One of the finest ballads of the last decade and a song that took on special meaning post-Katrina. The accompanying video, starring Evan Rachel Wood and Jamie Bell as a young couple dealing with a difficult choice one of them makes, may not present the most original story. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t ring true.
One of the most controversial films ever released by a major Hollywood studio (in this case, United Artists), “Cruising” was definitely the wrong film at the wrong time. Released in 1980, the film is about a detective, played by Al Pacino, who goes undercover into the gay leather S&M subculture to find a killer who is stalking and killing people who are part of the scene. As the film progresses, Pacino’s character becomes more distraught and disturbed by what he’s finding. Pacino’s character is not only discovering things about himself he doesn’t want to admit, but he may also be losing his sanity in the process.
OK, based on the above description, my plot description reads like some retro gay-panic cautionary tale penned by someone like Jerry Falwell. Given the fact that in 1980, there were very few films with positive gay role models, it’s easy to see why gay people were outraged by this film.
However, after over 30 years of a much more diverse representation of the homosexual community in media, the complexities of this film are more apparent and it can now be viewed a lot more objectively. I don’t believe this film is saying that anyone who hangs around homosexuals will suddenly become gay and insane. “Cruising” is a character study of one man, who was probably not stable to begin with, being overwhelmed by what he’s supposed to investigate. If you watch carefully, Pacino provides many clues to his character’s internal demons early on, without explicitly calling them out. That is the work of a fine actor.
“Cruising” contains one of Al Pacino’s best acting performances and it was right before “Scarface” turned him into one of cinema’s most overbaked hams. This is not to say Pacino delivered a bad performance in “Scarface” or in other films since then. It’s just that this is one of the last times Pacino didn’t chew the scenery. From what I understand, Pacino has refused to discuss this film at all.
Director William Friedkin has never been one to shy away from troubling material or to leave audiences feeling uneasy when they leave the theater. Even his most popular films “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist” don’t have tidy conclusions. “Cruising” is no different. While it’s understandable why someone may not like “Cruising,” the film shouldn’t be dismissed as the homophobic (or homophilic) garbage the critics of the time alleged. The film is brilliantly directed and edited. The sound design alone (where you can hear leather and chains throughout the entire film) is enough to be very unnerving. There’s also an overwhelming sense of dread that permeates the film. Had it been released in the mid-1980s or beyond, everyone would say the film was a metaphor for AIDS.
The film also contains some excellent supporting performances from Paul Sorvino, Karen Allen, Joe Spinnell, Don Scardino, Powers Boothe, and Mike Starr. It also has one of the first punk soundtracks on a major studio film, featuring songs by Mink DeVille, the Germs, and Rough Trade. Jack Nitzsche does another fine and effectively creepy score.
If you’re curious about “Cruising,” be warned that the film contains some very disturbing graphic violence. In addition, the film does very explicitly show the gay leather S&M underworld of the late 1970s. It barely squeaked by with an R-rating in the permissive late 1970s and I’m sure it would have a hard time now.
“Cruising” also inspired James Franco’s recent film called “Interior. Leather Bar.” Co-directed by Franco and Travis Mathews, the film attempts to chronicle the explicit footage that was cut of “Cruising” and has been subsequently lost. It’s telling that a major Hollywood star being involved in a film like this gets no more than a shrug these days. Especially when he’s the lead in an upcoming hyper-expensive Disney fantasy film.
Probably the most bizarre footnote is that Steven Spielberg was attached to direct “Cruising” at one point in the early 1970s.
UPDATE (Oct. 2015): The clip of this from “Coming Home” has since been removed from YouTube. I’ve posted a non-film version here as a substitute. You are strongly urged to check out “Coming Home” when you get a chance.
One of the most powerful uses of a song in a film. This is the ending of Hal Ashby’s Vietnam War drama “Coming Home” from 1978. The scene features Jon Voight’s paralyzed Vietnam War veteran talking to a group of high school students, while Bruce Dern’s veteran character commits suicide by swimming into the sea.
Apparently, Dern’s suicide scenario was one that Ashby often thought of. The use of Buckley’s “Once I Was” was especially meaningful, because before Buckley’s death from an overdose of heroin, was Ashby’s choice to play Woody Guthrie in his biopic “Bound for Glory.”
“American Pop” is animator Ralph Bakshi’s immensely ambitious attempt at telling a multi-generational story through the musical ambitions of one family. Beginning in Russia at the turn of the 20th century and ending somewhere roughly in the late 1970s/early 1980s, “American Pop” chronicles American popular music from ragtime to punk. It’s one of the few cinematic attempts at creating a non-pornographic (but still R-rated) animated film for adults. Sadly, it wasn’t successful at the box office.
“American Pop” is one of those movies that I wish was better than it is. But what’s there is still extremely impressive. Bakshi’s use of rotoscope animation (where live actors are filmed and the animator creates images over the live ones) is still stunning to watch even over 30 years later.
For many years, it was not available due to rights issues over the extensive soundtrack (which ranges from Scott Joplin to Jimi Hendrix, to Lou Reed to Bob Seger). However, such obstacles were cleared in the late 1990s and the film is easily available on DVD these days. Here’s hoping a remastered Blu-Ray release is in the planning.
From the 1959 album “Giant Steps,” “Naima” is a ballad that John Coltrane composed for his then-wife Juanita Naima Grubbs. One of the smoothest and most beautiful pieces of music ever recorded.
A pre-“Superfly” solo classic by Curtis Mayfield. The first time I heard this was on the soundtrack for an early 1970s sketch-comedy film called “The Groove Tube” that was a precursor to “Saturday Night Live.”
From the album “21st Century Breakdown,” Green Day does a nice approximation of an early 1970s John Lennon ballad.
The title song from Cash’s “American IV: The Man Comes Around.” It’s an incredibly stark and chilling song about the Book of Revelations. However, as with most great songs these days, it has been co-opted and used way too much in several different films and TV shows.
It’s hard to pick what the best Tom Waits song of all time is. However, “Tom Traubert’s Blues” is the greatest in my opinion. A beautiful and sad variation on the Australian folk song “Waltzing Matilda,” “Tom Traubert’s Blues” is about the ravages of alcoholism. According to Bones Howe, Waits’ producer, the inspiration for the song came from a time when Waits “went down and hung around on skid row in L.A. because he wanted to get stimulated for writing this material. He called me up and said, ‘I went down to skid row … I bought a pint of rye. In a brown paper bag.’ I said, ‘Oh really?.’ ‘Yeah – hunkered down, drank the pint of rye, went home, threw up, and wrote ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues’ […] every guy down there… everyone I spoke to, a woman put him there.”
According to Waits, he used the melody from “Waltzing Matilda” because “”when you’re ‘waltzing matilda’, you’re on the road. You’re not with your girlfriend, you’re on the bum. For me, I was in Europe for the first time, and I felt like a soldier far away from home and drunk on the corner with no money, lost.”
The song was used brilliantly in the film “Basquiat” when Jean Michel-Basquiat learns that his mentor Andy Warhol has passed away.
This meme has been around forever, but in my opinion, it never gets old. Fart humor may be as lame as mother-in-law jokes, but when it’s done well, it can still be sublime. Apologies to Mel Brooks, but this makes the campfire scene in “Blazing Saddles” look like an episode of “Full House.”
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