. It really crushed Mart. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I think Albee might have been bothered by the fact that Mart had openly gay characters who were not disguised. That wasn’t what was happening among gay playwrights. So many of the popular songs of Cole Porter were very thinly disguised songs about a man and a man, not a man and a woman. That was a disguise that worked. I once met with Albee and asked if he’d let me direct Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with four men, which I’d heard was the original intent. I wanted to do it for HBO. I thought it would work perfectly well with very few changes. I’d heard that’s the way he’d set out to write it. He denied that so I had to take him at his word. He said, “That’s an old wive’s tale” and he’d never want to see it done that way. I think it would be spectacular. That may be why some of the references in the play were somewhat obscure to audiences.
How did Boys come to you? Had you seen the off-Broadway production??
No, Mart sent me the script. I thought it was sensational. Later, I did see the play while we were preparing the film. I thought it was great.
As a straight man, did you find the characters relatable?
Totally. What comes to mind when you ask that is perhaps the one thing I’d change today is I would have somewhat muted the behavior of Emory. I’m not saying that as a criticism. I think Cliff Gorman’s performance is terrific. I let it go a little too far. When you’re doing a play you’re playing to the last row of the balcony. It’s got to be heard and understood, but when making film the camera brings intimacy. I think in the context of the film I allowed him to push it a little too far. Perhaps that’s because Cliff was not gay. He was one of those warned by his agent and friends and other advisors not to do this role.
Was there any temptation to cast name actors rather than the New York cast?
We talked about it for 30 seconds and agreed it would make no sense. Here’s so-and-so playing gay. I always was interested in a kind of verisimilitude, rather than make the film a vehicle for a star. In the case of those nine guys, I didn’t think there was anyone who could play those parts better. If we’d cast one star, we’d have had to cast nine stars. What happens is a movie star would tend to overshadow those actors who were not movie stars. We could have gotten name actors. The film had taken on a kind of importance because of what it was. There were a lot of name actors who wanted to play in it, but we felt these nine actors couldn’t be topped.
The entire cast gives really great performances and inhabits their characters so it’s shame most of them didn’t go on to more prominent careers. Do you think this was due to stigma at having portrayed gay characters so believably?
To a great extent it’s the choices they made. I can’t tell you whether there was some innate prejudice in the industry at the time against them as they were warned by their agents. I can’t say that it wasn’t true. [Lawrence] Luckinbill worked all the time and built his own career. A number of them died young, don’t forget. [Robert] LaTourneaux, who played the cowboy, died very young. Cliff Gorman died young. The guy we lost touch with, who disappeared is Reuben Green. I thought he’d have a career, but I don’t know what happened to him. I worked with Keith Prentiss again in Cruising. Frederick Combs died young. Kenny Nelson… In my prejudiced view, Kenneth Nelson should have been nominated for an Academy Award.
You filmed a kiss between Hank (Laurence Luckinbill) and Larry (Keith Prentice) that eventually got cut out.
We did. It was a very traumatic situation. After Hank and Larry leave the party and go upstairs to the bedroom, Mart and I wanted to have not a scene but a shot of the two of them in the bedroom and that winds up in a passionate kiss. From the very beginning the actors didn’t want to do it and it was a source of constant debate. Neither Keith nor Larry wanted to do it. [Laughs] I remember Mart and I thinking that it was absolutely necessary. We had long discussions with the actors to discuss the importance of it for the characters and the piece itself. Finally, the day before it was scheduled they agreed to do it and we shot it. Then we came to put it together and I couldn’t find a way to integrate it. It stopped the flow of the final act. We didn’t take it out because it was controversial. The Boys in the Band is a very tight script and film and there was not a lot of room for digression or underlining. It just cut right into the flow. After all this trouble, we cut it.
Do you remember if the film played in the hinterlands when it was first released in theaters and how it was received there?
Not to my knowledge. I think its distribution was mainly to big cities. I think there with the DVD release years ago the reviews are almost entirely positive. The new generation of critics view it much differently. I remember there were some pretty great reviews and others that reflected a kind of fear of the subject matter. The film was rarely criticized in terms of how it was made and acted. It was always the basis of its subject matter. Nowadays, film historians recognize it as a pretty damn good piece of work for a generation that’s several times removed from that period.
