William Friedkin dishes on the original ‘Boys in the Band’

An all-star solid started previews this week in “The Boys in the Band,” Mart Crowley’s 1968 play a few group of homosexual males who throw a celebration — and loads of bitchy zingers. So it appeared becoming to meet up with William Friedkin, the Oscar-winning director who made the 1970 film. The actors in the Broadway revival — Jim Parsons, Matt Bomer, Andrew Rannells and Zachary Quinto, amongst them — are brazenly homosexual. Fifty years in the past, that may have been unthinkable. “Once we made ‘Boys in the Band,’ you couldn’t say you have been homosexual and get a job,” says Friedkin, who additionally directed “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist.” However Friedkin, who’s straight (spouse No. 1 was Jeanne Moreau, spouse No. four is Sherry Lansing), didn’t suppose twice about making the film. “I didn’t give a flying f–ok right into a rolling doughnut about any of that,” he says over lunch at the Carlyle Resort. “And you understand why? As a result of the play is good. The characters are finely drawn and there may be fantastic wit. It’s a bit harking back to Oscar Wilde. It may be talked about in the similar sentence.” William FriedkinAP Crowley wrote “The Boys in the Band” at a low level in his life. He was “down on my ass and lifeless broke,” he as soon as informed me, and was house-sitting for actress Diana Lynn in Beverly Hills. He’d gone by way of a heavy interval of consuming and, attempting to maintain his head clear, rattled off the play in 4 days by the pool. “An incredible mixture of anger and despair,” he mentioned, fueled the writing. The play opened off-Broadway and was a right away hit, propelled in half by an distinctive solid, together with Laurence Luckinbill, Leonard Frey, Cliff Gorman, Peter White and Keith Prentice. When Friedkin noticed the play, he made a key choice. “I liked these guys,” he says. “And I informed Mart, ‘We’re not going to solid anyone however them.’” Theater buffs cherish the film as a result of it’s a report of the original manufacturing, although Friedkin says he didn’t shoot “The Boys in the Band” like a stage play. “I moved it round prefer it was a Luis Buñuel movie,” he says with fun. He shot the opening in Greenwich Village, and it’s enjoyable to see what the neighborhood seemed like in 1969, many years earlier than Marc Jacobs shops lined the streets and luxurious condo buildings shot up alongside the Hudson. Whereas the play is ready in the Village, the condo in the film is on East 68th Avenue. At the time, it belonged to the actress Tammy Grimes. “Mart knew her, and he introduced me up to have a look at her place,” says Friedkin. “She was very open to it. The scenes the place they’re hanging crepe paper and preparing for the celebration have been shot in the daylight on her deck. We moved right into a studio to shoot the evening scenes.” The solid of the Broadway revival of “The Boys in the Band.”Robert Trachtenberg Frey has an unforgettable flip as the lethally bitchy Harold, who was based mostly on Howard Jeffrey, a Broadway choreographer who died of AIDS in 1988. Frey additionally died of AIDS, as did another members of the original solid. The straight members of the solid — Gorman, Luckinbill and White – took a threat to be in the film. Their brokers warned them that they’d lose jobs in the event that they did. Luckinbill, in truth, was dropped from a tobacco industrial. “They did the film as a result of the roles are simply so damned good,” says Friedkin, who additionally directed “Cruising,” the 1980 Al Pacino thriller whose gay-themed violence touched off an issue. Written a yr earlier than the Stonewall riots, “The Boys in the Band” is a time capsule, to make sure, however Friedkin says it meant an excellent deal to a era of homosexual males. “I hear from guys all the time that this was the movie that helped them come out of the closet,” says Friedkin, now 82. “It gave them the braveness to not be ashamed.” You may hear Michael Riedel each weekday morning on “Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning” on 710 WOR radio. Share this: https://nypost.com/2018/05/03/william-friedkin-dishes-on-the-original-boys-in-the-band/ The post William Friedkin dishes on the original ‘Boys in the Band’ appeared first on My style by Kartia.