"Cruising" Comes to the Castro

by Tommi Avicolli-Mecca, 2007-09-17

When I first heard that William Friedkin’s 1980 anti-gay classic “Cruising” was coming to the Castro Theater, I felt a rumble in the pit of my stomach. How could a film that was not only protested vehemently by the queer community, but also trashed by every reputable critic, be playing at the Castro Theater in the heart of San Francisco’s queer neighborhood?

Just as raids on gay bars are things of the (not-so-distant) past that no one thinks about when they enter a club in San Francisco these days, the old battles against Hollywood’s mistreatment of queers don’t come to mind much anymore when folks go to the movies.

What a battle it was. Even as Friedkin was filming in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1979, protesters arrived on the scene to make their feelings known about the story of a straight cop (Al Pacino) who goes undercover into the leather bars and sex dens to find a serial killer who is victimizing gay men. The depiction of the so-called seamier side of queer life was not positive.

Friedkin didn’t exactly have a good reputation in the queer community. He had previously made “Boys in the Band,” a film that portrayed every negative gay male stereotype known to humanity and then some.

Friedkin wasn’t alone in how he depicted queers. In 1980 there were only negative portrayals of gay men and lesbians in Hollywood’s movies. Transgenders were completely invisible. No actor dared to come out of the closet for fear of his or her career being instantly toast.

It’s still true. There may be more positive portrayals of queers in film now, but the box office remains an impossible closet to break free of. While there are American actors who are out, including Ellen Degeneres, Harvey Fierstein, and David Hyde Pierce from Frasier, the movie industry’s leading men and women remain solidly in the closet. Producers and directors still don’t think an out gay leading man or woman can appeal to the masses, i.e., bring in the bucks. A lead actor is chosen for his/her ability to rake in the dough.

Which is why Sean Penn is now slated to play former out SF Supervisor Harvey Milk in Hollywood’s planned adaptation of Randy Shilts’ “The Mayor of Castro Street.” Milk wasn’t the country’s first out elected official (Elaine Noble in Boston was), but he was the one who got remembered, probably because he was killed along with then-Mayor George Moscone.

The news that Penn, a straight actor, will play the gay icon has surprisingly not aroused much ire from a community that once demanded an end to the practice of “I’m not queer, but I play one in the movies.” Harvey firmly believed that gays should represent gays. That’s why he ran for office in the first place. He also felt strongly that queers should come out.

American films may have come a long way baby from “Cruising,” but the fact that Hollywood still keeps its stars locked in their celluloid closets while straight actors play the queer roles shows that we still have a long way to go.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a radical, southern Italian, working-class, atheist queer performer and writer with a website: www.avicollimecca.com