It reaches a new audience every few years.
I think it’s a wonderful film. I’m very proud of it. I think it deserves to be seen. The judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena is Alex Kozinski. He told me this is his favorite film and got in touch with me and had me show the DVD at his office in a massive conference room. He showed it on television monitors to about 100 people and served pizza to his entire staff. One of the newly appointed judges came to me and thanked me for it. He saw it as a young man and said it helped him to come out of the closet. He had about 12 monitors set up and I saw it again with a an audience and the lines resonated and people who’d never seen it before had tears in their eyes at the end. I believe they were mostly straight people. I don’t know for sure because it wasn’t my business. Out of all the movies I’ve made, that’s the one he wanted to see. It played great.
About a decade later you made Cruising, another film that has become a lightning rod for all sorts of opinions from the gay community. It was the most controversial film of its time and there were protests by outraged gay people while you were making it and it wasn’t well-received when it was released in 1980. Now, more than three decades later, critical opinion has changed and it’s shown at gay film festivals. Do you feel vindicated?
No, because I know what my intention was with Cruising. It was to use the S/M world, of which there had been no depiction of which I was aware in any films, at least I’d never seen them. I wanted to use it as a background for a murder mystery.
How did you become aware of this scene?
Randy Jurgenson [a former NYPD detective] is in The French Connection and we’re close friends and he had that job of trying to solve the unsolved murders taking place in the late ‘70s in the clubs. There were several things happening at the same time. A guy named Arthur Bell wrote an incredible series of articles in The Village Voice about deaths in the S/M clubs. They were kind of a warning to the gay community to stay out of these clubs because they were dangerous. The fact that the Mineshaft and many other S/M clubs were owned by a guy I knew named Matty “The Horse” Iannello. He was the boss of the west side. Virtually every business on the west side of New York was either owned or partially owned by him or paying him protection. I asked him if I could film in the clubs. I went down there and saw a number of people I knew and they allowed me to film. They had no problems with me filming in there with Al Pacino.
There’s a really bizarre connection between the backstory of Cruising and The Exorcist.
Paul Bateson had been in The Exorcist, and I saw his picture on the front page of the NY Daily News as a suspect in all these murders. I got in touch with his lawyers and asked if he’d agree to see me. He was being held at Riker’s Island, pending trial. He was very anxious to see me. He told me his story, which was the real and final motivational kick for me to do the film. This is also why I basically leave the murders unsolved in the film. What Bateson said to me is he was being charged with the murder of a man named Addison Verrell, who was the theater critic for Variety in New York. He admitted to me that he had murdered Addison. He picked him up in the Mineshaft and brought him home, hit him over the head with a frying pan, killed him and cut him up. He put his body in a plastic bag and dumped him in the east river. There were many such bags that were being fished out of the East River, which is how they got Paul Bateson. In very small print on a part of the bag it said “Property of NYU Medical Center. [Laughs] That’s how they traced these bags with body parts They were just body parts that were unidentified. They were called CUPPIs, which stood for Circumstances Unknown Pending Police Investigation. He was being held for about eight CUPPI murders. He told me the police offered him a deal. If he confessed to four or five more murders, they would reduce his sentence. They wanted the headlines: Fifteen murders solved. I asked him, “What are you going to do?” He said, “I don’t know. I’m thinking about it.” Anyway, he got out about 10 or 15 years ago so he must have taken that deal and gone into witness protection.
Cruising got a lot of attention again two years ago for informing the James Franco movie Interior. Leather Bar, which used the footage you cut from your film as a broader discussion about male sexuality. What are those legendary missing 40 minutes?
Just pornography. There was one scene that I took out that involved an actual incident with two cops who were watching the area around the Mineshaft because of the violence in and around it. These two cops at one time were bored with the detail and started to play strip poker. The penalty being the one who lost would allow the other to beat him on the ass with his billy club. I think it’s one of the most provocative scenes I’ve ever shot. I just filmed everything that took place at the Mineshaft with Pacino watching and wondering and it’s down to just a handful of shots now. I’d shot 40 minutes worth. I put it into the cut I showed the ratings board knowing that they’d get rid of all of it and leave me with what I needed to tell the story. I wouldn’t put that footage back in. I think if I did that now it would be exploitive. It was nothing that moved the plot.
