‘The Boys in the Band’: A Successful Remake of a Timeless Gay Classic

Picture ‘60s soul duo Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Coming” blasting on a record player in a New York City high rise apartment. The record player rests on a side table next to an olive velvet chaise longue and a zebra skin throw rug, while a rotary dial telephone sits on a bright orange desk opposite an upright piano. Homoerotic paintings line the walls. The men are dressed in brightly colored sweaters, ascots at their necks. The 2020 film “The Boys in the Band” transports viewers back in time to 1968. The carefully-crafted sets and costumes conjure a wistful nostalgia for the lost era. In “The Boys in the Band,” seven gay friends throw a boozy birthday party, where a party game reveals the deep anxieties and hardships they have faced on account of their sexualities.

“The Boys in the Band” was originally a play by Mart Crowley that premiered off-Broadway in 1968, just one year before the Stonewall Riots. The play was one of the first sympathetic depictions of gay men in a time when homosexuality was largely rejected as taboo. The show was then brought back on Broadway in 2018 for its 50th anniversary, and the production won the 2019 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.

The same Tony Award-winning cast is also featured in this 2020 film adaptation. In real life, all nine cast members are openly gay men, which is a refreshing departure from the precedent in gay cinema of casting straight actors in gay roles. Perhaps the three most highly regarded gay movies, “Brokeback Mountain,” “Moonlight,” and “Call Me by Your Name,” all feature straight actors. This casting choice is a testament to the progressiveness of the production team and to the great strides that have been made for the LGBTQ+ community since the inception of the story in the sixties.Yet despite the progress made by the gay rights movement in the last 50 years, the tragic stories told in “The Boys in the Band” remain relevant today.

Throughout the movie, the main character Michael (Jim Parsons) refers to the “icks.” “Icks” is the phrase Michael coins to describe the day-to-day struggle of being gay. “Icks. Anxiety. Guilt. From that split second when your eyes pop open.” In many ways, “The Boys in the Band” is about the universality of the “ick” feeling among gay men, as each gay character lives with the everyday “icks” on account of his sexuality. Michael, who was raised Catholic, perceives himself as a sinner; Harold (Zachary Quinto) struggles with growing older in the superficial gay community; Emory (Robin de Jesús) struggles with being femme in the cutthroat hierarchy of gay culture; Hank’s (Tuc Watkins) coming out forces him to leave his wife and two daughters behind; even Donald, (Matt Bomer) who seems the most put together, connects his sexuality with family trauma. In an interview about the film, Matt Bomer, who plays Donald, said of the characters in the story, “They’re not clichés.” The characters in the movie are well-drawn and feel complete, as if they were real people. In fact, Mart Crowley openly admits that he based the characters off of people he knew. The depth of the characters and their raw humanity make the characters relatable, thus making “The Boys in the Band” a success.

Unfortunately, there is one downside to the movie. As with any drawing room play that has been adapted for the screen, the viewer is acutely aware that “The Boys and the Band” was once a play. Although the story remains relevant and the actors do a brilliant job, the movie at times feels corny, simply because the lines were intended for the stage instead of the screen. However, this awkwardness is a small price to pay for the message and drama of the story.

At the end of the movie, Michael laments, “Show me a happy homosexual and I’ll show you a gay corpse. If we [the gay community] could just not hate ourselves so much.” “The Boys in the Band” focuses more on the internalized unhappiness of the gay man than on the external prejudice that was rampant in the Sixties. As a result, the core themes of the movie remain true today. Today, being gay is still an “icky” experience for many gay men on an individual level — an experience that many still internalize, despite the social progress that has been made.

“The Boys in the Band” is a must see.