When I was growing up, everything I heard or read about The Boys in the Band was terrible. Recently, after the Broadway revival, it was meant to be ´period´and wonderful. I´d never seen the film until now and found it a difficult and unpleasant watch, with some of the worst-directed acting I can remember seeing. If I´d been invited to this party, I´d have told the host to f**ck off, left within five minutes, and there would have been no play. The most interesting aspect for me was the décor (Fire Island greetings, Marlene in Concert posters), pausing the film to eye up the bookshelves (Berlin Stories, etc), the line dancing scene in the rooftop, and the wonderful pop music of the period that the characters put on (Tammy and Marvin, lots of Burt Bacharach).

Talking about it with friends (worth naming since so many of their views are drawn on and collectively summarised below: Andy Medhurst, Matthew Hays, Andrew Griffin, Matthew Motyka, David Greven,  Lawrence Napper, Bryan Johnson, Andrew Moor), there were lots. of mixed feelings. Most loved the first half, where we´re introduced to each of the characters and New York seems alive with cruising, and sex and secret  and hidden knowledges. They can cite by heart reams of dialogue which remain acidly witty. The camp elements of the period are still recognisable as such and still work, though I wonder if younger people will catch the extent to which all of these characters are talking through a particularly intimate and shared knowledge of the careers of Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, Marlene and Maria Montez. For other generations shared reference points would be Liza and Diana Ross, or Madonna, or Britney or Rihanna and Beyoncé. The film evokes that, brings it to life, vividly. It´s like a secret code made from knowledge of the stars.

Friends have made various comparisons. David Greven for example talks about how the film is like Rope in that it´s about the agony of and violent reaction against the closet. And one can certainly see that. Other friends such as Matthew Hays have made comparisons to Albee and Waiting for Godot and Abigail´s Party. And again those comparisons are understandable but to my mind only superficially so. I think even existential theatre has some utopian dimension that drives it, there´s no emphasis on the fun of company, even of the repartee (most of it is meant to hurt), of the joys of sex, or the pleasures in overcoming oppression or even of the pleasures in being marginal. It´s relentlessly grim, and thus I find it untrue.

I´ve seen a marvellous production of Virginia Woolf with Imelda Staunton recently and it was alive with pain and hopes and a kind of deep love within the hurt that is nowhere evident in this. I´ve also been seeing a lot of Pinter, and this certainly doesn´t have all the significant ’empty spaces’ within the dialogue that he does. So he might have been inspired by Pinter but it doesn´t feel Pinteresque.

The interesting thing to me  is that queer cultures continue to connect on the tangents of this work but perhaps only because that´s all the work gives you, the odd line, the camp, an imagined sense of a history of how things used to be etc. But they are tangents. All the characters are to me one dimensional stereotypes…and yet they echo something we recognise, which is what makes it interesting, but the moments where it echoes are not necessarily the best bits.

My suspicion is that the play IS better than the film. I´ve never seen the play but…even the SCREENPLAY feels better than the film. I hated almost all of the performances and I think it is the director rather than the actors that are to blame. That Emory, the queeny camp one, is meant to be an interior decorator beggars belief. We´re TOLD that but nothing in the way he dresses, acts or behaves would connote that.  I  can´t imagine him talking to an ageing wealthy  matron  about colours in  a way that would lead to his hiring. So Friedkin´s  direction is in some ways  wonderful (in  the way it moves, its use of space, the highlighting of moments) but terrible in that it shows so little understanding of the psychology of the characters represented.