From Badass Digest:

William Friedkin's Cruising is a film that fascinates me to no end. I've covered it on the site before, but I can't stress how much you need to see it. It's one seriously bizarre moment in time where two of Hollywood's top players (Friedkin and star Al Pacino) collaborated to take audiences to a very dark place, and blow up their own careers in the process. Admittedly, the attitudes are dated. But more importantly, as a film the narrative is rather fragmented. Part of the reason for that is some 40 minutes of footage was excised by the studio. What remains is a seriously compelling, flawed film that might have been great.

Now, either James Franco is even more fascinated by Friedkin's movie than I am or maybe he lost a bar bet or something, because apparently he's gone out and remade the missing 40 minutes of Cruising. We can all gather what was IN those missing 40 minutes, so this is a long way of saying that Franco might have just made a gay porn short. Dubbed James Franco's Cruising (not sure if that's a name above the title thing a la John Carpenter, or just a sentence), the film allegedly took two months from conception to edit. That, my friends, is creative drive.

But will we ever see it? James Franco does a lot of weird shit (soap opera appearances, experimental films) and also abandons things to which he's attached (REM's last album was slated to have music videos for each song directed by a number of names; guess who never turned his in?), so the odds that we'll ever get to see this are only slightly higher than the odds that most of you will actually want to see it.

Indiewire has more, including a still that looks astonishingly similar to a scene in Friedkin's film.

<img src=http://cf.badassdigest.com/_uploads/images/cruising2.jpg alt=nohomo

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Franco is one out there motherfucker. I don't even know what to say about this.

This is most odd. I just don't know what to say. I love Friedkin and Cruising, but I'm note sure what the point of this is at this juncture.

Franco sure seems to a have strong fascination with gay culture.

Fucking wow. That's hardcore fan dedication.

I want to see these scenes. I can't help but appreciate the weirdness.

I wonder what was his source for the deleted material? Is there a shooting script out there?

Does not having the slightest interest in seeing this make me a homophobe or even a thread crapper?

No.

Publicly questioning it makes you both!

I hope someone lets Julie Walker know.

Cruising is a pretty bad movie, but there is something magical in it that makes it compelling, and I'm sure it is derived 100% from the time period in which it was made. I'd love to see any kind of tribute, re-creation of that movie, though I don't believe it will be able to scrape even the surface of Cruising's very bizzare tone.

Bizarre indeed. I haven't seen Cruising in years, but recall hearing about the excessive cuts. Franco is just as bizarre so can't say that I'm not curious.

Not enough moustaches and hankies in that picture.

Don't forget Bruno Kirby.



http://www.filmthreat.com/reviews/10278/

Come up with a better soundtrack than this James Franco!!!

"Heat Of The Moment" - Willy DeVille
"Loneliness" - The Cripples
"Spy Boy" - John Hiatt
"When I Close My Eyes I See Blood" - Madelynn von Ritz
"Lump" - Mutiny
"Shakedown" - Rough Trade
"Pullin' My String" - Willy DeVille
"Lions Share" - The Germs
"Hypnotize" - The Cripples
"It's So Easy" - Willy DeVille

I hope Franco is using the same tracks. The music in Cruising is fantastic.

Those pictures are exactly what I imagine Steamworks to be like so, yeah, mgbfan has forever tainted me.

Done and done.

Hi, have you met James Franco?

oh yeah, the fisting scene

from what I've read about the deleted scenes from the movie is that essentially a whole bunch of hard core sex shots.

The film itself was littered with subliminal frames of actual male intercourse. Remember the scene in Fight Club with the penis? That's how it was in Cruising, but actual intercourse. There was a special edition DVD that came out a few years ago that had a William Friedkin commentary track that was pretty fascinating. Friedkin went into explicit detail about shooting the film at actual gay clubs, the extras weren't real extras, but patrons of the clubs, because they brought authenticity to the film. In fact the creepiest part about the film was that it was based on a serial killer in NY who killed a bunch of people, but played one of the orderly's in The Exorcist years prior, which Friedkin talks about.

As far as Franco and his project - I have no idea what's going on there.