Mart Crowley and 'The Boys'

The first thing one notices about Mart Crowley, the man who wrote the very funny and very sad play about homosexuality called The Boys in the Band, is his uncanny resemblance in appearance and manner to Woody Allen. Like Allen, Crowley is small, boyish (age: 34), and balding. His speech comes fast and sharp. He cocks his head slightly after he has told a joke, in anticipation of the listener's laugh. And, like Allen, Crowley wears glasses. However, the glasses are not horn-rimmed, but wire-rimmed, like Peter Fonda's.

Two weeks ago today, Crowley spent the afternoon in Boston to talk about the film version of Boys, which he both adapted for the screen and produced. It was a week before the film was to have its world premiere in New York and Crowley gave the impression that he was running a little scared. As we walked with the film's press agent into a large Cadillac limousine waiting outside the MGM Screening Room in downtown Boston, he was silent. It wasn't until we were seated in the living room of his enormous Ritz-Carlton suite and room service had provided a supply of drinks that he opened up.

Crowley took off the jacket of his expensive-looking, continental three piece suit and leaned back on the couch. He talked about the great increase in overtly-homosexual theatre in New York since Boys opened off Broadway (where it is still running) in 1968. "These plays come along," he said, "and homosexuals rush and descend on them-just like taste-makers anywhere else. But that audience runs out, and after two weeks these shows have to be playing to Mr. and Mrs. America.

"Of course, anyone can come along and write another play about homosexuality-as long as it's good. God, how many things have been written about the Kennedy assassination? You just have to make sure your own point of view comes through. Look, maybe Genet writes plays about nothing else but homosexuality-but he's good and no one says, hey, he's writing about that again."

Crowley's next play, opening next fall, is called Remote Asylum. He described it as being about "escapism-drugs, booze, sex, a passport or plane ticket that lets you think you can run away from yourself." The five characters include two heterosexual couples and Michael, a central (and homosexual) character of Boys. Like his first play, Asylum will be in the tradition of the "well-made" American play. But his third play, Crowley said, is "moving further along." All the characters are straight and the structure of the work is influenced by Pirandello, whom he admires greatly.

As for the conception of Boys, Crowley said, "I loved Virginia Woolf and it influenced me a lot-but the real inspiration was the Salinger story. 'Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut.' And movies like All About Eve [Mankiewicz's melodrama about Hollywood stardom] and Hitchcock's Rope, which gave me the idea of using confined quarters as a dramatic device."

Crowley likes the movies and would like eventually to write directly for the screen, directing his own screen play. He feels he is ready to do so now that he has gotten his feet wet producing the filmed Boys.

"It's great, absolutely fabulous, what's happening in the movies," he said. "The day of the Hollywood-made-and-controlled film is over. The day of the multi-million dollar monolith like Hello. Dolly is over. The only reason I'd make a movie in Hollywood is to make a picture about Hollywood, as it were- shot on location." He leaned over and laughed raucously, his eyes glowing mischievously at the prospect. "Seen All About Eve a lot?" he asked.

"The movies this year have been incredible," he went on. "I liked them all: Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, They Shoot Horses, Z..... All these great movies in one year! And productivity! Antonioni at least did something, whether for better or worse..." He caught my eye and smiled before the kill. "... And there was one a week from Godard." He started to smile broadly. "....And a Truffaut or two..." He leaned over and laughed. "Make that: a Truffaut or three..." Hysterical laughter. He started another drink.

"A lot of Hollywood studios offered me a lot of money for Boys, " Crowley said, but he took a smaller offer from Cinema Center, so that he could retain artistic control and the original off-Broadway cast, all unknowns. "One studio," he explained, "wanted to use old stars in 'these great little cameo parts' to rev up their careers. Paramount kept talking about a title song-they wanted to sell the picture with a hit record!

"I had some of my own ideas for publicizing the film, but I got vetoed. There was this Farlcy Granger picture in the forties which had the advertising slogan 'See it with someone you love.' I wanted the ads for Boys to say, 'See it with someone you suspect.'" More laughter.

We talked about The Damned, perhaps the only other major film this year to have a strong homosexual point of view. Crowley said he thought that film was "fabulous and terrible... Jack Lemmon calls it The Boys in the Bund. "

HE DOES not want to leave the theatre entirely for the movies, however, as he feels strongly attached to "the craft of writing for the stage." He admires many playwrights who are working now. "Arthur Miller still writes a hell of a play," he said. " The Price was the most literate, absorbing evening I had had in the theatre for a long time. And Williams, of course, is the master-if he still has a gasp in him. Albee-everyone's waiting for him to do something. And Terrence McNally and Israel Horovitz are very talented too. So is Ron Cowen; he has already written Summertree and he's only 22."

