"The Boy's in The Band" Remembered with Crowley, Luckinbill and Musto

theater talk is made possible in part by the cuny tv foundation who do you have to get a drink around here you remember that dance we used to do at fire island man that was in so far back i think i've forgotten it i remember it one two one single single dipped all right from new york city this is theater talk i'm the show's producer susan haskins and i'm michael riedel of the new york post [Music] this year's pride celebration is commemorating the 40th anniversary of the stonewall rebellion and this week on theater talk we're going to talk about the boys in the band an equally important landmark in gay culture and gay awareness which opened about a year and a half before stonewall [Music] i've always loved the boys in the band but it certainly generated its share of controversy over the years about its portrayal of gay people its relevance to today in gay culture as well we're going to discuss all those issues with a very interesting panel uh lawrence luckenbill was the original hank in the original production of boys in the band off-broadway and a good friend of mine i'm happy that he's with us on theater talk welcome larry thanks and our old friend michael musto gay cultural commentator who is very opinionated on the subject of boys in the band welcome to theater talk thank you and a very very special guest making his debut on theater talk mark crowley who wrote the boys in the band thank you welcome michael to this issue of is the boys and the band still relevant is it dated what do you say absolutely not the last revival i saw seemed as fresh as today's headlines because there are still the same issues facing the gay community every step at the table that you get every right that you get is accompanied by still fears doubts oppression self-loathing and this play really holds a spotlight up to people and we can't be embarrassed for something for reflecting the time it was written in uh this is a play with really waspish wit and characters kind of tearing each other apart but in a way that shows their affinity for one another their community based on the fact that they're comfortable enough with each other to make these put downs and then it gets nasty halfway through one of the characters gets drunk and forces them all to call the person that they first fell in love with and it might be perceived as nasty the way i am when i out celebrities but in a way he's forcing them to face their fears and and face the truth and mark doesn't necessarily feel he wrote the play this way but i see the ending of the play as a condemnation of the closet so that's as fresh as you can get mark this um question of the self-loathing there's a documentary about making the boys about the history of the play and some of the people interviewed in that movie including edward albee say that they had issues with the play when it first came out that it had sort of had this idea of the self-hating homosexual how do you respond to that kind of criticism well it definitely does have that image i mean the leading character is uh you can't defend him on that count at all i don't think it's true of all the characters though particularly the one that larry played i who i think is about the bravest character in the play yeah who leaves his who's left his wife for a man yeah and and has done it uh fully openly and and with great courage faced what that would do to his family and uh so that it was um it's always been a a a change a life changer for gay men who come up to me all all the time i wouldn't say every single day but at least twice a year somebody will say hank changed my life meaning that uh specifically that when they saw the movie or the play they went home and were able to face their parents or their uh their wife or someone else and say look i'm gay this isn't working i want to ask you mart um this was the first play openly gay play right not a sort of as used to say coded gay plays or a famous new york times essay by stanley kaufman who said that you know a lot of the play the gay playwrights are writing coded gay plays and is it not true that you read that stanley kaufman article and boys in the band is a response to that yes it was stanley kaufman article in the sunday new york times that i read and it said what what did it say well it took the three um excuse me most famous playwrights of the day did not name them i think they could have got sued by them all if it had in that day to say that they were all and the word wasn't gay then i mean that they were all homosexuals and uh we were talking about tennessee williams william inge and edward yes are they gay they're not going to assume the point of kaufman's article was and it also had been written about by philip roth who had written a scathing oh that's right indictment of homosexual playwrights giving heterosexuals a bad name you know for their conduct but kaufman's article was isn't it about time that one of these uh homosexual writers writes a play that's openly about his own experience and i thought that was a good point very very good point did kaufman like the play did he ever see the play in review i don't really know i don't think i ever met him but i met him he did like the play did he yeah good michael as a young gay man when did you first come across boys in the band and what was the impact on you i was already out i was a full-fledged adult and i wish i had seen it sooner because it spoke volumes to me about the fact that there was this gay community out there i had no idea when i was sort of semi-closety and not sure of my identity it really would have helped me to know that there were these people who were out created a world together uh based on love hate and all the kinds of things that straight people share as well uh and i was when i did finally see it it blew me away every line it just screams at you from the screen i mean there's so much wit on display all the characters are brilliant because they're they're all from the pen of my crown see having seen the movie i did not realize the number of lines in the culture that came from the boys in the band i