I have a love/hate relationship with “The Boys in the Band.”
I love it because it was one of the first Gay plays to be a hit in New York. It brought homosexuality out of the closet and onto the stage. It was a true cultural touchstone, coming out just a year or so after the Stonewall riots.
And it scared the hell out of me when I was a young, Gay man in the 1980’s.
It was hard to see past these stereotypes in Danville VA and figure out how they related to me and my life. But, it was one of the few visual examples of Gay life, of any kind, available to us.
Thank God, for “Will and Grace”….I can’t believe I’m saying that, but it was so much more positive than this…
I hate “The Boys in the Band” for all the self hatred it shows and all the negative sterotypes. It was of it’s time…
But it does truly show the way some of us were….
It’s honest. Scary, but honest.
And it’s a fair reminder of how the times were and how Gay men saw themselves then…It’s a snap shot in History.
And it should make us grateful for how far we’ve come since then…
And make us appreciate how much harder it was for those who came before us…
It’s gotten so much better…
Lost in the 21st Century 
Scott,
Boys in the Band is a fairly accurate representation of certain aspects of human nature (gay or straight).
The reason it can be depressing to watch as a gay person may be simply that it’s like seeing several people you wouldn’t ever want to run into — and all at a dinner party.
At your house.
It’s a well-written play about very unpleasant, insensitive, often cruel, often stupid people. I’m surprised it didn’t send you running to the closet for a decade or playing the “Oh, $#!&, which one will I turn out like? Are these my only role model choices?”
(A better movie for that is Valley of the Dolls. Or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)
Luckily, I managed to avoid seeing Boys in the Band until I was much, much older.
Still, Cruising seemed much scarier to me. Yet, it still made me want to move to the Village…
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Luckily, I saw “Valley of the Dolls” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at about the same time and loved them, so that’s where my focus went for role models! I just blocked “Boys” from my mind for years. It is beautifully written, but scary, scary, scary…
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