Cruising is a 1980 crime thriller written and directed by William Friedkin, and starring Al Pacino, Paul Sorvino and Karen Allen. It is loosely based on the 1970 novel by The New York Times reporter Gerald Walker about a serial killer targeting gay men, particularly the men associated with the leather scene. The title is a double entendre, as "cruising" can describe both police officers on patrol and men who are cruising for sex. It was an international co-production between West Germany and the United States.
Poorly received by critics when released, Cruising performed moderately at the box office. Pacino subsequently called the film "exploitative". The shooting and promotion were dogged by gay rights protesters who believed that the film stigmatized them as a community. The film, including its open-ended finale, polarized critics, but in the decades since its initial release, the film has developed a cult following.
Plot Amidst a hot summer in New York City, the dismembered body parts of men begin appearing in the Hudson River. Police suspect a serial killer is targeting gay men at West Village bars such as the Eagle's Nest, the Ramrod and the Cock Pit, luring them to cheap hotels, tying them up, and stabbing them to death. Under pressure to solve the case before the Democratic National Convention, NYPD Captain Edelson asks officer Steve Burns to go undercover in the city's gay S&M and leather bar scene to track down the killer, as Burns matches the victims' physical characteristics.
Upon accepting the assignment, Burns uses the pseudonym John Forbes to rent a separate apartment in the Meatpacking District for the operation. He quickly befriends neighbor Ted Bailey, a struggling gay playwright, but overhears the turmoil in Ted's relationship with his overbearing dancer boyfriend Gregory. Burns becomes heavily immersed in the customs of the gay nightlife scene, though the secrecy of the work strains his relationship with his girlfriend Nancy. One night, Burns entices young waiter Skip Lee, who is mistakenly arrested and beaten by police into giving a false confession despite his fingerprints not matching those of the killer's. Disturbed by the gay bashing, Burns considers quitting, but Edelson convinces him to continue by reprimanding the officers involved in Skip's interrogation.
As the killer continues to evade police, Burns pursues a new lead and investigates students at Columbia University who studied under one of the previous victims, a college professor. His suspicions center on Stuart Richards, a graduate music student whom Burns previously encountered at a club. Although Richards appears outwardly ordinary, Burns breaks into his apartment and discovers S&M attire, along with box of disturbing letters addressed to Richards's deceased father hidden in a closet. When Richards later realizes that his apartment has been broken into, he retrieves a knife from his closet matching the one used by the killer.
At night, Burns follows Richards to the park and cruises him for sex. During the encounter, Burns asks Richards to lower his pants, prompting Richards to pull his knife, but before he can strike, Burns incapacitates him by stabbing him in the side. At the hospital, Richards is taken into police custody, where authorities determine that his letters indicate signs of schizophrenia. Although Richards denies being the serial killer, his fingerprints match for those discovered at one of the murder scenes. Edelson thanks Burns for apparently solving the case and promotes him to detective.
Shortly after Richards is arrested, Ted is found brutally stabbed to death in his apartment. Police dismiss the murder as a lover's quarrel turned violent and issue an arrest warrant for Gregory, whose jealousy had previously lead to a bitter confrontation with Burns. Edelson is shocked at the sight of the crime scene and is informed that Ted's neighbor, John Forbes, has disappeared without notice.
Nancy reconciles with Burns at their shared apartment, where he promises to tell her "everything", but after shaving first. As Burns shaves, Nancy tries on his leather jacket, peaked cap, and aviator sunglasses, resembling the outfit worn by the killer. Burns then blankly stares at the mirror.
Cast
Production Philip D'Antoni, who had produced Friedkin's 1971 film The French Connection, approached Friedkin with the idea of directing a film based on The New York Times reporter Gerald Walker's 1970 novel Cruising, about a serial killer targeting New York City's gay community. Friedkin was not particularly interested in the project. D'Antoni tried to attach Steven Spielberg, but they were not able to interest a studio.
A few years later, Jerry Weintraub brought the idea back to Friedkin, who was still not interested. However, Friedkin changed his mind following a series of unsolved killings in gay leather bars in the 1970s and the articles written about the murders by Village Voice journalist Arthur Bell. Friedkin also knew a police officer named Randy Jurgensen, who had gone into the same sort of deep cover that Pacino's Steve Burns did to investigate an earlier series of gay murders; Paul Bateson, a radiology technician who had appeared in Friedkin's 1973 film The Exorcist, was implicated (but never charged) in six of the leather bar murders, while being prosecuted for another murder. All of these factors gave Friedkin the angle he wanted to pursue in making the film. Jurgensen and Bateson served as film consultants, as did Sonny Grosso, who earlier had consulted with Friedkin on The French Connection. Jurgensen and Grosso appear in bit parts in the film.
