The director of The Exorcist and many others followed me on Twitter for some reason. And, well, he’s not doing that any more… I actually got to see two of his films on the big screen, the restored Sorcerer at (I think) the Academy Twin in Paddington with the man himself in attendance, and Cruising at the Golden Age in Surry Hills, and I think it’s the latter that fascinates me the most, and I think Peter Bradshaw’s description of it in the article above sums it up well:
Elsewhere, his underworld drama Cruising from 1980, with Al Pacino as the cop going undercover to find a gay serial killer, has perhaps been derided for expressing not much more than the straight world’s fear of gay sexuality. But there are some extraordinary moments in it: such as when Pacino’s boss – played by a young Paul Sorvino, later to gain immortality in Scorsese’s GoodFellas – calmly asks him: “Have you ever had your cock sucked by a man?” and Pacino calmly says no, though without insisting he is straight. It is a brutal, rough-edged drama which scrapes tactlessly against the guardrails of what a 21st century audience would consider good taste.
Yeah. It’s a real “fuck you” of a film in many ways, not least in terms of whatever constitutes “taste” these days, and when I saw it a few years ago it was really hard to fully appraise… I actually agreed that Friedkin and co didn’t intend for it to be homophobic, but I still can’t decide if it wound up being that or not anyway, and as a non-gay man I’m not sure I’m exactly qualified to make such a judgement anyway. It’s deeply flawed and a mess, but it is so in such a fascinating way, and in many ways that’s the sort of film that intrigues me more than an uncomplicatedly well-made and unproblematic classic…
