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"What I am, Michael, is a 32 year-old, ugly, pockmarked Jew fairy, and if it takes me a little while to pull myself together, and if I smoke a little grass before I get up the nerve to show my face to the world, it's nobody's goddamned business but my own. And how are you this evening?"

You had to hand it to Harold: He knew how to make an entrance — affecting a slow, serpentine slink while spewing venom at his mean-spirited host who'd just dressed him down for arriving stoned and unfashionably late for his own birthday party.

Leonard Frey, a brilliant and withering Harold on stage and screen, was the second of the original cast to die, a dozen days before his 50th birthday (8/24/88), preceded (6/3/84) by Robert LaTourneaux, 41, who played his dumb-hustler "birthday present," Cowboy. Two party guests — Donald (Frederick Combs, 57) and Larry (Keith Prentice, 52) — passed away eight days apart in September of 1992. The self-hating host, Michael (Kenneth Nelson, 63), was the last to go (10/7/93). Behind the footlights, fatalities included the play's original producer, Richard Barr at 71 (1/10/89) and, ahead of everybody, its original director, Robert Moore at 57 (5/10/84). All died from AIDS or AIDS-related diseases. Cliff Gorman — the show's Obie winner who played the most flamboyant character on the premises, the irrepressibly over-the-top Emory — succumbed to leukemia Sept. 5, 2002, at age 65.

	Leonard Frey in "The Boys in the Band."
	photo courtesy National General Pictures

Mart Crowley, 75, is still standing — and so is his landmark play, although its disciples are in sharp decline and there has been a major disconnect between generations. In 1968, when it debuted Off-Broadway, and again in 1970, when it reached the big commercial screen, The Boys in the Band was a flashpoint for intense controversy, dividing the homosexual community. There were those who strongly objected to their tribe being depicted as ditzes indulging in cruel fun 'n' games during a booze-fueled birthday bash in Greenwich Village, and there were those who looked around and saw it was the only play giving gays a place in the public sun. They saw it as an authentic, unflinching start — something to build on.

These battle lines seem to materialize whenever the work is revived here — in 1996 at The WPA and Lortel, and in 2010 at a site-specific apartment near Chelsea.

A lot of human history stubbornly swirls above this groundbreaking piece, so it's no small blessing Crayton Robey has stepped up to the plate to produce and direct — ultimately, an act of preservation — a documentary feature on the play and film and on the people it touched, for better and for worse. It is called "Making the Boys," surfacing in New York City and Los Angeles movie theatres this month.

	Crowley outside a New York City movie theatre showing "The Boys in the Band."

The 28-year-old filmmaker admits, "A lot of people in my generation don't have any clue or any patience for history. They've heard of Boys in the Band, and they know the lines, the language. But they don't necessarily connect the two. 'Who do you have to f**k to get a drink around here?' They don't realize it's from Boys in the Band.

"I wanted this film to be celebrated and valued for what it meant to Americans at that time, giving a positive visibility about homosexuality. I think Americans need a piece like this to understand the journey of the homosexual and America itself."

Twenty or so "talking heads" have been corralled to give testimony about The Boys and the times — strong gay voices from a variety of professions: novelist Michael Cunningham, columnists Michael Musto, Patrick Pacheco and Dan Savage, actor Cheyenne Jackson, "Project Runway" designer Christian Siriano, songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, television host Andy Cohen and playwrights Paul Rudnick and Edward Albee.

Any desire for Crowley to chronicle "The Boys in the Band and How They Grew" in one medium or another has, he says, been quelled by this documentary. "I think the film did it. Crayton has done it all. He got lots of current people to cooperate with this. Good God, the leading playwrights of today and yesterday are represented!"