James Franco sort-of remakes William Friedkin’s gay horror film Cruising

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

It seems James Franco’s arthouse indulgences are strangely curtailing with the horror genre as he is sort-of-kind-of remaking William Friedkin’s CRUISING. I describe the process as such because, after failing to acquire the remake rights to the leather ‘n chains serial killer film, Franco went a more original route by making JAMES FRANCO’S CRUISING, a reinterpretation of the original’s production history directed by gay art-porn director Travis Matthews.

The controversial original film had Al Pacino starring “as a police detective who goes undercover in the gay S&M sex scene to investigate the serial murders of gay men within the subculture.” Franco’s version instead goes a more meta direction: Mathews plays himself and directs, and Franco, who also plays himself and produces, decided to document the recreation of the 40 minutes that were lost from the film after an intense battle with the MPAA to change its rating from X to R.

The film was in just two days and finished editing in two months. Though the film will feature ”real gay sex”, the director has announced the film will be not be over explicit: “We’ll have a couple of versions. One that is dirty and one that is dirtier. But neither ventures into seriously hard-core territory.

JAMES FRANCO’S CRUISING will be released in an art installation format during New York’s fashion week beginning September 12th. Now, given the subject matter of this article, I think it’s only fitting a picture of Mr. Franco with an awesomely butch mustache play us out…