In his research, Friedkin worked with members of the Mafia, who at the time owned many of the city's gay bars. Al Pacino was not Friedkin's first choice for the lead; Richard Gere had expressed a strong interest in the part, and Friedkin had opened negotiations with Gere's agent. Gere was Friedkin's choice because he believed that Gere would bring an androgynous quality to the role that Pacino could not.
The film was intended to depict gay cruising as it existed at the Mineshaft, which does appear in the novel. However, that bar is not named in the movie because it would not allow filming. Scenes from the movie were instead filmed at the Hellfire Club, which was decorated to resemble the Mineshaft. Regulars from the Mineshaft also appeared as extras,Jack Fritscher, p. 509. and scenes were shot in streets and other locations near the Mineshaft.Fritscher, p. 506. Additionally, Pacino visited the Mineshaft while researching his role.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) originally gave Cruising an X rating. Friedkin claims that he presented the film to the MPAA board "50 times" at a cost of $50,000 and deleted 40 minutes of footage from the original cut before he secured an R rating. The deleted footage, according to Friedkin, consisted entirely of footage from the clubs, depicting graphic sexuality ... that material showed the most graphic homosexuality with Pacino watching, and with the intimation that he may have been participating".
In some discussions, Friedkin claims that deleting the 40 minutes had no effect on the story nor the characterizations. In others, he states that the footage created "mysterious twists and turns (which [the film] no longer takes)", suggested more clearly that Pacino's character may have become a killer, and simultaneously made the film both more and less ambiguous. When Friedkin sought to restore the missing footage for the film's DVD release, he discovered that United Artists no longer possessed it. He believes that UA destroyed it. Some obscured sexual activity remains visible in the film as released, and Friedkin intercut a few frames of gay pornography into the first scene, in which a murder is depicted.
This movie represents the only film soundtrack work by the punk rock band the Germs. They recorded six songs for the film, of which one, "Lion's Share", appeared. The cut "Shakedown, Breakdown" was written and recorded specially for the film by cult band Rough Trade. Soundtrack director Jack Nitzsche had initially attempted to include two songs—"Endless Night" and "Devil's Sidewalk"—by Graham Parker and the Rumour in the film, but legal issues prevented their inclusion. The songs appeared on Parker's 1980 album The Up Escalator.
Friedkin asked gay author John Rechy, some of whose works are set in the same milieu as the film, to screen Cruising before its release. Rechy had written an essay defending Friedkin's right to make the film, but not defending the overall film. At Rechy's suggestion, Friedkin deleted a scene showing the Gay Liberation slogan "We Are Everywhere" as graffiti on a wall before the first body part is pulled from the river, and added a disclaimer:
This film is not intended as an indictment of the homosexual world. It is set in one small segment of that world, which is not meant to be representative of the whole.
Friedkin later claimed that it was the MPAA and United Artists that required the disclaimer, calling it "part of the dark bargain that was made to get the film released at all" and "a sop to organized gay rights groups". Friedkin claimed that no one involved in making the film thought that it would be considered as representative of the entire gay community, but gay film historian Vito Russo disputes that, citing the disclaimer as "an admission of guilt. What director would make such a statement if he truly believed that his film would not be taken to be representative of the whole?"
Friedkin has said that he was disappointed with Pacino's lack of professionalism during the shoot, claiming that he was often late and did not contribute any ideas to the character or to the film. On the other hand, Pacino has said that Friedkin did not let him know how to interpret the end of the film, saying, "Am I the killer at the end of the picture or have I gone gay? To this day I don't know because Friedkin never told me how to play my final scene." In his autobiography, Friedkin says that a single shot can change the whole plot of a movie when talking about Cruising, implying that the ambiguous ending might not have been planned from the start. However, some elements in the movie do suggest that Burns might be the killer, such as a scene early in the film in which he’s shown wearing the killer's cap, and the fact that Richards does not attack first, and that Burns stabs him. Furthermore, the killer is said to sing a nursery rhyme before he kills, and Burns is the only person who sings one in the movie.
Protests Throughout the summer of 1979, members of New York City's gay community protested the film's production. Protests started at the urging of journalist Arthur Bell, whose series of articles on unsolved murders of gay men inspired the film. Gay people were urged to disrupt filming, and gay-owned businesses to bar the filmmakers from their premises. People attempted to interfere with shooting by pointing mirrors from rooftops to ruin lighting for scenes, blasting whistles and air horns near locations, and playing loud music. One thousand protesters marched through the East Village demanding that the city withdraw support for the film. As a result of interference, the movie's audio often had to be overdubbed to remove the noise caused by off-camera protesters.