I know there was a great deal of anger against the film in the critical community. It was outrageous. I was getting death threats. They were the worst reviews I’ve ever seen, let along gotten. People were really angry. These weren’t simply reviews that reviewed the film. These were personal attacks. I think a large part of it had to do with the fact that the gay movement had made great strides at that point by the time the film came out in 1980. I understand that Cruising was not the best foot forward you could put out for the gay movement at that time and there was a lot of resentment for that. I don’t hesitate to say that they may have just hated the film. I know it’s disturbing.
After directing two of the most-debated films with queer-themed subject matter, were you offered other gay projects over the years?
Yes, I wouldn’t accept or reject something based on subject matter, only quality. I never thought of them as being definitive works about gay life at all. That was just background for these terrific characters and stories. I was neither drawn to nor repelled by the subject matter, it was the execution.
Another project you directed that holds a lot of appeal for gay audiences is the video for Barbra Streisand’s rendition of “Somewhere,” which marked her return in 1985 to the kind of music she performed at the beginning of her career.
I also interviewed her on The Broadway Album. She’s been a good friend for many years and still is. She asked me to do this video with her and I decided to shoot it at the Apollo Theater. I was going to get everything arranged at the Apollo, set up the lighting and shots then drive over to her apartment on the west side of New York and bring her to the theatre. There were close to a thousand people in the theater who’d come to watch a Streisand video. For the people in the first several rows, I hand-selected every face. I cut away to faces of all races and colors and ages. She was meant to lip-sync live in front of the audience. There were three murders in front of the Apollo Theatre when I left to pick her up. I never told her that and don’t think I have till this day. I picked her up and as I was driving to the Apollo I mentioned that I had this really great audience made up of people from all walks of life and that I would make the cut-aways while she was singing. She said, “What? I can’t perform in front of a live audience. I haven’t performed in front of a live audience in years.”
She famously suffered from stage fright for decades.
She told me that the last time she’d appeared live was in front of an audience at Central Park where there’d been an audience of more than 100, 000 people. They turned all the lights on the audience and she saw their faces for the first time. When she’d performed onstage either in a play or a live performance she could never see the audience. Now all of a suden the lights are on the audience and she saw what was to her figures out of a George Grosz painting. He painted Germany in the ‘30s just before the war and had depicted all these angry, bitter faces in drawings and water colors. She said the faces looked like that to her. At the Central Park concert not all the faces were smiling at her and some looked vicious to her. After that, she stopped performing live for the longest time. When I got her to the theater what I decided to do was I told the audience we were going to record their faces to a playback. Of course, there was great disappointment, but that’s what we did. Then she appeared and we had to re-light her when she performed solo on the stage so I dissolved into the faces of the people.
The other thing I remember is that she never thought she looked pretty other than in her makeup mirror. She always looked beautiful to herself in her makeup mirror. So I got with Andrzej Bartowiak [the director of photography] and he made a box that had very small wattage bulbs around it like a makeup mirror. It was a box with no mirror and we put it over the lens of the camera and it made her feel like she was performing into her makeup mirror and we called it the StreiLight.
There’s a scene in the video where everything goes black except for Barbra’s face and the lace of her collar. I wonder if this was a nod to William Wyler’s similar last shot in Funny Girl.
No. [Laughs] I just wanted to portray her as well as we could and with the great passion and emotion she was able to convey.
There’s a long-standing rumor that Barbra turned down the role of Chris MacNeil in The Exorcist.
