The Worst Film Ever

Powerful

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The Boys in the Band is an adaptation of a stage play by writer Mart Crowley. It was an intelligent but controversial drama of gay life in New York City with a group of thirty-something men who throw a birthday party for one of their friends.The film version is directed by William Friedkin, who would go on to win a Best Director Oscar the following year for the hard boiled thriller, The French Connection and later get further acclaim for his film The Exorcist.Michael (Kenneth Nelson) is Catholic, he drinks too much, acerbic but can also be witty as well as waspish is preparing the birthday party for his friend Harold. He is helped by Donald to prepare for the party. Micheal's old college friend, Alan rings him that he is in town and dropping by to see him. Alan is straight and at college, Micheal kept his gay identity latent and Alan is unaware that he is gay.When the party gets going we see the different personalities. Emory is a stereotypical queen, Hank is married but is about to get divorced as he now lives with Larry, a fashion photographer. Bernard is the most amiable of the lot, a black bookshop clerk.Once Alan drops in who is clearly uncomfortable with what he sees the drama steps up. He gets involved in a scuffle with Emory who ignores Micheal's instructions to tone it down. Alan has a rapport with Hank, who is outwardly the straightest, but then shocked to discover Hank is bisexual despite having kids.Micheal realises that Alan has actually come to see him as he might be having issues with his sexual identity and creates a party game. As the game progresses, certain truths are laid bare but things do not turn out as Micheal envisages.For a film that is nearly fifty years old, I was astonished to see how little the film has dated. Even the featured song, The Look of Love, fits well. Since 1970 there has been more liberalization of gay rights in the west, but still the drama feels very real, it is all about relationships and how people communicate with each other.When Micheal recalls the stories about when he was younger and went to parties 'I was so drunk last night' that he could not remember that he might have had gay encounters, when in fact he really knew what he was doing. I am sure some in the audience might agree with him albeit reluctantly.With Harold you see someone like Micheal who has religious issues, Harold being Jewish. Harold is also more preening, forever wanting to look young and popping various pills and he is the only one throughout the night who can respond in kind to Micheal if he so desires.The one thing that ages the film although it is touched upon in the film with mention of Hepatitis, is of course AIDS which emerged in the 1980s. AIDs has had a devastating impact on the mainly gay cast, many of them who died relatively young.This is a landmark film for queer cinema as it is an attempt to bring it into the mainstream and has a complex look at gay life.

Mart Crowley's landmark, groundbreaking Off-Broadway play is brought to the screen nearly 100% intact. The entire original stage cast is here, and the only thing missing is part of a monologue by Michael (Kenneth Nelson) at the beginning of the film that would have rendered the scene something of an anachronism in light of the Stonewall riots of 1969 (the play opened in 1968).The cut is a small one, however, and what Crowley and stage director Robert Moore gave us in 1968 is pretty much what Friedkin gives us here.I think by now most people know the bare bones of the plot: eight gay men gather for a birthday party at the Greenwich Village apartment of one of them. Before the party gets really under way, a ninth man shows up unexpectedly: Michael's old college roommate, now a lawyer and married with children, who arrives hoping to cry on Michael's shoulder about something, but the party makes him shut down.By the end, veneers are stripped away, revelations are made, tears are shed, and amidst the bitchiness and hostility a lot of laughs and true affection emerge. And the college roommate may be a closet case; the play chooses to leave this question open, and the film wisely follows suit.The performances are magnificent. This is one of those rare instances of a stage-to-film adaptation in which a single claustrophobic set is actually an asset. Trapped together in the apartment for the evening, drinking far too much, the men lower their guards and reveal the human beings underneath the carefully constructed veneers.Kenneth Nelson plays Michael as a slowly gathering storm; his hostility builds with every drink he tosses back, until the final explosion.Frederick Combs is Donald, Michael's closest friend and probably lover (though for some reason they deny this). Bernard (Reuben Greene), the only African-American in the cast, could easily have been a token, but he is a real person, not a symbol. And Cliff Gorman nearly steals the film as the unapologetic screaming queen, Emory.Hank (Laurence Luckinbill) and Larry (Keith Prentice), the only couple in the group, are in some ways the most well-adjusted, with one hitch: Larry wants total freedom, including the freedom to sleep around occasionally, while Hank, a *bisexual* finally facing the truth about himself, is comfortable about being gay but is the jealous type.Oddly, at the time the play opened, Larry's manifesto of total sexual freedom was something of a rallying cry for the burgeoning Gay Liberation movement. Today, in the aftermath of the AIDS pandemic, with many of us now old enough and wise enough to appreciate the benefits of monogamy, it is Larry who appears the most anachronistic.The birthday boy is Harold (Leonard Frey), a self-described "thirty-two-year-old, ugly, pockmarked Jew fairy;" he arrives late and stoned, and he and Michael begin the verbal sparring that seems to define their friendship and propels the second half of the film.Also on hand is Cowboy Tex (Robert La Tourneaux), a rather dim-witted hustler Emory has purchased for the night as a birthday present for Harold. La Tourneaux provides a good deal of the play's rich comedy while at the same time exhibiting a sweetness underneath the surface of the cheap hustler.And then there is Alan (Peter White), in Harold's words "the famous college chum," who may be gay and in the closet. Certainly Michael thinks so. But if he is, by the end of the play he seems to have decided to stay there.It is fashionable among gay film buffs today to sniff at this film as an example of "how things used to be," usually pointing out that "we are not like that anymore." But I don't think that's true. With the "ex-gay" movement preying on young gay people like a nest of vipers, teaching them to loathe themselves, I wouldn't be so complacent about the progress we've made. At any rate, this is an amazing accomplishment and should be required viewing for every young gay kid out there. And though it is about men, Lesbians should be able to relate to some of it too.One sad footnote: Kenneth Nelson (Michael), Frederick Combs (Donald), Leonard Frey (Harold), and Robert La Tourneaux (Tex) all eventually died of AIDS.

