The Boys in the Band (1970) on Netflix
Michael throws a party for Harold's thirty-second birthday at his Manhattan apartment. His former roommate Alan, a married straight man, calls wanting to visit, unaware that Michael is gay.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.6/106,583 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Michael, an actor who lands work only now and then, prepares his Manhattan apartment for a party marking Harold's thirty-second birthday. Donald arrives early, his psychotherapy session cancelled, and helps him get ready. The other guests arrive: Emory, an interior designer; Bernard, a bookstore clerk; and Hank, a schoolteacher in the middle of a divorce, with Larry, a fashion photographer, the two of them at odds over monogamy. Emory has brought a gift for Harold: an evening with Cowboy, a young hustler. Michael, who has never told Alan that he is gay, asks the others to be discreet because his former roommate is coming, a straight conservative he calls uptight. Alan telephones to say he will not come after all, then appears at the door.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Boys in the Band (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Crowley, who insisted on being involved as a writer and producer and on having creative control, was paid $250,000 plus a percentage of the profits for the film rights, and on top of that received a fee for writing the script.
- Friedkin shot a scene, offstage in the play, in which Hank and Larry kiss passionately; the actors were reluctant to perform it but eventually did, and he then cut it during editing as over-sensationalistic, a decision he later admitted regretting.
- Gordon Stulberg admitted the film was a financial failure, saying it did well in the big cities but the heartland of America simply would not accept a film about homosexuality, even though it had no outright sex.
- Michael's apartment was inspired by the real Upper East Side apartment of actress Tammy Grimes, a personal friend of Mart Crowley; most of the patio scenes were filmed at her home and the interiors were shot on a recreated sound stage set.
- Crowley and his friend and colleague, the writer Dominick Dunne, set up the film version of the play with the newly formed Cinema Center Films, owned by CBS Television; Dunne was the inspiration for the character of Alan McCarthy.
- Friedkin fired the cinematographer Adam Holender one week into the shoot of The Boys in the Band, replacing him with Arthur J. Ornitz.
