Hi. Come in.
Welcome to my apartment.
Mart Crowley was helpful with sharing
memories that he had about
the process of writing the play
and personal stories
about who these guys were based on.
And Mart wrote me probably the most beautiful email
about the history of Bernard and a boy he knew
that he was enamored by.
It was mind-blowing for me.
They're based on people he knew
and they are really his group of friends.
And they came to life in this feat of imagination,
this huge creative risk.
I don't know that I knew what the hell I was doing,
to tell you the truth.
I mean, I knew I was writing a play about gay life.
This is sort of a New York gallery, as you see.
It's only wide enough for one person
to look at the pictures at one time.
But these are all my friends.
The play in 1968 was a huge success.
It was revelatory and unprecedented.
Nobody had seen anything like it at the time.
The Boys in the Band originally premiered
off Broadway,
April 14th.
It was Easter Sunday, as a matter of fact.
And the joke was, "I hope it doesn't lay an egg."
The revival of the play was 2018,
50 years later.
This is the photograph that was used to publicize
the play on Broadway.
And it is obviously mocking up the original.
Here we are, the cast and me.
I wanted to acknowledge the bravery
of those guys that took on those parts,
even against the advice of their agents.
This was the first time we saw people in this situation,
first time we saw gay people represented on stage.
It was at a time when
being gay wasn't legal.
It wasn't okay. It wasn't accepted.
There was a tremendous undercurrent of fear
about what this could do to them in their careers.
It would have been career suicide
to have come out and
not even acknowledge that they were gay, but…
'Cause some of them weren't.
The actors all in this version are open and out,
but in the original, six were played by gay actors
and three were played by straight actors.
All of them, though, had everything on the line,
you know, the gay community had been
verboten, so nobody ever really talked about it
unless you were gonna be around
private surroundings.
There's Billy Friedkin and me
on the set of The Boys in the Band up there.
But I have to be honest.
You know, I was either so dumb or so young,
I didn't even feel like I was taking any risk.
Here's the original set design by Peter Harvey.
I wrote to Mart,
and I have this trove of emails from him now
that are so well-written and such good reads
about these movies that made an effect on him,
"And I saw this in this country."
'Cause he's another, like Michael.
He was always jet-setting around.
This cigarette box…
it was a gift from the cast and crew.
They bought it in Tiffany's,
but Tiffany's wouldn't engrave it
because it has a line from the play
which is, "Thank you and fuck you."
You know what you are Michael?
You're a real person.
Thank you, and fuck you!
This is who Donald was based on.
My friend Douglas Murray.
And the play is dedicated to Doug
and to Howard.
They couldn't stand each other.
Okay, that's Howard.
That picture was taken by Jerome Robbins.
Mart has been a great resource,
but he's also said, "Do what you want."
I think he knows that after 50 years,
the script is really sturdy and it's going to survive
this interpretation and he's been completely generous.
This is my goddaughter
and she's holding up a-- the photo,
the photograph,
that is a gift in the play.
This play has gone through so many different
iterations, in terms of how it's been perceived by society.
It was loved and adored, 'cause it was the first time
gay men were being portrayed like this on stage,
then it was reviled
because people thought it was regressive.
And I think the nice thing about 50 years later
is that we're able to revisit in a way where
we could say, "This is a part of our history."
I like this picture very much. There's Joe on one end
and Ryan on the other end. And me here.
The fact that all actors involved are openly gay men,
it was a great way to show how far we'd come.
The fact that now everyone can be open with themselves.
People said, "I remember this.
Thank you for telling our story."
Then there were young people who said,
"You're telling my story."
One person was, like, sobbing, crying.
And he said, "I'm just so proud.
I'm so proud to be an out gay man."
Ones my age that were saying,
"Oh, we're not like that anymore."
And then…
the youngest ones saying,
"Well, we're still just like that."
The jokes and the shade and the humor.
There's something about it that's so familiar
to me and my generation.
It speaks to being a part of history and some some sort of
spirit out there that won't ever change.
As a young person, gay, straight, whatever,
there are certain historical things that have gone on
and you can be a better version
of who you are by knowing
what came before.
There is a phenomenon
as a 52-year-old gay man where you
don't really know how to grow old gracefully.
Mart is, for me, an example of what is possible.
Here's the Tony Award that we all won.
Well, I was totally surprised.
Nobody believes that but I was, I mean…
the fact that I didn't even have a speech prepared…
I knew who I had to thank. I had a list.
I got out a paper that had a list of people
that I had to thank, but then my eyes teared up
and I couldn't even read that.
You know, I sold the play and that bill of goods
by couching it as a comedy.
And the laughs lightened it up
and made it permissible for the audience to participate.
So I hope that they not only
laugh at the jokes still,
but I hope that they take the serious content
that's buried underneath that to heart.
This telegram, which was from my psychiatrist,
sent it to me on opening night,
"Dear Mart, no one could be more pleased
nor proud of you than I."
So we'd come through a lot together
and I guess he was thrilled with his work.