Release
Boys Don't Cry premiered in Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September 1999. It received its US premiere at the New York Film Festival on October 8, 1999, to critical acclaim. It was shown at the Reel Affirmations International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in early October to further praise. Boys Don't Cry was given a special screening at the Sundance Film Festival. The film received a limited release theatrically on October 22, 1999, in the United States, where it was distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, a subsidiary of Twentieth Century Fox, that specializes in independent films. The film grossed $73,720 in its opening week, followed by an additional $237,504 by October 17, 1999. By December 5, the film had grossed in excess of $2 million. By May 2000, the film had a United States total gross of $12 million—more than threefold higher than its production budget. Internationally, the film was released on March 2, 2000 in Australia and April 7, 2000 in the United Kingdom.
The film won a variety of awards, with the majority of wins going to Swank for her performance. Swank won a Best Actress Oscar while Sevigny received a nomination in the category of Best Supporting Actress. From the Hollywood Foreign Press, the film received two Golden Globe nominations in the same two categories (Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress) for Swank and Sevigny, with one win (Best Actress). Swank and Sevigny both received Best Actress Awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, and an Independent Spirit Award. The film won three awards at the Boston Society of Film Critics Awards: Best Actress (Swank), Best Supporting Actress (Sevigny), and Best Director (Peirce). Swank and Sevigny won Satellite Awards for their performances, while the film itself was nominated in two other categories: Best Picture (Drama) and Best Director. It was named one of the best films of the year by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Boys Don't Cry's release was concurrent with the murder of a homosexual teenager, Matthew Shepard, who was killed on October 12, 1998, almost a year before the film's premiere. The murder sparked additional public interest in hate crime legislation in America and in Brandon Teena, and aided public interest in Boys Don't Cry.
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Famous quotes containing the word release:
“As nature requires whirlwinds and cyclones to release its excessive force in a violent revolt against its own existence, so the spirit requires a demonic human being from time to time whose excessive strength rebels against the community of thought and the monotony of morality ... only by looking at those beyond its limits does humanity come to know its own utmost limits.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“The near touch of death may be a release into life; if only it will break the egoistic will, and release that other flow.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The steel decks rock with the lightning shock, and shake with the
great recoil,
And the sea grows red with the blood of the dead and reaches for his spoil—
But not till the foe has gone below or turns his prow and runs,
Shall the voice of peace bring sweet release to the men behind the
guns!”
—John Jerome Rooney (1866–1934)