I'm not sure what I think

I’m not sure what I think about William Friedkin’s Cruising and as I thought about it, I actually thought about this board. I should note that I saw the version released on dvd, which I understand has some changes from the original release.

I guess if you haven’t seen the film, you may want to avoid spoilers, although the film won’t provide much closure anyway. I’ll start sorting out my own vague but spoiler-inclusive thoughts in the next paragraph.

I thought about the changing use of actors as the victims & killers in the murder sequences, and about the ending. In the dvd features Friedkin seems to imply that this was to keep audiences off kilter, but it left me wondering, narratively, if there was even one serial killer at any point, or just a bunch of violent queens offing each other with steak knives.

Taken with the implication that “the gays” (or at least the leather scene) are violent, Cruising seems to put forth the idea that you can catch “the gay.” I realize undercover cops getting carried away is kind of a trope, but Pacino gets put into the club scene, starts enjoying it, doesn’t seem to be questioned when found tied up, & has possibly murdered a gay neighbor (and straight girlfirend?)

Am I overthinking, or is Cruising some kind of straight-panic piece, showing fear of becoming gay by association, or gay sex equalling death? If this movie had come along five or ten years later, I’d think it some kind of AIDS allegory. (That would take Pacino’s gay escalation further: voyeurism>copping feels>dancing>hookups>bondage>bugchasing?)

Thoughts, anyone?

I believe what’s been re-edited in are explicit subliminal anal sex scene stills. If you live in the UK, these scenes were removed by law and have only recently been re-inserted. I apologize for being so blunt.

The movie is about a killer who targets gays in a sub-culture. There is nothing implicitly wrong with this seeing as it is actually quite common with serial killers. The film is left entirely ambiguous, Pacino may or may not be gay and the person captured may or may not be the killer. The film suffered protests without the protesters really understanding what the fuck they were doing. The film is also missing about forty minutes of bar scenes, which were cut by the studio and most likely no longer exist.

People get hyped over nothing. There is absolutely no legitimate reason to believe that Al Pacino did anything to anyone. He may have or he may not.

I also refuse to believe that Friedken is in anyway homophobic.

This movie was pre-AIDS outbreak, so it can’t be an allegory.

Well said, Ben.

I know it was too early for AIDS.

I also refuse to believe that Friedken is in anyway homophobic.

People don’t always know they are, especially outsiders looking in (which may be appropriate for a movie about an outsider looking in.) Friedkin tells a story on the dvd about passing on the film & then becoming interested after finding out a CAT scan tech from Exorcist had moved in those circles and been charged with a similar murder. It puts the thing in a weird light. most pieces of art or entertainment do include jodgment, whether we mean to or not. I could attempt to discuss cottage cheese neutrally, maybe write a whole book about Breakstone’s, and still betray my distaste for the stuff.

I’ve quite possibly overthought this, and I’m wonerding if that may be a point, at least as far as the serial killer plot (and it’s lack of clear resolution) is concerned.

I remember the film being quite homophobic. Not only did it go out of its way to make homosexuality itself seem threatening (in subtle and not so subtle ways) but every single gay character presented is either extremely violent or a helpless victim and all of them suffer from some sort of trauma or underlying family issue. The fact that Pacino “catches the gay” seemingly from exposure is the icing on the cake.

The question, I suppose, is whether the film was homophobic even for its time. Given the fact that it opened with a disclaimer saying that the film was not an indictmen of the homosexual world I think the filmmakers were well aware that this was, at the very least, crossing some kind of line in 1980.

If one is trying to do as symptomatic reading of Friedkin’s attitudes toward homosexuality via his work, one ought to consider that a decade earlier, he had made The Boys in the Band.

About Cruising specifically, there was a whole body of popular literary that dealt with “dark side of sexual liberation” themes in the ‘70s. Looking For Mr. Goodbar, for example, does a similar thing for NYC hetero single bars to what Gerald Walker’s novel does for the Greenwich Village leather bar scene.

Daring film for its time and not in the least homophobic, though I do wish Michael Winner would get on with doing his long-planned un-PC remake, Cottaging.

^Yes, and I believe in that recent documentary about the play (and subsequent film) The Boys in the Band, Friedkin says in an interview that The Boys in the Band was one of his favorite films that he’d made. I highly doubt he’s homophobic.