mean you know who do you have to bleep to get a drink around here which is uh davis movie exactly i thought that was from you know a sort of a variation of a betty davis movie and boom there it is in in boys in the band it had a great influence on me too i mean it's not just necessarily the gay community but i think people's many people struggling with some kind of self-loathing with some kind of feeling of not belonging to the general mass are moved by that play and relate to it well thank you all i can say to that is i think one of the uh one of the things that gets knocked for was that it appealed to crossover yes i was one of those crossover people that you got indicted for right you know some very cynical people said oh well then there's nothing there but a bunch of square straight people you know who are uh laughing and relieved that they're not those people on the stage oh no it's not relief you're not those people that you know you are either my father's reaction yeah it was as straight as there is a redneck from arkansas and uh he saw it with my mother and i had being i used to work as a stage carpenter so i had bored a hole in the set so we could see who was sitting in row six you know the middle of the row and we everybody fought now to get get a shot at the people before we came on with the presents and i don't know if you knew that but it uh uh anyway i looked out that particular night and there were my parents sitting in six you know 102 and 103 whatever it was and i i i really had a moment because i knew what they were going to experience what they were actually already experiencing because we were we were off stage and it was already happening and i just saw that when my when something really gay happened on the stage and i forget what line it was it wasn't who do you have to bleep to get a drink around here but it was something like that and uh something about the hairspray can or something like that and also for you something called control now notice nowhere on the label is it called hair spray just simply control and the words for men are written about 37 times all over the goddamn can it's called butch assurance still hairspray no matter if they call it balls my mother goes to my father you know with her little cloche and her her wig she goes i started to laugh um when you were putting the play together as the documentary is made clear in other interviews i've seen with you you were um you were kind of out of luck right totally you were broke broke you were drinking heavily i believe unemployed yeah i had some good leads so i mean you know i had some reason to be depressed about being unemployed except you were living in splendor at the time you wrote the problem only because a friend of mine who was very wealthy was going on a vacation with her husband and she had they had four children and she had millions of servants but they were all different nationalities and she called me and said look if one of the kids falls down the stairs and breaks his neck uh there's nobody here to call a doctor in english so could you come over and stay for about six weeks until we get back and so i immediately sublet my own apartment to a hungarian actor who was in hollywood to make a picture and that was my income at that low point and i moved into diana lynn hall's house the actress diana lind from the 40s who was in preston sturges great movie miracle of morgan's creek and her husband mortimer hall who was still very much alive and his mother morty's mother was dying it was uh dolly schiff who was the new owner of the new york post so you can imagine what the house was like and the servants totally broke lying in bed depressed and then there's a knock on the door and a butler brings breakfast on a tray and says that you know his wife would like to speak to me about what the menus were for the week you know and that inspired you to write a play about a bunch of queens eating lasagna on the upper east side well it is a preston sturgeon well i'm curious about that though because did you i also you you've said this before you were you were drinking heavily at the time because you were depressed when you began to write the play did it sort of give you a sense of purpose to your life oh yeah well actually i never drank a drop when you started we started writing yeah no no no it was and dinah had left me the keys to the wine cellar in this house morty didn't want me to have them morty [Laughter] but i never drank i didn't drink at all for the entire time that they were away and that i started to how long did it take you to write it i wrote the play in five weeks with uh with the exception of the little tag between michael and donald at the end just that resolution scene interesting had you been a mean drunk like michael the the main character yeah yeah yeah yeah because it certainly is also a play about the results of being on me yeah yeah talk about that original cast michael because in the movie which is so rare to have a movie made that uses the original cast usually you all get replaced by bigger names i mean a phenomenal array of actors if you can just sort of sketch in each of those actors for us a little bit what you admire about those performances and mark was under pressure to use big hollywood names and stuck to his guns and stuck with the original cast that's why the movie which is directed by william friedkin is so good but obviously larry is brilliant uh leonard frey is magnificent as harold he went on to an oscar nomination for fiddler on the roof of all things last year so it didn't ruin careers um robert latornow played the the dumb hustler cowboy yeah in real life he was a conflicted hustler who died tragically cliff gorman is the screaming queen uh emery and everyone thought he was so convincing they were sure he was gay and he wasn't right no no not at all did dominic done have something to do with this oh well dominick dunham was the executive producer of the film kenneth nelson is fantastic as michael the host of the party who gets a little too tipsy he went on to win a golden globe award for best newcomer he was the original star of the fantasticks yeah that's