A few years later, Jerry Weintraub brought the idea back to Friedkin, who was still not interested. D'Antoni tried to attach Steven Spielberg, but they were not able to interest a studio. Friedkin was not particularly interested in the project.
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Philip D'Antoni, who had produced Friedkin's 1971 film The French Connection, approached Friedkin with the idea of directing a film based on New York Times reporter Gerald Walker's 1970 novel Cruising about a serial killer targeting New York City's gay community.
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Burns stares at himself in the mirror and he briefly looks at the camera, which then cuts to the tug boat patrolling the Hudson River from the beginning of the film, bringing the audience full circle. As Burns shaves his beard in the bathroom, Nancy tries on his leather jacket, cap, and aviator sunglasses. The police consider the case closed with Richards in custody and Burns, now promoted to detective, moves back in with Nancy. The police dismiss the murder as a lover's quarrel turned violent and put out an arrest warrant for Gregory, with whom Burns had an earlier confrontation due to Gregory's jealousy. Burns brings the man into custody, but shortly afterward, Ted's mutilated body is found. After Burns asks him to pull his pants down, Richards tries to stab him, but Burns stabs him in the side, incapacitating him. Burns later meets Richards in Morningside Park and cruises him for sex. He breaks into his apartment and discovers a box of letters to his father. Burns thinks that he has found the serial killer: Stuart Richards, a gay music graduate student with schizophrenic disorder. Edelson in turn reprimands the officers behind the interrogation of Skip.įollowing a new lead, Burns investigates students at Columbia University who studied with one of the previous victims, a college professor. Exhausted by the undercover work, Burns is close to quitting, but is convinced by Edelson to continue with the investigation. Burns is disturbed by the brutality, and tells Captain Edelson he didn't agree to the assignment so people could be beaten simply for being gay. Burns's undercover work takes a toll on his relationship with his girlfriend Nancy due to his inability to tell her the details of his current assignment and his developing friendship with Ted, who himself is having relationship problems with his jealous and overbearing dancer boyfriend, Gregory.īurns mistakenly compels the police to interrogate a waiter, Skip Lee, who is intimidated and beaten to coerce a confession before the police discover Skip's fingerprints do not match the killer's.
He rents an apartment in the area and befriends a neighbor, Ted Bailey, a struggling young gay playwright who does tech support to pay the bills. Burns is at first reluctant to accept the assignment, but he is ambitious and sees a high-profile case as a way to rapidly advance his career. Officer Steve Burns, who resembles the victims' dark-haired, slim profile, is sent deep undercover by Captain Edelson into the urban world of gay S&M and leather bars in the Meatpacking District in order to track down the killer. The police suspect it to be the work of a serial killer who is picking up gay men at West Village bars such as the Eagle's Nest, the Ramrod, and the Cock Pit, then taking them to cheap rooming houses or motels, tying them up and stabbing them to death. In New York City amidst a hot summer, body parts of men are showing up in the Hudson River. The film is also notable for its open-ended finale, which was criticized by Robin Wood and Bill Krohn as further complicating what they felt were the director's incoherent changes to the rough cut and synopsis, as well as other production issues. The shooting and promotion were dogged by gay rights protesters, who believed that the film stigmatized them. Poorly received by critics upon release, Cruising performed moderately at the box office. The title is a play on words with a dual meaning because "cruising" can describe both police officers on patrol as well as men who are cruising for sex. It is loosely based on the novel of the same name by New York Times reporter Gerald Walker about a serial killer targeting gay men, particularly those men associated with the leather scene in the late 1970s. Cruising is a 1980 crime thriller film written and directed by William Friedkin and starring Al Pacino, Paul Sorvino, and Karen Allen.