Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend dive into queer and queer-adjacent titles of the past that deserve a watch or a rewatch.To understand the present and the future, we must first examine the past.
For LGBTQ people–or anyone interested in the history of the way we’re portrayed on-screen–that could begin with a viewing of Mart Crowley’s seminal play about gay men, The Boys in the Band.The Boys in the Band has always had a divisive onus about it: some critics hailed it as a landmark portrayal (for the time, anyway) of gay men, while others assail it for latent homophobia and even racism.
The plot follows a group of New York gay men gathering for a birthday party. Booze and underlying tensions ignite tempers, and eventually, the whole night.