I have no idea if William Friedkin is/was a homophobe or not. The film he made certainly seemed to be. I haven’t seen it in ages but didn’t it also feature hardcore gay sex footage spliced into the murder sequences? I also recall dissonant punk music during the club scenes as opposed to the period accurate disco in an attempt to make them seem more threatening.

Quite a bit of it is interesting in a giallo kind of way and I like many of the directorial flourishes Friedkin employed but the end result is still a helluva mess that either reflected the fears of mainstream society at the time or very cynically preyed upon them.

The early days of punk and the popularity of disco were pretty much contemporaneous with one another, Hellshocked. The Germs (the punk band featured prominently on the film’s sountrack), for example, were together from 1977 to 1980.

This made me think about Shame. It seems that intended or not there is a “moral consequence” for being gay or at least being part of this scene. Since there really was no counterpoint to this film, we can assume that the average American would lump it all into one big gay stereotype. The again, promiscuity in any form always ends up being frowned upon from horror films to giallo to thrillers.

SPOLIER BELOW

Shame kind of grated on me in that McQueen showed the “bottoming out” of his main character involved in a sex act with a man.

“promiscuity in any form always ends up being frowned upon from horror films to giallo to thrillers.”

And not just actually having sex, but just having not-fully-repressed desire:

The early days of punk and the popularity of disco were pretty much contemporaneous with one another,

What I meant to say is that disco was the music of the underground homosexual S&M scene of the late 1970’s. Punk was used because it would make the club scenes more threatening that, say, Gloria Gaynor.

And now it sells butter:

!!

In two years Gangsta Rap will be used to sell tampons.

Can’t wait to read this thread more in depth, but I gave CRUISING two shots, and I just thought it was very sloppy and nonsensical both times, even after preparing myself during the repeat viewing to accept it’s nonsense in that kind of Giallo-non-linear-logic kind of way. But, nope. Which is a bummer because I had the opposite experience with THE EXORCIST and TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. which I loathed then loved, and furthermore I thought SORCERER was amazing from the get-go.

To me, these are two very good critical analyses of Cruising:

http://www.rouge.com.au/3/friedkin.html
http://www.fipresci.org/undercurrent/issue_0407/martin_cruising.htm

The spicing footage doesn’t mean anything, subliminal messaging is not taken very seriously in the scientific community. In fact linked articles on Wikipedia cite it as a pseudo-science, in the same vein as crystal healing. Friedken employed a similar technique in his director’s cut of The Exorcist and that certainly didn’t make me feel the film was more demonic.

Also, I didn’t perceive the film to portray homosexuality as brutish or threatening in anyway. The film is about a sub-culture of the gay community, not the mainstream one. It is quite evident to anyone who has ever read a book about killers that sub-cultures are targeted because mainstream society won’t acknowledge their disappearance. It would be downright foolish to say that BDSM doesn’t exist in both Gay and Straight communities. I’m not gay and I’m not into BDSM, but I certainly don’t find it imposing, seeing as it is often between consenting parties. I don’t think people wouldn’t have a problem with this film if the character was investigated a straight BSDM culture. I can’t stress this point enough. The film is about a sub-culture.

“I also recall dissonant punk music during the club scenes as opposed to the period accurate disco in an attempt to make them seem more threatening.”

You are absolutely 100%, splitting hairs here. It is absolutely disingenuous to believe that Friedken would know exactly what type of music a BSDM bar would be playing. This is a rather odd nitpick to make.

Pacino doesn’t catch the gay because I had the feeling he already was and that his superior knew that. The film is left ambiguous, which is what upsets people.

The spicing footage doesn’t mean anything, subliminal messaging is not taken very seriously in the scientific community. In fact linked articles on Wikipedia cite it as a pseudo-science, in the same vein as crystal healing. Friedken employed a similar technique in his director’s cut of The Exorcist and that certainly didn’t make me feel the film was more demonic.

Um…what? I was not referring to subliminal imagery or an attempt to brainwash the audience. I was referring to the fact that, visually, he literally compares anal sex to being stabbed with a knife repeatedly. If I remember correctly it is a recurring image in the film.

Also, I didn’t perceive the film to portray homosexuality as brutish or threatening in anyway. The film is about a sub-culture of the gay community, not the mainstream one.

The film went out of its way to make the homosexual BDSM subculture come across as threatening. I’ve already explained several ways it did this and I am sure if I rewatched it I could find several more. Beyond that, even the one positive homosexual character in the film, who was not part of the BDSM scene, incidentally, was a weak, subservient and ultimately helpless victim and our lead, is, seemingly, a self loathing homosexual.

