When Mart Crowley’s ‘The Boys in the Band’ first played a limited few days engagement off-Broadway in 1968, the reaction was immediate: Lines around the block. Cultural movers and shakers desperate to get a seat. It was a commercial sign about the curiosity and interest in homosexuals, their stories, their lives. That has continued even as society has changed over the past 52 years. The original ‘Boys’ soon returned to the stage and became a cultural milestone, argued about, acclaimed, condemned. William Friedkin, a young rising filmmaker who had made just one picture, a Harold Pinter film, directed the 1970 film version. Friedkin’s next picture would win him an Academy Award: ‘The French Connection.’ ‘Boys’ was sold with a now-classic poster showing 2 faces: Harold and the caption ‘Today is Harold’s birthday.’ And Cowboy, ‘This is his present.’ 
Crowley, whose connections as Natalie Wood’s assistant were instrumental in getting ‘Boys’ staged, scripted the film which featured mostly members of the stage play, partly because no Hollywood actor would even think of playing a homosexual. Needless to say, Friedkin’s take – opening the play a bit by introducing each character before they arrive at the evening birthday party – is now a classic and no one will ever match the late Leonard Frey’s frizzy haired, somewhat scary and very wise Harold. The new Netflix ‘Boys’ arrives as very much a film version of the 2018 hit Broadway revival directed in both instances by Joe Mantello and playing, proudly, with the same all out and proud gay cast led by stars like Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto (as Harold) and Andrew Rannells. Crowley was thrilled by the decades-later recognition of ‘Boys’ as a modern classic and especially the Tony Award for Best Revival in 2019. Because after Stonewall there was a period when ‘Boys’ was vilified and hated. He died last March at 84, having filmed a quiet cameo as a patron on a bar stool at the gay Greenwich Village bar. I interviewed Parsons who is not just engaging but thoughtful, incisive and reflective. This is part of that interview.
Q: Your character Michael IS Mart Crowley, he’s a stand-in for the playwright and we see his drunken malevolence, biting disdain, his withering put-downs. How did that impact you Jim for playing Michael? You had the original source sitting in front of you.
JIM PARSONS: It was a combination of two things. It was a slow process of me utilizing Michael as a stand-in for Mart. For one thing I think, just my own self-defense mechanism, I didn’t think too much going into it — because it would have added a certain amount of pressure with this living playwright still around for our Broadway production. But the other side of that, which is something I knew at first, Mart was such a gentle man he would have never – he was never the type to come around and not only give notes, but like he would never have presumed to just on his own impart anything to me. He was very hands off in that way. Although if you approached him, he was so easy and open. One of the worst best things that happened to me was in the Broadway run when I broke my foot and I had all this time suddenly to sit in my dressing room (because I was only allowed to walk onstage) and just watch movies. And I wrote an email to Mart Crowley and asked him, I guess I felt safe enough, I felt secure enough in what I’m doing, I can start talking about this: ‘What movies do you think Michael would have liked?’ He wrote me back a few different emails that went into this beautifully written, hysterical, touching stuff about his own relationship with films, how the security he found in movies, how Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Rope’ was such a major jumping off point for him and an inspiration for him to write ‘Boys in the Band,’ which I found fascinating.
But it was really during the movie process, for whatever the reason, that started to hit me. That Michael is a struggling writer, much like Mart was a struggling writer. And until Mart wrote, honestly – brutally honestly – about his own life which required a level of acceptance about who he was, he still struggled. And that’s the journey I have to assume Michael is on. As the character of Harold (Quinto) says to him at the end, ‘You are a homosexual. You will always be one no matter what you try and do about it.’ If Michael can accept that, not only can he probably be a kinder party host but I think he’ll be a better writer – because he’ll be a more honest human being. If Michael is Mart, he’s definitely Mart before he wrote ‘The Boys in the Band.’
Q: What about playing a self-loathing. closeted gay for an audience of young gays and lesbians today? What do you think they will relate to there?
JP: I think they will relate to a couple of things. I think in an historical way and this isn’t much related as parting information not only can they understand the hurtful ways being sidelined in society can do for you — and the ways it can make us act in such hurtful ways sometimes where we’re struggling in the world the way we are — and the way in which these men came out of that: They had to they had to fight to gain their rights and equalities so they could be healthier, happier human beings. I think that’s important to learn about. But I feel that to watch these characters go through this, what it doesn’t bring up for you maybe personally, what you may have gone through or are going through, I think it invites you to have more empathy and be on the lookout, not just for gay people, but other people in the world. Maybe right in your circle, maybe people you don’t know yet. To recognize the ways in which society is sending them signals that they’re not all right. That they don’t totally belong. You know, it’s sad to say this but when you think in those terms I think it’s pretty rampant. I think if anything it’s surprising if you go down a list how many little ways so many people are told ‘You’re not really up to par to be a full-fledged human being on this earth.’ It’s different in different cultures and in different countries but I just think a tale told with this much specificity somewhat paradoxically invites a more general empathy for all human beings.
