This summer, The Boys In The Band will add a new chapter to its long life, this time as a Netflix movie. Back will be the camping, the fighting and laughing and crying, a portrait of friendship as both endurance test and saving grace that Mart Crowley got so right more than a half-century ago. Opening Off Broadway in 1968, The Boys In The Band, an unlikely hit about a group of gay New Yorkers that would have been all but unimaginable in 1967, just as William Friedkin’s 1970 film was in ’69, and just as last year’s announcement by producers Ryan Murphy and David Stone that the play would finally makes its Broadway debut was met with not exactly whispered dismissals of stunt casting. The 50th anniversary staging of The Boys In The Band would feature, for the first time in the play’s history,...
- 5/24/2019
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Emmy-winning television mastermind Ryan Murphy recently announced that he is set to turn one of this year’s potential Tony contenders, “The Boys in the Band,” into a movie for Netflix. The stage production (which Murphy produced) ran a successful limited run on Broadway last summer. As the nominations announcement approaches, what could this mean for its chances in Best Play Revival?
“The Boys in the Band” centers on a group of gay men who gather in an NYC apartment for a friend’s birthday party. After the drinks are poured and the music is turned up the fault lines beneath their friendships are exposed, as well as the self-inflicted heartache that threatens their solidarity. When Mart Crowley’s play originally premiered Off-Broadway in 1968, it helped spark a revolution by putting gay men’s lives onstage unapologetically and without judgement in a world that was not yet willing to fully accept them.
“The Boys in the Band” centers on a group of gay men who gather in an NYC apartment for a friend’s birthday party. After the drinks are poured and the music is turned up the fault lines beneath their friendships are exposed, as well as the self-inflicted heartache that threatens their solidarity. When Mart Crowley’s play originally premiered Off-Broadway in 1968, it helped spark a revolution by putting gay men’s lives onstage unapologetically and without judgement in a world that was not yet willing to fully accept them.
- 4/29/2019
- by Jeffrey Kare
- Gold Derby
How much baggage does The Boys in the Band, Mart Crowley’s 50-year-old groundbreaker, tote onto its first-ever Broadway stage? How many memories of early Off Broadway notoriety, dismissive reappraisals and late-in-the-day charges of antiquated self-loathing?
Oh Mary, don’t ask.
Or actually, do. Because director Joe Mantello, a production team that includes Ryan Murphy and Scott Rudin, and a cast led by the full-of-surprises Jim Parsons as well as Zachary Quinto and Matt Bomer, have revived and revitalized a play that for all its imperfections throws a party at the Booth Theatre that shouldn’t be missed.
And not just as some musty, the-way-we-were study guide. After all the lacerating barbs – what shocks most today might be the depiction of horrendously casual racism – we’re reminded that Crowley wrote a fierce and funny drama about the damage done when society’s hate works its way into the souls of its outcasts.
Oh Mary, don’t ask.
Or actually, do. Because director Joe Mantello, a production team that includes Ryan Murphy and Scott Rudin, and a cast led by the full-of-surprises Jim Parsons as well as Zachary Quinto and Matt Bomer, have revived and revitalized a play that for all its imperfections throws a party at the Booth Theatre that shouldn’t be missed.
And not just as some musty, the-way-we-were study guide. After all the lacerating barbs – what shocks most today might be the depiction of horrendously casual racism – we’re reminded that Crowley wrote a fierce and funny drama about the damage done when society’s hate works its way into the souls of its outcasts.
- 6/1/2018
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Review by Mark Longden
The Boys In The Band screens Wednesday, Mar. 29 at 9:00pm at the .Zack (3224 Locust St., St. Louis, Mo 63103) as part of this year’s QFest St. Louis. Ticket information can be found Here
As well as new movies, St Louis’ wonderful Qfest (now in its tenth year) also shows classics of queer cinema that blazed a trail and inspire all sorts of different reactions today. “The Boys In The Band”, an off-Broadway play that was transplanted with the entirety of its cast to the screen, is one such. A review from a revival in 1999 said that, even at the time of its release, it had “the stain of Uncle Tomism”, and it’s been called a minstrel show. But it’s much more than that.
Despite occasionally wonderful direction from William Friedkin (who made “The French Connection” the next year) , its origins as a stage play are very evident,...
The Boys In The Band screens Wednesday, Mar. 29 at 9:00pm at the .Zack (3224 Locust St., St. Louis, Mo 63103) as part of this year’s QFest St. Louis. Ticket information can be found Here
As well as new movies, St Louis’ wonderful Qfest (now in its tenth year) also shows classics of queer cinema that blazed a trail and inspire all sorts of different reactions today. “The Boys In The Band”, an off-Broadway play that was transplanted with the entirety of its cast to the screen, is one such. A review from a revival in 1999 said that, even at the time of its release, it had “the stain of Uncle Tomism”, and it’s been called a minstrel show. But it’s much more than that.