It is quite evident to anyone who has ever read a book about killers that sub-cultures are targeted because mainstream society won’t acknowledge their disappearance.

As someone who has read many books about killers I must once again um….what? The killer or killers in the film were a part of the subculture. Moreover at least two of them were self hating homosexuals who would kill those who reminded them of themselves. Not being caught was the last thing in his or their minds.

It would be downright foolish to say that BDSM doesn’t exist in both Gay and Straight communities

Who said it doesn’t exist? I merely said it was presented in an inherently negative and judgmental light.

I don’t think people wouldn’t have a problem with this film if the character was investigated a straight BSDM culture.

If the film in question presented every single participant as a violent, perverted deviant with daddy issues and treated heterosexual BDSM as a danger to society at large then I am quite sure people would at the very least be offput by the film’s victorian morality and judgmental attitude.

You are absolutely 100%, splitting hairs here. It is absolutely disingenuous to believe that Friedken would know exactly what type of music a BSDM bar would be playing. This is a rather odd nitpick to make.

It is absolutely disingenuous to believe that the usage of punk and, furthermore, particularly abrasive and dissonant compositions, which Friedkin hired a band to compose, was not a deliberate decision. The film was shot on location and the predominance of disco was hardly a secret. I don’t see how it is splitting hairs when it is a key element to the film (particularly during Pacino’s dance sequence).

Pacino doesn’t catch the gay because I had the feeling he already was and that his superior knew that. The film is left ambiguous, which is what upsets people.

That is certainly what the film is implying but it also goes out of its way (as I recall) to show how happy Pacino’s character was before his encounter with undergroun BDSM subculture and how unhinged he became following it. It comes very close to outright arguing homosexual panic.

I don’t think the film is evil. It even occasionally empathizes with the plight of homosexuals at the hands of law enforcement . At best, however, it is deeply impregnanted with the prejudices of the period which Friedkin tapped into in order to make his film a more visceral experience.

“disco was the music of the underground homosexual S&M scene of the late 1970’s.”

Are you speaking for experience here?, because I’m admittedly not, but, at any rate, I do know that there were a variety of musical styles played at the gay bars and clubs in that area at that time—their were dance clubs that played disco and the like, but there were also, for example, cowboy bars that played country music, and, for a while in the mid-‘70s, Mother’s, a gay bar on W. 23rd, was booking basically the same bands that CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City. So there certainly has always been punk in gay clubs and gay people in punk clubs, and I don’t know that the idea that punk would be playing in the bars in the film is all that historically improbable.

As far as punk being “threatening,” I think that more a matter of personal perspective. A lot of the better punk has much more to do with issues of personal identity than with outward violence and the like, so I think he’s more likely trying to communicate a sense of Pacino’s character’s confusion about himself and the community he’s “investigating” as much or more than it is about trying to imply some sort of violence underlying the community as a whole.

“Can’t wait to read this thread more in depth, but I gave CRUISING two shots, and I just thought it was very sloppy and nonsensical both times”

Yeah, it’s a problematic film. I don’t think there’s anyway around it. It has some interesting aspects—the vaguely Roegian approach to structure, and the layering of music and sound owes something to Godard (something, if I recall correctly, Adrian Martin notes in one of the pieces Ari linked to above), but even those on board for the critical renovation of the film’s rep undertaken in recent years have to admit it’s still a tabloid film and kind of a mess of one at that.

Are you speaking for experience here?, because I’m admittedly not, but, at any rate, I do know that there were a variety of musical styles played at the gay bars and clubs in that area at that time—their were dance clubs that played disco and the like, but there were also, for example, cowboy bars that played country music, and, for a while in the mid-‘70s

Not at all. In my first viewing it felt incongruous to me (Pacino’s dance sequence particularly) and reading about it several other people (including others who had experience) also noted the odd lack of disco music in the film. If it seems that I’m trying to pigeonhole or even criticize a movement I had absolutely nothing to do with then I’m going about it the wrong way and I’ll rephrase:

Just as romantic comedies tend to use lighthearted music to generate mood and horror films use scary music to generate dread, I found it curious that “Cruising” used loud, clashing, dissonant music during a sequence where two men danced while others around them had sex. It helped make the enviroment itself seem threatening, a place where danger could lurk at any corner, rather than a place where consenting adults to go have fun. There were no punk songs played as I recall. It was the film’s punkish score as dance music. Imagine the same scene with a different score. The tone shifts considerably, doesn’t it? That is what I mean.

