Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy: The Boys of 'Love! Valour! Compassion!' Move from Broadway to Hollywood Minus Their Biggest Out Star

<< Blog | Editorial Features Thursday, September 10, 4:00 PMThu, 10 Sep 2020 @ 4:00 PM by Jake Jizzenhall

Throughout cinema history, there have been some iconic nude scenes that have transcended the bounds of the films in which they appeared. Our weekly columnAnatomy of a Scene's Manatomywill take an in-depth look at these scenes, their history, their deeper meanings, and their legacy. This week, an almost exclusively gay male cast strips down for the 1997 film adaptation of Terrence McNally's play Love! Valour! Compassion!

When he tragically died in March of complications from COVID-19, 81 year-old Terrence McNally had become one of the best known gay playwrights since Tennessee Williams. McNally won four Tony Awards in a span of five years in the 90s and was one of the leading gay voices in the theatre scene at the time. While perhaps not his most personal work, his 1994 play Love! Valour! Compassion!was a tremendously influential work in gay culture, thanks in no small part to being turned into a feature film just three years after it played on Broadway.

The original Broadway productioncame about thanks in no small part to McNally's friendship with Nathan Lane, who had appeared in the writer's two previous Broadway shows—The Lisbon Traviata and Lips Together Teeth Apart. The role of larger-than-life costume designer Buzz Hauser, a man with a bounce in his step and a Broadway showtune in his heart, was written explicitly for Lane, with McNally more or less modeling the character on Lane's own outsized personality. While Lane and McNally's names alone were enough to get the show produced on Broadway, transitioning it to film proved much more difficult.

While Nathan Lane's big screen career had exploded in the mid-90s with The Lion King and The Birdcage, he apparently wasn'ta well enough known actor to leadthe film adaptation. The producers, likely worried by the niche subject matter and copious amounts of male nudity, wanted a bigger name with which they could sell the film, and that's how Lane was replaced by Seinfeld's Jason Alexander. The only other member of the original Broadway cast to be replaced was Silence of the Lambs' Anthony Heald, who was busy filming A Time to Kill at the same time the film was being shot, leadingto Stephen Spinella playing the role of Perry in the film.

It's interesting to note that Heald is straight while Spinella is gay, which is the exact opposite of the Lane/Alexander swap, thus balancing out the ratio of straight actors to gay actors in the film—two confirmed straight vs four confirmed gay along with Justin Kirk who is confirmed to be neither in nor out of the closet. Even if Kirk is straight, there's still a majority of the cast that's out, which is pretty impressive for any film. The other five actors all originated their roles in the stage production, with the incredible John Glover landing a Tony Award for his dual performance as twin brothers John and James Jeckyll, the latter of whom is perilously close to the end of his battle with AIDS.

Perry's longtime partner Arthur is played by John Benjamin Hickey, John's Latin summer lover Ramon is played by Randy Becker, while the entire action of the story is set over three holiday weekends at the Upstate New York home of choreographer Gregory (Stephen Bogardus, the other straight-in-real-life member of the ensemble) and his blind lover Bobby (Justin Kirk). The flamboyant friends kick off the summer together on Memorial Day weekend, reunite for the Fourth of July, and close the story on Labor Day weekend. It's a film very much in the same vein as a Richard Linklater "hang out" comedy where all of the drama is contained within the interactions between the characters rather than through elaborate plot machinations.

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As in the stage production, the film ends with the friends all heading into the lake at night to skinny dip before going back to the relative normalcy of their lives in New York City. All seven members of the ensemble strip down, hiding nothing as they bring this poignant and bittersweet work to an end...

As for Alexander, while he is excellent in the film, you're always aware that you're watching an actor performing. It's likely a byproduct of the familiarity with him playing one very distinct character so well for so long, but he doesn't stick out like a sore thumb or anything. It's not quite on a par with the much more subtle and nuanced work done by Robin Williams the year prior inThe Birdcage, but Buzz isalso just a hilariously flamboyant character, so there's not quite as much room for subtlety and nuance.

There has been debate after debate over whether or not it's "okay" for a straight actor to play a gay character in a film or show and there is no one good definitive answer to that question. Back in the 90s, there was obviously no discussion being had, so it's good to know that gay people at least now have a voice in their own portrayal on film. Still, in the same way you wouldn't want to prohibit a gay person from playing a straight character, it's just not a good idea to have a blanket policy on these sort of casting measures. Ask yourself this question, "at the end of the day, is it better to have a film adaptation of Love! Valour! Compassion! with a straight actor playing a gay character or to not have an adaptation of the play at all?"

Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy...