Independent…

Slipping in and out of the weekend. The tray table shudders as we head north on Amtrak, making the large water and the coffee jump towards the edge. I spent over twenty dollars on an ill-fashioned dinner in Penn Station: Carrot-beet-apple-ginger juice, two piece meal of Kentucky fried chicken with green beans that tasted like they had been boiled in the squeezings of a ham, served with resentment, a grande decaf soy latte from starbucks and with it a slice of reduced fat banana bread which, after a third of it was eaten, was deemed too sugary. As yet uneaten is a no dairy no wheat cookie from the same place as the juice. All of it prepared carelessly, ordered greedily and then eaten sadly.

An odd way to finish out the weekend, since up to that point it had been peaceful and pleasant. I experienced palpable joy when I entered my apartment and saw its hard won space and order. For the first time in quite a while the return home was not a return into anxiety. When I left, I actually spent a while tidying up, in hopes of duplicating the feeling.

Last night I went with thornyc and bad_faggot to see Cruising a film that never ceases to surprise. This time around it was the blankness of the acting. And the paucity of the script. Pacino stares around, attempting to inject some distress into what seems to mostly be haunted befuddlement. Karen Allen has nothing to do, and it is mostly left to Paul Sorvino to keep the plot points moving. But of course all this is beside the point, since the film is really a fantasia on sex in a police state, where bodies are reduced to parts, codes of conduct reduced to outfits and every dwelling is grimy, smudged, damp. People mostly look past each other, unless they are cruising each other. And then when they have sex they barely look at each other. There is a thankless bit of acting by the two drag queen hustlers in the beginning. It’s easy to take the movie to task for not getting it right about gay life (whatever that is), but the films real effect is that of having someone tell you a story only to have their narration turn into a long masturbatory fantasy, complete with a hasty and furtive mopping up of the mess once they come to their senses. I pray for a dvd, preferably one that might provide a look at of all the cut stuff. Where is Criterion when you need them? Would make a good double bill with Joe Gage’s closed set. The people who really should have protested are the cops, who are depicted as amoral sociopaths, who treat homosexuals like meat either to be fucked, scorned, bullied or ignored at will. At another point this weekend The Wiz was on TV, directed by Sidney Lumet and it is a similarly bewildering failure. I can’t help thinking that he and Freidkin should have exchanged projects.

Because of bad_faggot‘s suggestion, I have added a t-shirt to my cafe press shop: a yellow one that has the disclaimer from the beginning of the film on the front.

And now I ponder the fact that it’s already 9:45. Faithful readers will realize that I’m slipping from my schedule.

0 Comments +

  1. Cruising…The Boxed Set!

    Later this month, a deluxe DVD edition of Showgirls will be released, complete with shot glasses, pasties and a lap dance tutorial (one hopes and prays Elizabeth Berkeley was tapped: what else is she doing nowadays…we need to learn the secrets of the “fishy flop”). Perhaps Cruising will get similar treatment? The extras might include a bottle of rush, a rag and a tutorial on spastic bar dancing?

  2. Oh dear God – I remember protesting this when it was being filmed. Can it be that it was all so simple then? Or has time rewritten every line?

    I feel even older this morning than I was feeling last night.

  3. CRUISING disclaimer, and recombinant memes

    “This film is not intended as an indictment of the homosexual world. It is set in a small segment of that world, which is not representative of the whole.”

    I love this disclaimer, and I think it should be run at the beginning of lots of films, expecially The Wizard of Oz.

    In fact, I wish someone with more expertise in and access to forbidden technology than myself, would remix selected video scenes from The Wizard of Oz with sampled dialogue from Cruising.

    Or, you know, vice versa.

  4. There must be something in the air – I just watched Cruising last week and not-entirely-coincidentally picked up Dennis Hensley’s “Screening Party,” which devotes a whole chapter to it!

    Odd…

  5. Re: CRUISING disclaimer, and recombinant memes

    Ed this is brilliant. One funny thing about the film is that the image you see immediately after the disclaimer is that of some guy piloting a tug boat. So you think, “It’s set in the world of homosexual tug boat captains?!?”

  6. “Whaddaya got?”

    So now Cruising is going to need a new disclaimer. How about:

    “This is a shocking story. It could never take place in most American towns – but it did in this one. It is a public challenge not to let it happen again.”

  7. Re: CRUISING disclaimer, and recombinant memes

    Ed this is brilliant. One funny thing about the film is that the image you see immediately after the disclaimer is that of some guy piloting a tug boat. So you think, “It’s set in the world of homosexual tug boat captains?!?”

  8. How about…

    “What you are about to see is mostly incoherent; just like your life. Even so, you would be mistaken to imagine that it is about you.”

    Or
    “Space – the final frontier….”

  9. I hate that movie. But we thought it was important to ‘s education — he was two years old when it was originally released — much like taking him to see Auntie Mame. Next up: The Killing of Sister George!

    I love that book. I think the DeWitty has some connection to it, he may actually be one of the screening party friends!

  10. Re: How about…

    “What you are about to see is mostly incoherent…”
    This is great. What’s it from?

    “Space – the final frontier….”

    Yes! Replace this in the Trek movies with:

    “Greetings, my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future.”

  11. Now we know who taught Al Pacino how to dance

    Some trivia about Cruising from the IMDB.com site:

    The LA punk band The Germs recorded five or so songs expressly for the soundtrack to this movie, although in the actual event, only “Lion’s Share” was actually used. During the recording sessions, director William Friedkin was so energized by the Germs’ playing that he took to doing the “pogo” dance around the engineer’s booth.

  12. How about…

    “What you are about to see is mostly incoherent; just like your life. Even so, you would be mistaken to imagine that it is about you.”

    Or
    “Space – the final frontier….”

  13. completely off the subject, but

    and I were discussing the first CD we ever purchased…I told him mine was the CD single to Carmen Electra Go Go Dancer. NOT something I would admit to the general LJ public tho’…heh. I was a collector of anything Paisley Park at that time. 🙂

    …was funny to see this as your music for this post.

  14. Re: completely off the subject, but

    I was in Europe the summer that this was being unleashed, and it came with the most hilarious ad campaign ever on EuroMTV ads like : Prince Says SHE IS THE SCARIEST WOMAN ON THE PLANET! that was the first I had ever heard of Carmen Electra. Six months later she was launched in America, and promptly flopped. I love Go-go dancer though -a relentlessly silly song. Nothing she has done subsequently has measured up in my opinion.

    “dancin in my cage and riding high!”

  15. Re: completely off the subject, but

    I was in Europe the summer that this was being unleashed, and it came with the most hilarious ad campaign ever on EuroMTV ads like : Prince Says SHE IS THE SCARIEST WOMAN ON THE PLANET! that was the first I had ever heard of Carmen Electra. Six months later she was launched in America, and promptly flopped. I love Go-go dancer though -a relentlessly silly song. Nothing she has done subsequently has measured up in my opinion.

    “dancin in my cage and riding high!”

  16. I hate that movie. But we thought it was important to ‘s education — he was two years old when it was originally released

    Wow, that makes me feel old. I was nine when Cruising was released. I guess my parents were good at sheltering me, as I somehow missed all the controversy, and never even heard of the film until I read The Celluloid Closet in my early twenties. That’s also how I heard of The Killing of Sister George, which I love, incidentally (And not in an ironic way, like its perverse companion piece, The Legend of Lylah Clare).

  17. Re: completely off the subject, but

    Sorry for hijacking the thread, but my first CD was Asylum by Cressida. Which I admit to buying for the striking Marcus Keef cover art as for the music (personally responsible for damage to the ozone layer, too, it looks like). It was back in ’93. Yes, I was a bit behind the curve as far as the compact disc thing, and still stubbornly buying vinyl and refusing to have anything to do with overpriced aluminum/polycarbonate sandwiches.

    Then the bottom fell out of the used CD price market and you couldn’t stop me.

  18. Tiiiiiiiiiiiiny text. And yellow? I was thinking white on black, like the film screen. Also I would change ‘film’ to ‘person’.

    But you know me, never satisfied. Just started a new job yesterday, am quitting new job tomorrow. Also my car was ‘relocated’ today – took the train to Queens only to find when I got home that I had walked past the spot it had been towed to, closer to my house than where I had parked it last night. Craziness.

  19. So crazy that LJ is just sending me this comment now, a month later!

    And yes indeed, both and are sorta combined into the character “Ross.” Alonso’s even on the back cover!

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