Never. The Exorcist was offered to three women. The studio wanted a big star. They wanted either Audrey Hepburn, Anne Bancroft or Jane Fonda — all of whom were stars. We offered it to Audrey first, but she was living in Italy. She said, “I’ll do this if you shoot it in Italy.” I thought about it a long time but decided I couldn’t. I’d have to bring every actor in from America. I’d planned to shoot it in Georgetown, where I did shoot much of it. I didn’t speak Italian so how would I communicate with an Italian crew? I urged her to come to American just for the shoot, but she turned that down so we turned her down. Then we offered it to Anne Bancroft, who said she’d be happy to do it, but she was in her first month of pregnancy and asked if we’d wait a year. We couldn’t. I would have loved to have had her. She’d have been great. Then we offered it to Jane Fonda, who sent back a telegram that read “Why would I want to appear in a capitalist bullshit rip-off like this?” I’ve seen Jane recently and asked if she remembered it and she didn’t, but that was her rejection of it. Then Ellen Burstyn called and told me she was destined to play the part. I told her it would never happen because at the time we were thinking of these other women. Burstyn was eventually the last woman standing.
It’s a challenge to imagine anyone but her in that part.
She’s great. She had the quality that I most look for and admire, which is intelligence. She totally understood the nature of the piece and her role. But it was never offered to Streisand. At one point I met with Carol Burnett, who I thought was extraordinary in person. She had this really wonderful quality. I remember expressing that with [William Peter Blatty, novelist and screenwriter of The Exorcist] and he was all for it. Ted Ashley, the head of Warners, said, “You’re out of your mind. We’ll never get over the fact that she’s known as a comedian.” I think she would have been good, too. I was eager to do it with her, but that was one the studio clobbered. They were also very much against Burstyn. Years later, I met Ted Ashley at a black-tie gala in New York long after he’d retired and the film had by then made about $400 million. I said, “I guess Ellen Burstyn wasn’t the right actress, huh?” He replied, “If we’d had Jane Fonda we’d be at a billion dollars.” [Laughs]
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Cam
Interesting interview, the part about the Exorcist was fascinating, I bet Fonda is regretting turning down that role.
I remember reading that by the time the movie for Boys in the Band came out, many in the gay community thought it was already dated. Still glad, that at least that snapshot is there for people to see, even among people who were somewhat out it still looked like a very rough time.
AshNYC
Beautiful movie. Somehow, I came across the vhs as teen in St. Louis. I didn’t really know what to make of it then, but after living in NYC for 20+ years, its amazing to think of how ‘true to life’ the characters were. Not saying this is a ‘good thing’, but I certainly recognized a lot of my and my cohorts behavior.
Glücklich
“Who hasn’t walked into a soiree and shouted, ‘Who do you have to fuck to get a drink around here?'”
I haven’t.
Who hasn’t seen this film, interesting and classic as it is, and wanted to beat the shit out of every single unlikeable one of those bitches?
AtticusBennett
the saddest reality is this: The Boys in the Band is NOWHERE near as dated as it SHOULD be, all these decades after its creation.
these guys still exist, even though they’ve changed slightly in look and manner.
there isn’t a single character in the play/film that doesn’t exist today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxGTr7aVO0E
little clip i put together showing one of the biggest character moments, which I’m sure many will recognize as a sadly-still-existing reality affecting our community.
stranded
Regarding the 40 minutes cut from Cruising: “I think if I did that now it would be exploitative.” Which is basically what i think of Franco’s version did. Shock for shock value, no a artistic message/statement. Even as shock goes, it was tame and boring. Maybe wild 35 years ago, but not today.
Coincidentally i am currently reading The Exorcist. I can’t help but imagine Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller and Linda Blair as i read it.
Saint Law
‘Cruising’ is an enigmatic. There is the suggestion that each time the murderer is the next victim. I can see why peops might consider this to be homophobic. Nonetheless I find it a compelling film: a kind of urban ghost story.
Jenni
Wow! What a terrific interview. Love the bit about Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with an all-male cast! Speaking of which, Anna Albelo has a great riff of the play with an all-female cast as part of the plot of her wonderful lesbian romantic-comedy, Who’s Afraid of Vagina Woolf? The film stars Anna, Carrie Preston, Janine Gavankar and Guinevere Turner. Trailer is here:
http://wolfeondemand.com/productions/details/796/Whos-Afraid-of-Vagina-Wolf
dvlaries
I agree with Friedkin about dialing down Emory. All these years later, the character is a little squirm-inducing, and great as Gorman is, one can see he might have done better by giving less. When the film was new, Keith Prentiss was immediately identifiable to any Dark Shadows alumnus. Luckinbill too was known to soap opera watchers. Not all of them were totally unknown.