Q: When you did this did you have any thoughts for Henry Willson [the predatory gay agent who ‘invented’ Rock Hudson] which you had played for Ryan Murphy in the 1940s ‘Hollywood’?
JP: I didn’t do Henry until we were finished. We were filming this when Ryan came to me about Henry.
Q: Of course it was a triumph that ‘Boys’ was staged with an all gay cast. You were in ‘The Normal Heart,’ another landmark gay play filmed, and now these two. Is it ever too much gay and you say ‘Give me a baseball player to play’?
JP: [Laughs] No, the gay characters I’ve played have been such rich, interesting humans and in ‘Boys’ and ‘Normal Heart’ — and ‘Hollywood’ for that matter — being gay comes up as a major highlight of the story. Oddly in the actual playing of the scene, it doesn’t occur to me as much. It’s more the ways in which they’re, you know, struggling. And the ways in which they feel they don’t fit in. And just trying to get through
a conversation. You know, it’s their normal human things that’s what’s so interesting about them. So, no, I haven’t flagged them as making me tired that they’re gay. No.
NEW DVDs:
A BLACK HEROINE OF THE ‘70s A terrific follow-up to ‘Julia,’ television’s first series to star a Black professional woman, ‘Claudine’ (Blu-ray, Criterion Collection, PG) was an Oscar-nominated gift for Diahann Carroll. The 1974 romantic drama teamed her with James Earl Jones. They are not glam movie stars, or famous Black achievers but ‘real people.’ Claudine is a Harlem single mother of six and Jones a garbage collector. The Curtis Mayfield soundtrack is performed by Gladys Knight and the Pips no less. Carroll died last year after a career that began in the Fifties and included Broadway, nightclubs, films and TV. There’s a bit of sadness watching her triumph here for she inherited the role just weeks before filming was to begin. The luminous Diana Sands (‘A Raisin in the Sun’) who was to star had suddenly died of cancer at 39.
The Criterion Special Edition features: The 2003 audio commentary with Carroll, Jones and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, filmmaker George Tillman, Jr. and Dan Pine, the son of the screenwriting couple Lester and Tina Pine. There’s a new conversation between filmmaker Robert Townsend (‘Hollywood Shuffle’) and programmer Ashley Clark, illustrated audio excerpts from a ’74 AFI Harold Lloyd Master Seminar with Carroll, a new interview with the compelling, informative critic Imogen Sara Smith on ‘Claudine’ director John Berry (who had been blacklisted), plus an essay.
TIME FOR GIFT GIVING?? It’s both time capsule and cinematic boast, a super gift and a monument to smart filmmaking. We’re talking about the boxed set ‘Focus Features 10-Movie Spotlight Collection’ (Blu-ray, Universal, various PG-13, R and PG ratings) which includes these Oscar-honored, already classic milestones:
* Sofia Coppola’s ‘Lost in Translation’ (Bill Murray considers it his favorite performance, the semi-sequel is due this fall),
* Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Ang Lee’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’ which won Lee Best Director Oscar but left the picture and Ledger screwed,
* Joe Wright’s ‘Atonement’ with Keira Knightley, James McAvoy and Saoirse Ronan in the first of her Oscar-nominated performance. It boasts one of the great cinematic recreations of Dunkirk,
* Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsberg in ‘The Theory of Everything’ with Armie Hammer which is now a film for the ages,
* Cynthia Erivo in her double-Oscar nominated performance in ‘Harriet,’
* The Coen brothers’ delicious down and dirty and downright nasty ‘Burn After Reading’ (with its too-true tagline: ‘Intelligence Is Relative’) with Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Frances McDormand in a CIA tale that posits the Question: Who is the better idiot, Brad or George?
* Eddie Redmayne in his Oscar winning work as Stephen Hawking in ‘The Theory of Everything’ opposite Felicity Jones,
* Jim Carrey in Michel Gondry’s ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ with Charlie Kaufman’s Oscar-winning screenplay,
* Wes Anderson’s sweetly romantic ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ with Bruce Willis, Tilda Swinton and the intentionally disturbing killing of a dog,
* Joe Wright’s marvelous Jane Austen adaptation ‘Pride and Prejudice’ with Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen (‘Succession’) so fine as Mr. Darcy.
