Actor James Franco has teamed with gay art-porn director Travis Mathews to direct “James Franco’s Cruising,” inspired by William Friedkin’s controversial 1980 gay murder mystery “Cruising.”
The film, which Mathews just delivered to Franco as an initial cut, was shot over two days. Elapsed time from first conversation to first edit: two months.
“He straddles this superstar summer movie blockbuster celebrity life, and on the other hand he does these very low-budget art films,” Mathews told Indiewire. “There’s the people who know him for his blockbusters, but there’s a different population that knows his gallery shows and that he makes semi-esoteric gay content.”
“Cruising,” based on the novel by Gerald Walker, stars Al Pacino as a police detective who goes undercover in the gay S&M sex scene to investigate the serial murders of gay men within the subculture. The production, which shot in New York City, was picketed by gay rights groups nervous about the film’s depiction of gay men. (Those protests are documented in Jim Hubbard’s short “Stop the Movie (Cruising)”.)
According to Mathews, Franco wanted to update the film, but he couldn’t get the rights. As Mathews’ gay art porn/drama “I Want Your Love” was getting press attention, Franco’s people emailed Mathews to ask him to talk about the film. Within 24 hours, they were talking.
“He knew he wanted real gay sex in it,” Travis said. “His people went looking for a filmmaker who had filmed real gay sex, and I suspect someone who would complement his vision. We talked about why we would be interested in still looking at this film. We talked about his interest in the film and his interest more broadly in so many gay-themed stories and visionairies. He’s worked with so many in front of and behind the cameras over the years.”
As for Mathews’ own opinion and recollection of the film, “The interesting thing about that movie is it gets short-circuited a bit too quickly in people’s eyes. If you forget about the whole murder mystery backstory and you just look at the bar scenes, I think it’s quite an insightful, important document of an important subculture, right before AIDS hits, in 1979 New York.”
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Watch the full film above.
Only last night i watch this film in full again, its a brilliant film and worth a veiwing if you ever get the chance to see it
Just to clear things up, I watched the film “CRUSING” from 1980 that this new film is inspired by,
WOW.It is very good films for the guys to see the gay movies.
some hot men. it is very sensual.
Is it just me….or is Franco a little weird?
OK…this is very cool you put the full Cruising film on this site. I love this movie even though it was extremely controversial in it’s day.
Franco is certainly a bit queer.
In both senses, I’d say.