What William Friedkin breaks down in 1970's grimly introspective independent chamber opus is a pre-liberation premise of violence joined with massive gentleness, efficiently encapsulated by ex-alcoholic Roman Catholic homosexual Michael when he offers, "You show me a happy homosexual, and I'll show you a gay corpse." The "boys" are greatly alert to their apprehensions, confronting them whenever they look at their reflections. And it's through reflections that Friedkin finds the sad underbelly of Crowley's script. Since homosexuality and hardcore profanity hadn't been so frankly handled in a mainstream movie yet, Friedkin's approach seems more effective, endeavoring to make his footprint without leaving the gum on the bottom of his shoe. He presents customariness in a cockeyed world where difficulty's inescapable.During the opening montage, except for Emory's hilarious flamboyance, the boys all appear "normal" enough. Then the wicked lure begins with eye contact. Michael's friend Donald tells him he was brought up to be a failure, so failure's all he feels accustomed to. Donald's oblique eye contact with Michael tells him, and us, that's why they're together. The looks are what tell the truth. Soon, Michael mourns being gay sans asserting it point-blank. He looks at a picture of himself while saying, "Waste, waste, waste." Indeed the dialogue elucidates the character, but by framing Michael within his own portrait, an ageless mirror, an endless remembrance of the past, Friedkin exposes a fading soul. Even former college roommate Alan, who Michael says wouldn't even betray any emotion in a plane crash, suggests compassion, and doubt in Friedkin's visualization. Alan loses control on the phone with Michael, desperate to visit and talk. After Alan hangs up, he grips his hands together, showing his wedding ring. By holding on this image one or two thumps, Friedkin visually places suspicion in our minds about "straight" Alan's intention for visiting his pal.Plays have no overpowering images. We watch the cast. In films, the camera thoroughly dictates what's seen. When Friedkin animates the camera, involves various angles, the scene feels unspoiled. For instance, near the beginning of the film, Michael, arms heaped with packages, struggles to get inside where the phone's ringing. He can't get the key in, and the ringing becomes a relentless nuisance. Rapid bumpy close-up movements on the keys in his hand, his face and the lock actually develop tension.When an antagonistic, intoxicated Michael instigates the "truth game," his apartment grows exceedingly oppressive. Everyone's humid, inebriated, clammy. Track lights are turned up, which abruptly give the uneasy feeling of an interrogation. Unlit ceilings, rained-on windows further squeeze the action. There's a great corkscrew energy, the breakthrough of startling insight. And, as time passes, there's a particular tranquility. We're still completely walled off in our own lunacy, but over time, it becomes normal. We're comfortable in the shadows from which Friedkin shoots whilst watching suspicion rise concerning Alan's sexuality, closet doors creaking to and fro, divorced teacher Hank and fashion photographer Larry's clashing on monogamy, and the crevices expanding in Harold and Michael's love-hate rapport.That Friedkin uses close-ups throughout the game when the guys call the one person they've ever loved intensifies accent on the caller's defenselessness. For instance, when Emory reaches his unrequited love recipient, we suffer his bittersweet elation when he says, "Del, is this really you?" And his sorrow, acknowledging, "You wouldn't remember me. I'm just a friend. A falling-down drunk friend." As Friedkin presses in for a close-up supported by Arthur Ornitz's skillfully murky cinematography, he separates the caller in a congested room, increasing the spectacle of absolute isolation.It's a parlor murder mystery in a sense. By divulging their deepest skeletons and doubts, the game's like the systematic murder of those who know too much, but in a psychosomatic sense, cruelly exposing their hearts in close-up, revealing a softness within. That Friedkin frames an unforgettable peak moment between Michael and Harold that's both stingingly brutal and honestly tender with Harold first approaching Michael, then isolating the two in frame adds to their unspoken yet implicit closeness.While the film itself acts as a mirror for exploring oneself, the mirrors in the film perform natural functions. When Michael scuffles for his keys and busts through the door, he sprints past the camera, which pans him inside. He rushes around the corner out of sight to answer the phone, yet we see him reproduced in the living room mirror. We observe it simply owing to his unexpected likeness in it. Friedkin frames the shot with Michael vanishing off one side of the screen and re-emerging in the reflection on the other side, at once opens the film but also foreshadows the cabin fever.Equally, when Alan calls Michael the second time, it's from a phone booth, the city lights mirrored in the glass surrounding him. But not his reflection. And when he hangs up, we cut outside the booth to incorporate a flashing yield light in the fore. We follow him until he crosses before cars' headlights. When Harold opens Michael's gift, we're in tight on Harold. The hostility between the two temporarily scatters. Friedkin frames them in independent close-ups, divulging their affection, easing the discontent. Temporarily. The friction fosters again. No one knows when it will detonate or who'll be hurt.The wry humor was hatched from a dejected sense of self, an emotional climate created by what the times told these characters about themselves. Kenneth Nelson, who plays Michael, and Leonard Frey, who plays Harold, characterize this in stark opposition. The cast as a whole matches each other evenly and strongly, yet most memorable, I dare say, Cliff Gorman's Emory. They were told they would keep gay people in a sort of public indigence, in the closet, but all society needed was for it to show them, to familiarize them, and thus integrate them. And it inched the closet door further open for gay characters in media and in all walks of life in our culture.

