Trivia / The Boys in the Band

• Dark Horse Victory: Not that it didn't have people predicting it, but many thought that the Broadway production wouldn't win the Tony for Best Revival of a Play since it had been closed for nearly a year by that point, and Tony wins for productions that aren't running by the ceremony are typically rare.
• Dawson Casting: 42 years old Zachary Quinto plays 32 years old Harold.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: In the 2018 Broadway Revival (and 2020 film) all the cast were openly gay.
• The Production Curse: From the 1970 film, Kenneth Nelson, Leonard Frey, Frederick Combs, Keith Prentice and Robert La Tourneaux all died from AIDS-related causes.
• Romance on the Set: In the Broadway Revival, Tuc Watkins and Andrew Rannells played the play's couple, Larry and Hank. A couple of months later they revealed they are dating.
• Self-Adaptation: Mart Crowley wrote the original play and the screenplay for the first film adaptation. He was also credited as a co-writer on the screenplay for the 2020 film version.
• Sequel Gap: Crawley wrote a sequel for the play called The Men from the Boys in 2002, 34 years after the original.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Despite much acclaim and success, the Broadway revival closed once lead actor Jim Parsons had to return to shooting The Big Bang Theory. While big names often don't stay in shows (especially straight plays) for all that long, it's been assumed by many that the show likely would've ran for longer if Parsons didn't have to leave, especially since the run had been extended a bit beforehand, which was seen as them putting it on for as long as they could while Parsons was free. Interestingly, the next season would be it's final after running for decades, as Parsons refused a paycheck of $50 million dollars. Some believe that the idea of his series preventing him from other ventures like this again were a deciding factor in his refusal.
• Star-Derailing Role: Most of the actors in the 1970 film went on to have extremely limited (or non-existent) film careers - either bit parts in second-rate films, made-for-TV movies and soap operas, or in other cases almost nothing at all. Several of the actors later said that their public association with the film and with homosexuality made it difficult to impossible to get larger roles in quality films (even for the actors who were straight in life), and that their agents warned them that appearing in this movie would seriously hurt their careers.
  • In contrast, the film proved not to be a Creator Killer in the career of director William Friedkin, who within the next couple of years went on to direct two high budget, high publicity films: The French Connection and The Exorcist.
• Technology Marches On: Much of the problems in the film would have been solved had cell phones existed.

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