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October 5, 2020
The Boys in the Band: once banned in Australia, this pre-gay liberation story is now a fond, funny Netflix remake
The Boys in the Band, a remake of a 1970 film based on a 1968 play, has arrived on Netflix with little fanfare
The film tells the story of Michael, a Herm茅s scarf-loving, Manhattan-dwelling gay man who is hosting a birthday party for a friend. Intended as a small event for seven gay men, a straight former college buddy of Michael鈥檚 also arrives unexpectedly. The party, to put it mildly, does not go well.
The guest of honour is Harold, a former figure skater who, in his spectacular party entrance, describes himself as 鈥渁 32-year-old, ugly, pockmarked, Jew, fairy.鈥� That description sums up much of the film鈥檚 mood.
First performed a year before the New York , when LGBT people fought against police brutality, igniting a revolution, this is a pre-gay liberation story in which homosexual men swap barbed insults, indulge in a cruel party game and seem to be drowning in a sea of self-loathing.
The , written by Mart Crowley, was regarded as a breakthrough in the telling of gay stories. It was revived on Broadway in 2018 and the cast of that production star in the Netflix film.
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But the 1970 film was , judged 鈥渋ndecent and obscene鈥� by the Film Classification Board. It wasn鈥檛 until 1972, with the introduction of the 鈥淩鈥� rating system that Australians could watch the movie.
The differing responses to versions of Crowley鈥檚 drama, 50 years apart, offer an intriguing case study in how historical context alters the way we understand a story.
Outdated and harmful?
In 1970, a film almost entirely about homosexual people was rare. As a result, The Boys in the Band was unlikely to be assessed purely on its merits as cinematic art or entertainment. Instead, it was read by censors as a threat to Australia鈥檚 inviolable heterosexuality.
When it finally screened here, in 1972, the gay liberation movement had burst into life and the response to the film from gay activists was wary.
Watching the party goers decry each other as 鈥渇aggots,鈥� (one character declares, 鈥淪how me a happy homosexual and I鈥檒l show you a gay corpse鈥�), deemed the film outdated, harmful and cruel.
as a memory of a time happily left in the past, before gay liberation arrived with its messages of pride and freedom beyond the closet. But if this story was labelled a tired, outdated memory almost 50 years ago, what can a remake offer today?
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A memory of a memory
As it turns out, plenty. Freed of much of the burden of representation it carried in 1970, The Boys in the Band now arrives as a funny, tense and heartbreaking memory of a memory.
The film is a fond, nostalgic replica of its predecessor. Some scenes are almost shot-for-shot copies. Others act more like the workings of memory, in that they evoke a sense of the earlier film without quite managing to create a direct duplicate.
The performances similarly call to mind the original cast. At times, they sand the edges of some of the harsher earlier stereotypes, particularly Robin de Jesus, whose portrayal of the proudly 鈥渘elly鈥� (or effeminate) Emory feels more real than the original one did.
Others add some new complexity or depth, including Andrew Rannells as Larry, who must negotiate his desire for free love with a partner looking for monogamous romance.
This distancing through layers of memory switches the central question of the story from 鈥淚s this who we are?鈥� to 鈥淚s this who we used to be?鈥�. Which isn鈥檛 to say present-day gay men won鈥檛 see something of themselves in the film.
The jokes, the relationships and the inner workings of gay friendship circles at times still ring true. But the stakes are lowered by the passing of time and the nostalgic haze.
Gay artists in the Hollywood mainstream
With an openly gay cast (many of them TV stars), a gay director and gay producers, the new film shows how gay artists, no longer on the fringes but working within mainstream Hollywood, have reclaimed and repositioned this story.
In so doing, they reveal an element of gay culture that simply didn鈥檛 exist in 1970. Gay men鈥檚 mainstream cultural memory as displayed in the original film revolves around the popular divas of the day (Judy Garland, Bette Davis and Marlene Dietrich are all quoted or imitated by the cast).
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Today, that cultural memory also incorporates stories about gay people, written by gay people, including The Boys in the Band itself.
If the first film was Hollywood鈥檚 earliest attempt at revealing gay lives, the remake wraps its predecessor in layers of historical meaning.
Netflix鈥檚 film doesn鈥檛 carry the burden of being a landmark. Instead, it recalls the earlier film鈥檚 breakthrough as something worth remembering.
, Research associate,
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