Leonard Frey, who played Harold both in the celebrated off-Broadway production of BOYS IN THE BAND and in the film, told Johnny Carson a funny anecdote about his unforgettable entrance line during a particular performance of the play.Michael has just flung the door open and, finding birthday boy Harold standing there giggling, scolds, "You're late. You're stoned and you're late." Harold brushes by him and delivers his famous line as he saunters directly downstage to the apron: "What I am, Michael, is a 32-year-old, ugly, pock-marked, Jew fairy, and if it takes me a little while to pull myself together, and if I smoke a little grass before I get up the nerve to show my face to the world, it's nobody's goddamned business but my own." He is then supposed to do a little Barbara Stanwyck pivot and sweetly ask: "And how are you this evening?" But before he can turn, a loud amen chorus comes out of the orchestra: "TELL IT LIKE IT IS, MARY!" Well, let there be general rejoicing throughout the land: BOYS IN THE BAND is still telling it like it is, and now in a stunningly beautiful DVD release. William Friedkin's landmark film is both brilliant film-making and a penetrating, bitingly funny examination of some of the more dysfunctional ways gay men cope with their pain. Mart Crowley, who adapted the screenplay from his play, penned more memorable lines than any three Bette Davis films. Director Friedkin gives Michael's tony, late-sixties Manhattan apartment a sense of place and mood that is just uncanny, and the ensemble acting is pitch-perfect. By the time LOOK OF LOVE plays, it's movie magic.I remember seeing BOYS IN THE BAND as a college freshman in Oklahoma City during its initial release. I was not a little horrified by what I saw and prayed my generation would avoid this kind of self-annihilating behavior. And we did change some things—laws, social structures, attitudes. But that said, in the thirty-five years that have passed between the making of BOYS IN THE BAND and Ang Lee's BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, emotional issues around gay sexuality have changed very little because the childhoods of most gay men changed only just a little. Then and now, gay boys early on pick up on dear old dad's apoplectic revulsion to their difference, and his subsequent withdrawal, however subtle, is deeply lacerating. Often it's not at all subtle. (Deep-closeted Alan's presence roils the party because he embodies such rejection.) For the most part, they still deal with the same emotional injuries as Michael from BOYS IN THE BAND or Ennis Del Mar from BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. Anyone who says otherwise is either the happy exception that probes the rule or, more likely, someone hiding from his issues.I could easily assemble the cast from my present circle of friends and acquaintances, including one whose rabbit-like frequency of couplings would make playboy Larry seem rather chaste by comparison (though, to be fair, Larry didn't have the advantage of having with him at all times a notebook PC with a browser open to men4sexnow dot com). My upper lip involuntarily curls with contempt at the self-deception of gay men who insist that we've come so far as to make BOYS IN THE BAND a tired irrelevancy. And, if written now, Crowley's witches brew would require just that sort of character--a sniffy, intellectually dishonest, college-educated militant who marches to a brittle little anthem inside his head and trowels PC banalities over his conflicts and longstanding hurts.BOYS IN THE BAND is still as deeply relevant as it is funny and entertaining. We should take notice.