Cruising is the name of a film released in 1980, directed by William Friedkin and starring Al Pacino. The film is loosely based on a novel written by Gerald Walker about a New York City serial killer targeting gay men in the late 1970s. 1980 is a leap year starting on Tuesday. ... William Friedkin (born August 29, 1935 in Chicago, Illinois) is a movie and television director, producer, and writer best known for directing The Exorcist and The French Connection in the early 1970s. ... Al Pacino, pictured at the age of 21. ... Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the United States, and is at the center of international finance, politics, communications, music, fashion, and culture. ... Serial killers are individuals who have a history of multiple slayings of victims who were usually unknown to them beforehand. ... This article provides extensive lists of events and significant personalities of the 1970s. ...

Cast and Crew

• Director/Writer - William Friedkin
• Gerald Walker - Novel

• Al Pacino .... Steve Burns
• Paul Sorvino .... Capt. Edelson
• Karen Allen .... Nancy Gates
• Richard Cox .... Stuart Richards
• Don Scardino .... Ted Bailey
• Joe Spinell .... Patrolman DiSimone
• Jay Acovone .... Skip Lea
• Randy Jurgensen .... Det. Lefronskyk
• Barton Heyman .... Dr. Rifkin
• Gene Davis .... DaVinci
• Arnaldo Santana .... Loren Lukas
• Larry Atlas .... Eric Rossman
• Allan Miller .... Chief of Detectives
• Sonny Grosso .... Det. Blaisia
• Ed O'Neill .... Det. Schreiber (as Edward O'Neil)
• Michael Aronin .... Det. Davis
• James Remar .... Gregory
• William Russ .... Paul Gaines
• Mike Starr .... Patrolman Desher
• Steve Inwood .... Martino
• Keith Prentice .... Joey
• Leland Starnes .... Jack Richards
• Robert Pope .... DaVinci's friend
• Leo Burmester .... Water Sport
• Bruce Levine .... Dancer
• Charles Dunlap .... Three Card Monte
• Powers Boothe .... Hanky salesman
• James Sutorius .... Jack (voice)
• Richard Jamieson .... Spotter
• Jimmie Ray Weeks .... Seller (as James Ray Weeks)
• David Winnie Hayes .... Bouncer
• Carmine Stippo .... Bartender
• James Hayden .... Cockpit Coke man
• Todd Winters .... Tugboat Mate

Story

In New York City, body parts of men are showing up in the Hudson River and police feel it is the work of a serial killer that is picking up gay men at bars and then raping them and slicing them up into little pieces. Officer Steve Burns is sent deep undercover to the urban world of gay leather bars in order to track down the serial killer. His undercover work takes a toll on his relationship with his girlfriend and leads him to question his own sexual orientation. In the end Burns captures the serial killer, who is a gay threatre student, and film ends with Burns being unable to put his undercover work behind him and possibly becoming a serial killer. Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the United States, and is at the center of international finance, politics, communications, music, fashion, and culture. ... Serial killers are individuals who have a history of multiple slayings of victims who were usually unknown to them beforehand. ... Although the word gay originally meant happy, in modern usage the term is often applied interchangeably with homosexual. However, there are important differences between the terms: while homosexual relates specifically to sexuality, the term gay is a political or social marker. ... Serial killers are individuals who have a history of multiple slayings of victims who were usually unknown to them beforehand. ... Sexual orientation is the focus of a persons amorous or erotic desires, fantasies, and feelings, the gender(s) one is primarily oriented towards. ...

Negative Criticism

The criticism of the film can be divided up between the quality of the film versus its alledged political message. In both cases most of the criticism was highly negative and gay activists had public protests against the film.

Jack Sommersby's comments were common of the criticism directed at non-political matters such as character development and the changes made when the film was transfered from a novel to a film [1]:

• "There’s nothing indicative of his fighting his sexual identity, so why does he target gays, then? After first plunging his knife into a victim, he tells them, “You made me do that.” Huh? What about them made him do that? The closest we get to a motivation comes from his imaginary conversations with his deceased, formerly-disapproving father, who tells his boy, “You know what you have to do.”, which sets him off to kill, and, again, we’re baffled as to the connection Friedkin’s trying to make. Was the father’s disapproval pertaining to his son being gay, and is the son trying to win back his father’s approval by killing men of a sexual nature the father has a seething hatred for? If so, there’s no indication of any of this. In fact, we don’t even know if the father knew his son was gay before passing on."

