I posted roughly this same message already on "The Exorcist" thread elsewhere here.

In the late 70's, I was an actor in NYC, and attended a SAG casting call for extras in "Cruising," for only men. There was a large crowd of men in the room, and a casting person announced at the beginning that everyone would be required to sign release forms, because they'd be required to actually participate in gay sex acts in the background during scenes. I was closeted at the time, and didn't want such a thing to be known about what I hoped would eventually be a career. So, like many of the men there, I walked out. I later heard they ended up using non-Union men for those scenes, though I would guess those got their SAG cards from working on it.

During the actual filming, one night, when I was in the Ramrod bar, down on West St., a man burst in, announcing that the "Cruising" shoot was nearby, and we all needed to go there and protest. I didn't go, and neither did most of the men there, if any. I was still living in fear about being openly gay, and didn't want to get into any possible publicity, especially since I was married to a woman at the time.

Though I have not seen the completed film from start to finish, I have seen most of it, on cable, in bits and pieces, and, like most of the posters above, consider it to be little better than smarmy exploitation, especially in its intimation that homosexuality can be "catching," if, like the Al Pacino character, you expose yourself to it long enough. This is really reprehensible on the part of Friedkin and his creative team, appealing to so-called "mainstream" straights by showing the perverts at play. (What's even more interesting is that one of Friedkin's first directorial efforts was the film version of "Boys in the Band," which is, by and large, sympathetic to its gay characters, apart from the fact that most of them are written as self-hating alcoholics and drug addicts.)

Fortunately, when it first opened, "Cruising" was a big flop. No one went to see it, and it quickly disappeared.

As a gay man who lived in New York during what I now call the "heyday," of PPPA (or Post Pill Pre-AIDS, when everyone was doing everything, I am still amazed that I not only survived, but am still negative. That's what comes from being a top, I guess. I can remember seeing West St. literally swarming with gay men on Sunday afternoons, and there was rampant sex to be had, in any number of places. At that time, all you need worry about was going to the doctor, and any communicable disease could be easily cured. (I once met a man who said he'd had syphillis "three times," and showed me the scar from the lesion on the head of his cock. That was enlightening...)

But, even though the movie pays lipservice to the idea that this is only a small percentage of gay men, what "Cruising" actually shows is quite the opposite, going for the sensational, and even killing off the sympathetic character of Pacino's nice gay next-door neighbor, played by Don Scardino, whom I'd seen on Broadway in the musical version of "King of Hearts." Friedkin presents a whole sickened world of dark impluses on steroids.

Frankly, I've never found Friedkin to be a particularly affecting filmmaker. "The Exorcist" is horrific and shocking on first viewing, but does not hold up on repeated viewings, because you're aware of what's coming next. Not like "Psycho," which still scares the crap out of you, perhaps because of the contribution of its composer, Bernard Herrmann. (For instance, watch "Psycho" sometime with the sound turned off, and you'll see what I mean.) Famously, Friedkin asked Herrmann to score "The Exorcist," but, apparently, Herrmann was not impressed with the film, and demurred. Supposedly, Friedkin said to Herrmann after a screening of a work print, "Why don't you give me a score like what you wrote for "Citizen Kane?" To which Herrmann answered, "Why don't you give me a picture like "Citizen Kane!"