Anyone interested in the American theater, gay culture, and the assimilation of gay people into the mainstream (or not) should check out director Crayton Robey’s 2009 documentary Making the Boys. Q Cinema will screen it 8pm tomorrow night (Wed Apr 13) at Four Day Weekend, 312 Houston St, FW. Tickets are $8-10.
Robey’s film assesses the impact of Mart Crowley’s groundbreaking 1968 comic drama The Boys in the Band on both the theater world and, to a lesser extent, the national consciousness. Playwrights Edward Albee, Terrence McNally, Tony Kushner, and Paul Rudnick are interviewed, as well as director William Friedkin, who helmed the 1970 movie version; activist Larry Kramer; and the late author Dominick Dunne. Is Crowley’s blend of brilliant wit and toxic self-loathing a cautionary tale or a documentary-like snapshot of a time and place in an American subculture? Forty three years after the play’s Off Broadway debut, has it indeed gotten better for men taking refuge in urban gayborhoods? After Q’s screening of Making the Boys, you better believe the conversation will be intense.