right so talk about range peter white who is living in california now and working in california as an actor and i'm sorry you can't be with us today and frederick combs yeah who played michael's best friend the late keith prentice as hank's lover and reuben green and ruben green who will last still alive but we hope he is i mean he had there's no record of his of his dying in any of the variety or the report hollywood report or any of those things the new york times don't know much about reuben whether he was gay or not or anything i don't think ruben was at all no no no not from all the things that happened like children he bothered right now and whenever they do a production of boys in the band in japan the reuben green part is played by a korean yes yeah oh yes whatever um larry what was it like you were a heterosexual actor beginning of your career to have a script about playing gay people land on your agent's desk i mean were you encouraged to do this play i was not encouraged to do it i was discouraged to do it but um but i'm gonna head this thing with saying it changed my life and did nothing but good for me and for everybody in the play i think uh that could be debated with bob letourneau and some others that perhaps what might happen to them after the after the the play but the play was such a huge hit and we were so embedded in the culture that uh it it got me a two picture deal with otto preminger uh which promptly eroded when i went on david frost and told about what otto was really like it was an exercise in sadomasochism but but no my agent who also represented the play and mart uh said don't do this it'll it'll wreck your career and i said but it's a good play and it's by a friend of mine oh you knew mark oh yes we went to school together of course catholic university of america that's right yeah yeah yeah so she said don't do it but you yeah i said i'm sorry if it if it does something to our relationship but i'm i'm doing it because it's a good play and then i proceeded to tell mart and and chuck guinness and and bob moore that i wanted to play michael and then i wanted to play uh harold and i wanted to play every other part of the flamboyance oh no you're hank you're right and that but did did you as uh i know you got the auto prem in your films but did you lose any jobs at all as your agent yes i did i lost i lost a job i lost uh something right come on cigarette commercial i was the man from true i was a cigarette to true man i smoked a cigarette extreme close-up and uh which and i didn't even smoke cigarettes uh but the the casting director who was gay and a wonderful guy and a very smart guy called me up one day and he said i want you to come in and and read for the the new series of commercials but i don't know if it's going to work and i said well okay that's fine it was just a commercial you know i didn't really care and i came in and read for this array of clients who were there from true cigarettes and and at the end thank you and my friend and i looked at each other and i left and he called me up about a half hour later and he said you're not going to believe this they don't want you to go on with this i'd already done like a year of commercials they don't want you to go on with this and i said what's the reason he said well the reason they give is that no smokes our oh my god i said well at least it's kind of funny was there was there concern on the part of any other cast members when they first started doing boys in the band about what the impact would be on their careers well i i think if peter white were here he could address that quite uh what would he say do you think well he was very torn wasn't he whether to do it or not and he was warned not to yeah and he was warned not to and he did do it uh and he says he has no regrets i was on a soap opera i was on all my children for a long time and i left that and there was a the the head of casting over at disney he said you've got to take this off your resume if you want to work in this town which was boys in the band and i said i won't take it off my resume he said well you can have a hard time getting a job out here cliff gorman became kind of a star out of it yeah and he wasn't the first choice do you remember that no i didn't yeah uh bill hickey was cast yeah but who was a terrific actor of course and i don't think it's telling any stories out of school that he had a problem with addiction because he was always you know getting struggling and getting and losing parts and not being hired because of it and after he uh auditioned got the part we only had a what a week to get it out of the play at the workshop production and he didn't show up for rehearsal the first day and then when he didn't come the second day the director robert moore said to me we just can't we got to go with somebody else who was that guy that was so over the top that came in when we looked down the list and was cliff gorman michael we just have a few minutes left but aside from the sort of cultural impact the last impact what is it about just the play itself that makes it so much fun for you well it is an important play it's the gay raisin and the sun it's the first play to put our life out there and uh what's so funny about it is the crackling dialogue the way each actor fits his part so brilliantly i studied with william hickey i don't see him as emory so i'm sort of glad he didn't and by the way if you think things have changed so much i've lost ad campaigns recently for being who i am so nothing has changed yeah but that's all nothing has changed it's just the second it starts with them doing first of all the scenes in the movie of new york at that era are fascinating documentary footage but then once they get together for this party and we should say the premise of the play is michael historian party for harold and is gifting him with a hustler and that's all you need to know but his straight friend shows up and straight friend shows up and this little uh antagonism going on but uh once they start doing a conga and drinking the punch and eating the lasagna and uh tearing each other down it's riveting it's who's afraid of