Plot
The film is set in an Upper East Side apartment in New York City in the late 1960s. Michael (Kenneth Nelson), a Roman Catholic and recovering alcoholic, is preparing to host a birthday party for his friend Harold. Another of his friends, Donald (Frederick Combs), a self-described underachiever who has moved from the city, arrives and helps Michael prepare. Alan (Peter White), Michael's (presumably straight) old college roommate from Georgetown, calls with an urgent need to see Michael. Michael reluctantly agrees and invites him to his home.
One by one, the guests arrive. Emory (Cliff Gorman) is a stereotypical flamboyant interior decorator; Hank (Laurence Luckinbill), a soon-to-be-divorced schoolteacher, and Larry (Keith Prentice), a fashion photographer, are a couple, albeit one with monogamy issues; and Bernard (Reuben Greene) is an amiable black bookstore clerk. Alan calls again to inform Michael he isn't coming after all, and the party continues in a festive manner. However, Alan does appear unexpectedly and throws the gathering into turmoil.
"Cowboy" (Robert La Tourneaux) – a male hustler and Emory's "gift" to Harold – arrives. As tensions mount, Alan assaults Emory and in the ensuing chaos Harold finally makes his grand appearance. Michael begins drinking again. As the guests become more and more intoxicated, the party moves indoors from the patio due to a sudden downpour. Michael, who believes Alan is a closeted homosexual, begins a game in which the objective is for each guest to call the one person whom he truly believes he has loved. With each call, past scars and present anxieties are revealed. Michael's plan to "out" Alan with the game appears to backfire when Alan calls his wife, not the male college friend Justin Stewart whom Michael had presumed to be Alan's lover. As the party ends and the guests depart, Michael collapses into Donald's arms, sobbing. When he pulls himself together, it appears his life will remain very much the same.
Read more about this topic: The Boys In The Band
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)