LGBTQ+ Pride 2025: Cruising

In 1980 New York City, during a very hot summer, a serial killer is attacking gay men and specifically gay men within the leather BDSM scene.  Captain Edelson (Paul Sorvino) elicits the help of NYPD officer Steve Burns (Al Pacino) who fits the profile of the murder victims, to go undercover as a gay man frequenting the leather bars of the Meatpacking District.  Burns moves into an apartment in the area and befriends his neighbor, Ted (Don Scardino) who is a struggling playwright and having relationship issues with his jealous roommate / boyfriend. Burns begins to lose himself within the world he is investigating, and this takes a toll on his relationship with his girlfriend, Nancy (Nancy Allen).  After a nasty interrogation of a potential suspect, Burns confesses to his captain that he does not believe he can keep going and that the undercover work has changed him, but soon after that, he is able to identify another and more promising suspect which he is able to apprehend in a violent manner.  With the case closed, Steve returns home to Nancy and tries to act like everything is back to normal, but you can see in his eyes that Steve Burns has forever been changed.

Cruising is a 1980 crime thriller based on a novel of the same name by The New York Times reporter Gerald Walker.  Written and directed by William Friedkin (The French Connection / The Exorcist / Boys in the Band), who was approached about making the film by Jerry Weintraub, but was not interested until a series of unsolved killings begin happening involving the gay leather bar scene which were written about in the Village Voice by Arthur Bell.  This aspect intrigued Friedkin who then agreed to make the film. The movie was released on February 15, 1980, and was met with mostly negative reviews in addition to gay activist groups protesting the release of the movie.  The gay community at the time felt that the film housed a homophobic political message as it portrayed gay men as being attracted to violence.  The film was released with a disclaimer that it was not intended represent the gay community as a whole, but only a small subsection.   It wasn’t just after its release, but during production, the gay community did what ever it could do to disrupt filming. The production was intended to depict gay cruising as it existed at the Mineshaft, which was a BDSM / Leather members only bar in New York City.  The Mineshaft would not allow filming, so the movie was shot at The Hellfire Club, which was made to look like the Mineshaft.  Many of the extras, were actual patrons of the Mineshaft. Raymond Murray, editor of Images in the Dark, an encyclopedia of gay and lesbian cinema, described Cruising as both entertaining and, for those too young to have experienced the pre-AIDS era, a fascinating—if exaggerated—portrayal of gay life, filtered through a Hollywood lens. He also noted that the film has since become part of queer history, serving as a reflection of how a fearful Hollywood once portrayed and responded to a marginalized community.  In addition, the film originally received an “X” rating, and some 40 minutes of the film needed to be cut to eventually get the MPAA to lower the rating down to an “R”.  Most of this footage was explicit sexual activity taking place within the bars.  In later years, the film has been re-evaluated and seen through different eyes and is no longer believed to be quite as homophobic as it was originally thought.  The director had this to say in retrospect, “Cruising came out around a time that gay liberation had made enormous strides among the general public…. I simply used the background of the S&M world to do a murder mystery; it was based on a real case. But the timing of it was difficult because of what had been happening to gay people. Of course, it was not really set in a gay world; it was the S&M world. But many critics who wrote for gay publications or the underground press felt that the film was not the best foot forward as far as gay liberation was concerned, and they were right. Now it’s reevaluated as a film. It could be found wanting as a film, but it no longer has to undergo the stigma of being an anti-gay screed, which it never was.”

I came out of the closet (finally admitted to myself I was gay) in 1992, while in the U.S. Navy and stationed abroad in Spain.  I had very little knowledge of the gay community, and with the hostile climate and constant scrutiny I had little ability to learn.  Sometime in late 1993 or early 94, I rented Cruising from a video rental place off base.  At this point in time, I had my first relationship and break up and wasn’t sure what I was really looking for.  I knew nothing of the leather scene but was intrigued by the masculinity and sexual attitudes of the men in the background of the film.  As for the story itself, I thought the mystery part of it was weak, but the psychological aspect was good.  I did not see the film as being particularly anti-gay, and in fact, Pacino’s character defends their right to exist without being beaten.  The abusive cops are not portrayed as good people.  Re-watching the movie for the first time in 3 decades and having been a part of the leather scene for several years but having never been gay in a pre-AIDS world, I do see much of the movie as hyper focused on the sexual aspect of the leather community without offering much else in its multi-facetted elements.  But that is the backdrop of the story.  The direction is really good, which most critics agree with, but there are some plot points that are very weak and a lot of people believe that the 40 minutes of footage cut from the film would have filled in some of those holes.  For instance, it is never really explained what elements of being undercover was actually changing Burns so drastically.  The intentional ambiguity does allow the audience to think and draw their own conclusions as to what the future holds for Burns, but a bit of additional character development would have gone a long way.  My thoughts are this: Burns began to discover that he had some attraction to men and may have even been falling in love with Ted.  I also think his troubled past with his father, briefly mentioned in the beginning of the film, echoes the killer’s past and in the end, this drives the character over the edge and possibly to emulate the very man he set out to capture.  In the end, this is not a bad film, and although it does not paint the gay community in the best light, I do not believe it to be overtly homophobic.  I would have liked there to be a bit more character building and it needed some added nuance to the world in which it existed.