As far as punk being “threatening,” I think that more a matter of personal perspective. A lot of the better punk has much more to do with issues of personal identity than with outward violence and the like

You’re preaching to the converted here. I LIKE punk (The Clash and before, pretty much nothing since). I wasn’t criticizing the genre itself. Using punk in a 1980 mainstream film, however, is like using gangsta rap in a 1989 film. It is not a neutral decision and its effect on the audience isn’t very difficult to anticipate.

think he’s more likely trying to communicate a sense of Pacino’s character’s confusion about himself and the community he’s “investigating” as much or more than it is about trying to imply some sort of violence underlying the community as a whole.

I can understand that point of view. Given how many other decisions I had a problem with though, I can’t quite share it.

The community would be no more threatening if it was a straight community. The only reason people nitpick is because the people participating happen to be gay. It shouldn’t matter whether they’re gay or not. Had the film been about straight people no one would have lifted an eyebrow. People arrive at sensationalist conclusions because it happens to be about a minority. You cannot expect everyone to get everything right everytime. Yes the film has it’s caricature’s but I never picked up on the idea that the film was portraying BSDM people to be threatening. The only real relationship in the film is the one with the gay man and his partner in the apartment. Even that murder is left ambiguous.

Killers often target members of communities that they’re a part of of. Jeffrey Dahmer was gay and he certainly targeted people in this area because they were readily available. That’s what I’m stressing here. You go where the prey is, so to speak. We don’t even know if there is more than one killer or if he’s even part of the community. We are never given all the details.

Also, people who engage in homosexual acts are not exclusively homosexual, as seen in a prison system. In fact, in prison if you aren’t having sex with men you are considered gay. This is a fact, not a mistake that people make all the time in movies. I believe the cause of homosexuality is biological and cannot be changed, but I know that in certain situations people will do just about anything. You can read about it here.

The film is missing about forty minutes of Pacino engaging in gay sex and watching scenes of pornography. This is a large chunk of the film that is missing and certainly contains plot elements left out of the film. I’ll let the people here guess whose decision it was to force that footage to be cut.

Pacino’s character is gay in the book, which is a huge plot device could certainly be in the forty or so missing minutes.

The funny thing is I don’t think the film deserves this much discussion. As a giallo it has its moments and Friedkin’s directorial flourishes make the mess slightly more palatable but it is pretty much a forgettable little flick.

http://www.cinemaqueer.com/review%20pages/cruising.html

This review isn’t particularly well written but it raises some of the points I raised (and some I don’t agree with) from the point of view of someone who is homosexual. I have also, in all fairness, read articles from other reviewers who, as homosexuals, had no problems with the film.

“The funny thing is I don’t think the film deserves this much discussion.”

I agree it’s not a particularly excellent film, but there has been a movement of sorts among younger critics in recent years (the Adrian Martin piece that Ari linked to, for example) to reevaluate the film.

“Using punk in a 1980 mainstream film, however, is like using gangsta rap in a 1989 film. It is not a neutral decision and its effect on the audience isn’t very difficult to anticipate”

Right, but bear in mind that disco had crossed over in the late Seventies and become subsumed by mainstream pop, so by 1980, disco was largely passe, not only in the gay disco niche, but in the mainstream as well, so to use disco in that context might not have brought anything to those scenes at all. One of the initial questions raised in this thread was whether the film is essentially homophobic. All I was saying regarding its use of music is that I don’t know that the punk was used specifically to demonize gay people in general.

Right, but bear in mind that disco had crossed over in the late Seventies and become subsumed by mainstream pop

Had it? Saturday Night Fever came out in 1977 and I think I Will Survive came out in 1979 (please don’t ask how a straight, 28 year old Dominican knows this because he has no answer for you) which is when the film was shot.

All I was saying regarding its use of music is that I don’t know that the punk was used specifically to demonize gay people in general.

I know, and your point is fair and evenhanded. I, however, do feel the use of music was a deliberate choice to make the environment itself (a gay S&M club) feel even more exotic (to put it mildly) and, yes, threatening, simply for effect. It wasn’t the only decision of this nature, just one among many.

