Why did Boys In The Band succeed when so many others (other gay movies that were about "gay") fail?

It wasn’t successful. That is gay men rewriting history yet again.

It cost about $6 million to make and only earned $3.5 million, and that includes USA and Canada rental numbers.

It is looked at as an achievement now, but it was not when it came out.

By succeed I, meant WORK...not whether it was a financial success or not.

Sorry, should have been clearer.

I have to ask what “work” means?

I had a video store order it for me sometime in the 1980s. I rented it from them. A while later, I found it in their bargain bin for sale. I’ll bet I was the only person to ever rent it from them.

It was good. "Long Time Companion" was better.....

[quote]Even after 50 years it's really THE BEST...nothing's come close.

HUH?

"Boys in the Band" hit at just the right moment in the zeitgeist to become a "thing", and really even now is almost a cult, or fetish. What it ISN'T is a good play! It's overheated minstrelsy at its most flaming and a dreary evening, no matter how you gay it up!

So many others? In the 1960s and 70s? Huh?

[quote] So many others? In the 1960s and 70s? Huh?

Huh? Who said 60s and 70s?

I have to watch it at least once a year. My mom had gay male friends in the 70s who were just like them.

It's not 'minstrel'; they were asserting themselves in a society that wanted to erase them.

It was a milestone in gay cinema, openly gay characters who were reasonably well adjusted (no one committed suicide).

Next up would be: "Ode To Billy Joe"; "That Certain Summer" and others.

I liked Longtime Companion better. Parting Glances was better too.

I just saw SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE and I liked it. I love BOYS IN THE BAND and LONGTIME COMPANION too. They're all different. BOYS is similar to Some of My Best Friends Are.

R9. I did, too, but to be fair they are movies of different moments in gay history and culture. TBITB is about that moment when we still were dominated by self-loathing (thanks to decades, centuries of oppression from without). The other seem(Ed) more urgent because AIDS was the worst nightmare of gay life, come home, and we could not afford to indulge in the self-pity of Crowley's birthday party.

But before there was 'Boys' there was: "The Gay Deceivers" (1969)

Maybe because it was based on a play?

It still holds up better than that awful broken hearts club movie. with a blond Zach braff as a skinny young twink, Dean Cain as a closeted movie star, Nia Long and Mary McCormack as lesbians, and Billy Porter!

Written and directed by Greg berlanti of arrow fame

Maybe because it was based on a play?

It still holds up better than that awful broken hearts club movie. with a blond Zach braff as a skinny young twink, Dean Cain as a closeted movie star, Nia Long and Mary McCormack as lesbians, and Billy Porter!

Written and directed by Greg berlanti of arrow fame

Maybe because it was based on a play?

It still holds up better than that awful broken hearts club movie. with a blond Zach braff as a skinny young twink, Dean Cain as a closeted movie star, Nia Long and Mary McCormack as lesbians, and Billy Porter!

Written and directed by Greg berlanti of arrow fame

Boys In The Band is one of my all-time favorite films, not just gay films. The dialogue is the most quotable this side of All About Eve and Casablanca.

Wasn’t Midnight Cowboy hugely successful? And Dog Day Afternoon?

Looking forward to the remake Coming out this year.

Give us a fave quote r16

Why are everyone walking around as if their wrists are broken? 8p

BITB is so sad. I couldn’t watch it more than once.

I think it succeeded artistically because the play was adapted well for the film, and the entire original cast was retained. The men playing that group of friends really were a group of friends who had spent a lot of time together -And it showed. They had time to explore the characters and hone them in front of an audience, so there was more depth than most films can muster in a four-week rehearsal period.

r16 = Connie Casserole

The more obscure and optimistic Funeral Parade of Roses, same era and milieu is much looser and more fun. Oedipus Rex set in the gay underground of 1969 Tokyo. Without the self-flagellation of the BITB.

R24: Exactly. It is not set in the US. This is, and specifically New York City. That plays a part in it. Michael is a transplanted southerner, raised Catholic, and a pill addict still taking his internalized homophobia out on everyone around him. Harold is a native New Yorker, Jewish, and a stoner who can accept being gay.

While BITB is the first film of its kind, that doesn't mean it "succeeded." Its characters played into the stereotypes of maladjusted and self-loathing homosexuals, an image of gayness that was all pervasive. So in that sense the movie was a colossal fail, with gay men seen as what the American Psychiatric Association categorized them to be: mentally disordered. The movie (and play) played into gay stereotypes. It succeeded as the first of its kind, but for all the wrong reasons.

[quote]So in that sense the movie was a colossal fail

Oh, FFS. "Fail" was still just a verb then. Try "failure," nincompoop.