virginia wolf meets you know killing a sister joyce well i was gonna ask you that because you you do say that edward edwards play who's afraid of virginia woolf actually influenced you a lot and i'm sort of interested in this notion in both plays of a kind of have a group of people together have a party and then let them lacerate at each other these the kind of parties that went on back in the day because i've never been to a party where people play a game of get the guests were these real sorts of things that happened socially i i don't know if it was that sustained or not but i personally you know had a very terrible behavior i don't know why it was tolerated sometimes when i would go off at a party and insult somebody you know uh uh names aside who they were and what the reasons were for but you know it broke two or three no there are people if you drink enough gin or whiskey that's happening pretty much known for that i mean there's still some you know i used to call it the homosexual home of the brave which is we're all in the foxhole together and there's there's there's a war going on and all those people out there are trying to get us and there's the black guy and there's the the the extreme gay guy and there's the the this guy on that guy there's the jew you know it's like one of those movies so world war ii movies where the every every genre was representative who who america was and i used to say to that to that to people and they'd say yeah you're right it's like everybody they're all like regular guys aren't they and i said yes they are they're all like ordinary people and that was the killer that people could come into the theater and see a bunch of people that they would recognize on the street or recognize in their job or who taught them and they're gay and that's their background that's what they're living with so accept them and they all love each other and they all really love each other yes not to get too sentimental about it but i mean i was talking to a producer who's interested in reviving it who says for him what still moves him about it is that despite the laceration to each other that at the end when harold has devastated michael he says oh michael thanks for the laughs call you tomorrow they are a family of sorts are they not oh yeah that that bond is not broken even by the outrageous behavior uh the last line of the play is well harold's last line in the play is call you tomorrow and doesn't harold say that in your sequel as well yeah it's his la the last line in the sequel which i don't know if we've mentioned it here what is the sequel called the sequel is called the men from the boys and it was written and performed in 2002 and was done in san francisco and in l.a but it's never been done in new york and we were hoping before the economic crisis that that this november there's a theater group off broadway in new york called the transport group and they want to do the two plays in rep which i think would be a terrific idea now they only have the money to do boys again and so i'm afraid that the second play may get dropped this is your chance to play harold or michael carol i told mart what i want to play is a play that bobby drives directed and starred in off-broadway called a breeze from the golf that's his play and it's a really wonderful play yeah bobby drivers was the star of that play but it was directed by our our you know our friend and uh schoolmate jack going it's a fabulous play in my opinion we should say that you have an anthology of your plays coming out thank you for saying the anthology is called the anthologists called the collected plays of mark crowley i think at least that's what it was the last time i looked at the cover art even november and it represents my life between covers sixth place and that sort of represents a lifetime of work for me we have to wrap it up uh but michael a final thought on boys in the band for young gay men who haven't seen it today and who don't know what life was like back then your gay card will be revoked if you don't see this movie you have to see it do not be ashamed of the gay past it's very much connected with the gay president and this movie will live forever so you better catch up with it now and be sure to catch up with creighton roby's documentary the making of the boys which is out this fall and fascinating you're all in it you're all in it and the dvd of the voice of the band which has some extras you'd want to be sure to see yeah absolutely uh thanks to michael musto from the village voice larry luckenbill a fabulous actor good friend of ours and mark crowley who wrote the boys in the band now it's my turn and ready or not michael here goes you're a sad and pathetic man you're a homosexual and you don't want to be but there's nothing you can do to change it not all your prayers to your god not all the analysis you can buy in all the years you've got left to live you may very well one day be able to know a heterosexual life if you want it desperately enough if you pursue it with the fervor with which you annihilate but you'll always be homosexual as well always michael always the day you die our thanks to the friends of theater talk for their significant contribution to this production theater talk is made possible in part by the frederick lowe foundation the eleanor naylor dana charitable trust the allen s gordon foundation the corey and bob denelli charitable fund carrie j freeze that dorothy strelsan foundation the new york city department of cultural affairs and the new york state council on the arts a state agency playbill online is the official website of theater talk and the home of the playbill club providing information and opportunities for theater lives [Music] we welcome your questions or comments for theater talk thank you and good night

Channel: Theater Talk Archive

Views: 394

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: theater talk, susan haskins, michael riedel, broadway, Mart Crowley, Laurence Luckinbill, Michael Musto, The Boys in the Band, Susan Haskins-Doloff

Id: _2ZfhrvDNik

Length: 26min 45sec (1605 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021