ALL SHOOK UP A 2019 documentary series with an insightful hook, ‘Hip Hop The Songs That Shook America’ (Blu-ray, 6 episodes, 2 discs, AMC) in each episode covers one classic song with the artist deconstructing their composition, revisiting the impact the songs had on them personally and dissecting the song’s socio-economic and cultural conditions.
The songs range from Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Alright,’ Queen Latifah’s ‘Ladies First’ to Run-DMC’s ‘Rock Box’ and Outkast’s ‘Elevators.’ There are 4 Special Featurettes: Barbershop, Rooftop Redemption, Sounds of the South, Basement Tapes.
A NEBRASKA SUPERHEROINE A streaming series on DCUniverse which was then broadcast on The CW ‘Stargirl’ (Blu-ray + Digital Code, 13 episodes, DC WB, Not Rated) is a superhero prequel of sorts to The Justice Society of America. LA native Courtney Whitmore (Brec Bassinger, just 21) discovers a powerful weapon, the Cosmic Staff, and becomes superheroine Stargirl. She leads a new incarnation of Justice Society of America whose members include Doctor Min-Nite II, Wildcat II and Hourman II. There is also the Injustice Society of America led by Icicle.
Luke Wilson is Courtney’s stepfather and mentor. He’s a former sidekick to Starman and has a super cool 15-foot robotic vehicle he made from spare parts. Also here, Henry Thomas (‘E.T.’) as Doctor Mid-Nite. This latest Greg Berlanti series is based on creator Geoff Johns’ DC comic series which he dedicated to the spirit and memory of his late sister.
BICKERING, AMUSING 90s ODD COUPLE At the start of John Badham’s 1991 action comedy ‘The Hard Way’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, R), there is so much noise and mindless car crashes you may rightly wonder how stupid or irritating this is going to be. ‘Hard Way’ may not re-invent the wheel but it quickly becomes an engaging, well-paced, beautifully executed odd couple comedy with remarkable work by Michael J. Fox as an action movie star (yes, think Tommy Cruise with a helmet of hair) who decides he must partner with a hell-raising obnoxious New York cop (James Woods, shall we say ideally cast?) who wants nothing to do with this poser. The Daniel Pine-Lem Dobbs script allows both actors to do what they do best. They are accentuated by the sociopathic villain, a scene-stealing Stephen Lang (so splendid and memorable as the Blind Man in the Detroit-set thriller ‘Don’t Breathe’ and here in splendid shape as the most gleeful homicidal maniac you’ll ever see) and a winningly engaging Annabella Sciorra as Woods’ would-be girlfriend. Badham cast his ‘Saturday Night Fever’ star Karen Lynn Gorney in a key cameo and benefits from producer and second unit director Rob Cohen’s work. His vivid chases and stunts led to Cohen’s subsequent stepping into the director chair with the Bruce Lee biopic ‘Dragon’ and the 2001 ‘The Fast and the Furious.’ The audio commentary is fascinating with Badham, Cohen and film historian Daniel Kremer. We find out it was Cohen’s idea to climax the picture in Times Square with all four stars hanging for life onto a huge, elaborate moving sign that advertises Woods’ next big action movie. The sequence took five weeks to film on a soundstage (Times Square was added later) and Sciorra we learn was ‘terrified’ the whole time she had to be up there. The film is a reminder of how engaging and improvisatory Fox was at this peak juncture of his career. One surprise: Penny Marshall is here briefly.
A TITANIC HISTORIAN Imagine having a Titanic historian guide you through a lamentably error-ridden film of the sinking of the world’s most legendary ‘unsinkable’ ship in 1912. That’s what makes ‘S.O.S. Titanic’ (Blu-ray, 2 discs, KL Studio Classics, R), a 1979 British production with TV stars top-billed like Cloris Leachman, David Janssen and Susan Saint James, so fascinating. The 1930s luxury liner Queen Mary, dry-docked as a tourist attraction in California, stands in for many of the ‘Titanic’ scenes. Another ship stood in for the Titanic’s captain’s cabin and the first deck. 
