Gay Movie History | The early years | The sissy | Censorship starts | Subtlety reigns | Accustomed | Cut, cut, cut | Finally it happened | Gay liberation | The 80's | Gay goes into hate | Hollywood's ambivalence | Aids

Finally it happened!

The movie was "Boys In the Band," based on the hit off-Broadway play by Mart Crowley, and for young gay men like Barry Sandler, it offered an image of "gay men as having this incredible sense of camaraderie, this sense of belonging to a group which I'd never really felt before." It also presented a rather depressing collection of bitchy, vindictive, self-loathing queens. "I knew a lot of people like those people," says Crowley, "and I would say that probably all nine of them are split off pieces of myself... I think the self-deprecating humor was born out of a low self-esteem, if you will, from a sense of what the times told you about yourself. Homosexuality was still classified as a mental illness. If you went to a gay bar, you were liable to be arrested, or the place be raided... There were still, not just attitudes, there were laws, against one's being, the core of one's being." In one of the key scenes in the movie, the problem is stated succinctly by one of the miserable characters: "If we could just not hate ourselves so much. That's it, you know. If we could just learn not to hate ourselves quite so very much." And by the time the film was released, thousands of gay men and lesbians had done just that, and had taken to the streets in the name of "gay liberation." As gay people made themselves more visible in the world, they also became more visible on the screen.

Table of contents

1 The Early Years 7 Finally it happened ! 2 The Sissy 8 Gay Liberation 3 Censorship starts 9 The 80's 4 Subtlety reigns 10 Gay goes into hate 5 Accustomed 11 Hollywood's ambivalence 6 Cut, cut, cut ! 12 Aids