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Epicurus.com - The Boys in the Band
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List Price: $26.98
Our Price: $19.99
Your Save: $ 6.99 ( 26% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Paramount
Starring: Kenneth Nelson, Peter White, Leonard Frey, Cliff Gorman, Frederick Combs
Directed By: William Friedkin
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Paramount
EAN: 0097368878549
Format: Color
Label: Paramount
Manufacturer: Paramount
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Paramount
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2008-11-11
Running Time: 118
Studio: Paramount
Theatrical Release Date: 1970
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Editorial Reviews:
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Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 11/11/2008 Run time: 119 minutes Rating: R
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: A milepost in American gay pop culture
Comment: The 1970 film "Boys In The Band," based on a stage play from 1968, is an interesting snapshot of American gay culture in the 1960s. Originally written and produced before the Stonewall Riots that shaped the gay rights movement of the 1970s, the play transposes the psychology-heavy drama of Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill, et al. into a gay milieu, albeit into the catty, queeny world of the pre-gay-lib era.
Within the LGBT world, the film is controversial due to the lacerating self-loathing seen in and among many of the principal protagonists, and the perception that the characters are simply a stable of gay stereotypes. The negative psychological portraits are as much a product of the genre (intellectualized 1960s stage plays) as they are a critique or caricature of gay culture, and the stereotypes, such as they are, exist in part because of the truth they evoke.
(Indeed, if you read some of the negative reviews on this film on Amazon, you'll find that they seem to be from younger viewers, who came of age in the 1980s, '90s and '00s, when gay culture was considerably less conflicted and immeasurably more free than in the earlier era when so many strides were made -- these viewers seem to have little empathy for or knowledge of what life was like before LGBT lifestyles became so much a part of the mainstream. Without an appreciation for the stifling conditions of the Mattachine Society era, they feel free to condemn this film, which seems like a relatively honest, if hyperbolic, presentation of life as it was, several decades ago. Pro or con, it's certainly worth checking out to add to your historical perspective... the material is uncomfortable, but it was meant to be.
Customer Rating:
Summary: BRILLIANT, SEARING, AND STILL RELEVANT
Comment: Let there be general rejoicing through the land at the DVD release of this landmark film! BOYS IN THE BAND is both brilliant, bitingly funny filmmaking and a penetrating examination of the (still) dysfunctional ways gay men cope with basic conflicts imposed by American society. Mart Crowley penned more memorable lines than any three Bette Davis films and Friedkin established a sense of place and mood in his main character's tony 1968 Manhattan apartment that is just uncanny. By the time LOOK OF LOVE plays, I couldn't tear myself away.
My upper lip involuntarily curls with contempt at the self-deception of gays who insist that we've come so far as to make BOYS IN THE BAND a tired irrelevancy. Consider the time elapsed between the making of this film and BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. The issues raised have changed very little because the childhoods of most gay men (principally the apoplectic reaction and subsequent withdrawal of their fathers) has changed very little. I could easily assemble the cast from my present circle of friends (one of whom would make Larry seem positively chaste). Only nowadays we'd need to add a sniffy, intellectually dishonest character who marches to a stirring little militant anthem inside his head and trowels PC banalities over his conflicts and childhood hurts.
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Summary: A Must See!
Comment: Most gay men, and many heterosexual people, have heard of or seen "The Boys in the Band" so I won't describe the story. The details, as well as the written play, are readily available. Finally this classic gay film is available on DVD; and it's a masterpiece in every way imaginable. As William Friedkin & Mart Crowley have said, this is the best looking print of "The Boys in the Band" ever produced ... better than any theatrical print in existence. The bonus features are icing on the cake. They are presented in three featurettes, one dealing with the play, one with the film and the final one with what happened to the film and the cast during the nearly forty years since it was released.
For those of you who've heard that the film is negative, please don't be put off by this. It's a look at gay life prior to the era of gay liberation. Certainly, and thankfully, things have improved greatly since the setting of the film, the late 1960's. Seeing the film gives you a look at those times. After seeing the film, I believe you will know two things. 1) Even though none of us would want to go back to a time when the closet was the rule for most gay men, it is still important to know that life was not all misery then. Gay men still found each other and came together to enjoy their lives, forming friendships and relationships just as they do now. 2) Even though we've come so far, we have a long way to go. If you're really honest with yourself, you will have to admit that you know someone in your group of associates who is just like each of these men. The film is not that dated.