Crowley, like the character of Michael in Boys, was brought up in a small town in Mississippi, where he saw many movies but no plays until he left at age 17. "To quote myself," he said, "'There was no Shubert Theatre in Hot Coffee, Msisissippi." (The line belongs to Michael in Boys. )

He left home to go to Georgetown University in Washington (as had Michael in the film), but "only stayed about five minutes," before going on to Catholic University Drama School, which has produced such theatre people as Jon Voight, Walter and Jean Kerr, and Robert Moore, who made his New York directorial debut with Boys. (William Friedkin directed the film.)

"I got to Georgetown," explained Crowley, "took one look at the joint, and heard all those broad a's... " He didn't finish the sentence, but Icancd towards me and started to laugh: "It was like Wellesley in drag..."

He ended up in Hollywood, where for eight years he was Natalic Wood's secretary and close friend. She encouraged him to write, but most of his projects-including a TV situation comedy pilot starring Bette Davis as an interior decorator-were kicked around. Eventually he came to New York and wrote Boys. He had a lot of trouble getting it produced, but once he succeeded, the play took off. It has been produced successfully all over the world.

"The only place it flopped," Crowley said, "was Paris. But when I heard they translated the line 'Who do youhave to fuck to get a drink around here?" as Who do you have to ravish to get a drink around here?"-then I knew there was trouble in River City." He laughed. "I hear the theatre there had fur walls..."

Boys has now become a full-time activity, and Crowlcy has had little time for much else. He doesn't read many books, because. "As Gore Vidal said. 'No one in our generation has read a book since 1945." But he does keep up with films and old American movies.

"Garbo knew what she was doing when she painted that line above her eyelid," he said. "And Mac West! I saw her at a party a while ago. She came up to me and said. 'Mr. Crowley,"-and here he imitated Miss West-"'Honey-I wrote your play forty years ago. It was called Drag and it closed after one performance in Pat terson. New Jersey. '"

"I TRY to keep up with the world in which we live," said Crowley, "but it's pretty hard sometimes. You get involved with a project and you close in. You can't even have a personal relationship-get laid or-have sex. My day from morning to night has been in the cutting room. That Rap Brown thing comes through and we're standing there talking about the titles."

"Have you heard about the New York bombings?" I asked.

"Can't you see it?" he said, He motioned a marquee with his drink-free hand: " The House on Eleventh Street, starring Signe Hasso."

He talked a little about the criticism Boys in the Band had gotten from homosexuals. "The Mattachine society hates it," he said. "But people pick up on the Michael character more than anything." (Michael is the most self-hating and destructive of the "boys.")

"Some of the other characters are well adjusted. Hank has made a very serious commitment in leaving his wife for Larry. And Harold [the freaky birthday boy] is very well adjusted to his homosexuality: he knows his neuroses and lives with them. I'm not saying that Harold's way is the healthiest way of life, but at least he's not in the dark about himself. Michael is a conflicted character. He doesn't know what he wants, and still hangs on to vestiges of his childhood-like the church and its teaching that homosexuality is a sin."

The big mystery in Boys. of course, is the character of Alan. Michael's straight friend from Georgetown days, who shows up unexpectedly at the birthday party Michael is throwing for his homosexual friends. Michael hopes that Alan is actually a "closet queer," so that his own guilt at being a homosexual will not be as strong.

The movie ends with Alan's sexual personality still unrevealed.

"I don't really know about Alan," said Crowley. "Maybe he is a homosexual, maybe he isn't. I think everybody has drunk at that fountain at one time or another. Or at least thought about it. Maybe Alan came to the party because he wanted to-maybe not. If he had gotten down and sucked a cock at the end of the movie, you would just have yawns... You can't top mystery, can you?" Crowley nearly doubled over with laughter, and put his last drink down on the coffee table.

The press agent came in and reminded Crowley that he had a plane to catch. The promotional tour was brief-just Boston, New York, and Los Angeles, where he would stay with Natalie Wood. "I'm not going to Dallas." said Crowley and giggled.

"God, Kael [the New Yorker critic], Morgenstern [ Newsweek ] and Hollis Alpert [ Saturday Review ] were all in one room in New York watching the picture last night. I nearly had a heart attack..." He started to lean over, his eyes bright and watery: "Is that a banana split or isn't it?" He paused and looked down at his feet, then looked up and said, in imitation of the manner of Busby Berkeley heroes: "Man, that's box office!"

"Are you nervous about the film's critical reception?" I asked.

"You see me shaking don't you?" he said and looked around the room in semi-mock paranoia. "Uh... I hope I'm not acting out of pro por -tion..."-his voice rose-"I hope I'm not overreacting!"

I told him that I thought there was little chance Boys in the Band would be a total flop. "I guess that's what Otto Preminger said after Hurry, Sundown, " he answered quickly. "Let's put it this way: If it's a hit, I'll get another job. And if it's a dog, I won't even be able to get Zanuck's maid on the phone." He started to laugh again, catching my eyes as he did so. Crowley and I were both still laughing-tipsily, loudly-when the press agent came to take him away to the airport.