[IMG:L]When director William Friedkin set out almost 30 years ago to make Cruising, a thriller set in the world of gay singles bars–a world that even today might rankle more than few – he never intended to create controversy, never meant to ruffle feathers, he insists today.
“To me, it was simply the background for a murder mystery.”
Sure. And The Exorcist was just a horror film. The French Connection was a movie about a drug deal. Maybe Friedkin can’t help himself. While many of his films, in the hands of someone else, could have been fun popcorn movies at best, the Chicago-born and raised director has a knack for igniting debate from both sides of whatever issue was at stake.
The Exorcist unsettled non-believers and church leaders alike. The French Connection showed that cops weren’t all good. And Cruising would prove to be no shrinking violent either.
The story of an ordinary beat cop, played by Al Pacino, who agrees to infiltrate New York City’s gay underground to serve as bait for a serial killer, Cruising sparked its share of protests–but not from middle America, but the gay community itself, which saw the film as an unbalanced portrayal of its lifestyle.
But times do indeed change. And with the film’s release as a special edition DVD on Sept. 18 by Warner Home Video–with archival footage, fresh interviews and a commentary track–it’s a chance to revisit the film for some, and take a look for the first time for a new generation. Screenings of the 1980 movie in connection with the DVD issue have demonstrated that the gay community is a forgiving one. And Friedkin, who couldn’t be happier, is also insistent that he never set out to make a statement one way or another.
“Attitudes change, people’s ideas change,” Friedkin says. “At the time I made Cruising it was the very beginnings of gay liberation. And the gay community had just begun to make political gains, and I guess the feeling was that this film might not be the best foot forward. I think that gay life has become a part of mainstream America, and so there is less of an attitude that this is going to hurt us.”
To be fair, Cruising, thriller that it is, does present a heightened view of homosexuality.
The film opens with two cross-dressers being harrassed by two patrolmen, who lament what has happened to their city. Then there is the harrowing first murder, a stabbing after a one-night stand. Later, police mull over a body found in the river, and Lt. XX, played by Paul Sorvino, determines that city officials will be cracking down on crime, no matter where it happens. The only way to find the killer is by drawing him out, and Pacino‘s Steve Burns is selected not by his brilliance or expertise but simply because his build and hair color match all the previous victims.
[IMG:R]Eager for the chance at a promotion, Burns accepts the assignment, but is forbidden from telling his girlfriend, played by Karen Allen, where he is going and what it is he’ll be doing. You get the feeling that he wouldn’t want to tell her anyway. Soon enough, Steve takes an assumed name and identity and moves into an apartment in the Village, and has an otherwise innocent lunch date with a gay neighbor, whose worst offense is studying musical theater. What promises to be an interesting and enlightening friendship is shrugged off, however, so that Pacino can get to the leather bars, full of mirrored sunglasses and coded handkerchiefs in the back pockets, all the quicker.
To be fair, it is a murder mystery, but it is interesting to note that Friedkin intentionally chose sinister punk rock to blare in the clubs, instead of disco and Donna Summer, which is what the extras, mostly real gay clubgoers, wanted. To give that world a sinister edge, one wonders? Or is Gloria Gaynor‘s “I Will Survive” just not forboding enough?
The ramped-up club scene aside, the film does present a side of single life, and New York City itself, that did ring true for the close of the Me Decade. It’s not just the gay scene that seemed dangerous–the world of “singles bars” was every bit as treacherous in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Maybe it’s the lack of cell phones or BlackBerrys or perky best friends, but the crime-ridden Manhattan of the late 1970s would be unrecognizable to Harry or Sally, never mind Carrie Bradshaw and her Sex & The City friends. Gay or straight, trying to meet someone as a single person back then looked like a bleak proposition indeed.
But there is another aspect to Cruising, and that is the attitude by police toward murders in the gay areas of the city. As seen in the film, many cops weren’t at all interested in solving or even stopping the murders, and it was only because of political pressure to reduce crime statistics that the cases were even investigated. “They just don’t really care,” Friedkin says about the police in his film. “They figure, well, let them kill each other. That was the attitude then, with rare exception. And that’s what I made the film about, the violence against gay people then, the unwarranted attacks on gay people.”
Perhaps for these reasons Cruising remains an important time capsule–not just for its subject matter but for its approach. When Friedkin first agreed to make the film, for producer Jerry Weintraub (who would go on to produce George Clooney‘s Ocean’s 11 movies), signing Al Pacino for the lead, who lobbied for the part over first choice Richard Gere, studios lined up to make the deal, based on the names involved. But when it came time to read Friedkin‘s script, based on the novel by Gerald Walker, everyone balked at the subject matter, until United Artists and Lorimar agreed to finance and distribute the film.
“If I tried to make Cruising today, I couldn’t get it made,” Friedkin insists. “I’m sure very few other filmmakers could. You see what films are today. They’re sequels and remakes, almost exclusively. In the seventies, for example, the studios were open to all sorts of ideas, and all kinds of very difficult subject matter got made, like Taxi Driver,” Friedkin says, alluding to his fellow 70s-era auteur, Martin Scorsese, “It would be tough to make today, as honestly and graphically as he made that film.”
Friedkin had found himself drawn to stories in the Village Voice by reporter Arthur Bell, chronicling an actual series of murders in New York City, where a real-life cop, Randy Jurgensen (who appears in a cameo in the movie) was sent into the clubs. Many of the murders went unsolved and Friedkin‘s film had its own ambiguous resolution. “I grant you that’s not easy for audiences who are used to a killing on television, taking place at 9 o’clock, and the murderer going off to prison at 10. But the Cruising murders are still unsolved, and there is no one killer.”
With no bad guy put away, maybe tensions were still high in the city. Even in the days before the internet and endless tabloid television shows, word spread about the film and its subject matter, and protesters crowded the streets where Friedkin and his crew were filming. And it would be years before the public eased up on its criticism of the film.
[IMG:L]After Cruising, Friedkin went on to direct another cop thriller, To Live and Die in L.A., the college sports film Blue Chips, and Jade, with David Caruso. His most recent film was the horror film Bug, starring Ashley Judd, which fizzleed at the box office. In the 1991, he married Paramount studio chief Sherry Lansing.
He jokes now that Lansing too, hated Cruising when it was first released. Shrugging at all the criticism with a sly grin, Friedkin basks in his favorite quote by British essayist Samuel Johnson. “I would rather be attacked than go unnoticed.”
