Kill James Bond! - S3E22.5 Cruising [Preview]

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

This is a preview of a bonus episode. Check it out here! In this episode of Kill James Bond, we look at 1980's Cruising, A movie about a serial killer stalking the S&M community in the Meatpacking District of New York. Protested during it's production and release, this movie remains.... let's say controversial.  ----- FREE PALESTINE Hey, Devon here. For the past few months I've been talking to a family trapped in Gaza, working to hit their gofundme for passage out of Rafah whenever the crossing reopens. Their names are Ahmed and Layla, and their 4 kids Jana, Malik, Lana and Amir. While the crossing might be closed, the situation is changing by the day and being able to afford passage out when a crossing reopens is an immense comfort. Please don't donate money as your sole intersection with palestine organising. You have to do other things now. https://www.gofundme.com/f/a8jzz-help-me-and-my-family-get-out-of-the-gaza-strip https://www.map.org.uk/donate/donate ----- Consider supporting us on our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond ------ *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com

Hello and welcome to another Pride Month bonus episode of Kill James Bond. You know who we are. This is Devon's pick. What's up? Of Pride Month bonus episode of Kill James Bond. You know who we are. This is Devon's pick. What's up? A Pride Month bonus episode. Devon bravely coming out as homophobic. Yes. So what I've done is I've picked a movie that I quite like and both of my friends have hated it and now I'm starting this podcast from the back foot as I attempt to put my analysis forth to the viewer over yours. So it's gonna be interesting.

I didn't hate it. I think it's like a well made movie. I think it's interesting. No, Nova hated it. I do believe that it is homophobic and it made me sad to watch, but I think it's homophobic in an interesting way. The text that I put in the group chat for this was that after watching this, I watched this late at night and I Struggled to sleep afterwards because I was too angry to sleep. We are watching Cruising we are indeed watching cruising 1980s cruising

Serpico 2 gay Serpico starring Al Pacino 1980 I think this is maybe getting graded on a curve because we saw Serpico first and it changed your life for the better And the thing is Serpico rules and it changed your life for the better. And the thing is Serpico rules. I will say this, this guy isn't hot in this. Mmm. That's true. This hasn't changed the way I dress at all, other than what I'm doing right now is a bit for the cameras that no one at home will get to see.

It's a little hot. For those listening at home, Devin is wearing the full Leatherman outfit, complete with a little cap. That's right, yeah. I'm actually doing this from the Vac-Cube. It's amazing that you've done the Gimp mask and the podcast's audio still sounds so clear. It's good. Yeah, you'd think that Zip would be jingling next to the microphone. You can get a microphone that fits into the end of the gas mask.

It's pretty easy. Oh, wow. Where? No. Right. This is a 1980 William Friedkin movie. You may remember William Friedkin as the guy who made The Exorcist. Oh, nice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he also made this, which is not nice. This is, let's say a controversial movie. It was controversial at the time. It was re-released in like the 2000s, like 2007, and it had a bit of a re-appraisal. And now we are doing a re-re-appraisal to see if the reappraisal was right. Right?

Because at the time, people hated this movie. Well, hated it before it came out. Like they were protesting it and disrupting the filming. We'll get to that. But then in 2006, it came out, you know, Will and Grace was on, everyone was at brunch, no one, everything was fine. And so people were like, this is good now actually, maybe. And the kind of revisionist history of cruising appeared.

And those people were wrong. And I'm going to get into this over the course of this show trial for the next hour and change. Mm-hmm. They're completely wrong. But I am right. Every other interpretation is wrong. I do think it's very funny that the first person to speak in this film is Nate Bethea. Yeah, we begin. New York City, 1980. Tell me a wrong...

Fucking right. No, you're so right. Tell me a wrong. The first guy in this is Pure Spits Nate Bethay, our producer. Yeah, the Hudson River tugboat with Pure Spits Nate Bethay, our producer, on it, sees a floating arm in the Hudson River, which is then fished out and sent to a mortuary. And we get a medical examiner say, oh, you know, these body parts have been turning up. And the most 70s NYPD detective ever, man is wearing his shield on, like clipped to

his very wide shirt collar, which is a move I hadn't ever seen before, goes, ah, what do you want me to do about it? You know, it's, I can't do anything about this. Well, we get the first instance of several in this movie of like cops saying shit. Yes. Because the medical examiner is just like, you got to, you know, investigate this and he's just like, hey, you can't give me a cause of death. I can't. Prosecutors of homicide.

Put it in the circumstances undetermined bag, which is what they do. Exactly. Yes. This movie hates cops, which is I say that in its favor, right? Like that's a good check. Yeah That's that's one of the one of the key Theses it's advancing right is that cops are both? Personally sadistic and also extremely stupid right? Yes, correct We start off mostly with the extremely stupid, with the like, oh, what am I going to do with this like severed arm? And now we go to the sadistic, right?

And we open with a fairly traumatic scene. Yeah. The first of two fairly traumatic scenes to open a movie with, I will say. Yeah, interesting choice to show to two trans women. We see two NYPD- Well, it doesn't think it's good that it's happening. Yeah, that's true. It's just that it officers in their like, patrol car, in their cruiser, because cruising is a devil meaning, talking about how all women are bitches, right? This is like the first thing.