Despite occasionally wonderful direction from William Friedkin (who made “The French Connection” the next year) , its origins as a stage play are very evident,...
- 3/27/2017
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
In 1973, William Friedkin directed The Exorcist and frightened a generation, creating a horror movie classic. Three years earlier, before The French Connection launched Friedkin onto the A-list, he directed The Boys in the Band, an adaptation of an off-Broadway play about a group of gay men at a birthday party. The Boys in the Band is at least as much a horror movie as The Exorcist. Instead of demonic possession, the terror comes from the characters’ palpable hatred for themselves and each other, thinly disguised as friendship. The villain is homosexuality itself and society’s reaction to it, which slowly turn these men into delusional, self-pitying, hateful monsters.
I’m really struggling to figure out what Friedkin and screenwriter (and the original playwright) Mart Crowley wanted audiences to feel about these characters. The only two emotions I can muster up are pity and disgust. Based on the play’s astonishing...
I’m really struggling to figure out what Friedkin and screenwriter (and the original playwright) Mart Crowley wanted audiences to feel about these characters. The only two emotions I can muster up are pity and disgust. Based on the play’s astonishing...
- 5/23/2014
- by Bryan Rucker
- SoundOnSight
I've already talked about intentional thrills in Tuesday's Best Movie Ever? subject Halloween, so to celebrate All Hallow's Eve, we're inspecting the flipside: nine unintentionally scary movie moments. I couldn't handle these as a kid, and I still can't handle them now. They're scrumdiddylumptiously traumatizing!
1. Willy Wonka's climactic freakout in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Plenty of Willy Wonka moments qualify as frightening -- the perilous ferry ride, Violet Beauregarde's blueberry explosion, the austere presence of Slugworth -- but angry Gene Wilder is a scary thing. His freakout at the chocolate factory's sole survivor Charlie has been turned into an ever-present internet meme, but I still can't shake the chills of his screamy "You Lose! Good Day, sir!" Trivia note: Did you know that Gene Wilder was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1968 for The Producers but lost to The Subject Was Roses' Jack Albertson, who...
1. Willy Wonka's climactic freakout in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Plenty of Willy Wonka moments qualify as frightening -- the perilous ferry ride, Violet Beauregarde's blueberry explosion, the austere presence of Slugworth -- but angry Gene Wilder is a scary thing. His freakout at the chocolate factory's sole survivor Charlie has been turned into an ever-present internet meme, but I still can't shake the chills of his screamy "You Lose! Good Day, sir!" Trivia note: Did you know that Gene Wilder was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1968 for The Producers but lost to The Subject Was Roses' Jack Albertson, who...
- 10/31/2012
- by virtel
- The Backlot
Time for an anomaly in the "Best Movies Ever?" canon: I'm not saying I completely adore the 1970 gay ensemble curio The Boys in the Band, but I am saying it's essential. It's also bizarre, provocative, embarrassing, really senseless, and sometimes totally funny. Since its release, the movie has been so discussed, ballyhooed, and reviled that you can never what quite tell what its official reputation is. It's a movie that's more often referenced than seen (at least nowadays, unless you caught the "making of" documentary that came out last year), and the thing is, you should really see it. Because I'm willing to bet there's a large percentage of gay dudes today who can't even imagine what being gay in the New York of the late '60s looked or sounded like. Even if this movie's pat, often self-loathing characters don't pierce the heart of that reality, it's nice to...
- 7/10/2012
- by virtel
- The Backlot
The Boys in the Band
Can I make a confession? I didn't want to watch or review Making the Boys, the new documentary about the landmark 1968 play and 1970 film The Boys in the Band that opens in limited release in March.
Yes, yes, I know how important the movie is in gay entertainment history (which is why I put it as number one on my list of the most important gay movies of all time, even as I also put it on another list of my least favorite gay movies).
But it's also probably the most discussed gay movie of all time. As Making the Boys points out, it was hailed upon its first staging, then condemned by gays in the post-Stonewall era, then "rediscovered" in the 1990s. At every point in modern gay history, it's been there in the background, cited as an example of post-Stonewall "truth," or as...
Can I make a confession? I didn't want to watch or review Making the Boys, the new documentary about the landmark 1968 play and 1970 film The Boys in the Band that opens in limited release in March.
Yes, yes, I know how important the movie is in gay entertainment history (which is why I put it as number one on my list of the most important gay movies of all time, even as I also put it on another list of my least favorite gay movies).
But it's also probably the most discussed gay movie of all time. As Making the Boys points out, it was hailed upon its first staging, then condemned by gays in the post-Stonewall era, then "rediscovered" in the 1990s. At every point in modern gay history, it's been there in the background, cited as an example of post-Stonewall "truth," or as...
- 2/22/2011
- by Brent Hartinger
- The Backlot
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