Questions about the film Cruising (1980) with Al Pacino.

I was obsessed by Pacino's hair.

Carry on.

[quote] Sheltered Younger Gay

No, you're not.

[quote] Who Wasn't Born Yet

Yes, you were.

Bitch (R2), I was born in 1980. They didn't make black leather diapers & booties back then, for me to crawl into the leather bar! I can't recall getting cruised as an infant and having any nursery room trysts with the other babies either.

OP, that's my interpretation of the ending. Pacino's character is closeted, in denial and often under the influence and doesn't remember what he's doing until the very end. The GF figures it out.

I interpreted the ending as Pacino being so caught up in the murders he was investigating and the world he was immersed into that he then became a murderer. I didn't get the impression that he was the original murderer.

OP, I was born in 1960 and started going to the West Village bars, saunas and discos in 1978 at 17. I grew up in Brooklyn. I don't remember how we all got into these places, but we never had a problem. What you see in Cruising is very accurate. There were many places like that. Sex was easy and everyone was hooking up. The 1970s-early 80s in NYC was very raunchy, drug-fueled, hyper-sexual for many gays and straights. It was a sexually wild, fun scene. At the same time, you got to upscale piano bars if that was your thing.

I find it so amusing people were SO offended by Cruising and Dressed to Kill that they felt it necessary to protest. People who protest movies are never the brightest bulbs.

My parents told me they went to see this! I was horrified and ask why. They said they were just curious about that kind of life! I can't imagine my father watching it.

I hear from a 20 something straight guy in 1980 that he was horrified by the fisting. I never saw it.

The fisting scene left a deep impression in me. I'd never seen something like that I knew I wanted to try it for some reason. That bottom looked like he was in the deepest state of bliss.

I'm fascinated by this film, but I understood the protests against it. Homosexuality was still controversial then; men were still being arrested for gay sex. People worried the film might affect the struggle for equal rights.

Fisting was and is, like most fetishes, a small part of sexual spectrum.

It must been fun, R6. Which sauna was your favorite? Were the always as filthy as they have been in the 2000s? I loved attending them in Europe but I find them unbearable in NYC.

I came of age in the NYC of the 70s and the whole leather scene was foreign to me. I knew there were bars over on the waterfront where people with fetishes indulged themselves. But it was a fetish not restricted to being gay. S&M is included in all expressions of human sexuality. In my eyes, a romantic relationship includes affection and deep emotion which heightens everything in the sexual act. I thought these leather guys were play acting at being "real men," and i was not attracted to the scene. Same with fisting. To me it's just plain disgusting and belongs again to the world of S&M which is foreign to the majority of gay men.

R13, you could find filthy if you wanted but most weren't. They were like the ones in Europe and Asia. The one I went to most often was The St. Marks Baths on 8th Street. Like European and Asian saunas of today (and for decades) you could get food and drinks. Guys stayed the weekend.

I thought it was a great film. I was a little annoyed by the ending, and having to interpret what really happened myself. But maybe that's what's kept it on my mind for the 10 years or so since I first saw it.

FYI, my interpretation is more in line with R5's. I don't think that Pacino was the original murderer, but something snapped during his undercover stint. And he definitely murdered the boyfriend of the guy in his building (who he had fallen in love with).

As far as fetishism, the most (oddly) arousing (and also disturbing) scene for me was the big Black giant in the jockstrap beating the shit out of the poor kid at the police station. Something tells me that those NYC cops actually did things like that (and lots worse) back in the day. I'm sure Eldergays can verify this.

Any of you elders ever go to an establishment in NYC called "The Toilet?"

R16, 100% cops would do shit like that. I'm sure it's still like that in parts of the country that aren't as "progressive". And I do believe there are two different murderers in the movie. It's a very good movie, a darker, seedier complimemnt to Dressed to Kill.

[quote] I was born in 1980.

No, you weren't.

Go take your meds, R19

R19 Guess how many fingers I'm holding up.

Sherlock Shithead.

I saw the film when it came out. I though Pacino looked kinda hot in his leather outfits. Not my thing, but in my relationships I was more than willing to play parts (without the gear) -- when my BF wanted it hard, I was willing. When he wanted to make love, no problem. I loved him. I had no need to conquer him or make myself feel power over him in everyday life. When you get older and less "potent" people sometimes need the visual stimulation of dominance or submission to get off. Nothing wrong with that. Just never needed to dress up to play a role during sex.