The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack came out in December of ‘77 and pretty much mainstreamed disco. “I Will Survive” was actually released it ’78, but didn’t chart until ’79 (in April, I think). “The day that disco died” was in July 12, 1979:

. . . and disco had pretty much fallen of the charts completely by September.

Presumably before the film was shot and certainly way before the script was written. It’s beside the point though. We both agree it is a deliberate choice though with a different purpose.

Hellshocked, if you are suggesting that the music was an imposition lacking verisimilitude,
then based on my experience on the periphery of the gay club scene, and more centrally in the underground music realm, in my opinion you are mistaken.
I was very young in 1980, but people in my little world already fully understood that Carol Pope and Rough Trade, and certainly the macho Willy DeVille, were in regular rotation at the gay joints and hideaways, which is where the sub-sub-cultures used to meet and greet.
The front man for the Germs was gay. Ian Drury and later Tom Robinson were part of that mix. You didn’t hear a lot of Village People, but the Isley Brothers’ “Fight the Power” was practically a chestnut (and a floor filler for a lot of leather queens).
It wasn’t always “Sylvester Night” for that crowd.
I recall seeing CRUISING for the first time with a group of friends, and each of us was gobsmacked that the filmmakers got the music so damn right.
MUCH of that scene, in terms of aesthetics, was entirely threatening and menacing.
Not because everyone was prone to violence, but because there was a fascination with
the biker-macho-Tom of Finland iconography that informed the aesthetic.
If you doubt the power of such an aesthetic, sit down and talk to Grace Jones some time about her club heyday. Has there ever been a more menacing looking female performer?
Adopting an attitude of danger and macho-menace was theatre (no smiling on the dance floor),
as theatre has been an integral part of gay lifestyle, due largely to the over-expression of their ideals and tropes, a habit that often characterizes any marginalized group.
It was all a walk on the wild side, but often that path leads into the dark side.
Friedkin did not invent that conceit.
Oscar Wilde got there first with Dorian Gray.
You can witness that conceit in the songs of The Velvet Underground, but as dark as things get
for whatever characters are involved, no one would suggest that Wilde or Lou Reed were in some way castigating homosexuality.
But back to the music, during the mid 1950s the mainstream world might have reasonably suspected that gay men in New York could reliably be found at performances of OKLAHOMA and whatever was shaking up Broadway at the moment.
But in the small bars in Chelsea and Grenwich (and some lost streets in New Orleans and San FRancisco), the hip crowd was listening to the rarest and rawest R&B 45s the DJ could find in Chicago or Memphis record stores.
I was told a long time ago by a gay friend that “club fags” always know where to find the cleanest drugs and the dirtiest music. That was true for a brief time.
I was a straight boy from the South, and it took me only a few months to find out he was right.

Friedken on the missing forty minutes: “[a]bsolutely graphic sexuality….that material showed the most graphic homosexuality with Pacino watching, and with the intimation that he may have been participating.”

That sounds like a pretty big missing piece…………

Hellshocked, if you are suggesting that the music was an imposition lacking verisimilitude,
then based on my experience on the periphery of the gay club scene, and more centrally in the underground music realm, in my opinion you are mistaken.

I happily stand (or sit) corrected.

Adopting an attitude of danger and macho-menace was theatre (no smiling on the dance floor),
as theatre has been an integral part of gay lifestyle, due largely to the over-expression of their ideals and tropes, a habit that often characterizes any marginalized group.

That’s kind of what I was getting at. I assumed (based on what little I know, have read and people I know) that the attitude and posturing was theater, part of an attempt to not only redefine what to mainstream society were conventional homosexual roles and attitudes but to subvert traditional hypermasculine-heterosexual iconography and transform it into the aesthetic of the scene (like, as you mentioned, what Tom of Finland did). The film, however, took it at face value. It treated theater as fact. I kept imagining a film about a heavy metal in the 1980’s filled will human sacrifices made in Satan’s name.

The movie, I felt, regarded the scene (and homosexuality in general) as deviant, distasteful and dangerous. It treated it as one of Dante’s circles of hell.

“[a]bsolutely graphic sexuality….that material showed the most graphic homosexuality with Pacino watching, and with the intimation that he may have been participating.”

I have a hard time believing there were over 40 minutes of graphic sex shot for a film starring Al Pacino and Karen Allen, but a lot of the film’s transitions were definitely awkward. I read somewhere Friedkin also said the missing 40 imply even more heavily that Pacino was the killer/one of the killers.