Page 508 - Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer - Vol. 1

488 Jack Fritscher, Ph.D.

Front: Protest Poster V. Cruising

This page and opposite. Top: “Protest Poster V. Cruising,” William Friedkin, the director
of the acid-tongued The Boys in the Band, shot the controversial film Cruising in streets and
locations round the Mineshaft in 1979. “Correct” multi-grain vanilla gays, not particularly
fond of meat-wearing leather gays, and not understanding the subculture of leather gays’
secret society, protested that Cruising would be bad publicity for the emerging gay identity
because straights would think that all gays acted like the characters in Cruising, as opposed
to straights thinking that all gays acted like The Boys in the Band or Quentin Crisp in The
Naked Civil Servant. Worth the price of admission in Cruising is Friedkin’s brilliantly
shocking scene in which a muscular booted black cop, naked but for a white jockstrap and
a cowboy hat, barges suddenly into an NYPD interrogation room and slaps leather cop
Al Pacino across the face. Every diverse behavior in the Mineshaft, and every promise of
lustful aggression, and every subliminal desire crying out in the Mineshaft, was summed
up in the erotic interracial code of that slap.
©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved—posted 05-05-2017
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