*
Friedkin is also right in his thinking about Carol Burnett. All too rarely exposed that way, Burnett in fact has an outstanding facility for drama. She too would have been immensely good.
mujerado
@Glücklich: I haven’t. Not then, not now.
AtticusBennett
@dvlaries: I dunno – i think Emory is exactly what he needed to be. The Emorys of the world deserve to have their stories told. We need to stop shying away from something just because ignorant straight people, and insecure gay people, continue to *choose* to bristle at something for being “Stereotypical”
“dialling down Emory” is like those gaybro wimps wishing “fems wouldn’t be so fem” – it’s someone else who is made nervous because someone else is NOT nervous about their manner, behaviour, demeanor, etc.
the most harmful stereotype in the film is, of course, The Closeted Miserable Coward who takes such a soothingly angry view of Emory. Emory is everything that Closeted Alan cannot be – open, unafraid, and not giving a flying fuck what someone else thinks.
jmi2
@Jenni: surprised that she actually did what she did. Albee has blocked other attempts to change not only Virginia Woolf but other plays. he retains almost final word & total control on any production of his material.
met Albee several times in the 80’s. disliked him instantly because i thought him totally insufferable in his self-importance. as a matter of fact, his first words to me were, “Do you know who I am?” i simply responded, “Yes. What would you like to drink?” and turned away…
Sansacro
@AtticusBennett: totally. I also think it’s a great film. I don’t know about others, but, over the years, I (and the gay community?) have matured enough that this film does not offend me at all. There is spectrum of archetypes in this film, from the queen to straight-acting closet case, and everything in between; all recognizable.
Clark35
@AtticusBennett: Very true. You can even read old books like “Dancer from the Dance” or Larry Kramer’s “F______ts” and you will find the same type of gay men decades later.
Chevelter
If I could have my way, the original negatives and all existing copies of Boys In The Band and Cruising would be destroyed. Nothing traumatized young me more than those two films. If that’s what gay is, I felt, I may as well kill myself now. They are both offensive and repulsive.
Bob LaBlah
Thank you so much for running this article. Late, late at night about two weeks ago the cable channels ran Midnight Cowboy and Cruising. That was the first time I saw Midnight Cowboy from beginning to end and saw why it was as controversial (at that time) as it was. I got to NYC just in time to catch the tail end of that era and glad I experienced it.
As for Cruising I still get bothered watching it because I always end up mentally at the bedside of one of my friends whom there was nothing one could do but watch their demise. AZT (which turned out to be more or less useless) was still on the drawing board. And the memories of the Mineshaft, the Anvil, Peter Rabbit…..the list just goes on.
I was surprised at how AIDS took a lot of the stars of Boys in the Band. If you want just click on the actors in the movie and their bios. I saw Fiddler on the roof and never made the connection of Harold from Boys in the Band with the character he played in Fiddle on the Roof. I do now. Many of them need their resumes updated because so little has been written about them who have passed on. Any one remember the Warriors? One of the lead gang bangers died of AIDS.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065488/?ref_=nv_sr_2
jdjohnson
@AtticusBennett: I agree as I think Emory was played correctly. The film works with his portrayal. And we all have friends like Emory. I think it is a pretty accurate portrayal of one of the multitude of types of gay men that exist. Now, whether it makes some people, gay and/or straight, uncomfortable is another topic.
jdjohnson
@Clark35: Isherwood, Genet, Mishima. There are always the same types in literature.
Glücklich
@jdjohnson:
None of my friends are like Emory or any of the sad sacks from that film. I’m too old to be friends with fourteen year-old girls in the drama club who cut themselves.
jcmiles
@Cam: @Cam:
I do not think that Jane Fonda has any regrets. That movie was not hers. She not dumb if she thought it was for her, she would have done it. The person that could have done it was Shirley Maclaine. She would have been great. I had that Shirley turn it down?? I guess not. But in the end it was Ellen Burstyn movie and made her a star.
