Keith Prentice and other BitB cast in today's LA Times

[Midnite]

After watching a couple of eps of 1841 PT this afternoon, I was delighted to open my newspaper to a vivid photo of a smiling Keith Prentice.  The article is titled 'Band's' tune lingers today / 'Making the Boys' documents the history told in and rewritten by 'Boys in the Band.'

The online version:  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-making-the-boys-review-20110429,0,6784730.story

Making the Boys is currently playing at Laemmle Sunset 5 in W. Hollywood.  http://www.laemmle.com/viewtheatre.php?thid=2

[David]

I really want to see this doc: Boys is such an important, landmark film, and sadly, as timely today as it was in 1970.
I heard that the doc includes rehearsal & performance footage of the original stage production, in which Don Briscoe was a replacement cast member.
I'm hoping for a few shots of him too.

[michael c]

i disagree david...

this is getting very off-topic but i don't know any gay men who live with the level of fear,shame and self-loathing the characters did in Boys.

and we certainly don't live with the same constant threat of arrest they did in 1969. not that there still isn't major progress to be made in this area but there has been significant change.

[David]

There's been giant steps forward as far as equality goes & this will continue no doubt, but gay on gay behavior has not changed much.
I recently did a comprehensive study of the gay blogosphere for a book I hope to write: I was horrified by what I saw.
Nationally known gay activists, award winning gay writers and heads of major gay orgs gleefully engaging in vicious smear campaigns against each other, against straight allies & even against bias victims.
Many of them also routinely engage in tit-for-tat name calling troll-a-thons with anti-gay right wingers--I could post links to this but that might be too off topic.

No one with an ounce of self worth would behave like that.
I understand all too well how much damage homophobia has done: I once suffered from severe mental health issues that were caused by the religious mandated abuse I endured from my own parents. In that state, I did the very things I now condemn.
But it gets to a point when we have to accept personal responsibility for our actions.

Nothing underscores all these points better than The Boys in the Band--I'm glad that more than one DS cast member was involved in such an important & groundbreaking work.

Whew......
Getting off soapbox......

[David]

 

PS my above post is in no way meant to negate your own feelings or experiences.
Just talking in general terms.

Keith P was a fine actor: I wish we could have seen more of his work. Anyone spot his cameo in Cruising (1980)?

[Midnite]

I could post links to this but that might be too off topic.

The discussion has definitely gone off-topic.

[Gothick]

Christopher Bernau who played Philip Todd (who uttered that deathless line during Leviathan:  "I'm ... so ... scared ... !!") was also in the 1969 replacement cast while the original B'way cast was doing the movie.  It would be so beyond cool if they had found footage of the replacement cast doing a scene from the play.  Seems rather unlikely but one can always hope.

G.

[David]

Maybe we could see the replacement cast in rehearsal.

[Julia99]

I've seen the documentary. There are shots of Keith, one of Bernau and none of Briscoe.  sorry.

[Brian]

I can only add that Keith, whom I knew back in the early 1980s when he returned to Dayton, Ohio, was very proud of his work in BITB.  Keith was not happy that some of his work was cut from "Cruising," but he wasn't bitter.  He also was proud of his work on DS.  Though I haven't been part of it since 1985, I know that the Dayton theater community remembers Keith with pride and affection.

Brian

[michael c]

i've sad this before but i find prentice's participation in DS to be somewhat remarkable given the times.

he appeared in BOYS off broadway for two years before doing the film so it's suprising they'd cast an actor so strongly associated with a gay situation in a daytime soap at the time.

[Gothick]

I think it was another era, really.  Actors, by and large, unless they were someone like Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, were allowed to have private lives.

I remember having lunch with the late Craig Hamrick and we were talking about this topic, and he mentioned the name of a prominent, very prominent, member of the DS cast who frequently went to Uncle Charlie's, a well known gay bar in the Village, for drinks after the show. (The bar was named after a character named "Uncle Charlie" on a once popular series, "My Three Sons," who was the live-in male housekeeper to a widowed Dad played by Fred Macmurray.)  Members of the press were also sometimes there.  Nobody ever said anything.

Like I said... it was another era.

G.

[David]

I know who you're talking about: I used to see hm at Uncle Charlie's!
I also saw another DS cast member several times at a bar on Christopher Street.
 
I regret that I never came on to them, I was young & hot back then: the 70s.