Part of the reason it was a success is because of the fact that William Friedkin didn’t need the feel the need to “open it up“ by making interior shots into exterior ones for no good reason. Yet it still feels very much like a movie.

And unlike [italic]Cruising[/italic], the gay characters here are characters, not plot devices that exist solely to serve Al Pacino.

It succeeded in the sense of having a commercial pedigree---Friedkin was a straight, up and coming director, the studio was a shortlived CBS spinoff that made a number of major films, the distributor was second string but not just an art house operation). The film mostly played urban art house theaters, but even that was a novelty. It was based on a hit play and was one of a number of plays/movies that pioneered the group therapy/people hanging-out tableau that remained popular for a long time (think Big Chill in the 80s or Return of the Secaucus Seven, it's superior predecessor). There were other contemporaneous films with some gay backstory (Dog Day Afternoon), but obviously gay films like Midnight Cowboy still had to submerge the gay stuff even with a gay director. Sunday Bloody Sunday had bigger stars and less self-loathing but was bi rather than gay, which set a pattern for other "cross-over" films before the HIV era.Still, it was the kind of film that was more possible after BitB and one that helped make BitB seem dated.

"Boys in the Band" became almost instantly old fashioned which I guess is a sign of success, although much of the subculture is still around. I recently read the memoir of a Black gay blogger ("I Can't Date Jesus by Michael Arceneaux) and his tiresome quoting of Beyonce reminded me, instantly, of the lines in BitB: What's more boring than a queen doing a Judy Garland imitation? A queen doing a Bette Davis imitation". Although in this author's case, it's a queen doing a Beyonce imitation. That kindof stuff never gets old.

Oh, dear R27--I didn't know we were supposed to speak the way they spoke when BITB came out. Luckily, "cunt" was around then, R27, you cunt.

Quotes from BITB

R27 still wears flared pants and velour turtlenecks, a la 1969.

It was well written, good diversity of characters representing different elements of gay men and groundbreaking for its time. I think it still holds up. Amazing to me that such a life existed in the late 60s - long before gay liberation. A reminder what we’ve always shared.

R31 Thanks for posting. I had forgotten some of those great lines.

The Judy Garland references were timely to the point of being eerie because of her death.

Weren't most of the gay guys in BITB played by straight actors anyway?

Sounds like you've got a lot of catching up to do, R36.

Probably R37, I've only seen clips of the film and I know the queeniest and most stereotypical character is of course played by a straight actor.

Well, here's my ten cents worth.

Firstly, it was a very good script and as someone said, it was a long running play so it was developed and developed...and it combined gay wit with gay pathos. Something that I don't think has been achieved very often since.

It was also a classy production - excellent director.

They kept the cast from the original play - Hollywood wanted to re-cast it but the writer yet again went for quality over a big paycheck. A labor of love.

And the characters were multidimensional.

Most "gay" movies since, seem to be pretty tacky, cheaply made, poorly acted.

I was 14 when I first saw Boys in the Band on a double bill with Something for Everyone, roughly a decade after both films were first released. Even then I was taken aback by how much BitB reinforced the gay stereotype (bon mots against a backdrop of misery). Something for Everyone, even with its darkest comedy, left me feeling much more optimistic about what the future held for gay men.

Ha R31!

Those quotes easily track to about two-thirds of the thread topics on Datalounge.

Well there is truth in the gay stereotype. While it would have been nice to have a “role model” movie, those tend to be less than insightful. Think Philadelphia’s saintly gay man with perfect family and lover vs BITB reality. I think it does reveal real issues gay men face - and therefore talks to me as much in 2019 as 1969.

I recently watched A Very Natural Thing, a low-budget indie from 1974; I was expecting it to be crap, but to my surprise I was quite taken with it. Requires patient viewing - it's very leisurely paced -- and acceptance of the extremely limited budget, but while the characterizations are a bit slim, the actors are engaging enough and there's a political aspect to it -- it even features sequences filmed at the 1973 gay pride parade, back when that actually meant something.

It had big studio support.

It's a Blue Whale! Oh, Mary, don't ask!

[quote]There were other contemporaneous films with some gay backstory (Dog Day Afternoon),

That was six years later and that was about a gay man who robbed a bank for money to pay for a sex change operation. None of the men in this movie have any problem with being men.

Al Pacino was playing a man who had no trouble being a man in DOG DAY AFTERNOON. His trouble was that he was drowning in his life. He was trying to stay a family man with his wife and also help his lover in a desperate, misguided grab for cash to help him get a sex change operation. It was a great film, unlike BITB.

Dog Day was not a GAY Movie.

R48

Maybe I'm alone but I liked The Broken Hearts Club

You're not alone.

I liked BHC, too.

In a way, it was like an updated BITB without the heavy-handedness.

R48: It's an acknowledgment that the T is ex-gay therapy.