Should Be Required Viewing For Young Gay Persons Everywhere

Mart Crowley's landmark, groundbreaking Off-Broadway play is brought to
the screen nearly 100% intact. The entire original stage cast is here,
and the only thing missing is part of a monologue by Michael (Kenneth
Nelson) at the beginning of the film that would have rendered the scene
something of an anachronism in light of the Stonewall riots of 1969
(the play opened in 1968).

The cut is a small one, however, and what Crowley and stage director
Robert Moore gave us in 1968 is pretty much what Friedkin gives us
here.

I think by now most people know the bare bones of the plot: eight gay
men gather for a birthday party at the Greenwich Village apartment of
one of them. Before the party gets really under way, a ninth man shows
up unexpectedly: Michael's old college roommate, now a lawyer and
married with children, who arrives hoping to cry on Michael's shoulder
about something, but the party makes him shut down.

By the end, veneers are stripped away, revelations are made, tears are
shed, and amidst the bitchiness and hostility a lot of laughs and true
affection emerge. And the college roommate may be a closet case; the
play chooses to leave this question open, and the film wisely follows
suit.

The performances are magnificent. This is one of those rare instances
of a stage-to-film adaptation in which a single claustrophobic set is
actually an asset. Trapped together in the apartment for the evening,
drinking far too much, the men lower their guards and reveal the human
beings underneath the carefully constructed veneers.

Kenneth Nelson plays Michael as a slowly gathering storm; his hostility
builds with every drink he tosses back, until the final explosion.

Frederick Combs is Donald, Michael's closest friend and probably lover
(though for some reason they deny this). Bernard (Reuben Greene), the
only African-American in the cast, could easily have been a token, but
he is a real person, not a symbol. And Cliff Gorman nearly steals the
film as the unapologetic screaming queen, Emory.

Hank (Laurence Luckinbill) and Larry (Keith Prentice), the only couple
in the group, are in some ways the most well-adjusted, with one hitch:
Larry wants total freedom, including the freedom to sleep around
occasionally, while Hank, a *bisexual* finally facing the truth about
himself, is comfortable about being gay but is the jealous type.

Oddly, at the time the play opened, Larry's manifesto of total sexual
freedom was something of a rallying cry for the burgeoning Gay
Liberation movement. Today, in the aftermath of the AIDS pandemic, with
many of us now old enough and wise enough to appreciate the benefits of
monogamy, it is Larry who appears the most anachronistic.

The birthday boy is Harold (Leonard Frey), a self-described
"thirty-two-year-old, ugly, pockmarked Jew fairy;" he arrives late and
stoned, and he and Michael begin the verbal sparring that seems to
define their friendship and propels the second half of the film.

Also on hand is Cowboy Tex (Robert La Tourneaux), a rather dim-witted
hustler Emory has purchased for the night as a birthday present for
Harold. La Tourneaux provides a good deal of the play's rich comedy
while at the same time exhibiting a sweetness underneath the surface of
the cheap hustler.

And then there is Alan (Peter White), in Harold's words "the famous
college chum," who may be gay and in the closet. Certainly Michael
thinks so. But if he is, by the end of the play he seems to have
decided to stay there.

It is fashionable among gay film buffs today to sniff at this film as
an example of "how things used to be," usually pointing out that "we
are not like that anymore." But I don't think that's true. With the
"ex-gay" movement preying on young gay people like a nest of vipers,
teaching them to loathe themselves, I wouldn't be so complacent about
the progress we've made. At any rate, this is an amazing accomplishment
and should be required viewing for every young gay kid out there. And
though it is about men, Lesbians should be able to relate to some of it
too.

One sad footnote: Kenneth Nelson (Michael), Frederick Combs (Donald),
Leonard Frey (Harold), and Robert La Tourneaux (Tex) all eventually
died of AIDS.




Never mess with a middle-aged, Bipolar queen with AIDS and an attitude problem!
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