SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE

US, 1971, 110 minutes, Colour.
Fannie Flagg, Rue Mc Clanahan, Carleton Carpenter, Calvin Culver, Candy Darling, Nick De Noia, Gil Gerard, Dick O’Neill?, Sylvia Syms
Directed by Mervyn Nelson.

Some of My Best Friends Are … is a film about homosexuals in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village on Christmas Eve 1971. The focus of attention and the location is The Blue Jay bar. It is not so long since the Stonewall protest and the film offers an opportunity to reflect on what homosexuals experienced at this time of discrimination and changing legislation.

Some of the cast went on to other films and television programs including Rue Mc Clanahan and Gil Gerard. Carleton Carpenter, who was a young star at MGM in the 1950s (I Love Melvin and singing ‘Abba Dabba Honeymoon) with Debbie Reynolds in Two Weeks With Love is Miss Untouchable. Warhol actress Candy Darling also appears as does gay icon Calvin Culver.

William Friedkin’s The Boys in the Band, from the play by Mart Crowley, had appeared the year before, a much more complex film and with a bigger budget. However, these films are reminders of changing mores and attitudes in the 1960s and 70s.

1. The implications in the tone of the title? Especially in view of the theme of homosexuality? Wbat were your initial reactions to this title?

2. How did the film communicate the atmosphere of the Blue Jay on Christmas day? How important that this was the time for the setting of the film? Why?

3. Did the setting seem real or did it sewm artificial in order to get as many types as possible into the film? Was this important for the meaning of the film?

4. What were your impressions of the bar itself? As a congenial place? As ugly? As a place where people were frightened? As a place for enjoyment? How did the presentation of the staff help this? The manager, the straight bartender, the motherly woman? How important was this for the human setting for the portrait of homosexuals?

5. Was the film well plotted? The situations and failings in the bar? The manager and the arrangements with the police? the ebb and flow of people in the bar during the evening?

6. How important were the types of homosexuals presented in the film? As persons? Their relationships? their self-image? Their worries?
i) The waiter: Sherry and his flirting on the phone, his preening himself, his working in the bar, the reaction of the man who came thinking he was a girl? the meaning of his life and the whole emphasis on trying to relate to people too?
ii) Howard Wilkins: as a religous person, his organ playing, his relating to his brothers, the confession, the needing of sympathy? How sympathetic a character was he? How real? In his being humiliated during the evening? In his relating personally to Harry? How important was he for the film to give it a tone of ordinariness?
iii) Barrett Hartman: the homosexuat as a married man with personal respect? His relationship to Michelle? The importance of the flashback to the skiing, the nature of his fight with Michelle and his revelation of the emotional tangles of a homosexual? With the background of the marriage? Does this seem a real case? What audience response emotionally does it draw?
(iv) Karen/Harry, as a pathetic figure in drag? When did you realize the this was a man? The image that he put across when he was in drag? The toughness? The humiliation of his being exposed? As a pathetic figure? How real was the insight into this type of character?
v) Terry: the commercial artist, as a gentle kind of person, the flashbacks to him in his work? Why did he relate to Scott? The nature of his love, as a tender person? The humiliation of his mother’s interventiion? the effect on him?
vi) Scott: as an airline pilot, as seemingly normal, as needing this kind of relationship? Was he a strong character or not?
vii) The Italian actor: his stud reputation on the screen, his impotency in his relationships with women, his tough image and yet his pathetic self-hatred, his welcoming of the boy from Nebraska? A genuine character? Could he over change and better his image of himself?
viii) The solitary person: the aloof style, the loneliness and yet the putting over of pompous superiority?

7. Leta: The blonde? Her role in the film as contrasting with homosexuals? As an ugly woman from their point of view? with Scott? Her taunts and threats?

8. What was the atmosphere of the film as time came for closing? As the police came in?

9. How sad and pathetic was the finale? Christmas Evening, the closing of the bar? The people going home? bruises and hurts that they were taking with them? Michelle at the table? the return of Hartman?

10. How typical were the people in this film? Did they evoke sympathy or antipathy? Why?

11. How well did the film raise the reality of homosexuality? Of the people who are homosexual and their emotional needs? Did the film have value from this point of view?