YMMV / The Boys in the Band

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Just what exactly was going on with Alan? Is he straight? Gay? Bisexual? And what exactly did he want to tell Michael? Was he considering coming out? Was it about his marriage? Does he secretly have feelings for Michael? Did his homosexual affair in college really happen, or was it false gossip? If it did happen, is it proof that he's gay? Could he have just Experimentedin College? How aware of everyone else's sexualities at the party is he? Does he actually love his wife or is she just The Beard? And even if he has no sexual attraction to her, could he still love her romantically anyway? The audience and the other characters never get a solid answer to any of these questions.
  • It's worth noting, in the recent revival and remake, it was widely publicized that the entire cast was gay, which can definitely lead credence towards Alan being gay or bi in that version, though it's still far from explicit proof.
  • Mart Crowley, the play's author, instructed Peter White, the actor playing Alan in the original production (and William Friedkin's 1970 film) to do so in such a way as to leave half the audience thinking he's a closeted homosexual and the other half to think he's a straight man who inadvertently finds himself out of place at a gay party. That's a pretty explicit statement that Alan's backstory was meant to be ambiguous and unresolved.
• Award Snub: Leonard Frey, who played Harold. He'd be nominated for Best Supporting Actor the next year for Fiddler on the Roof.
• Cult Classic: Not the most famous piece around, but it's still regarded as a groundbreaking and excellent play.
• Fair for Its Day: Many people see this film as a hopelessly outdated relic of a time when gay characters were only camp, snarky queens. Few are aware that this was one of the first films to show gay characters as not only protagonists, but real three-dimensional individuals who were every bit as human as their straight counterparts. This is from a time when gay characters rarely even made it to the end credits of films.
• Genius Bonus: The dialogue is loaded with literary and cinematic references that are likely to go over many viewers' heads.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Robert La Tourneaux's film career was destroyed by this film, and really did turn to hustling — which led to his death from AIDS in 1986.
  • Leonard Frey, who earned an Oscar nomination for the next year's Fiddler on the Roof, died of AIDS as well in 1988.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Hank and Larry's relationship in the revival and remake thanks to their actors Tuc Watkins and Andrew Rannells becoming a real life couple.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Hank and Larry's phone calls to each other.
  • Michael's gift to Harold - a silver framed photo of Michael, with an inscription that's never revealed.
    Harold: (choked up) Thank you, Michael.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Who do you have to fuck to get a drink around here?" (This one's widely subject to Parody Displacement.)
  • "Who is she? Who was she? Who does she hope to be?"
• Retroactive Recognition: The model in the opening montage is Maud Adams.
• Vindicated by History: Far better regarded now; Google users give it an 88% approval, for instance. The general public's vastly improved attitude toward the gay community almost certainly played a role in this.

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