I was late 20's when this film came out. I was out and in a relationship - both facts I had just shared with my family. I was upset and offended that this movie -which was getting all kinds of mainstream press coverage and little of it positive - would be the first and only "insight" into gay life for many straights.

Right R23. And then AIDS came along shortly afterwards and confirmed what the general public assumed the gay community was into.

The movie was shot in 1979 but came out in 1980, the year that AIDS was identified as a new terrifying epidemic. As a police procedural the movie makes no sense. The murderer seems to morph throughout the film. The murderer is revealed to be the oddball guy with the boxes in his closet that Pacino goes through but is not a very convincing candidate. I think one character that is murdered comes back as the voice of the unseen killer.

So as a whodunit it just wanders around and makes no sense and has no pacing. As a parable of AIDS is does make sense. The man who gets "killed" - i.e. infected with HIV can then turn around and become a "killer" - transmit the fatal virus to another man. The killer seems faceless and has many faces and bodies it goes through. I agree that I feel that the Pacino character fell in love with his roomate Don Scardino and killed him rather than face his repressed homosexuality.

Pacino is weirdly blank in the movie and seems detached from everyone and everything. BTW: the title "Cruising" (taken from the original novel written by a cop) has a double meaning. The one we all know "cruising" as in on the stroll looking for a gay pickup but also cops when they are driving around at night in their police cars waiting to get a call.

It's a profoundly unsatisfactory and weird film that is also very prescient as well as hateful. It was accurate because despite the fact that the gay community immediately protested the film as soon as it was announced, the leather community was happy to be filmed in actual leather bars in the act of fisting, fucking and bondage, etc. 70's and 80's gay porn actor Eric Ryan ("Centurians of Rome") is one of the extras in the bar scenes. William Friedkin filmed hours of basically gay porn in those bars which could never be used in a mainstream Hollywood film. James Franco made a documentary about those lost 40 minutes in "Interior: Leather Bar". Friedkin, the director of "The Exorcist" didn't work in Hollywood again for another three years and his white hot career really never recovered its full momentum.

R25- AIDS was identified in 1981 NOT 1980.

OF COURSE Miss Franco's buns became as moist as a Hostess Cake dunked in coffee, just thinking about that lost footage, R25!

Am I remembering it correctly, R25? Was it the neighbor (who Pacino's character had fallen in love with) who was slashed to death? Or was it the neighbor's boyfriend (who he had assaulted earlier) who was killed?

[quote] Any of you elders ever go to an establishment in NYC called "The Toilet?"

Only when I was out on the town with Jayne Wrightsman and Nan Kempner.

I'm really not sure why it was made. Killer queen movies weren't going to rake-in the millions like "The Exorcist" did for Friedkin. No Oscar chances. And it was semi-fictional, based on two or three different news stories- then embellished.

Too bad it didn't have an awesome soundtrack to go along with it. Missed chance to have Donna Summer, Blondie, Pat Benatar, Giorgio Moroder, etc. do some badass club songs at the last gasp of Disco.

It was kind of a XXX snuff film. Audiences stayed away, including the gays. It's so obscure it's on Youtube to watch for free.

It's a much better movie than the reviews suggested. Critics had their claws out because of the backlash against it within the gay community. I don't find it anti-gay at all. I think gays at the time didn't want straight society to know what they were up to in the privacy of their own clubs and bedrooms. The hardcore gay sex scene was very widespread in NYC, SF and LA at the time. Open sex went on everywhere, and it was wild.

[quote] Open sex went on everywhere, and it was wild.

That's why I kind of get the gays who were offended by the movie--they were afriad many straights would assume that was THE gay lifestyle they were watching-- but I also don't think the movie was dishonest about its portrayal. By the stories older gays have told on here and elsewhere, what was depicted in the movie was commonplace across urban areas in America. No, not every gay was doing it but many where.

It was just another Billy Friedkin movie like his Boys in the Band showing the sad and desperate life of the American homosexual.

I bought my first leather shorts after seeing that movie.

This was the first movie I saw as a child and it really infuenced me. Mmmmmmmmm

There have been previous threads on this movie. On one of them I commented that the scenes where Al is stalking the suspected killer student are hilarious. They remind me of Barbra in One a Clear Day being harassed by Yves Montand for the song "Come Back to Me".

... On a Clear Day ...