Masc Pride
“Cruising” is one of my favorite movies. I didn’t see anything homophobic about it. I read one writer said that “Irreversible” was the most homophobic movie ever (so dramatic). I watched it and didn’t see any homophobia, but the assailant was also a gay guy that frequented an S/M club. It seems if you mix gays with S/M it’s automatically deemed homophobic. Not sure why. Those scenes do exist and set a good atmosphere for a seedy slasher film. They’re just movies.
mcflyer54
What a terrific interview. I only wish it had been longer. While Friedkin may look back and wished he had muted Cliff Gorman’s performance in “Boys In The Band”, for those of us “of a certain age” every one of those characters rang true at the time and for the period. I’m sure many of us knew (or maybe were) an Emory and to have muted that performance would have been unfaithful to the character and the era. “Boys In The Band” was a movie that was probably equally loved and hated within the gay community at the time of release but now, for many of us, it is a very accurate representation and reminder of a period much different than younger gays are experiencing today.
wpewen
I am 57 and was growing up in LA when Boys in the Band came out. I’ve never watched it. One problem with it was how quickly the urban gay scene changed in the early/mid 70’s. By the time I was out in 76 the film was viewed as a past we could quickly forget. From what I know of the movie, good as it is, no way does it relate to gay guys other than a certain narrow focus, real for it’s time and I’m sure now, but depressive somehow and something many of us have never wanted to relate to.
scotshot
@jcmiles:
Burstyn was already a star having been nominated for an academy award for her breakout role in “The Last Picture Show” 1971, she then graduated from supporting roles to leading ones. An “overnight success” as she entered show business in 1955.
Jenni
Have to say that you anti-Emory guys are the saddest gay stereotypes of all! I adore Emory as a character. He has always represented to me the most heroic figure in the whole film.
Michael Musto chose it for his VIP Q Movie Pick for my QMovieBlog a few years back:
“One of my favorite LGBT films is William Friedkin’s THE BOYS IN THE BAND. The 1970 adaptation of Matt Crowley‘s landmark play is still stingingly funny and rivetingly melodramatic, its journey into self-loathing coming off not nearly as dated as it probably should. Cliff Gorman snaps off the screen as the film’s biggest queen of all.” – See more at: http://queermovieblog.com/index.php?s=musto#sthash.CjtW8qtI.dpuf
Also of course the film just came out on Blu-ray!
https://www.wolfevideo.com/products/boys-in-the-band-the/
Baxter2015
I did a small play in Brooklyn with Reuben Green in 2002. It was about the Underground Railroad and it played at various community centers in Brooklyn. I think Reuben went to the same church as the author. I didn’t know he was in the film and was only told by someone else that he was in the original stage production of Boys in the Band. Seeing clips of the film now I can say he looked the same in 2002 as 1970 only more mature and gray but still very handsome. He was wonderful to work with and a strong actor, probably close to 70 at the time. He was living somewhere in Brooklyn around Prospect Heights I think but that was 13 years ago now.
Delbert Botts
Please stop bashing my old friend Emory!
Finrod
Well, I’m glad that he didn’t tone down Emory. He’s gayer than the rest of the cast put together and he’s also the most likable character, and the least self-loathing. Based on some of the comments here, he could give some lessons on that subject.
socaldesign
@wpewen: If you haven’t seen it at 57 I think you should before commenting. It’s more than a bunch of queens bitching.
Kangol
This is a tremendous interview, so full of history and anecdotes, and so illuminating about Mart Crowley’s play, William Friedkin’s work, and gay life in NYC pre-AIDS. The only criticism I have is that it could have been edited a bit more, since it’s full of typos. But other than that, excellent work, Queerty.
Josh Rosenzweig
Fantastic interview, Jeremy. LOVED IT
GayDinosaurTales
Excellent interview. I had a special connection to BOYS IN THE BAND. Kent State University was one of the first to get the rights to do the play in 1970, and I was lucky enough to be cast in the production. I saw the film in Cleveland which blew me away. As theatrical as many now may find the gay world portrayed in this film, you had to be living in that world to understand how far we have come. I moved to New York two years later and befriended Leonard Frey, the actor who created the role of Harold, the birthday boy. We had some great conversations about the characters and the actors who played them. A big part of the gay man I am today came from what I learned from my BOYS experience.
