Boys in the Band - a film review

The Boys in the Band, Mart Crowley's theatrical portrayal of gay men in the late 60s, will forever be remembered as a major event in the early days of the gay liberation movement in the United States, and well beyond its borders, as well.  Crowley succeeded in capturing for all the world to see how he himself, like so many of his fellow urban gay men, turned their own internalized homophobia into rage and cruelty against each other. How well he succeeded in doing this is evidenced by the widespread rejection of the play by members of the gay community itself who saw it as airing dirty laundry, as trite stereotyping, or as a useless exercise in pessimism. Who needs this? they asked. What we want are stories in which we succeed and live lives with a happy ending.

I include myself among those critics. I hated the play when I first saw it in the film version Mart Crowley also wrote and produced, in 1970, fifty years ago already. I was still in the early years of a decades long project of coming out and desperately wanted to see something other than bitchy queens  on the screen trashing each other to pieces. I wasn't able to credit what a beautiful job it did of capturing the absolute need for a gay liberation movement to create a world in which people no longer found it necessary or tempting to direct self-loathing at one's closest friends, simply because you knew they couldn't fight back.

When I became aware that Boys in the Band had had first a fifty-year revival on stage two years ago and now a film remake produced by Netflix, again, my first reaction was negative. "Why would anybody dredge up that horror show?" Fortunately, because I saw that it had a first-rate cast of out gay actors playing the roles, people like Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto and Matt Bomer, I couldn't resist. 

I'm very glad I did. The play and film are essentially the same, with few changes (it's a bit shorter, and is now a one-act, more effectively concentrating the tension buildup) but the experience, at least for me, was totally new and different.

That has to do, no doubt, with the fact that the pain being expressed on stage is a pain I no longer experience personally. I have been openly gay for many years now, live without fear of rejection and am well-received by friends and neighbors as a man in a same-sex marriage. I am now free to see the play as a historical document, not as a social commentary on the agony of living in a homophobic world.

I'm well aware that my position is privileged, however, and that the long slog toward gay liberation is far from complete. Many will still smart who see the film as it reminds them of how far they may have yet to go to rid themselves of internalized self-loathing. But for most Americans browsing the large number of things to watch on Netflix, this 2020 update will provide a great bit of entertainment. The acting is first rate, as I suspected it would be. It helps, no doubt, that the ensemble had two years in which to perfect their lines on stage and were able to make the film essentially off-book. There are good interviews with the troop in which they speak of their experience, including ways in which the film differs from the stage version and all sorts of other trivia which, I think, enhances the viewing experience. Check out a couple of these interviews (I'd suggest you see the film first), especially here, but also here.     

It's especially useful to those of us worried today that we're experiencing hardships we might not overcome. Not that progress is inevitable, by any means. But there is something about being able to go back in time and recognize that we stand on the shoulders of those who worked through some dark days and take comfort in knowing things can, and with effort, do get better.