One of them's getting divorced. We like learn about them is that they're both like extremely misogynist And then they do some what I like is established as extremely routine Sexual assault and sexual harassment of two trans sex workers. Yeah Yep, they sort of flagged these these two women down like one of them is even going come on man You booked me like a couple of days ago. I can't take another bus this month, but they give him going, come on, man, you booked me like a couple of days ago. I can't take another bus this month. But they give him slightly too much sass. And he immediately is like, no, I actually have power in this situation.

Yeah. Get into my car and have sex with me. But it threatens them. Yeah. Mox them. Mm hmm. And then like rapes, rapes one of them. It is simply oral rape, like forces one of them on pain of arrest to like suck him up. And there is. And I do think this is like quite clever is that whilst this is happening We then pan away from that and there is a man Crossing the road to go into a gay club and like listeners the sort of plot of this movie is that there's a

Serial killer targeting gay men and the cops are gonna have to do something about this and Al Pacino is going to have to save the day. Very specifically, people who are involved in the S&M sub-community in the meatpacking district in New York City. It's a very, like, laser-focused... Where it claims to be. What I do think is quite clever is that it shows us that the cops are so busy harassing and raping queer people that they are not noticing the actual threat as it literally walks behind the car. Yes.

Absolutely. And you walk straight past them. Which I think is like, okay, there's some things this movie does that are clever, even though I think overall that it's homophobic. But credit by credit is you. In places I think it's a very well made movie. This is one of them, right? I like the way that this interaction plays out with the kind of like mutual contempt

and like familiarity and like brutality and it's horrifying. And it's not intended to make you like the cops, right? But it is also intended to be, I think, it's for a Cishet viewer, right? I think the whole movie is. And I think... Very much, yeah. The kind of thing is intended to establish, oh, what a like strange world all of these people inhabit, right?

Yeah, that's interesting actually is that we get a lot of shots of like, so we now go into this gay S&M club, and there are a lot of shots and scenes that take place in these clubs throughout the movie. Yes. And it took me quite a long time to realize that the movie is trying to suggest that this is like strange and exotic.

I know. There's a lot of shots that like linger on like gay men and like dancing and stuff, and I was like, oh yeah, cool, it's a club, like you've established this? It's cool, yeah. And then it keeps lingering and showing us stuff, I'm just like, oh, you want me to think this is weird and bad. Oh, that's why you're spending so much time with this.

No, I just thought this was just kind of normal. Like this just seems seems like these guys are having a good time. Like, cool, great. But it's doing the thing with gay people that the Bond movies do with Asian people. Well, the kids are just like, oh, fuck, it's Japan. But now it's like, oh, fuck, it's Japan. But now it's like, oh, fuck, it's gay. My favorite detail in this first club scene is the like sort of long held shot of the gimp.

Like they there's a lot of like shots of Leather Man. Right. But then there's every so often, Friedkin will cut back to a guy in a gimp mask and just hold there for a couple of seconds. Just like, check this guy out. There's the gimp. And it's like, OK. And OK. It's kind of haunts this movie. And I'm just like, you know, when people are like, no kink at Pride,

this movie's like, well, not only no kink at Pride, but also like no kink at kink clubs. The movie thinks this is weird. It's like, where else do you want people to do this, man? Like, this is normal. Yeah, we will talk about no kink at Prideink clubs. The movie thinks this is weird. It's like, where else do you want people to do this, man? Like, this is normal. Yeah, we will talk about no kink at pride at length, I suspect. Mostly the thing is though, and I think this is something that Devon's going to agree with me on for once in this.

I experience all the bar scenes in this movie as an inadvertent documentary. One hundred fucking percent. Even with regards to like, I like the movie, even ignoring it, like just as a pure inadvertent documentary? 100 fucking percent. Like even with regards to like, I like the movie, even ignoring it, like just as a pure inadvertent documentary, it's wonderful. And I'll let you tell us why, because you read about it a little more than I did. Yeah. So, I mean, add this to the list of like places you will never experience and are sad about, right? Like, you know, you will never eat off the light Hong Kong police mobile

canteen, but you will also never be in the mineshaft in the meatpacking district and like 1979, right? No. And I feel a strong sense of like affection and relationship to this as a queer community, right? You can go to queer clubs. Not like this. I know, but the thing is, right. It's a very specific historical moment.

There's a historical moment because the first cases of AIDS in New York City were recorded about a year after this movie came out. Right. Irrespective of all of the other things that have made it so that leather bars like this are increasingly forced to close in the face of like Grindr or, you know, tripling rents or whatever the fuck. Like, it's not just hard to find one because of that, it's hard to find one because a lot of the people who are in this movie, because they didn't cast extras for this. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because Friedkin knew the mob guy who operated all of these bars, a guy called Matty the Horse Yanello.

He just like got like a camera crew in here. So these are all like people who, these are all regulars. These are genuinely just like gay guys in the SNM community in 1979 in New York City. And this community specifically, and these people specifically were devastated. Yes. Within the next 10 years. Like... Absolutely.

And so it really is a time capsule, right? Mm-hmm. Would you say that this film is an example of hauntology? years. Like, absolutely. And so it really is a time capsule. Right. Would you say that this film is an example of hauntology? Hey, I'm recording this live on the traditional scrunch folks. If you want to listen to the rest of this podcast, you're going to want to head on over to patreon.com slash kill James Bond and sign up today for just five pounds a month. That's about the cost of a tube of three tennis balls so just hold off on that and pick up a subscription to Kill James Bond. Love you!