Wilberforce
A classic film. And I agree with Atticus. The self-hating queen is still alive and well, and actually a large part of our demographic. The evidence: we haven’t stopped the spread of HIV after 30 plus years.
bobbyjoe
No discussion of Friedkin, homophobia, and Cruising should leave out the most damning part: that Vito Russo and others discovered by slowing down the prints that Friedkin had added subliminal images of penetrative gay porn between the stabbing shots in the film. Friedkin has given lame explanations for this, but none of them really add up to why he’d do something so sneaky and so genuinely creepy. You watch Cruising, you see the murder scenes, and without realizing you’re watching it, you’re having explicit images of men having sex with other men subliminally cut into violent murder scenes. Short of the vilest anti-gay propaganda associating gay sex with violence, who does such a thing? To call it somehow a deliberate artistic device misses the point that (pre-VCR as the film was) Friedkin never thought anyone would discover it. Friedkin can say what he wants, but the fact that he did this has always pretty much damned any claim he has to the contrary that he wasn’t deliberately engaging in some of the worst homophobia in cinematic history. And that’s not hyperbole– sure, there’ve been lots of negative images of gay characters in the cinematic past, but can anyone name another major Hollywood director who was so extreme he hid subliminal images of gay sex into violent stabbing scenes?
Cam
@bobbyjoe: If this story us true, feel free to post a link as backup.
Gigi Gee
@Chevelter: That’s the way I felt after reading Larry Kramer’s book F@GGOTS. I found it in my local library when I was a kid, stole it do that I could read it, and returned it a few days later. I lived in a town of 14,000 (who bought the book for the library?), so there was no way I was signing it out! I was too young to understand why Kramer had written it. I thought it was an instruction manual on How To Be Gay. I was terrified!
Gigi Gee
This is one of the best articles I’ve ever read here.
MarionPaige
@bobbyjoe: “Friedkin had added subliminal images of penetrative gay porn between the stabbing shots in the film”
I seem to recall seeing the quick shot of sex (a penis) in one of the stabbing scenes without slowing down the film (the first murder of the guy on the bed). There were also stories about quick shots of various things in The Exorcists.
Reel Charlie
Reel Charlie reviews The Boys in the Band:
https://reelcharlie.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/the-boys-in-the-band/
Kangol
@bobbyjoe: Wow–you’re right, I’d totally forgotten that Russo caught this. Thanks for reminding us of one of the many reasons that gay people protested and condemned Cruising.
AtticusBennett
@Sansacro: amen/ the “offence” this film perpetrated was this: it showed the type of gay men that anti-gay bigots hate, and insecure gay men who care too much about anti-gay bigots think.
“Emory” is actually not a grossly-over-the-top caricature. But he is the “type of gay man” that bigots have hated on for decades. That’s what upset people.
The film, like i said, should be more dated than it is.
MarionPaige
@Kangol: “Wow–you’re right, I’d totally forgotten that Russo caught this. Thanks for reminding us of one of the many reasons that gay people protested and condemned Cruising.”
The protesting of Cruising occurred while the film was being made, before anyone protesting had seen anything that had been filmed.
Maude
Re: “BOYS”……….. Been that, done there. Many, many times.
Bars were getting raided all the time, and many of us 1uit the bars, and gave parties just like Boys In The Band……before it was made,
We didn’t totally give-up the bars.where the hot cruises were, but after a while, we all asked our guests to bring some body hot that we hadn’t met before, pretty soon,we ran out of ‘guests with a guest’ and in summer we had Fire Island…in winter, we were back to the bars….still being raided, but not so often, and then there were no raids……it felt like being set free from an oppression that lasted all of our lives….and it was, and we were.
iban4yesu
MarionPaige,
You are not the brightest bulb, are you?
The vicious intentions were there from the get go….why would one worry about the execution?
mujerado
@iban4yesu: – Calling names says more about you than about the discussion.