• "Gone is the back story of his having harassed gays at an off-base bar when he was in the Army; also gone is his racism, along with his seemingly asexual nature in the first half. Instead, he’s been made a regular, happy-go-lucky guy with a steady girlfriend. One can easily surmise Friedkin’s motivation here: using someone identifiable to lead us into the underworld of black leather and kinky sex. But even here Friedkin fouls up on making the cop’s emotional transitions clear. A mere three to four short scenes after he’s started his assignment, the cop’s moving about in bars with men dressed in policeman’s garb sucking on night sticks, and one lubing his hand up in preparation for a fisting session with a nearly naked man shackled and hanging from the ceiling. Is the cop repulsed? Does he feel the slightest bit turned on? We don’t know. He doesn’t move around in these places with the utmost confidence, and his body language conveys awkwardness, but this isn’t a clear-cut indicator of either approval or disapproval of what he’s seeing. And how far does he in fact go with the men he allows to be picked up by to see if they’ll strike out at him like the killer? We don’t know that either. We see one massaging his chest in a bar, and another one under a park tunnel give him a let’s-go nod before the cop walks off in his direction; but these scenes just end, we’re brought up short, and the cop’s emotional progression seems stunted, as if Friedkin simply didn’t care. We see the cop engaging in some heavy vaginal intercourse with his girlfriend, but we don’t know if he’s normally this semi-rough, if he’s doing so under the pretense that the rougher, the manlier he must be – fucking away any trace of gay, if you will. A week later, the girlfriend complains about his not wanting her any more, and he replies, “What I’m doing, is affecting me.” How? Turning him off sex with women, or off sex altogether in light of what he’s seeing and experiencing every night? Again, we do not know."

The second major criticism of the film came from gay activists that felt that the film had a homophobic political message that would lead to a rise in hate crimes against gay men. The gay film critic Vito Russo wrote in his novel The Celluloid Closet that, "Gays who protested the making of the film maintained that it (the film) maintained that it would show that when Pacinco recognized his attraction to the homosexual world, he would become psychotic and begin to kill." (Vito Russo The Celluoid Closet p. 238, 1987). In the DVD version of The Celluoid Closet documentary one of the film clips included shows that a few seconds of pornographic gay anal sex was inserted into a scene where the serial killer is stabbing a victim with a knief. Gay activists felt that the film portrayed homosexuals as sexual predators morally akin to vampires and that mixing in gay pornography into a murder scene along with the film's exclusive focus on gay leather bars suggested an intent by the film's director to make a bigoted political connection between gay love and violence. Homophobia is a term used to describe: A culturally determined phobia manifesting as fear, revulsion, or contempt for homosexuality. ... A hate crime (bias crime), loosely defined, is a crime committed because of the perpetrators prejudices. ... The Celluloid Closet is the title of a documentary film directed and written by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. ... DVD is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for storing data, including movies with high video and sound quality. ... Further reading Christopher Frayling - Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula 1992. ...

Positive Criticism

Gay Criticism

Gay critics felt that the film was incredibly homophobic in its depiction of gay men and several public demonstrations were held in an effort to disrupt the filming of the movie. The serial killer is a gay man and the gay men shown in the film (and their interest in S&M, fisting, water sports) creates this impression that homosexuals are akin to vampires spreading a disease. This sentiment was strengthened by the fact that Burns becomes a homosexual simply by associating with them and choice of the director to insert insert brief pornographic clips of gay anal sex while the serial killer is brutally killing one of his victims. Homophobia is a term used to describe: A culturally determined phobia manifesting as fear, revulsion, or contempt for homosexuality. ... Fisting is a human sexual behaviour that involves inserting the entire hand, and sometimes part of the arm, into the vagina (vaginal fisting) or anus (handballing or anal fisting) of a sexual partner. ... Water sport most commonly refers to a sport which is played in the water. ... Further reading Christopher Frayling - Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula 1992. ... Roman men having anal sex. ...

Trivia

Just two months after Cruising hit the theatres, a man armed with a sub-machine gun entered The Ramrod - a bar prominently featured in the film - and shot two people dead with a further twelve requiring hospital treatment. William Friedkin would make no comment.

The film has not been released on DVD and thus over forty minutes remain unseen. A VHS edition has some of the deleted footage put back into the film, but most of it was just more explicit sexual images. DVD is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for storing data, including movies with high video and sound quality. ...

Reviews

• San Francisco Examiner "Lasting images of "Cruising'" by Bob Stephens (1995) [2].

• Internet Movie Database

• Q Network Film Desk "Cruising" By James Kendrick [3].