The Russian-born Evgueni Mlodik is an upbeat guide, with backstories on various passengers and survivors, details on the actual iceberg collision which happened in the dark on a moonless night, and a winning way with clarifying the ‘class wars’ that have given so much fodder to Titanic lore. ‘S.O.S. Titanic’ was released overseas theatrically in a truncated 102-minute version. Here it was seen in a 144-minute TV version. Both versions are here in the Blu-ray. The Emmy winning James Costigan (‘Love Among the Ruins’) scripted. Mlodik notes that Titanic has always been a movie magnet, beginning with a hit 10-minute version starring a traumatized survivor that played just 3 months after the sinking. We learn that the most recent ‘final’ statistics suggest just under 1,500 perished and 712 survived. The 2nd Titanic film, also a hit, arrived in the late 1920s as a silent. Hitler’s Nazi propaganda chief was obsessed with the Titanic and in 1943, even as Germany was losing the war, Goebbels mounted an epic ‘Titanic’ that served as an indictment of the capitalist ship owner (a coward who wouldn’t go down with the ship and is played in ‘S.O.S.’ by future hobbit Ian Holm). Then there was the 1953 Hollywood fiction ‘Titanic’ with Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb in a classy soap opera that had nothing pretty much to do with the era or the facts, except yes it sinks. It was so completely contrived that it inspired a writer Daniel J. Lord to do extensive research and publish ‘A Night to Remember,’ which became a global bestseller and in 1958 the definitive film version of the first and last voyage of a liner it seems the world will never forget. Special Feature: 1912 newsreel, 1943 ‘Titanic’ trailer.
PEPPARD TIMES 3 Three George Peppard vehicles have become available: The 1974 brand new 2K master of ‘Newman’s Law’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, PG) has Peppard as an LA cop surrounded by corruption and, of course, violence. His 1972 ‘The Groundstar Conspiracy’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, PG), also in a brand new 2K Master, has a first-class director in Lamont Johnson (‘The McKenzie Break’) with Peppard as a government investigator on the trail of Michael Sarrazin’s terrorist who has already blown up the nation’s top-secret Groundstar Research Complex and murdered 6 scientists. What soon develops with his mind mysteriously ‘erased’ are questions about the saboteur’s identity. As for the 3rd entry, there’s a reason it’s taken 52 years before Universal put Peppard’s 1968 ‘P.J.’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, Not Rated) on DVD. 
First, it was routine for the studio to release their product theatrically and then, drastically edited, on TV. That’s what happened with this original detective story ‘P.J.’ where Peppard’s down-and-out P.I. is hired by a miserly, sadistic tycoon (a white haired but mobile Raymond Burr, not confined to his ‘Ironsides’ wheelchair) to act as bodyguard for his luscious mistress (Gayle Hunnicutt, who was never less than sensational). The job involves a trip to the West Indies where we have a positive injection of diversity with Black locals (including Brock Peters) bemoaning their island nation’s dependence on the US. But then there’s the most lurid, obnoxious Greenwich Village gay bar scene imaginable. It practically defines hysterical homophobia. In ’68 Mart Crowley’s ‘Boys in the Band’ became not just a huge, hugely influential hit, it was a game changer presenting persecuted gays with dignity and humor. ‘P.J.’ shows what a horrible ‘reality’ was routinely presented by Hollywood with gays grotesque and mercenary, hired to slice and brutalize the detective. Peppard visibly sniffs with distaste before he can steel himself to walk into this enclave. Needless to say, the gay interlude was never seen again when sold to television. The director here is John Guillermin (‘Death on the Nile’) who had successfully teamed with Peppard a few years earlier with the hit WWI aviation epic ‘The Blue Max.’
A GARDEN THAT WON’T GROW Some movies are distinguished by their casting but the real star in Ross Hunter’s starry 1964 ‘The Chalk Garden’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, Not Rated) is Enid Bagnold (‘National Velvet’) whose classic play has been adapted by Hollywood veteran John Michael Hayes (who collaborated with Hitchcock on the smash hits: ‘Rear Window,’ ‘To Catch a Thief,’ ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’ and his Oscar-nominated ‘Peyton Place’). Not that ‘Chalk Garden’ isn’t stuffed with classy Brits.
Deborah Kerr (‘Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison,’ ‘The King and I,’ ‘From Here to Eternity’ with that roll in the surf with Burt Lancaster) is the new governess hired to tame unruly Laurel (Disney child star Haley Mills, slowly growing up). Her real-life revered father John Mills (an Oscar winner for ‘Ryan’s Daughter’) is the butler and, let’s roll the trumpets, Dame Edith Evans commandingly appears as the grand grandmother – it was the 2nd of her 3 Oscar nominations. Audio commentary by film historian Tim Lucas.
"Hollywood" - Google News
October 01, 2020 at 11:53AM
https://ift.tt/2SguAH7
Stephen Schaefer’s Hollywood & Mine - Boston Herald
"Hollywood" - Google News
https://ift.tt/38iWBEK
https://ift.tt/3fdiOHW
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Stephen Schaefer’s Hollywood & Mine - Boston Herald"
Post a Comment