| The Boys in the Band | 
 enlarge | Director: William Friedkin
Actors: Kenneth Nelson, Peter White, Leonard Frey, Cliff Gorman, Frederick Combs
Studio: Paramount
Category: DVD
List Price: $26.98
Buy New: $18.00
You Save: $8.98 (33%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $17.63
Avg. Customer Rating:   (79 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1478
Format: Color, Dvd-video, Widescreen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD
Running Time: 118 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.7
MPN: 887854
UPC: 097368878549
EAN: 0097368878549
ASIN: B001CQONPE
Release Date: November 11, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Theatrical Release Date: 1970
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 11/11/2008 Run time: 119 minutes Rating: R
Amazon.com essential video
A sensitive yet humorous adaptation of the stage play, this 1970 film directed by William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) is one of the first films to openly address gay issues in a matter-of-fact style that largely avoids stereotyping. Shot on one set and featuring a birthday party as the festive setting, a group of friends assemble to celebrate, reminisce, and discuss their lives and the travails of being gay, even as one friend insists he's straight. The night turns from a light celebration to a sometimes-vindictive ordeal of revelation and betrayal, as each man in turn must confess his true feelings. Performed by the original cast of the stage production, the film may feel dated to some, but it still manages to be truthful and entertaining as it explores a subject that to this day is not often addressed. --Robert Lane
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 74 more reviews...
 Brilliant film--not so great commentary November 28, 2008
This is truly one of the great plays/films of all time. The bonus features are wonderful except for the commentary by William Friedkin. Friedkin is not watching the film thus not giving the viewer insight to what we are viewing. In fact, some of the words from Friedkin are already in other parts of the DVD. Too bad, it would have been an over the top release if this had not been done in this fashion. (It's also a little boring.) Also, Cliff Gorman's year of birth is incorrect. It is 1936 not 1926.
Boys In The Band DVD in 16:9 widescreen stereo splendour November 26, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Enough other reviewers have told the truth about the highly informative and beautifully produced extras on this DVD. Reason enough alone to buy it even if you own the VHS version. However Friedkin is not kidding at all about the high quality of the video - especially as compared to the VHS.
The DVD is actually 16:9 widescreen, not 2.35:1 as listed on this Amazon page. I loaded both the VHS and DVD into my home cinema system and switched between the two to compare the 4:3 full screen VHS to the 16:9 widescreen DVD and found that both formats offer a very similar amount of detail: the VHS has extra detail top and bottom and the DVD has extra detail on the sides. The DVD is vastly superior to the VHS in clarity, contrast and colour. Perfect in fact.
The other immediately noticeable quality advantage in the DVD is that it is bona fide stereo and sounds beautiful and pristine. The VHS tape was labelled as "HiFi Stereo" but was really only HiFi mono and it had huge problems with extraneous noise.
I first saw Boys In The Band as a midday movie on TV when I was about 16 (ca 1972). I remember that it forced me to be fully aware of the reality and permanance of my homosexuality - especially Harold's stunning "ready or not" admonishment to Michael on the futility of self-loathing and repression which ends with: "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 fervour with which you annihilate. But you'll always be homosexual as well. Always Michael. Always. Until the day you die."
That scene was also wonderfully filmed.
The Boys In The Band helped empower me to have a confident, self-accepting and happy life. I'm over the moon to own the film on DVD in such quality and deserved attention to detail.
 A milepost in American gay pop culture November 19, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
The 1970 film "Boys In The Band," based on a stage play from 1968, is an interesting snapshot of American gay culture in the 1960s. Originally written and produced before the Stonewall Riots that shaped the gay rights movement of the 1970s, the play transposes the psychology-heavy drama of Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill, et al. into a gay milieu, albeit into the catty, queeny world of the pre-gay-lib era.
Within the LGBT world, the film is controversial due to the lacerating self-loathing seen in and among many of the principal protagonists, and the perception that the characters are simply a stable of gay stereotypes. The negative psychological portraits are as much a product of the genre (intellectualized 1960s stage plays) as they are a critique or caricature of gay culture, and the stereotypes, such as they are, exist in part because of the truth they evoke.
(Indeed, if you read some of the negative reviews on this film on Amazon, you'll find that they seem to be from younger viewers, who came of age in the 1980s, '90s and '00s, when gay culture was considerably less conflicted and immeasurably more free than in the earlier era when so many strides were made -- these viewers seem to have little empathy for or knowledge of what life was like before LGBT lifestyles became so much a part of the mainstream. Without an appreciation for the stifling conditions of the Mattachine Society era, they feel free to condemn this film, which seems like a relatively honest, if hyperbolic, presentation of life as it was, several decades ago. Pro or con, it's certainly worth checking out to add to your historical perspective... the material is uncomfortable, but it was meant to be.
BRILLIANT, SEARING, AND STILL RELEVANT November 18, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Let there be general rejoicing through the land at the DVD release of this landmark film! BOYS IN THE BAND is both brilliant, bitingly funny filmmaking and a penetrating examination of the (still) dysfunctional ways gay men cope with basic conflicts imposed by American society. Mart Crowley penned more memorable lines than any three Bette Davis films and Friedkin established a sense of place and mood in his main character's tony 1968 Manhattan apartment that is just uncanny. By the time LOOK OF LOVE plays, I couldn't tear myself away.
My upper lip involuntarily curls with contempt at the self-deception of gays who insist that we've come so far as to make BOYS IN THE BAND a tired irrelevancy. Consider the time elapsed between the making of this film and BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. The issues raised have changed very little because the childhoods of most gay men (principally the apoplectic reaction and subsequent withdrawal of their fathers) has changed very little. I could easily assemble the cast from my present circle of friends (one of whom would make Larry seem positively chaste). Only nowadays we'd need to add a sniffy, intellectually dishonest character who marches to a stirring little militant anthem inside his head and trowels PC banalities over his conflicts and childhood hurts.
A Must See! November 16, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Most gay men, and many heterosexual people, have heard of or seen "The Boys in the Band" so I won't describe the story. The details, as well as the written play, are readily available. Finally this classic gay film is available on DVD; and it's a masterpiece in every way imaginable. As William Friedkin & Mart Crowley have said, this is the best looking print of "The Boys in the Band" ever produced ... better than any theatrical print in existence. The bonus features are icing on the cake. They are presented in three featurettes, one dealing with the play, one with the film and the final one with what happened to the film and the cast during the nearly forty years since it was released.
For those of you who've heard that the film is negative, please don't be put off by this. It's a look at gay life prior to the era of gay liberation. Certainly, and thankfully, things have improved greatly since the setting of the film, the late 1960's. Seeing the film gives you a look at those times. After seeing the film, I believe you will know two things. 1) Even though none of us would want to go back to a time when the closet was the rule for most gay men, it is still important to know that life was not all misery then. Gay men still found each other and came together to enjoy their lives, forming friendships and relationships just as they do now. 2) Even though we've come so far, we have a long way to go. If you're really honest with yourself, you will have to admit that you know someone in your group of associates who is just like each of these men. The film is not that dated.
A few years ago, there was a study that involved showing the film to three different groups. One group was in their forties, one in their thirties and another in their twenties. The forty-somethings thought that the film was dated and didn't identify with the characters very much. The people in their thirties admitted they knew some people just like the boys in the film. Strangely the youngest group said the characters in the film were just like many of their friends ... or even themselves. What does this tell us? It tells us that self-acceptance and the development of self-respect is a journey. The people in their forties had lived twenty years longer and had completed their journey to a greater extent than the middle and youngest groups. We can be hopeful that Michael had arrived at the first step toward his journey at the end of the film.
|
|
|