A few years ago, there was a study that involved showing the film to three different groups. One group was in their forties, one in their thirties and another in their twenties. The forty-somethings thought that the film was dated and didn't identify with the characters very much. The people in their thirties admitted they knew some people just like the boys in the film. Strangely the youngest group said the characters in the film were just like many of their friends ... or even themselves. What does this tell us? It tells us that self-acceptance and the development of self-respect is a journey. The people in their forties had lived twenty years longer and had completed their journey to a greater extent than the middle and youngest groups. We can be hopeful that Michael had arrived at the first step toward his journey at the end of the film.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Gone but not forgotten
Comment: I didn't see this film for the first time until I was well into my mid twenties in 1998. Therefore, my experience of this movie is probably different from those who saw in 1970 when times were different. I can see how many would see this as a very negative story but that said, I like this movie quite a bit. As a time capsule, it's a look at New York in a specific time and place with the great late 60s/early 70s fashions. As a narrative, it's every gay man's nightmare: a dinner party gone very wrong.
This new transfer of the film is great. We get to see all the boys in widescreen which is such an improvement over the cropped VHS version. The special features are enlightening and sobering: so much of the cast has died, many from AIDS. I'm glad that this movie is being released despite its negative reputation. Sure, there's much people may not be able to relate to but there's a lot about this story that rings true. A definite classic.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Turning ... Revolution complete.
Comment: At long last, Mart Crowley's "The Boys in the Band" is available on DVD (I can finally discard the VHS tape I have held onto for so long fearing it would warp or degrade over time). The play the film was based on was penned just over forty years ago, and the film was released thirty-eight years ago. Because the camera work, direction, and acting are so contemporary in feeling the film sometimes feels like it was made yesterday. But then, as I was watching it and enjoying it, I realized that when I saw the movie when it first came out I was about half the age of most the characters; now I'm twice their age!
The film is remarkable on a number of levels. First, this story about a group of gay men was brought to the stage just a year before the Stonewall riots in New York, when the gay community led by its most frequently maligned subgroup (the drag queens) openly rebelled against police harassment, a rebellion that ushered in the gay liberation movement. Most large cities today have Gay Pride parades and celebrations in late June marking this historical event. Even with backlash from the religious right, Western society in general has continued to move in an increasingly tolerant direction. So it may be hard for younger people, or indeed, for anyone who has come of age since Stonewall, to identify or accept the level of paranoia, bitterness, and self-loathing the characters in this film sometimes display. But, allowing for the theatrical device of exageration, these characterization reflect a reality that existed. And, as anyone who came of age prior to Stonewall can attest, Crowley does a good job of capturing the compensating loyalty and humor upon which gay men (the film, alas, only tells the male side of the pre-Stonewall era) relied for coping in a hostile world. After Stonewall there was a period when "Boys in the Band" fell out of favor and was unjustly accused of perpetuating stereotypes. (Crowley himself has gone on record as apologizing for the play's depiction of the self-loathing homosexual. In the featurettes included on the DVD,however, he seems to have moved beyond his earlier embarrassment and is again taking pride in his materpiece.)
Another thing that makes this film remarkable is that the producers refused to replace the original off-Broadway cast with big name Hollywood stars. Also, director William Friedkin resisted the temptation to "open up" the play for the screen. (Anyone who has seen both the brilliant off-Broadway stage production of "Steel Magnolias" and the banal film version should give a big "thank you!" for this.) Without statically filming a staged production of the play (and by taking full advantange of the skills of DP Arthur Ornitz), Friedkin was able to exploit the claustrophobia and building tension of nine people trapped in the birthday party from hell. (In fact, the only scenes shot outside of host's apartment are the character-establishing shots of each of the party guests leaving his adaptive environment in New York City and making his way to the party. These accompany the opening credits and are a luscious and all-too-brief reminder of what New York was like in the good old days.)
The film has also been criticized for being too vicious, with the characters being much too hell-bent on tearing one another down. But to these critics I would respond that "Boys in the Band" is a late example of a well-established trend in 1960s theater (consider, for example, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and "The Lion in Winter"). This mean-spiritedness is the shadow side of the much-touted American optimism and I think it has as much to do with the American culture's emergence from the buttoned-down 1950s as with anything specifically attributable to closeted gays. It wasn't just gay men who were learning (albeit imperfectly and ineptly) to express themselves in the 1960s--it was everybody. This mean-spiritedness has its roots in post-WWII playwrights Miller and Williams and its successors in Shepherd and Mamet. Its causes and effects are clearly something worth depicting and thinking about.
The DVD includes three excellent featurettes (Act One: The Play; Act Two: The Film; Act Three: 40 Years of Boys in the Band) which include interviews with Crowley and Friedkin as well as the two surviving members of the cast (Laurence Luckinbill and Peter White). The director's and screenwriter's commentary is a little less gratifying (both Friedkin and Crowley speak at length on a number of interesting issues, much of which was also used to create the featurettes and consequently not new information after you've watched the featurettes. Also, Friedkin's and Crowley's comments come from separate interviews so there is no interaction between these two men who obviously respected each other and enjoyed working together. Crowley's comments on Natalie Wood's support and friendship were especially interesting and worth hearing.) But all in all, the DVD producers have done an excellent job of packaging and presenting a groundbreaking and compelling work.
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