Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

I recently had the occasion, while processing new deliveries at my bookshop, to open a box of DVDs. In one, there were copies of the movie Cruising, only very recently released for the home market on disc.

I looked at the item. I felt like I was in an old forties movies, the calendar pages tacking on rather than flying off, whisked back in time to well, I didn't know exactly where the calendar would stop.

It stopped in 1970. That was when the novel Cruising was published. The author was Gerald Walker, for many years an editor and occasional contributor to the New York Times magazine. The book was pretty much your standard murder-mystery police procedural. It was first published in hardcover; later there was a mass-market edition. The plot involved a serial murderer who targeted gay men in bathhouses and in their apartments. The police get involved and are flummoxed by their inability to figure out the gay scene.

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The book came and went. Mr. Walker published no other book in his lifetime; he died in 2004 and was survived by his widow, Joanna Simon (Carly and Peter Simon's sister), and a son.

End of story? Not quite. There is another trail in this backstory. At the same time as the novel Cruising was published, there was the theatrical release of the film Boys in the Band, directed by William Friedkin, based on the controversial and successful off-Broadway play of the same name, written by Mart Crowley. (One line in the play and film is this: "Show me a happy homosexual and I'll show you a gay corpse.") Crowley's play and Friedkin's movie became fixtures in gay culture. Even today, 38 years after, I get asked if Boys in the Band has been released on DVD. It has not. But Cruising has.

Then came the 1970s. Gay culture bloomed. Also came the reaction. Anita Bryant. The Briggs initiative. The slaughter of Supervisor Harvey Milk. The spike in fag-bashings and the murder of gay men. Came the word, in 1979, that William Friedkin would be lensing the film version Cruising. Who pitched this project? The ways of Hollywood remain a mystery to me, as they do, I suspect, to those who practice their arts in that venue. Filming was to take place mostly in Greenwich Village, in the summer of 1979. The star was Al Pacino. The studio was Lorimar, at the time an up-and-coming fantasy factory.

The Hollywood folks had no idea. As we say these days, this would be a learning experience for our cousins in Tinsel-Town. The gay community in New York City took this event as an assault. In a climate of increasing political reaction (Ronni RayGun was already running for President), anti-gay violence was worsening -- sanctioned by the majority of the cultural elite and their institutions. (One gay man was stabbed to death while cruising in a park in San Francisco; his murderers screamed out: "Faggot, faggot! This one's for Anita!"). The New Yorkers decided on direct action.

Billy Friedkin was busily filming away in the West Village while hundreds, sought to disrupt his work. Guys would march up and down the street banging trash-can lids. Some got on rooftops with large mirrors to reflect sunshine into the cameras. Nothing less than an insurgency of angry faggots. Ten years after Stonewall, and the spirit still very much lived. Lorimar got in touch with the Mayor, and legions of police officers -- many on horses! -- came in to protect the shooting of Walker's humble book.

It was reported at the time, and I think this may still be the case, that this was the only film in American history that had to be shot behind the protection of police lines. There were protests, I think, after Birth of a Nation opened in 1915, not during its filming. Hell hath no fury like an angry quean -- plus, among New York gay men, you're dealing with all the media types; they know the tricks. At this point, the prospect for Cruising's Big Box Office Opening was shrinking like poor Alice after she swigged the wrong bottle. I would have loved to hear Billy Friedkin's frantic calls during those tense days.

The plot thickened. Groups organized around the nation to demonstrate when Cruising opened in February, 1980. Full disclosure: I was an organizer for the Boston protest -- which, as it happened, was the largest in the nation. Our group extended our protest to include another Lorimar production, due to be released a month after Cruising. This film was Windows, which featured a male lead who viciously murdered lesbians. That's entertainment? You do have to wonder: did the good volk in the swank suites of Lorimar think that homophobic murders were to be the chic screen fillers in the early months of 1980? I have not partaken of the heady Hollywood hallucinations, to use the late Parker Tyler's phrase, but I can tell shit from Shine-O-La, a rather common gift.

So I processed and priced the Cruising DVD ($24.95) and plopped it in the display pod, pausing to ponder a particularly vexing point: what is the shelf life, and half-life, or an infamy? The invisible hand of the marketplace will soon deliver its verdict. My hunch? Yuk!

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com